Using great literature to clarify and to improve students' writing is like using the unknown-literature to explain the only slightly less unknown--the writing of compositions. An alternative is to study films to foster an awareness of technique, for films contain many of the same rhetorical and structural devices as literature. It is possible to…

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) in Denver, Colorado, December 1969. (DS)

In terms of structure, the play "Othello" is a distortion of an initiation ritual. Arnold van Gennup, in his book "The Rites of Passage," reduces all initiation rituals into three definable phases: separation, transition, and incorporation. The general pattern of the initiation ritual in "Othello" is as follows:…

To understand the dangers of interpreting literary works primarily through the history, social customs, and values of the period portrayed in the work, students should imagine themselves 3 centuries in the future considering a modern work of art. For example, they should try to interpret the movie, "The Graduate," as a reflection of the…

This article presents an annotated bibliography of research works about digital/technology tools for literacy instruction, discourse/cultural analysis, literacy, literary response/literature/narrative, media-information literacy/media use, professional development/teacher education related to English/language arts, reading, second language…

Explains a teaching technique for explicating "Macbeth" that depends on textual proof. (RB)

Uses the film version of Bernard Malamud's "The Natural" to show how archetypes and irony make their appeal to a serious audience without in any way making the film less entertaining. (EL)

Investigates the uses of the rhetorical strategy of identification by John McPhee in his novel, "Coming into the Country." Describes the technique articulated by Kenneth Burke as identification. Identifies three of Burke's techniques in McPhee's prose. (HB)

The teacher's authority in matters of interpretation comes from his greater experience as a reader--and he does students a disservice if he does not exercise that authority. (JH)

This paper advises poetry readers to get rid of the inhibitions that the search for conventional meaning creates, by invoking the tenet that "a poem must not mean but be." The paper presents and analyzes several poems, maintaining that good poetry is an honest presentation of real experience that rarely offers information about any short-term…

Knowledge of classical rhetoric is still useful to writing teachers.

Discusses examples in "Moby Dick" of Melvillean words symptomatic of the significance of Ishmael's rhetorical energy, in order to suggest that Ishmael's language reflects Melville's search for lexical and rhetorical forms that express the democratic impulse. (SRT)