PART ONE
Working with Literature
Constructing the Course:
Sample Syllabi
The two sample syllabi that follow are designed for a fifteen-week semester. The first is
for a composition course built around literature. The second is for an introduction to
literature course with a writing component.
ENGLISH 103: COLLEGE COMPOSITION:
WRITING AND READING
This is a one-semester writing course for students who place out of the two-semester
writing requirement. The syllabus should work just as well in a second-semester com-
position course, where you may choose not to assign any of the genre-specific chapters
5, 6, and 7, instead moving directly from the two opening chapters to the anthology of
literature in Part Two.
The course begins with an introduction to Part One, “Working with Literature,”
and then moves on to the five chapters of Part Two, “Literature and Its Issues.” In a
fifteen-week course, we have found that the two weeks spent preparing students to
write using literature is time well spent.
A. The First Two Weeks. During this time, students are introduced to four key
ideas:
2. Arguing about literature is a process of inquiry that entails revision, reason, and
reexamination.
4. Writing is best thought of as a process involving exploring, planning, compos-
ing, and revising.
The first idea, about “meaning-making,” is the foundational structure for the
course. We read, write, discuss, write, make comparisons, and write again. It is
through this cycle of literate acts that good writing is most likely to occur. A discussion
of Chapters 1 and 2 is also valuable in introducing students to reading closely. The
poem by James Wright (Chapter 1) can be read in class, perhaps the first day, as can
the first writing exercise on page 15.
The second idea, about argument, can also be introduced the first day with an
overview of “Strategies for Making Arguments about Literature” (p. 59). The key terms
(issues, claims, persuasion, audience, evidence, and warrants) can be blended into
an informal discussion of argument by giving examples from the three poems about
work. A fuller discussion will be more useful after students have read this section at
home.
B. The Heart of the Course. The syllabus centers on Part Two, “Literature and
Its Issues,” and devotes nine weeks to four of the five chapters. Students write an essay
(four typed pages) for each chapter. They begin with Chapter 8, “Families,” and they
can work through several clusters in class; it is not possible to work with all the
clusters, of course, but students can read other clusters on their own, responding in
their journals to questions. Students spend two to three weeks on each essay, from
exploring to revising. For Chapter 8, the following clusters are discussed in class:
“Reconciling with Fathers,” “Grandparents and Legacies, “Gays and Lesbians in
Families: Poems,” and “Mothers and Daughters.” Depending on the time, you may
want the class to read one other cluster.
The syllabus allots time for covering Chapters 9, 10, and 11 (“Love,” “Freedom
and Confinement,” and “Crime and Justice”) in the same way, leaving the last few
weeks of the semester for work on Chapter 12, “Journeys,” and a concluding research
essay of six pages.
C. The Conclusion of the Course. Our last chapter is the focus of a research
essay. After students have covered about half of Chapter 11, “Crime and Justice,” they
can be asked to choose one of the research-oriented “Writing about Issues” prompts at
the end of each cluster to develop into a longer paper. You may want to consider as-
signing Chapter 7, which deals with the longer, more traditional research paper in
some detail.
D. Classroom Procedure. In covering the individual clusters, you may want to
begin by assigning the “Before You Read” questions for discussion to raise students’
awareness of the issues involved and help focus their attention. Even if all the reading
E. Writing Assignments. Each cluster ends with four “Writing about Issues”
assignments. Students cannot do them all, but our intention was to give instructors a
choice, depending on the focus of the course. In a junior-level essay-writing course
you may prefer to emphasize argument exclusively, but in a lower-level course it’s bet-
ter to combine elements of argument with personal response, using the literature we
read and personal experience as evidence. The assignments are merely prompts; au-
thentic writing comes out of the rich literate texture of reading, writing, discussion,
and journal writing. Students tap into that environment 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 Literature? How and Why Does It Matter?”
(Chapter 1); “How to Read Closely” (Chapter 2); “How to Make
Arguments about Literature” (Chapter 3)
Week 2 “The Writing Process” (Chapter 4); “Writing about Literary Gen-
res” (Chapter 5)
Weeks 3–5 “Families” (Chapter 8): Poetic Visions of Family, Reconciling with
Fathers, Mothers and Daughters, Siblings in Conflict, Grandpar-
ents and Legacies
• Essay 1 due
Weeks 6–7 “Love” (Chapter 9): True Love, Romantic Dreams, The Appear-
ance of Love, Talking About Love and Trust
• Essay 2 due
Weeks 12–15 “Journeys” (Chapter 12): Uncertain Quests, Journeys to a Dark
Place, Fairy Tale Journeys, Crossing the Waters, A Journey to
Death
• Essay 5 due
Week 1 Introduction: “What Is Literature? Why and How and Does It Mat-
ter?” (Chapter 1); “How to Read Closely” (Chapter 2); “How to
8): Mothers and Daughters, Reconciling with Fathers, Food in
Families
ENGLISH 200: INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE
To adapt the preceding syllabus for a course that stresses literature, instructors can
spend less time on Part One (one week) and work through more of the chapters. It’s
still a good idea to have students write before they read and to ask them to answer se–
lected questions from “Thinking about the Text” and “Making Comparisons.” Three
short papers (two to three pages) are assigned, spaced over a fifteen-week semester.
The topics are flexible; essentially any of the prompts seem appropriate. The two
courses are similar, but in the introduction to literature course the emphasis is more
on reading skills such as evaluation and interpretation rather than on developing top-
ics for essays and direct writing instruction. Making Literature Matter was developed
to facilitate either emphasis.
Weeks 5–7 “Love” (Chapter 9): Romantic Dreams, True Love, Seductive Ar-
guments, Immigrant Brides, Jealous Love
Weeks 8–9 “Freedom and Confinement” (Chapter 10): Where Tradition Is a
Trap, A Troubled Freedom, Struggling Against Stereotypes, A Cre-
ative Confinement, A Door to Freedom
Teaching Writing along with Literature
We have designed Making Literature Matter primarily for courses that integrate liter-
ary study with writing instruction. We realize that such courses can be difficult to
teach. In particular, class members may become so involved in discussing literary texts
that attention to their own writing slides off the agenda. To thwart this possibility, try
to make writing part of as many class periods as possible. For example, you might have
students freewrite about a particular work before or during a class and then ask for
HELPING STUDENTS WITH ARGUMENTATION
In many respects, our book encourages students to engage especially in argumentative
writing. We devote much of Part One to it, laying out and demonstrating key elements
of argument like issues, claims, audience, evidence, and warrants. Our explanation of
argument in Part One acknowledges to students that they may have trouble grasping
what warrants are. We hope that our discussion of the term makes its meaning clear.
But here we suggest that you also allow an ample amount of class time to help your
students understand what issues are. In fact, this concept is often harder for students to
grasp than the concept of claims is. Remind your class that an issue is a question that
can have more than one answer. Stress that a worthwhile argument addresses a genu-
ine and interesting issue. Have students review the various kinds of issues we list. At
DISCUSSION AND DEBATE
Your students will become more proficient in their written arguments if you give them
plenty of opportunities to discuss issues and advance claims in oral arguments. Con-
sider requiring members of the class to make oral reports on particular authors. You
might even call for entire panels on particular issues, authors, and texts. Another pos-
sibility is to break the class into small groups and require each group to collaborate on
a particular task and to report back to the class on their findings. Bear in mind that
small groups are unlikely to be productive if the task you assign them is vague; try to
make it precise as well as manageable. Students can also get valuable practice in dis-
cussion if you have them undertake various kinds of role playing, even when the text
under consideration is not a script. For example, you might have students enact a
meeting of characters from various short stories.
PEER REVIEW
Quite possibly you will also want to integrate writing into your class periods by devot-
ing class time to peer review of students’ writing-in-progress. Such review can effec-
tively take place in pairs, but many instructors prefer to set up entire peer-review
groups. Students can remain in the same groups throughout the term; then again,
many instructors like to change group membership from time to time. Some students
will be comfortable reading drafts aloud to an audience, whereas others prefer to dis-
tribute their drafts and have the audience read them silently. Neither procedure is
necessarily better, we think. You might let each group or the class as a whole choose
which procedure to adopt.
Admittedly, many students need help formulating review responses that will be
genuinely helpful to the writer. In fact, the typical peer reviewer is afraid to offend. We
recommend that reviewers fill out a sheet that contains questions reflecting your criteria
for the particular assignment you have given. Moreover, these questions should make
Looking at Literature as Argument
JOHN MILTON, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
(p. 77)
ROBERT FROST, Mending Wall (p. 79)
W. H. AUDEN, Refugee Blues (p. 80)
John Milton’s “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” Robert Frost’s “Mending
Wall,” and W. H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues” offer examples of how argument can work
differently in literary texts. Because 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
attributing 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 rep-
resents Frost’s own position. The poem is often read as concerned with human rela-
tionships and the twin roles of civilization and nature; the wall, after all, begins to
break down every year, thanks to unseen hunters and the whims of nature. The re-
Teaching the Genres
We group most of the literary selections in Making Literature Matter by genre as well
as by theme. Hence, teachers who prefer to stress elements of genre can easily do so.
Even if you prefer a thematic approach, you probably will want to familiarize your
students with some of these elements. Therefore, here we offer suggestions for teach-
ing genres. First we discuss short fiction; then we turn to poetry, plays, and essays. In
each case, we refer to examples of the genre found in Part One of the book.
In our experience, students are far more ready to discuss the content of literature
than they are the structural properties of literature, which much genre analysis
emphasizes. We suspect the general public is similarly inclined. Whereas many critics
in academe like to ponder a work’s symbolism, its plot design, or other technical
aspects of it, most readers outside the academy attend more to the text’s personalities,
events, and ideas. These readers tend to share Kenneth Burke’s notion that literature is
We believe that elements of genre are best taught as means to an end rather than
as ends in themselves. Our book envisions a course aimed above all at helping
students become more adept as arguers, whether their arguments wind up focusing on
literary form or on literary content. Indeed, throughout the book we encourage
students to think of their own arguments as a fifth genre, one just as important as the
other four. No doubt they will learn characteristics of literary genres more easily if you
point out how they can develop claims about these elements in their writing and class
discussions. For instance, they will be keener to learn poetic meter if you show them
how it can be the subject of the paper you have just assigned on several poems about
work.
How much should you talk in class about the term genre itself? That is up to you.
Probably most of your students will already have a rough sense of what the term
involves. They will know that literature is often divided into fiction, poetry, and drama,
although many of them will not immediately assume that it includes essays. To get
your class thinking about genres in literature, you might first ask students to identify
various film genres because most Hollywood movies fit into easily recognizable
categories. You might even ask how films are classified on Netflix or Hulu, which are
conspicuously organized by genre.
genre has often dealt with characters who live on the margins of society. (Try testing
his claim by having your class read Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard
to Find,” which we include in Chapter 11, “Crime and Justice.”) In his book The
Situation of Poetry, Robert Pinsky argues that much Romantic and post-Romantic
verse investigates whether the speaker can ever really commune with the physical
universe.
You might also have your class situate genres historically, attending to ways genres
have reflected or influenced specific societies and eras. To begin this contextualizing,
try asking your students to identify genres on screen or in print that have recently
changed as a result of changing social conditions. For example, because of massive
media coverage of real-life sex scandals, television soap operas can no longer hook
viewers simply by presenting fictional hanky-panky. Meanwhile, the growth of
millennials as a consumer force has encouraged an epidemic of youth-oriented TV
series on channels such as the CW. In part because more people surf the Internet and
more moviemakers rely on computer technology, Hollywood has produced numerous
science-fiction/fantasy films that examine issues posed by virtual reality (e.g.,
Inception). And what might the persistent popularity of reality TV show/contests
suggest?
You will have to decide how much to discuss subgenres of short fiction, poetry,
drama, and the essay. For each of these main genres, you can point out smaller topical
categories. In fact, this is what we do with our clusters in Part Two; there, for example,
SHORT FICTION
Of all the literary genres featured in the book, probably students will be most familiar
and comfortable with this one. Most likely they will have read several works of fiction
beforehand, in school if not on their own. In addition, they will have developed some
sense of narrative conventions through viewing films and TV shows as well as through
listening to songs with story lines. Thus, when you identify elements of short fiction for
them, often you will be helping them grow conscious of characteristics they intuitively
know. Feel free to bring their tacit knowledge to the surface by encouraging them to
compare the fiction they are reading with stories they have already encountered in
popular culture. When teaching Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where
Have You Been?” (p. 1015), for example, ask students to compare it with contempo-
rary narratives they have seen or read about stalkers or serial killers in movies, on TV,
or on the Internet.
We find that of all the elements of this genre, students are most eager to discuss
plot and character. Try asking your class to analyze at least a few stories using Alice
Adams’s formula ABCDE (Action, Background, Climax, Development, Ending),
which we apply in the book to Eudora Welty’s “A Visit of Charity” (p. 131). Few of
your students are apt to know this formula; in fact, we have never come across it in any
other introductory literature textbook. Yet Adams’s scheme—devised not by a literary
critic but by a veteran short-story writer—illuminates the plot structure of many pieces
of short fiction. Furthermore, by using it as a benchmark, students can trace how other
short stories prove unconventional in design. Of course, your students first need to be
familiar with the plot of any story they discuss. Despite our exhortations to the
contrary, we have found that they tend to read an assigned story only once before
A good, quick way to discover what your class thinks about a particular story’s
characters is to have students write down three adjectives for each character. You can
then go around the room and have students read aloud the adjectives they chose.
Next, you can ask the class to identify and elaborate whatever commonalities and
divergences have emerged. You can use this round-robin method of character analysis
to initiate class discussion or revive it. You can even conclude the period by asking
whether anyone’s adjectives have changed as a result of hearing other class members’
adjectives. Remember, though, that character analysis is not always the best approach
to a story, even if it does come naturally to students. You may find it more productive
to have your class address other facets of the story first.
If characters in a story seem to act unpleasantly, irrationally, or unproductively, a
number of your students may scorn them. Actually, a great deal of modern fiction (and
drama, for that matter) centers on characters whose nature and circumstances strike
many students as worse than their own. The great literary critic Northrop Frye helps
put this situation in perspective. In his 1957 book The Anatomy of Criticism, now
regarded as a classic account of genres, Frye traces various kinds of heroes that have
figured in literature down through the centuries. The first kind was “a divine being,”
the hero of myth. The second was “superior in degree to other men and to the
environment of other men”; this was the hero of romance. Then appeared the hero
who was “superior in degree to other men but not to his environment”; this prototype,
Frye argues, was “the hero of the high mimetic mode, of most epic and tragedy, and is
primarily the kind of hero that Aristotle had in mind.” Closer to our own time, there
emerged the low mimetic mode; this mode features a hero who is “superior neither to
other men nor to his environment,” so that audiences “respond to a sense of his
common humanity.” Finally there is the hero of the ironic mode, who seems “inferior
in power or intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a
scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity” (33–34).
Frye seems to refer exclusively to male heroes, thus leaving open the question of
how much his categories apply to females. Yet many of the short stories we include in
this volume fit into his so-called ironic mode. Reading Welty’s story, for example, your
students may believe that Marian and the adult women she encounters in the rest
home are “inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves,” caught up in “a scene of
bondage, frustration, or absurdity.” Even with this perception, a class analyzing Welty’s
characters may feel compassion rather than contempt. Nevertheless, quite possibly you
will encounter animosity toward these characters, as well as toward those in our book’s
other ironic narratives.
If some of your students do rush to condemn characters, their attitudes may still
provoke good discussion, especially if other members of your class are willing to
defend or identify with the targets. Often, however, moralistic dismissal is hardly
productive at all. At such times, you have various options. To get your students to at
least provisionally identify with a character they criticize, you can invite them to report
occasions when they have acted similarly or been tempted to. With a little prodding,
for instance, many people will recall feeling nervous and uncertain visiting a nursing
home, and they may also remember moments during their childhood when they were
more interesting and credible when it shows that the work is not easily decoded and
judged.
When discussing the plot of a story in class, usually students need not be
concerned with the verb tenses they use. But when they write a paper about the story,
you will want them to recount its events with a tense that is consistent. Unfortunately,
many students wind up shifting tenses in their papers about short stories. They move
back and forth between past and present, as if they cannot make up their minds which
to employ. In Part One, we advise students to try sticking with present tense when they
write about a fictional character’s actions. Whether or not you agree with us, point out
to your students what tense you want them to adopt.
Because short stories are short, you may be tempted to have your students read
several for a given class period. We find, however, that less is more: We are more likely
to engender substantial analysis of a story if we do not make it compete for time with
many other stories. A good limit is one or two per hour. You can, in fact, deal with
several if you divide the class into small groups, assign each a different story to analyze,
and then conclude the period by having each group report its analysis to the whole
class.
POETRY
Many students suffer from what we call “poetry anxiety.” Quite simply, they fear poet-
ry. In part, they do so because they find many poems elusive in meaning, hard to fig-
ure out. To them, the average poet seems almost willfully difficult. But another reason
for their unease is their feeling that whenever they study this genre they will have to
learn many new technical terms. Of course, your class may also include students who
love to read poetry, as well as students who have actually written some. You can even
invite the poets in your class to bring in samples of their work. Still, when you first
turn your class to poetry, it would be a good idea for you to begin by asking your stu-
dents their general attitude toward it. Let the anxious students know that you under-
stand their concerns, even as you submit that reading poetry can be pleasurable.
We suggest, too, that you proceed slowly as you introduce your class to the genre’s
technical features. How many of these features should your students learn? Quite a few
instructors believe that the study of poetry should involve extensive practice in
technical analysis, so that students develop an ability to identify any poem’s particular
meter and rhyme scheme. If you are dealing with multiple genres in your course,
though, you may not have time for such work. Also worth considering is the level of the
course. When our classes consist mostly of first-year students and sophomores pursuing
majors other than English, we do not make them regularly engage in scansion. Rather,
we draw their attention to various issues raised by particular texts, especially so they can
find topics for their own writing. We elaborate on matters of meter and rhyme when we
feel they are especially important to a given text’s meaning and impact.
We believe that when students are asked to interpret one of the poem’s images, they
should be encouraged first to think of all possible associations with it. In the case of Robert
Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” for example, you might draw a clock on the
blackboard and invite students to point out various things that clocks signify or evoke.
Eventually you can invite them to consider which of their associations fit this specific text.
Some of your students may be wary of attaching much figurative meaning to a seemingly
simple image of a clock, whereas you yourself may be inclined to pack it with symbolic
import. In fact, poetry tends to be the genre that students most see as in danger of English-
teacher overreading, the one that leads our own students to ask, “But could the author
really have had all those meanings in mind?” The best answer to this question, we think,
In Part One, our section on poetry as a genre presents poems that feature a first-
person speaker. Actually, much of the poetry in our book does so, and contemporary
poets seem very much drawn to the “I.” Some of your students may automatically
identify the “I” of a poem with its author, but we suggest you emphasize that the two
may need to be distinguished. Of course, certain poems do seem autobiographical.
But as we point out when we discuss issues of history in Part One, even Milton’s poem
about his blindness (p. 77) may be presenting just one aspect of Milton rather than his
complete, authentic self. You may find, as we have, that unless a first-person poem
clearly indicates otherwise, many students refer to its “I” as male. This tendency is not
all that disturbing when the poet is male, but it is troubling when the poet is female.
In one of our classes, for instance, many students used the masculine in referring to
DRAMA
When you teach a play, you have to decide how much you will present it to your stu-
dents as a blueprint for production rather than as simply a text to be read in class. Our
own inclination is to make our classes always aware of the play as a script to be per-
formed. There are numerous reasons for stressing its theatrical dimension. For one
thing, doing so gives students a better sense of how interpretations can be consequen-
tial; after all, performers’ understanding of their parts influences their enactment of
these characters onstage. Furthermore, referring to actual or hypothetical productions
of the play helps students see the material conditions that can affect literature. Susan
Glaspell created dramatic intensity when she confined the onstage action of Trifles (p.
1046) to the Wrights’ kitchen, but no doubt she also relied on a single set because that
is what companies like her Provincetown Players could manage in the small theaters
where they performed.
The best reason, however, for treating a play as a script is to get your students up
on their feet and actively participating in class. Let students read scenes aloud, or,
casting is deliberately provocative, as in the numerous modern productions in which
Shakespeare’s Caliban is played by a black man. On other occasions, the casting
purports to be “color-blind,” as when the black actor Paul Winfield played Falstaff in a
Washington, D.C., production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. (In fact, Winfield
replaced the female actor Pat Carroll in the role.) You may know that “color-blind”
invite students to recall plays they have seen rather than acted in. Do not be surprised,
though, if several students report that they have rarely or never seen live professional
theater—all the more reason for having your class actually perform. You might
encourage your students to see current productions of your college’s theater
department and even consider arranging a group visit to one.