Kategoria BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines >> Study & Teaching

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz--a witty, intellectually formidable, and prolific author--stands as an icon of women's early writing and of colonial New Spain. Living in the capital city of seventeenth-century Mexico, she was located in the center of her world, but, as a self-taught, illegitimate, Creole woman and as a nun subject to the authority of male religious leaders, she was also socially marginal within that world. Like other early modern women she took up the pen to challenge gendered norms of the time. In style and content her works, which draw on baroque stylistics, classical...

As teachers well know, the elements that make Thomas Pynchon exciting to read and study--the historical references, the multilayered prose, and the postmodern integration of high and low cultures and science and literature--often constitute hurdles to undergraduate and graduate readers alike. The essays gathered in this volume turn these classroom challenges into assets, showing instructors how to make the narratives' frustration of reader expectations not only intellectually rewarding but also part of the joy of reading The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason &...

A central text both in Dickens's career and in the history of the novel itself, Bleak House provides students and teachers occasion to discuss Victorian social concerns involving law, crime, family, education, and money and to learn about every stratum of English society, from the aristocracy to the homeless. But the sheer size of the novel and its narrative intricacy pose pedagogical obstacles. The essays in this volume offer instructors an array of practical strategies for use in the classroom: some describe courses organized exclusively around Bleak House; others offer...

The writings of Teresa of Avila and the Spanish mystics, most notably John of the Cross and Luis de Leon, aroused passionate responses when they were composed. Though today's students realize that religious beliefs have wide-ranging consequences, they are presented with particular challenges in studying the Spanish mystics because of their unfamiliarity with the linguistic, social, and religious history of early modern Spain. This volume is designed to help instructors elicit students' curiosity, sympathy, and appreciation for writings that can at first seem alien or confusing.

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When it was first published, in 1823, Claire de Duras's novel Ourika became a best seller almost immediately, and in recent decades, instructors have found it an irresistible addition to their syllabi. But from a teacher's perspective the novel presents something of a paradox. It is short, its narrative structure is uncomplicated, its vocabulary is limited, its plot is straightforward. It thus lends itself to "simple" readings that fail to reveal the novel's rich fund of social and historical themes. Set against the backdrop of the French and Haitian revolutions, the Terror, and the...

Mrs. Dalloway is considered a central work in Virginia Woolf's oeuvre and in the modernist canon. It not only addresses historical and cultural issues such as war, colonialism, class, politics, marriage, sexuality, and psychology but also reimagines the novel form. Moreover, Mrs. Dalloway continues to grow in its influence and visibility, inspiring adaptations in film, theater, print, and other media.

Despite Mrs. Dalloway's continued popularity, many students today find the prose daunting and a barrier to their appreciation and comprehension of the novel....

Zora Neale Hurston emerged as a celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, fell into obscurity toward the end of her life, yet is now recognized as a great American author. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is popular among general readers and is widely taught in universities, colleges, and secondary schools. A key text of African American and women's literature, it has also been studied by scholars interested in the 1930s, small-town life, modernism, folklore, and regionalism, and it has been viewed through the lenses of dialect theory, critical race theory, and...

"The works of Tim O'Brien are among the most significant recent contributions to a lengthy canon of war literature," write the editors of this volume; they serve "as an ideal point of entry for discussions of war and its human impact." The author of the highly acclaimed The Things They Carried, O'Brien is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of a National Book Award for Going After Cacciato.

This volume in the Approaches to Teaching series considers the range and depth of O'Brien's writing, with an emphasis on works that focus on the Vietnam War. Part 1,...

The career of Gunter Grass began dramatically in 1959, with the publication of his first novel. The Tin Drum brought instant fame to the thirty-two-year-old author and led to his receiving the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. Translated into dozens of languages, the novel has sold over four million copies worldwide. Its status as a major text of postwar German literature, however, has not diminished its provocative nature. In both style and content, it continues to challenge scholars, teachers, and students.

This volume, like others in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching...

As I Lay Dying is considered by many both the most enigmatic and the most accessible of Faulkner's major works. It is also the most dramatic; the journey of the Bundrens, a family of poor farmers in the South in the early twentieth century, unfolds like a one-act play, full of natural disaster and human madness. Taught in high school, college, and graduate courses, the novel lends itself to a wide range of interpretations, posing both challenges and opportunities for the instructor.

Part 1 of this Approaches volume, "Materials," offers an extensive guide to reference materials...