Describes how to introduce a Shakespeare play by having students act out and discuss an edited, pivotal scene from the play. Suggests various scenes which are well-suited to this activity. (MM)

Suggests that teachers can introduce the cultural context of nineteenth-century British fiction by exploring four types of walks that women characters take: the mission of mercy; the passionate, secret journey; the problem-solving walk; and the defiant or self-assertive walk of independence. (MS)

Reports on the 1994 English Advanced Placement Reading, an event which brought together 750 readers to provide accurate, efficient, and comfortable scoring of over 173,000 exams. (SR)

Presents a lesson to help students learn that Africans played a significant role in the abolition of the slave trade based on Olaudah Equiano's "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano," which places an African writer in the center of a discussion on works published in Britain. (SR)

Discusses three philosophical pillars that support collaborative learning: "spaces of appearance," active engagement, and ownership. Describes classroom experiences with collaborative learning supported by these pillars. (PRA)

Believes that students must be able to make a basic connection to the collective humanity. Notes that teenagers especially care about injustice and through exploring the global picture of human rights violations, they become aware and have desire to act on that awareness. Uses the humanistic approach to make 16th- to 20th-century British…

Teachers of literature and composition believe that they are doing the right thing by teaching literary analysis and encouraging students to assume the intellectual rigor of serious study of the language arts. However, the teaching of these courses is seldom justified with reasons other than the practical ones of going to college or finding a job.…

This paper examines the state of children's literature by tracing some of the side effects of nineteenth-century English children's literature. During their early histories, the British colonies, including America, were economically unable to produce their own children's books. Reading materials were imported from the home country, and, likewise,…

This collection of lectures and articles was occasioned by the author's 70th birthday and his many decades of teaching in the English departments at the University of Montana and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he is the self-proclaimed "apostle to the gentiles." The book explores the often conflicting paradox of…

From the very beginning of "Adam Bede," the idea of sight or perception is emphasized. Indeed by reference to a quotation from Wordsworth, George Eliot announces the purpose of the novel: to reveal clearly, to remove from the shade. While most of the characters in "Adam Bede" do not perceive events clearly and must have their…

This study provides a description of the 20th-century literary criticism associated with the epistolary form in English literature arrived at by bibliometric descriptive analysis. Information gathered from eight different indexes for the period 1900-1991 helps describe the specific features of: authors, titles, format, language, country of…

This handout is a guide to library resources in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, intended to help students find sources of criticism on Modern British Literature (long fiction, short fiction, poetry, and drama). The guide explains important reference sources in the Atkins library reference collection and…

This handout is a guide to library resources in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, for sources of criticism for the study of 17th-century British author John Milton. The guide is intended to help readers find critical and biographical information on Milton. It explains important reference sources in the…

Many compositionists correctly charge Romanticism with conveying the iconography of the solitary writer and with embedding that image in modern ideology. There can be little doubt that numerous Romantic texts continue to exalt and signify the concept of the lonely genius and the self-contained text. Romantic masterpieces have contributed to the…

An informal survey revealed that graduate students presented with Shakespeare's works felt academically unfit and powerless. These student-teacher-text power relationships parallel the power relationships between the dominant patriarchy and the female characters in "Othello"--Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca. However, "Antony and…