This booklet, containing eight instructional modules on works by major British writers, can be used either within a lower-level literature course for non-English majors or in a survey course for English majors. The first four modules focus on works from the early English period through the Elizabethan Age: "Beowulf,""Sir Gawain and the Green…

Poetry presents serious difficulties to students. Many poems students are asked to study were written during eras with social mores, modes of thought and expression that are now unfamiliar. Often the sentiments expressed in poetry are discomforting or unfamiliar to students, though the greatest poets express universal ideas and emotions with which…

Experience in evaluating responses to poetry in the Advanced Placement Examination can offer guidelines for the effective testing of students on poetry without reducing their interest in the art. For advanced secondary or first-year college students, teachers should avoid approaches and tests that are concerned with (1) extraneous biographical,…

Reconstructionism is an extension and elaboration of the progressivist philosophy of education developed by John Dewey and his intellectual associates. Thomas Brameld also views reconstructionism as the beginning of a new philosphy of education, and this dissertation develops an approach to teaching literature that functions with Brameld's views.…

The use of films in the classroom can help motivate students not only to write but also to consciously employ literary techniques. A film offers visual and audio parallels for conventions traditionally associated with writing, such as metaphor, plot, theme, point-of-view, dialect, satire, and imagery. Since these film conventions can be directly…

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…

The central theme of "To Kill a Mockingbird," one of the most widely taught novels in high school English classes, is frequently misinterpreted by well-meaning teachers. Although the cause of racial justice deserves classroom attention, the central theme and the focus of the four significant parts of the novel--the opening words, the…

Designed to assess the level of thematic profundity of a reader's response to short stories, the Literary Profundity Test consists of four very short stories, each with four endings representing one of the five levels in the Literary Profundity Scale: physical, mental, moral, psychological, and philosophical. Nine experts have agreed that each…

Grouped together are four miscellaneous papers from the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar. The first by Alfred Grommon addresses the education of teachers of English, commenting on the current status of teachers and putting forth some proposals which reflect the changes in attitudes toward teacher education programs and a recognition of the social,…

This book is an account of one teacher's attempt to use English literature as a vehicle of self-discovery for both his adolescent students and himself. The first chapter, "Stumbling into New Techniques," relates some of the techniques used to encourage student writing and to stimulate an appreciation and understanding of poetry--to help…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Henry Nash Smith, Van Wyck Brooks, Maurice Le Breton, Kenneth Lynn, Leo Marx, Walter Blair, Daniel G. Hoffman, W. H. Auden, James M. Cox, Leslie Fiedler, Bernard DeVoto, and Tony Tanner--all dealing with the biography and…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Leon Edel, Joseph Conrad, Max Beerbohm, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton, Percy Lubbock, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Van Wyck Brooks, Edmund Wilson, E. M. Forster, William Troy, Pelham Edgar, Stephen Spender, Graham Greene,…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Richard Chase, D. H. Lawrence, Newton Arvin, Alfred Kazin, Henry A. Murray, R. P. Blackmur, Marius Bewley, Richard Harter Fogle, Daniel G. Hoffman, Robert Penn Warren, and F. O. Matthiessen--all dealing with the biography…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Irving Howe, Edmund Wilson, Louis Auchincloss, Percy Lubbock, E. K. Brown, Q. D. Lewis, Alfred Kazin, Diana Trilling, Blake Nevius, Lionel Trilling, Vernon L. Parrington, and Louis O. Coxe--all dealing with the biography…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Jacques Guicharnaud, Rene Bray, Gustave Lanson, Alfred Simon, Will G. Moore, Ramon Fernandez, Paul Benichou, Lionel Gossman, Andre Villiers, James Doolittle, H. Gaston Hall, Robert J. Nelson, Jacques Copeau, Charles…