For at least three reasons, university English faculties should reassess their attitudes toward children's literature, a field of vital importance in children's education. First, specialists in children's literature are sorely needed in English departments, where courses on the subject properly belong (rather than in colleges of education).…

Muses on such topics as the importance of teaching students about the craft of poetry and of helping them see that life can turn into literature. (GT)

This paper argues that the prevailing tendency in the teaching of literature today is to rely too heavily on secondary material. An approach to training English majors to explicate and evaluate literature on their own is described. Students should understand that literature is not often autobiographical, that the writer's original intent is not…

This paper discusses the effects of personal response on both the research and the teaching of language and literature. Two studies are presented which show how personal response affects interpretive judgment. In addition, a study of classroom responses to literature is compared to a study of language, indicating that personal motivations preface…

Discusses how students' strained metaphors and odd juxtapositions in writing literary analysis papers can reveal fresh perspectives on the literature being studied. (DD)

Although the notion of teaching literature in an intensive weekend format may present numerous problems to be solved by the instructor, it can be a format that results in considerable success. It is conducive to the schedules of many students who work during the week, and weekend literature courses have proven to be popular. Intensive weekend…

American literature has served not only to help establish, define, and reinforce the American Myth, but has been used to question, to challenge, and to redefine it as well. The dialogic relationship between the literature and the myth thus can become the starting point for a course that encourages closer examination of the process of…

Takes a new look at the importance and the oddity of John Donne's "The Exstasie" through a feminist critical perspective. Discusses certain major elements in the poem: the situation, the the persons, and the images that carry key meanings. (EL)

Considers the importance of textual studies to literature study, the expanded canon of contemporary criticism, and the anti-intuitive bias of contemporary literary theory. (CRH)

Although there is abundant theoretical matter concerning the critical role that various interpretive communities play in making meanings of literary texts, most scholars do not take up the matter of the composition of these interpretive groups in their university classrooms. How may the interpretive strategies of groups of students change over the…

John Milton presented a wide spectrum of materials and ideas illuminating the literary landscape like a rainbow which critics and authors have been discussing for centuries. One example of the multiple layers of meaning in Milton's poems is found in Sonnet XIX, which can be useful for both forensic discussion as well as for composition…

An assignment for high school or college students that requires them to interpret what a poem may have communicated to the poet's contemporaries can be valuable in that it teaches them that there is more than one way to interpret a poem and that the rules of interpretation are neither universal nor unchanging. Such an approach to poetry…

Six points appear prominently in modern theory of composition: theory basks in the shadow of literary criticism and scholarship; writing is an act involving creativity, of which theory should take account; creativity depends upon the primacy of personal insight, which is also the basis of intellectual development; the grapholect of standard edited…

The workshop method of teaching a college literature course has proved an effective means of stimulating independent student work, promoting teacher-student conferences, and providing for peer criticism. Discussions of both some specific principles of literary criticism and the historical background of the period to be studied introduce the…

Shows how teaching "The Bluest Eye" not only helps students learn about the time period of the novel and its relevant issues and techniques, but also helps them to understand themselves. Shows how it can fit into contemporary literature classes, introductory courses to fiction or literature, or into women's literature classes. (EL)