Sample Syllabi 5
develop into a longer paper. It’s probably a good idea to assign Chapter 7, which
deals with the longer, more traditional research paper in some detail, in
conjunction with the Charlotte Perkins Gilman cultural contexts cluster. The
student papers in the research chapter work with the Gilman story’s use of some
of the sources we include.
D. Classroom Procedure. In covering the individual clusters, you may
want to begin by assigning the “Before You Read” question for discussion to raise
students’ awareness of the issues involved and to help focus their attention. Even if
all the reading is assigned for home study, you may want to have students read
poems in class and ask them to write after reading. You can have them alternate
between specific questions from “Thinking about the Text” and “Making
Comparisons” to an open freewriting. Have them record their responses in a jour–
nal, which can be checked periodically. In general, you want to begin the class by
asking for volunteers to read their responses as a way of opening up a discussion of
possible writing issues.
E. Writing Assignments. Each cluster ends with “Writing about Issues”
assignments. Students cannot do them all, but our intention is to give instruc–
tors a choice, depending on the focus of the course. In a higher-level course
you may prefer to emphasize argument exclusively, but in a lower-level course
it’s better to combine elements of argument with personal response, using
theliterature you read and personal experience as evidence. The assignments
are merely prompts; authentic writing comes out of the rich literate texture of
reading, writing, discussion, and journal writing. Students tap into that envi–
ronment for topics that interest them. In the “Families” chapter, for example,
the assignment is simply to pick one of the “arguing” assignments in one of the
clusters.
F. Semester Outline
Week 1 Introduction: “What Is Argument?” (Chapter 1); “Writing
Effective Arguments (Chapter 2); “How to Argue about
Literature” (Chapter 3)
Week 2 “The Reading Process” (Chapter 4); “The Writing Process”
(Chapter 5); “Writing about Literary Genres” (Chapter 6)
Weeks 3–5 “Families” (Chapter 9): Reconciling with Fathers, Mothers and
Daughters, Siblings in Conflict, Grandparents and Legacies
• Essay 1 due
Weeks 6–7 “Love” (Chapter 10): True Love, Romantic Dreams, Seductive
Arguments, Is This Love?
• Essay 2 due
Weeks 8–9 “Freedom and Confinement” (Chapter 11): Freedom for
Animals, Trapped in Stereotypes, Oppressive Traditions,
Domestic Prisons
• Essay 3 due
6 Sample Syllabi
Weeks 10–11 “Writing Researched Arguments” (Chapter 7) and “Crime
and Justice” (Chapter 12): Discovering Injustice, Punishments,
Justice for Workers
• Essay 4 due
Weeks 12–15 “Journeys” (Chapter 13): Fairy Tale Journeys, Roads Taken,
Visionary Journeys, Final Journeys, Contexts for Research:
Race, Social Equality, and “Battle Royal”
• Essay 5 due
SYLLABUS #2
ENGLISH 1102: CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING
This is a fifteen-week course in which students are expected to learn fundamen-
tals of critical thinking and writing. They will practice how to read texts closely
and analytically and write thesis-driven essays about single and multiple texts,
making use of sources to develop well-researched and properly documented
arguments about issues that emerge from their reading of literary, academic, and
civic texts.
To adapt the preceding syllabus for a course that stresses critical thinking,
argument, and research, instructors can spend more time focusing on argumen-
tation and research and less time on literary appreciation and terminology. The
rhetoric and concerns of argument remain front and center throughout the
semester, and numerous argumentative examples of prose appear on the sylla-
bus. It’s still a good idea to have students write before they read and to ask them
to answer selected questions from “Thinking about the Text” and “Making
Comparisons.” Three formal papers are assigned — an argument, an argument
about a literary work or works, and a research paper — but much journal writing,
peer review, and feedback from conferencing should go into shaping each paper.
In this course, students are encouraged to take literature as a springboard for
inquiry. As much as possible, they are expected to read around in the literature
to develop their own topics and projects. Therefore, although the syllabus lists
numerous readings and clusters for classroom discussion to rally around, you will
probably want to defer to the exigencies of getting students to complete the writ–
ing assignments and tailor classroom discussion accordingly. For example, the
first part of most classes may involve discussion of the literary works in question,
with the second half devoted to discussions of topic development and research.
Or you may dedicate one or even two sessions (in a three-day-a-week class sched-
ule) to classroom writing, peer review, and other collaborative activities. We
suggest that particularly in the first few weeks of class you have students do a
certain amount of in-class freewriting, brainstorming, and peer collaboration to
get them used to frequent writing and comfortable with the back-and-forth of
peer commentary.
We have organized the selections in the anthology around topics and issues
(such as “Romantic Dreams” and “Why Do Children Rebel Against Parental
Expectations?”) so that students will at once be invited in by the topic or issue
(most students surely have entertained romantic dreams or chafed against paren-
tal restrictions) as they are reminded that there are multiple ways to think about
Sample Syllabi 7
or approach the topic or issue. Of course, our instruction always emphasizes
close attention to the texts in the book — critical reading — and provides strate-
gies for paying close attention. But at the same time we encourage and equip
students to go “outside the text” — to bring their own experiences to bear, to
make comparisons to other texts, to bring in other perspectives that they discover
through the process of inquiry and research. Our critical clusters (on, for exam-
ple, Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to
Find”) show how different perspectives can result in different arguments about
the same text. Our contextual clusters (on, for instance, Ralph Ellison’s “Battle
Royal” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Years”) prompt students to regard texts as
responsive to cultural currents and pressures that can and should be explored.
That A Doll’s House reflects concerns that are still in the news today (see the
“Contexts for Research: Domesticity, Women’s Rights, and A Doll’s House” clus-
ter on p. 793) does much to make literary works, as much as contemporary argu-
ments, relevant to students wondering at the point of reading literature and
making arguments in a college composition course.
Week 1 Introduction: “What Is Argument?” (Chapter 1); Literature
and Current Issues: Why Do Children Rebel Against
Parental Expectations? (p. 421)
Week 2 Literature and Current Issues: Does Our Happiness Depend
on Others’ Misery? (p. 761); Literature and Current Issues:
What Aren’t You Free to Say? (p. 775)
Week 3 “How to Argue about Literature” (Chapter 3); “The Reading
Process” (Chapter 4); Literature and Current Issues: Why
Marry? (p. 554)
Week 4 “The Writing Process” (Chapter 5), “Writing about Literary
Genres” (Chapter 6)
• Draft of Paper 1 due
Week 5 Seductive Arguments (p. 533), True Love (p. 516), Romantic
Dreams (p. 477)
• Final draft of Paper 1 due
Weeks 6–7 Writing Researched Arguments (Chapter 7); Contexts for
Research: Confinement, Mental Illness, and “The Yellow
Wallpaper” (p. 244); Is This Love? (p. 497); Domestic Prisons
(p. 741), Literature and Current Issues: How Just Is Capital
Punishment? (p. 993)
Weeks 8–9 Oppressive Traditions (p. 695); Punishments (p. 905); Arguments
about a Poem: “Daddy” (p. 437); Arguments about a Play:
Othello (p. 572)
• Draft of Paper 2 due
Week 10 A Dream of Justice (p. 916); Trapped in Stereotypes (p. 723);
Literature and Current Issues: Do Immigrants Take Jobs from
Native-Born Workers? (p. 1122)
Annotated Bibliography of Resources
We have found the following list of books and articles especially useful for
teaching literature and composition courses. They have influenced, too, our
work on this book. The list is necessarily selective; particular items on it may lead
you to other good resources for your pedagogy. We have divided the list into
three categories: (1) texts on basic principles of rhetoric and argument, (2) texts
that engage in rhetorical analysis of literature or discuss argumentative moves
that literary critics make, and (3) texts that relate literary theory or pedagogy to
the teaching of writing.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF
RHETORIC AND ARGUMENT
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Edited and translated by
George A. Kennedy, Oxford UP, 1991.
Although an ancient treatise (dating from c. 333 B.C.E.), this remains an
illuminating guide to basic principles, and most contemporary theorists of
rhetoric and argument continue to build on it. Kennedy’s edition is acces-
sible as well as sound and up to date in its scholarly apparatus.
Crosswhite, James. The Rhetoric of Reason. U of Wisconsin P, 1996.
Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Shaugnessy Award, this
isa lucid and thoughtful defense of written argument as a form of
reasoning.
Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The
Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy.” College
Composition and Communication, vol 35, 1984, pp. 155–71.
Clarifies various possible senses of the term audience.
10 Annotated Bibliography of Resources
Emmel, Barbara, Paula Resch, and Deborah Tenney, editors. Argument
Revisited, Argument Redefined: Negotiating Meaning in the Composition
Classroom. Sage, 1996.
Includes many thoughtful essays that apply current strands in argument
theory to the teaching of writing.
Fulkerson, Richard. Teaching the Argument in Writing. National Council of
Teachers of English, 1996.
Good introduction to various theories of argument. Written expressly for
teachers of writing.
Lynch, Dennis A., Diana George, and Marilyn Cooper. “Moments of Argument:
Agonistic Inquiry and Confrontational Cooperation.” College Composition
and Communication, vol. 48, 1997, pp. 61–68.
Detailed presentation of a framework for composition teaching that
stresses argument as inquiry.
Perelman, Chaim, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise
onArgumentation. Trans. J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver. U of Notre Dame P,
1969.
A landmark in contemporary theorizing about rhetoric, especially
argument. Details many strategies of informal logic and makes a
1996.
Lucid and witty survey of various schools of literary theory. Concludes by
recommending they be replaced with a rhetorical approach to literature.
Fahnestock, Jeanne, and Marie Secor. “The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism.” In
A forceful call for less agonistic forms of argument in literary studies.
Graff, Gerald. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can
Revitalize American Education. Norton, 1992.
———. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. U of Chicago P, 1987.
Graff’s 1987 book is an excellent chronicle of debates among literary critics
since the modern founding of the discipline. His later book recommends
ways of teaching such conflicts in undergraduate classes.
Levin, Richard. New Readings vs. Old Plays: Recent Trends in the Reinterpretation
of English Renaissance Drama. U of Chicago P, 1979.
Negative about current practices in literary criticism but cannily analyzes
the field’s typical argumentative moves. Especially good on the impulse to
“thematize.”
MacDonald, Susan Peck. Professional Academic Writing in the Humanities and
Social Sciences. Southern Illinois UP, 1994.
Winner of the College Composition and Communication Book Award,
this is an incisive empirical comparison of scholarly discourse in literary
studies with writing in other fields.
12 Annotated Bibliography of Resources
Mailloux, Steven. Reception Histories. Cornell UP, 1998.
———. Rhetorical Power. Cornell UP, 1989.
Two books by a theorist dedicated to showing how both literature and
literary criticism function rhetorically.
Smith, Karen R. “What Good Is World Literature? World Literature Pedagogy
1992. 227–33.
Drawing on personal experience, Tompkins calls for more civil argument
in literary criticism.
Turner, Mark. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive
Science. Princeton UP, 1991.
Advocating “cognitive rhetoric,” this book focuses on metaphor as a way of
linking literature and other discourse to human beings’ everyday acts of
perception.
Veeser, H. Aram, editor. Confessions of the Critics. Routledge, 1996.
story “The Man in the Well” (included in Chapter 9 of the text).
Annotated Bibliography of Resources 13
RELATING LITERARY THEORY AND PEDAGOGY TO
THE TEACHING OF WRITING
Anderson, Judith H., and Christine R. Farris, eds. Integrating Literature and
Writing Instruction: First-Year English, Humanities Core Courses, Seminars.
Modern Language Association, 2007.
A collection of essays that report and analyze the contributors’ actual expe-
riences blending literature and composition in their classrooms.
Atkins, G. Douglas, and Michael Johnson, editors. Writing and Reading
Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Composition and Literature.
UP of Kansas, 1985.
A bit dated in its enthusiasm for deconstruction, this anthology still pres-
ents many useful suggestions for connecting literary theory to the teaching
of writing.
Bergmann, Linda S., and Edith M. Baker, editors. Composition and/or Literature:
The End(s) of Education. National Council of Teachers of English, 2006.
A collection of essays that examines actual and hypothetical cases of mix-
ing literary study and writing instruction, with attention to debates over
whether and how to combine the two.
Berlin, James. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures. National Council of Teachers of
English, 1996.
This posthumously published book is a thoughtful overview of how the
three terms in the title have historically been related. Suggests many ways
of making composition classes sensitive to the social and historical contexts
of literature and other discourse.
Berlin, James, and Michael A. Vivion, editors. Cultural Studies in the English
Classroom. Boynton/Cook, 1992.
Contains several essays that integrate literary study, writing instruction, and
cultural studies.
14 Annotated Bibliography of Resources
Cahalan, James M., and David B. Downing, editors. Practicing Theory in
Introductory College Literature Courses. National Council of Teachers of
English, 1991.
Many essays in this collection include interesting writing assignments
about literature.
Donahue, Patricia A., and Ellen Quandahl, editors. Reclaiming Pedagogy: The
Rhetoric of the Classroom. Southern Illinois UP, 1989.
Includes several essays that merge literary theory with composition theory.
Horner, Winifred Bryan, editor. Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap.
U of Chicago P, 1983.
Remains a useful anthology of essays on ways to overcome the institutional
divide between composition and literature. Many of the contributors are
leading scholars in both fields.
McCormick, Kathleen. The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English.
Manchester UP, 1994.
Insightful recommendations for teaching students how to read literature
critically and explore its various cultural dimensions through their own
writing.
McQuade, Donald. “Composition and Literary Studies.” In Redrawing the
Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies.
Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. Modern Language
Association, 1992.
Incisive overview of the relations between composition and literary studies
in English departments.
Miller, Susan. “What Does It Mean to Be Able to Write? The Question of
Writing in the Discourses of Literature and Composition.” College English,
vol. 45, 1983, pp. 219–35.
Provides a model for analyzing both the production and the reception of
texts, including student writing as well as published literature.
Annotated Bibliography of Resources 15
Drawing on his experiences teaching in post-Communist Albania, the
author explains how students can better appreciate American literature
through intensively writing about it.
Scholes, Robert. Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English. Yale
UP, 1985.
This now-classic book on the roles of composition and literary studies in
English departments calls for such departments to affirm writing instruc-
tion more and proposes a useful way of analyzing literary texts.
Young, Art, and Toby Fulwiler, editors. When Writing Teachers Teach Literature:
Bringing Writing to Reading. Boynton/Cook, 1995.
A collection that constantly emphasizes the integration of literature and
composition.
You may also be interested in four of our own books:
Clifford, John, editor. The Experience of Reading. Boynton/Cook, 1990.
Clifford, John, and John Schilb, editors. Writing Theory and Critical Theory.
Modern Language Association, 1994.
Harkin, Patricia, and John Schilb, editors. Contending with Words: Composition
and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age. Modern Language Association, 1991.
Schilb, John. Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary
Theory. Boynton/Cook, 1996.
PART ONE
A Brief Guide to Arguing
aboutLiterature
Chapter1
What Is Argument? (p.1)
PAUL GOLDBERGER
Disconnected Urbanism (p.3)
In “Disconnected Urbanism,” Paul Goldberger argues that because cell phones
can be used virtually anywhere, they threaten our ability to experience specific
geographic locations. Not only do they make it difficult to revel in where we
actually are, but they also make it hard for others to place us. Given the current
barno A New Moral Compact 17
prevalence of “smart” phones, Goldberger’s fears of technology- driven displace-
ment have arguably been realized. If he were writing today, he might reasonably
contend that cell users spend more time texting, updating social media, and
taking videos than actually experiencing the place they are in. Indeed, advances
in technology with which students are intimately involved demonstrate the logi-
cal extension of his argument. While he is chiefly concerned with urban spaces,
Goldberger would surely see people’s experience of rural areas as similarly
threatened. Were he writing on rural spaces instead, his essay might emphasize
the value of experiencing the natural world or reveling in the absence of hustle
DAVIDW.BARNO
A New Moral Compact (p.15)
David Barno’s main issue in “A New Moral Compact” is that we, as a nation, too
easily go to war. He claims this is in large part because people have little at stake
in current conflicts. More specifically, he argues, the volunteer nature of our
military means that only a small percentage of citizens and their families have to
deal with repeated deployments and other stressors. One key moment where
Barno attempts to persuade his readers is toward the end of paragraph 8. Here
he relies on pathos by mentioning the number ofU.S.casualties and asking read-
ers to “consider the burden of that stark reality upon career military families.” By
relying on personal experience in the paragraph following, he adds an ethos
appeal that is reinforced by his own position as the father in one of those military
families. Here readers get a sense of how he views his audience. They are people
with a strong moral compass and a high degree of respect for soldiers, open to an
argument framed in terms of morality. His evidence ranges from statistics to
personal experience to historical examples, with the latter two offering represen-
tative anecdotes.
Barno’s reasoning progresses fairly systematically, which suggests a reliance
on logos. It can be distilled as follows.
Despite some draft dodging, the Vietnam draft made it so that everyone had
to face the possibility of sending a family member to war. The wars in Iraq and
18 What Is Argument?
Afghanistan are different, because the same volunteer soldiers experience
repeated and prolonged deployments. Without a draft, nonmilitary families can-
not understand the consequences of war, and it becomes too easy a decision.
This is morally wrong, and we have a responsibility to our soldiers to make sure
everyone has a potential stake in joining and ending conflicts.
Barno’s argument rests on several underlying assumptions, including the
belief that war is sometimes justifiable, that all nonmilitary Americans have the
same apathy toward war, and that we must have a personal stake in order to
makemoral decisions about war. Though his organization and reasoning overall
rely on logos, ethos and pathos also play important roles. Readers of Foreign
Policy will recognize Barno’s reputation as a military leader and a figure with
expert knowledge about armed conflict. He does not rely too heavily on special-
ized terms, however, which suggests he is more interested in representing him-
self as a moral citizen and a father. The title of his essay reflects an appeal
through pathos, and his reliance on personal experience, as well as his discussion
of how contemporary soldiers experience war, act as both logos– based and
pathetic moves. Readers are to feel compassion, if not some guilt; and while
Barno doesn’t stir strong emotions, he does ask readers to consult their moral
compass to reasonably consider what it must feel like to be one of the few.
Transitional words in Barno’s essay include “contrast” and “yet,” both of
which show decided shifts in his argument from one paragraph to the next.
Unsurprisingly, the term “moral” and its variations (“morally compelled” and
“moral authority”) are repeated throughout the text. Barno draws heavily on
terms linked to morality, sacrifice, and responsibility to support the notion that
we are past due on a debt to our soldiers.
Barno’s more powerful sentences and invocations of active voice occur in
the second half of the essay. In paragraph 9, Barno plays with sentence balance:
“My anger was visceral, unbidden, reflexive. And as I examined my unexpected
reaction, it came down to this: my son was going back, yet 99percent of his mili-
tary age contemporaries were not — and never would . . .” His sentence lengths
vary here, as well, with the first sentence of paragraph 10 offering a solid
rini Should We Rename Institutions that Honor Dead Racists? 19
becomes especially loaded for Barno in the second half, as he asks readers to
think of morality not just in terms of going to war, but rather in terms of our
obligation to soldiers. Morality takes on multiple meanings here, as it becomes
linked to “seriousness” and “sacrifice.” To be moral, Barno suggests, we must
have something at stake. This creates a perspective by incongruity, as readers
must reconcile any pride at having an all- volunteer military with Barno’s claim
that this actually harms service members.
REGINA RINI
Should We Rename Institutions that Honor
Dead Racists? (p.23)
In “Should We Rename Institutions that Honor Dead Racists?” Regina Rini
offers a careful but nevertheless impassioned argument about our responsibilities
to one another. After rehearsing familiar arguments against renaming institu-
tions, Rini explores the performative power of names, including how they shape
our perceptions of the thing named. While she does not come down explicitly
on one side or another, she does call our willingness to change names other
people find offensive “an act of civic love.” By including the term “dead” in the
essay’s title, Rini emphasizes that the famous names in question belonged to
people who are no longer alive to care how their names are used. She also
reminds us that those famous figures belong to history and thus may not reflect
our current values. We have a choice, she maintains, about how to represent
what is important to us.
Rini’s essay follows a fairly clear, logical structure. She begins with an
extended reference to Romeo’s rejection of his name in Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet. This reference is likely to be shared by many of her readers; it also
foreshadows her moral argument later in the piece. In paragraph 2, she connects
this question of naming to concrete examples in society, including the move-
ment to rename colleges at Princeton and Yale. She notes that these efforts make
a certain amount of sense, but she turns next to common counterarguments that
question the limits of this renaming trend. Given Amerigo Vespucci’s abhorrent
behavior, she remarks wryly, “[p]erhaps ‘America’ ought to go.”
Rini finds such arguments ultimately unpersuasive, however, shifting to
explore how renaming has long been a common and accepted practice. What
these “institutional baptisms” reflect, she argues, is our power over how we are
represented. “Authority” is an interesting term for Rini, because while she is
discussing buildings and colleges the average person would be unable to simply
“rename,” she nevertheless maintains that, as the students who attend those
institutions, for example, the authority is in our hands. She implies that it is actu-
ally our duty to maintain the authority to name (and rename). Using “we” fre-
quently, she invokes her reader’s role, if not power, in effecting these kinds of
decisions. She also references Keyser Söze, the fictional crime boss from The
Usual Suspects (1995), to hint at how names can reinforce or obscure particular
realities. (Readers unfamiliar with the film will likely still understand the point
in context.)
20 What Is Argument?
Chapter2
Writing Effective Arguments (p.27)
Chapter2 is in some ways an extension of Chapter1. Indeed, we refer to some
of the arguments in Chapter1 to make our points. Chapter1 focuses on argu-
mentation as a practice of college- level critical thinking and reading, while
Chapter2 foregrounds argumentation as college- level writing. At the beginning
of the chapter, we provide concrete advice on developing an effective style of
writing (“Put an author’s claims in context,” “Attribute clearly,” “Mark transi-
tions, “Vary the lengths of sentences,” and so forth). Then we attempt to help
students move beyond two of their high school writing practices: using the five-
paragraph essay as a master template and never using the first person in their
essays. We end the chapter with two arguments for analysis, both of which use
the first person effectively.
LEE sIEGEL
Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans (p.37)
Responses to Lee Siegel’s article “Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans” likely
range from admiration to outrage. While Siegel paints himself as an intelligent,
ethical person, choosing to default on thousands of dollars in student loans is an
act many would find morally reprehensible. Siegel’s ethos is interesting, because
at times his essay reads like a confession. And yet, in sharing the “steps” you
“might want to follow,” he is also making a not- so- subtle recommendation to
readers who might be in a similar situation. Even as readers might question the
wisdom of following his example, this move does boost his credibility, in that it
implies his decision was carefully thought through. Siegel, we are to understand,
has a plan, even if his brevity and casual tone suggest that we are seeing only part
of it. His argument might have been more persuasive if he had addressed poten-
tial differences in others’ situations, however. What if one’s bank isn’t defunct or
one’s cosigner is still living? What if one doesn’t have a spouse or partner with
strong credit? In that sense, Siegel walks a fine line between outright advocating
that readers default on their student loans and relying on the particulars of his
situation to explain his reasoning. If anything, his argument points to the need
for more research on the issue.
22 Writing Effective Arguments
sOPhIA mCDOUGALL
All Princesses Know Kung Fu (p.40)
Many of us are familiar with (and share) concerns about the role of female char–
acters in films and television series. As Sophia McDougall points out in “All
Princesses Know Kung Fu,” we are thus poised to celebrate female characters
that “kick ass” or otherwise violate traditional norms. By beginning her essay with
the statement that she “hates strong female characters,” McDougall is offering a
frank, visceral, and potentially surprising claim. Readers are thus poised to ques-
tion why someone would hate the sorts of characters we now celebrate so readily.
For McDougall, these “strong female characters” are troubling because they
obscure the complexities possible in female roles. Princesses, she explains, both
know kung fu and recede into the background, just like the princesses of old.
Her reference to “George of the Famous Five” may be unfamiliar to American
readers, but we will likely understand her point from the larger context. The
addition of the adjective “strong,” which McDougall particularly resents, is prob-
lematic because it is not applied to male characters. Would we consider Sherlock
Holmes a “strong” male character, she asks?
23© 2017 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
Chapter3
how to Argue about Literature (p. 43)
We designed Chapter 1 as a mini rhetorical analysis of argument. We assume
that students who work through the chapter will gain some mastery of rhetorical
concepts and terminology and some practice in identifying how other writers use
these devices to persuade. In Chapter3, we begin to apply the practice of argu-
ment to the analysis of literature. We begin by contextualizing literature in the
larger field of discourse practices in our section “What Is Literature?” We make
the case for studying literature in a college writing course because students often
emerge from their high school English classes unprepared for the more rigorous
and interdisciplinary writing that will be expected of them in college. (They
often have to be taught that the five- paragraph essay will not do for college writ-
ing.) We then have students read and respond to a pair of stories: Daniel
Orozco’s “Orientation” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.” Notice that we extend the
argumentative and rhetorical concepts we taught in Chapter1 rather than focus-
ing on the more traditional “elements” of literary analysis. Indeed, we don’t
really take up the elements of literature until Chapter6. Instructors who prefer
to equip their students with those concepts early on can of course draw from or
assign a later chapter as they see fit, but we hope that they will see how our treat-
ment of “issues” in this chapter does not presuppose a deep or schematic knowl-
edge of those elements. We encourage that students be made aware of “issues of
symbolism” rather than sending them “symbol hunting.” (On such hunts, stu-
dents try to retrieve a symbol and use it as the magic key that unlocks a literary
work’s “secret meaning.”) We discuss literary genres and their elements in some
detail in Chapter6, which is where our discussion of teaching genres as genres
appears in this manual.
In Chapter3, we also devote a portion of our discussion to literature as argu-
ment. We discuss two poems in this context.
john milton, When I consider how my light is spent (p.69)
robert frost, Mending Wall (p.70)
John Milton’s “When I consider how my light is spent” and Robert Frost’s
“Mending Wall” offer examples of how argument can work differently in different
literary texts. Since the author of a literary work is typically distinct from the
piece’s narrator, speaker, or other characters, there is a danger in too easily attrib–
uting feelings or perspectives to the writer. The selections in this chapter demon–
strate a range of potential relationships between an author and the arguments in
his or her literary work. Milton’s poem, for example, offers an implicit warrant,
and it is no secret that Milton is referring to his own struggle with blindness.
Frost’s “Mending Wall” is a bit more obscure, however, and it is up for debate
whether the speaker represents Frost’s own position. The poem is often read
as concerned with human relationships and the twin roles of civilization and
24 How to Argue about Literature
LITERATURE AND CURRENT ISSUES
rivka galchen, Usl at the Stadium (p.72)
jon ronson, From “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up
Justine Sacco’s Life” (p.81)
jennifer jacquet, From Is Shame Necessary? (p.85)
This trio of texts, Rivka Galchen’s “Usl at the Stadium,” a selection from Jon
Ronson’s “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life,” and a selection
from Jennifer Jacquet’s Is Shame Necessary?, addresses the issue of public sham-
ing in contemporary life. Other examples of shaming might include our intense
fascination with celebrities’ personal lives, from their possible weight gain to
plastic surgery, as well as professional athletes’ behavior, including drug use and
violence against women or animals.
Galchen’s and Ronson’s pieces highlight in particular the role of social
media in the capture and hyperfast dissemination of “shameful” behavior. But
even when the intent of an author is not to shame the subject about whom he or
she is writing, the reproduction of sensitive information, like images or tweets,
can contribute to continued public shaming. For example, including in this
volume an image of Andrew Rector, the real- life inspiration for Galchen’s
“Usl,” would have made a kind of spectacle of him that potentially exacerbated
his situation. Given that overweight individuals are frequently objects of scorn,
it stands to reason that Usl, like Rector, were castigated mostly because of his
weight. The jumbotron, a supposedly neutral crowd pleaser, took on a troubling
perspective of its own and seemed to actually join in these acts of public
shaming. Ronson, too, notes that Justine Sacco declined a second interview;