Working on the assumptions that literature should be presented to students in ways that will help them to experience the literary work rather than merely to think about it and that the teaching of literature ought to grow out of the teacher's and student's reading of it, this book is divided into two sections. The first section describes the nature of literary experience and the kinds of approaches that different readers take to literature in order to attain that experience; and the second section applies this background to the teaching of specific works. Chapters in the first section examine literature as an event, an object, and a message; what constitutes good reading; and teaching methods that should be used to present literature aesthetically. Specific works discussed in the second section include Keats's "To Autumn," Cather's "Paul's Case," Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," and Shakespeare's "Othello." (HOD)