Argues that the relationship between Lily and Mrs. Ramsey in Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" is a form of the Oedipal story. According to the theory, Lily must resist Mrs. Ramsey's effort to entice her into the traditional female role and recognize that she can be separate from Mrs. Ramsey's world and still love her. (JC)

Describes the Johari Window, a specialized questioning strategy for the study of characterization in fiction. Asserts that this method promotes classroom discussion, provides motivation to analyze a character in depth, develops students' empathy for a specific character, and encourages inferential thinking. (MM)

Describes an exercise to elicit student interpretations of Robert Wallace's poem, "Ungainly Things." (MM)

Presents an interpretation of Katherine Anne Porter's short story "An Approach to Granny Weatherall" with explanatory material to help students and teachers appreciate and understand it. Notes that this interpretation is contrary to the Roman Catholic theology of sin and punishment on which the story is based. (NKA)

Describes the results of a study that asked two classes of 14 and 15 year olds to think aloud in the presence of an interviewer through their several readings of a poem. (DF)

Relates experiences teaching Philip Larkin's poetry. (HOD)

Argues for an interpretation of Act III, Scene I of "The Tempest" that stresses the characters' revealing their vitality and humanity through their dialog. (AEA)

Explores how Burke's texts engage readers. Discusses his determinate meaning, propositional content, stylistic content, interest in his audience, attitudes of assent and dissent toward reading, and the idea of reading as rebirth. (EL)

Outlines Bleich's theory of subjective criticism and traces its roots in the work of the psychoanalytic critic Norman N. Holland. Suggests that the subjective criticism approach to literature can help elicit student response in the classroom and initiate discussions of value questions which literature inevitably raises. (RBW)

Argues that the essential discipline in literature is neither learning to write essays for an exam nor keeping up with the latest scholarship but giving close attention to the words on the page and learning to respond to them. (MM)

Discusses how "Sons and Lovers" was used to elicit values discussions using questions from "Teaching in the Content Areas" by Harold Herber. (CRH)

This paper shows how literary criticism can enrich the high school English classroom. Specifically, the paper focuses on how an Internet teaching tool called the WebQuest helped one educator's students learn about literary criticism and apply it to "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. The WebQuest homepage defines a WebQuest as "an…

Telling stories from secondary and college English classrooms, this book explores the new possibilities for teaching and learning generated by bringing together reader-response and cultural-studies approaches. The book connects William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and other canonical figures to multicultural writers, popular culture,…

Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that: a close study of the characters of a literary classic will yield important clues to an understanding of the work as a whole; an effective analysis of stylistic devices depends upon selection and interpretation…

Report offers several working definitions of the process of critical thinking, then describes several ERIC documents dealing with ways of teaching critical thinking in general on the secondary level, and finally points to some aspects of learning about literature and language that involve critical thinking skills. (Author)