Poetry of the romantic age is often uninviting to students, leaving them puzzled because they do not sense the connections between the poetry and themselves. Yet, much romantic poetry can be enjoyed and comprehended if approached in terms of some personal, reflective, and connective readings. Wordsworth and Whitman are often avoided because they…

Alfredo Vea Jr.'s 1993 novel "La Maravilla" depicts a 1950s squatter community on the edge of Phoenix. The community, Buckeye Road, questions notions of U.S. American identity as middle-class, WASP, and heterosexual. Buckeye can easily be viewed as a romanticized utopia that offers an alternative to consumer capitalism, urban sprawl, the…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by John Unterecker, W. H. Auden, High Kenner, Giogio Melchiori, Frank Kermode, W. Y. Tindall, T. S. Eliot, R. P. Blackmur, Alex Zwerdling, Curtis Bradford, D. J. Gordon, Ian Fletcher, A. G. Stock, Allen Tate, and Richard…

A successful, elective minicourse in the literature of terror and the supernatural examined various literary works in the light of six goals: to examine the terror motif in fiction (in print and other media), to try to understand the reasons for the continued appeal of the literature of terror, to investigate why representative authors have…

This unit of study for junior-high level high-ability language arts students explores five themes in 19th century American history through literature of the times: romanticism, transcendentalism, abolitionism, industrialism, and feminism. Each of the five "isms" has its own "literature box" that contains appropriate documents…

Presents a method for interpreting "The Tyger" both literally and figuratively while leading into additional assignments on Blakean poetry. (RB)

Presents a rationale and teaching techniques for Keats's To Autumn,'' emphasizing teacher preparation, student responses, and classroom presentation. (RB)

Discusses the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley and how it might be used in secondary English classes as a means of investigating contemporary issues of technology and morality. Describes how one teacher asked students to identify a social issue from the novel and investigate it in today's news media. (HB)

Presents five reasons for classroom study of Mary Shelley's gothic work: (1)intriguing style and subject matter, brevity and novelty; (2)narrative versatility; (3)representation of the Romantic Era in English literature; (4)female authorship; (5)significance of the central theme of "scientific aims pursued in reckless disregard of human…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Richard B. Sewall, Conrad Aiken, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, George F. Whicher, Henry W. Wells, Donald E. Thackrey, Thomas H. Johnson, R. P. Blackmur, John Crowe Ransom, Austin Warren, James Reeves, Richard Wilbur, Louise…

One way of making connections among various authors in a survey course is to emphasize recurring themes, images, and tropes; the instructor can point out how they are transformed by a constantly changing ethos and set of historical circumstances. A case in point is the second part of a British survey, typically going from William Blake or William…

A contrastive treatment of texts with some common thematic material but by different authors is discussed. The tales, Hoffmann's "Der Goldene Topf" and Eichendorff's "Das Marmorbild" are suited for a third- or fourth-year undergraduate literature survey course. The comparative method can be applied to all genres. (SW)

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Walter Jackson Bate, T. S. Eliot, Douglas Bush, Richard H. Fogle, Jack Stillinger, Harold Bloom, David Perkins, Earl Wasserman, and D. G. James--all dealing with the biography and literary work of John Keats. Designed for…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Sherman Paul, William Butler Yeats, Lewis Mumford, Max Lerner, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Leo Stoller, F. O. Matthiessen, William Drake, R. W. B. Lewis, Heinz Eulau, Henry W. Wells, Edwin S. Fussell, Laurence Stapleton, and…