English Literature

New Revised Second Edition!

This new and revised edition offers students and teacher alike a wide range of materials from the literary canon which can be used as both a textbook for composition classes and as a survey textbook for Literature classes ranging from the Renaissance to Modernism. In addition to a wide range of literary materials, the text also contains an in depth essay by the author on how to write an effective academic essay, and an essay on how to write about literature in college. "Writing the Academic Essay" assists students with issues such as formulating a thesis, how to effectively utilize their voice, as well as guidance on logical and counter-argument, and a brief discussion of Bloom's taxonomy to help them move from restatement of facts and topics, towards a mature articulation of critically thinking through their prose. The "Writing about Literature" chapter will help students to make that transition from high school writing into college level writing, whilst also alerting them to some of the particular issues that need to be tackled when writing about Literature. This new edition also includes a complete six page essay on Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott' written by the author, designed to show students how an effective argument can be made using a small amount of literary criticism alongside a clearly articulated voice and thesis.

This new edition includes, for the Renaissance, the complete text of A Midsummer Night's Dream as well as new selections from Shakespeare's Sonnets, and John Donne along with the inclusion of Ben Jonson's 'To Penhurst and 'To His First Son.' New works in this edition also include selections from Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindiction of the Rights of Woman,' as well as poems from the early Romantic writers Charlotte Smith and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Additional works by William Wordsworth, John Keats and Alfred Lord Tennyson have also been added, as well as extra poems by Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman and T.S. Eliot, in addition to Virginia Woolf's landmark essay on 'Modern Fiction.'

This text offers teachers and students a series of doors through which to enter into a meaningful and fulfilling dialogue with some of the most engaging authors and ideas of the past 300 years. Whether your aim is to get students to write about traditional issues like history, race, class or gender these texts provide a rich mother lode of primary material for writing abd discussion. Should we choose to explore questions of technology and human vanity with Hardy's 'The Convergence of the Twain' or the brutalizing consequences of war and the plight of veterans with Wilfred Owen's 'Disabled,' or simply to open up a discussion about freedom and responsibility with James Joyce's 'Eveline,' the material is all here. The text is arranged chronologically should one wish to teach it with an eye on literary/historical developments since the Renaissance, or one can cross historical borders to spark debate and dialogue between writers of different periods, classes and genders. the Ideas, Issues and topics contained in this text have passed the test of time and continue to resonate with us, and as such these works remain at the very heart of a successful course of study for college level thinkers and writers.