Designed to make readers more aware of the systematic neglect of women's experience in the traditional literary canon, the paper presents feminist alternatives to the male-dominated canon, an assessment of their impact on the standard canon, and a proposal for new directions for further work. Two suggested approaches for feminist criticism are (1)…

The feature articles in this journal issue deal with various aspects of Canadian literature. The articles include: (1) a discussion of who's who and what's what in Canadian literature; (2) reviews of worthwhile but overlooked Canadian children's literature; (3) a list of resource guides to Canadian literature and a short quiz over famous first…

Honors education is not immune from the current controversy concerning the role of the literary canon. Indeed, the problem seems especially crucial for honors programs, for their curriculums are often multi-disciplinary in their approaches to culture and history. The solution may lie in what Linda Hutcheon calls the "poetics of the…

Joseph Priestley, in his "A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism," developed a psychological theory of style. The "Course" covers three main topics: traditional rhetorical arts of invention, arrangement, and style. Borrowing from the ideas of David Hartley, the association psychologist; Joseph Addison, the aesthetician;…

Teachers' dismissal of Robert Cormier's books as "too depressing" suggests a lack of sound critical understanding of his work and a lack of faith in individual young people. The body of adolescent or young adult literature has come a long way in recent years. The writing has shown a much fuller range of literary quality and the content…

A study examined whether intraceptive thinkers (those with a relatively complex and differentiated set of concepts for thinking about people) are more likely than projective thinkers (those who tend to think in simple stereotypes, and are biased and judgmental) to see the subtle religious themes in the poetry of Walt Whitman. Ninety-six male…

Noting National Assessment of Educational Progress findings that indicate students have difficulty analyzing literature, this paper presents a model for teaching students the process of reading and responding to literature in an orderly manner. Following an introduction to the problem of literature analysis in the schools, the model is discussed…

Young adult literature is the subject of this journal. The first article, "The Executioner Sings" (Jay Bennett), relates how and why its author writes. The next article, "Cinderella and the Pigman" (Lucy E. Waddey), explains why kids read the works of Judy Blume and Paul Zindel. "An interview with Keven Major" (Mike…

Designed for the student of historical rhetoric who does not have a reading knowledge of Greek and Latin, this book is divided into 6 sections, each written by a specialist in the rhetoric of the different historical periods. Each section (1) provides an overview of the primary works, their authors, and the rhetorical issues of the period; (2)…

Those who view the right to a religiously neutral, empirically-based public education as fundamental have been able to do little more than watch in terror as abstinence-only sex education, which excludes information on either safe sex or birth control, has come to prevail in United States (US) schools. Among causes for concern are abstinence…

Most writers of feminist biographies do not yet know how to solve presentational and narrative problems that have been solved in other genres. (JH)

Ideas or messages transmitted by language are not the same as grammatically determined meaning. (JH)

Four teaching approaches are discussed. (CH)