Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and Homer's Iliad are among the first literary masterpieces of Iran and Greece. These teachings include the educational teachings of Zal and Roudabeh, and Paris and Helen. This paper presents a comparative look at the immortal effect of this Iranian poet with Homer's poem--the Greek blind poet. In this comparison, using a…

Defninig rhetorical analysis as a means of studying writer/audience relationships allowing both intrinsic and extrinsic analysis, the author discusses the three sections of Levertov's poem, "From a Notebook: October '68--May '69." Section 1 is the speaker's personal comparison of her associations with life and death, comparison of…

Examines Roethke's commentary on his poem and looks for answers to such questions as: Is Roethke a reliable interpreter of his own poem? Where is the reader's understanding of the poem likely to differ from his and why? How do we reconcile these two viewpoints when they differ? (Author)

Three writers debate whether English teachers should depend on external or internal criteria when analyzing and teaching literature. Each writer discusses the meaning of Elinor Wylie's poem, "The Eagle and the Mole," according to his particular view of literary analysis. Edward Ducharme, in "The Evasion of the Text," submits…

This paper uses narrative criticism to analyze the ancient Indian religious poem, the "Bhagavad Gita." This important text, the second most widely translated piece of literature in the world, will receive much-deserved rhetorical attention to its narrative and how this helps construct issues of the self, the world, action, and ontology.…

Describes the use of the computer program EDIT for textual searches to locate a certain programmed word or word root. In the examples explained here, the vocabulary search is performed on poetry and allows examination of the metaphorical and conceptual poetic atmosphere achieved through word use. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

The problem of understanding oral poetics, or oral traditional poetry, is examined in this survey of contemporary Homeric scholarship in England. The Homeric problem, as it is reflected in both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", is considered in four key areas, including: (1) the poetic text, (2) comparative methodology, (3) the…

The problem, emphasized by I. A. Richards, of cultivating in students an awareness of literature which enables them to discern good and bad writing remains unsolved. As demonstrated in critical essays about a poem written under examination conditions by two 16-year-old boys, an ability to identify poetic techniques is not enough to ensure proper…

Examines how literary criticism exploits and marginalizes the poem as printed artifact. Argues that the author-centered, phonocentric premise of close reading neutralizes spatial dynamics and reduces material identity to the status of a transparent medium. Suggests that appreciation of silent visual form is a convention of post modernist writing.…

The person and poetry of Walt Whitman are discussed. Excerpts from his poems are included. (RM)

Surveys previous approaches to free verse. Proposes a new method of articulating the diversity of free verse. Discusses paired poems to show the kinds of things that this new method gives educators to say when they want to talk about the verse of free verse poetry. (RS)

This study investigated responses by fifteen- and sixteen-year-old students to poetry in three interview situations--affectively-oriented, cognitively-oriented, or nondirective--and the relationship of the responses to interview method, sex, and reading level. The responses were assigned to the five categories of Personal Association, Moral…

This paper describes Rod McKuen's theories of poetic composition, arguing that McKuen appeals to the anti-intellectual, blindly sentimental capacities of the American public. A comparison of McKuen's work with the work of such poets as James Dickey, Robert Lowell, and Theodore Roethke is outlined in order to demonstrate to students the superficial…