In spite of the fact that there has been an interest in children's theatre since after World War I and practically everyone--from the Junior League to the educationist--recognizes the need for and the value of good drama, there is a dearth of good drama of literary worth for children. It is true that children have been exposed to drama of some…

This paper focuses on the alternative-justification approach to debate, seeks to explore some of the objections to this approach, and considers several of the basic assumptions made by its supporters. The alternative-justification theory of debate is based on the assumption that any given question under debate has a number of affirmative plans and…

At the second annual Cal-State Hayward Conference in Rhetorical Criticism, upper division and graduate students from 17 colleges and universities presented papers on the theory, history, and criticism of rhetoric. Panels of faculty members from the same colleges and universities, serving as editor-critics, judged the six papers in this volume as…

John Searle's book, "Speech Acts," opened with the question, "How do words relate to the world?" This paper suggests a way of answering Searle's question by relying--in spirit if not in method--on Austin's linguistic phenomenology. The existential phenomenology approach is described in Austin's phrase as a "sharpened…

A study of the fictional treatment of the same theme--man's depravity--in "Lord of the Flies" and "Heart of Darkness" provides an approach to literary study which sharpens students' analytical skills through a comparison of the books and an exploration of the uniqueness of each. Although there are differences evident between…

The grammatical analysis and imitation of interesting sentences and paragraphs contained in literary works is a stimulating means of fusing the studies of language, literature, and composition. Students involved in such a course of study acquire an increased awareness of language which, in turn, results in a heightened appreciation of literature…

The author suggests that mathematical formulas could provide some direct and easily understandable frameworks for analogies in literary criticism. Most studies of textual problems, he points out, either have failed to use full mathematical models or have been reckless with the inherent limits of these techniques. Enumeration of linguistic traits…

Three speeches given by prominent authors at regional workshops sponsored by the Joint Liaison Committee of the Association for Childhood Education International and the Children's Book Council are printed here. The author--Lloyd Alexander, Myra Cohn Livingston, and Virginia Hamilton--addressed the subject of "Literature, Creativity and…

Written to encourage imaginative approaches to teaching writing, this paper contains ideas for developing writing skills by encouraging creative writing, formal analysis, and criticism despite the traditional lack of literary analysis in the creative writing classroom. In addition to including teaching techniques for practicing literary skills…

An initial philosophical analysis of "reading" has yielded; (1) that there cannot be a general definition of reading; (2) that the "focal" senses of "to read" indicate that reading is a form of linguistic perception carried out through the exercise of general linguistic abilities, adapted to a visual input of inscriptions with inherent linguistic…

At the sixth annual Cal-State Hayward Conference in Rhetorical Criticism, upper division and graduate students from 11 western colleges and universities presented papers on the theory, history, and criticism of rhetoric. Panels of faculty members from the same colleges and universities selected the three best papers for commendation and…

The Second Law of Thermodynamics demonstrates the idea of entropy, the tendency of ordered energy to free itself and thus break apart the system that contains it and dissipate that system into chaos. When applied to communications theory, entropy increases not only with noise but with the density of information--particles of possible meaning…

Offered in this book is an Argentinian's view of the literary achievement of the United States. The beginning chapters discuss Mather, Edwards, and Freneau; Franklin, Cooper, and the historians; Hawthorne and Poe; and Whitman and Herman Melville. Other chapters are given to a discussion of three poets of the nineteenth century (Lanier, Whittier,…

Research on literary response has had little to say about student response to authors' techniques in particular literary works. For this study, 165 senior high students of superior verbal ability were asked to read two short stories and to indicate what they thought made each story effective by selecting from an inventory comments which matched…

One of a series of works aimed at presenting contemporary critical opinion on major authors, this collection includes essays by Germaine Bree, Nicola Chairmonte, Serge Doubrovsky, Justin O'Brien, Wilfrid Sheed, Roger Quilliot, Thomas L. Hanna, Bernard C. Murchland, Henri Peyre, S. Beynon John, Rachel Bespaloff, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Champigny,…