Examines images and the written text in the picture book, "The Day of Ahmed's Secret," by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland. Examines the book in greater detail by looking for issues of authenticity as well as social issues within the book's pictures and written texts. (SG)

Offers an overview of contrasts and similarities in various approaches to Shakespeare studies. Discusses how a shift in perspectives from grappling with tragic moral themes to examining aesthetic and semantic complexity represents a productive way to respond to Shakespeare. (NH)

Drawing on interviews and on the actual language that readers (students, teachers, and adults) use to interpret and respond to literary texts, this book examines the conventions that shape talk about literature in large groups, small groups, and adult book clubs. By looking across contexts, the four separate but related studies in the book raise…

Recognizing the proliferation of persuasive language in advertising and in politics, this guide explains how to analyze political language for its persuasive techniques and why it is important to do so. The first chapter of the book provides a rationale for analyzing persuasion, and an overview of the book. The remaining chapters explore various…

Discusses the character of Claudius in "Hamlet" to determine the character's sincerity. (DF)

Describes a 4-week unit of study that focuses on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a text that has been especially controversial in today's climate of increased multicultural awareness. Involves students in a larger conversation about the possibilities for reading and interpreting literature and prepares them to write mature analyses of the…

Gives insights from a writer's agent into the crucial importance of the first paragraph of a short story. Alerts the teacher that he or she almost certainly employs a similar procedure for assessing suitability of a story for classroom use. Admonishes teachers to begin at the beginning when guiding students through a work of fiction. (SG)

The tendency to think of a literary work as an object or entity existing apart from author and reader has been the greatest stumbling block in literary criticism and the teaching of literature. The transaction between a reader and a text involves the reader in a highly complex, ongoing process of selection and organization. Keeping the reader's…

Developed as a model for teachers faced with the task of assigning research papers to students who are still apprentice writers, this two-part paper explores the possibilities of written response that reside both in the dialogic interplay of ideas in utopian texts and in the criticism of utopian texts. The first part examines some ideas contained…

The literary theorist Terry Eagleton believes that literary study is the study of human discourse. To build on his idea for use in the classroom, it must first be assumed that literature constitutes a dialogue between the work (and its author) and the reader. The dialogue process can be introduced in a 2- to 4-week unit through a cluster of…

Offers 10 basic principles that express the beliefs of the deans of 12 Pennsylvania colleges about the nature of literature, how it is best studied, how it is best taught, and the relationship between writing and literature. (SRT)