Traditionally, we English faculty have warned our students against simply identifying with a literary work's characters. For us, such attachments constitute "reading badly." But we engage in identifications, too, including ones with the work's author. A consideration of critical responses to "Benito Cereno" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" enables us to…

In this article, the author argues that Emerson repudiated the formalism of nineteenth century belletristic, mechanistic, reason-centered, American rhetoric influenced by Hugh Blair. Instead Emerson promoted a rhetoric with imagination at its center, which calls for civic duty. (Contains 33 notes.)

The apparent aestheticism of Northrop Frye's view of literature is scrutinized and the moral and didactic underpinnings brought to light. Special attention is paid to the role of literature and the imagination in the development of human morality. (RJG)

Notes that many reports on children's books employ the word "imaginative" or "imagination," but few relate it to fantasy, suggesting that it was not the genre that determined this label, but rather the talent, insight, and craft with which the author shaped the material. (HOD)

Offers a stimulating discussion of fancy and reality in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." (HOD)

A study of English literature offers a knowledge of other minds and, more importantly, a process of "extending sympathy" or imaginative identification. (HOD)

A distinguished writer looks again at a favorite childhood hero--Robin Hood, a work written by Henry Gilbert. (HOD)

Examines the structural patterns of literature suggested by Steven Spielberg's film, "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," and how these patterns are reflected in children's stories. (HOD)

Discusses how the imagination not only helps one to create fantasy worlds, but makes one's self what he or she is. (HOD)

Asserts that the act of visualizing is of vital importance in interpreting Wallace Stevens' poetry. Examines Stevens' use of "riddling" (using metaphors to create poetic riddles) as a literary device in several of his poems. (MM)

This exploration of the two leading varieties of nonsense literature defines strict nonsense as that in which the laws of nature are suspended and replaced by new laws which the author decrees, and loose nonsense as usually comic writing about a singular unlikely event. Examples of these two types of verse in children's literature are cited. (22…

Notes how discussing poetry as oral language helps high school students relate poems and imagination to their everyday lives. (RL)

Analyzes radio program in which host Garrison Keillor fabricates fictional community of Lake Wobegon, thus addressing another fabricated community, the baby boomers. Concludes Keillor's persona moves from nostalgia and bitterness to acceptance of conditions of community, reflecting and encouraging a passive, uncritical approach toward community…

Reexamines Maurice Sendak's first children's book, published in 1956. Finds it to be filled with the characters, themes, and psychological concerns that were to become hallmarks of the writer-artist's mature works. (NKA)

Children's writings seem to elicit a somewhat narrow range of adult responses. More often than not, the adult tendency is to read children's fictional writings as autobiographical. The adult critic can, that is, think of the child author as a collection of biographical facts, a series of life experiences with an end point marked by the production…