The three last American writers to win the Nobel Prize represent American male novelists who have been unable either to come to terms with the "Otherness" of the female or to draw convincing portraits of women. As a result, women in their works are presented as female stereotypes of one kind or another. Hemingway shows a split attitude…

The purpose of a five-week pilot project in composition at a Manhattan inner city high school were to test a methodology for teaching the nonnarrative essay and to determine if students could provide informed editorial guidance to other students in regular peer criticism sessions. The assumptions underlying the approach are that the central…

Literary analysis is approached as an atypical research modality: a modality that falls outside the parameters of experimental research usually described in the literature of educational meta-research. It is maintained that atypical research is appropriate as ancillary and complementary to typical research. Following Guba's explication of…

Secondary level composition classes can benefit from the assignment of factual papers. While literary analysis falls prey to subjective evaluation, the organization and synthesis of factual information eludes judgemental decisions. In addition, this approach can be relevant to the society in which the student lives by providing a field of subject…

Various aspects of 145 representative oral and written compositions of six- and seven-year-old new literates are discussed in this paper. The determination to label these compositions as "primitive fiction" was made primarily on the assumption that children's first attempts at fictive narrative take on the aspects of their cultural literary…

Both Sylvia Plath and Doris Lessing use themes prevalent in Gothic horror tales--fear, madness, dissolution of personality, the dream journey, and the grotesque--but both writers make use of these themes in their own inimitable way. This paper discusses Plath's "The Bell Jar" and Lessing's "Briefing for a Descent into Hell" in…

The book "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" by Clarence King, a late-ninteenth-century American geologist, writer, art critic, and romantic, is discussed in this paper. In the writing and revision of this book, King was attempting a metamorphosis of landscape description into popular reading as he moved from being a symbolic writer to…

This book provides background information on science fiction for teachers of English at any level who are approaching science fiction for the first time. Contents are: an introduction by W.E. McNelly; "SF in the Classroom" by J. Williamson; "Second Thoughts on the Course in Science Fiction" by M.R. Hillegas; "Flatland and Beyond: Characterization…

Unfortunately, textbooks of the elementary and junior high school levels receive very little of the honest, critical evaluation which is given trade books in children's literature. One vivid example of this fact was seen in the recent arduous but successful attempt to include "Beowul" in a fourth-grade literature text which was being…

Because teachers often feel incompetent when it comes to teaching poetry, many children grow up without ever acquiring an appreciation for the words and thoughts of poets. This book, intended for teachers, contains a lucid explanation of what poetry is, bringing together several classic definitions by eminent poets and critics. Elements that make…

Following the trend of organizing English literature study around "themes" both promotes superficial instruction and neglects a major facet of literature especially appealing to today's youth--that literature is a work of art covering the whole spectrum of man's experience where any of man's feelings, thoughts, and actions may find a place. With…

Few ways have been developed for effectively recording and analyzing values held by individuals, groups, and schools. The investigator sought to devise a rapid, valid, and reliable way to record and classify values expressed by students and schools. She hoped to avoid weaknesses inherent in the customary paper and pencil tests with their…

The ability to think of poetry rhetorically is a valuable instrument for interpreting poetry. The poet is the speaker "of" the poem, the persona the speaker "in" the poem. The communicative circle is complete when it includes the reader who combines an analysis of the text (the words of the persona) with an analysis of the…

Despite reservations about the significance of "The Pearl" in relation to John Steinbeck's other works, a case can be made for the novel as an effective exemplification of the Greek tragic form, which Steinbeck has adapted for his own realistic purposes. Although the protagonist Kino lacks high rank and eloquence, he possesses the tragic…

Teachers have to decide what poems should be taught and how they should be presented. The teacher ought to choose poems which he himself likes and which he expects that his students will like. Once chosen, the poem needs to be taught as a "meaningful whole" with emphasis on its unique structure and shape and on the significance of the parts in…