Longman / Prentice Hall

English

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Literature for Composition, Interactive Edition, 8/E
Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University
William E. Burto, University of Massachusetts - Lowell
William E. Cain, Wellesley College

ISBN-10: 020556383X
ISBN-13: 9780205563838

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2008
Format: Paper; 1448 pp
Published: 10/09/2007

Suggested retail price: $83.20
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Literature for Composition, MyLiteratureLab Interactive Edition offers superior coverage of reading, writing, and arguing about literature and a deep anthology of readings presented in Sylvan Barnet’s signature accessible style along with the powerful and complete integration of My Literature Lab (www.MyLiteratureLab.com).

Literature for Composition, MLL Interactive Edition enables students to access a wealth of media resources, developed to enhance their enjoyment and to help them master material. Icons in the chapters and the Table of Contents take students to film and audio clips, interactive readings, critical articles, student papers, writing prompts and other exercises.

Beginning chapters provide uniquely helpful strategies and models for reading, thinking, and writing critically about literature.
The first text to link argument and literature, the Interactive Edition provides earlier discussions of arguing about literature as part of the writing process.
A diverse anthology of selections is organized around seven engaging themes, and nine compelling case studies help launch research projects.
The text's 200 images, a 4-color insert, and special chapters on visual literacy and literature on film add another appealing dimension to the study of literature.
Featuring the discipline's most extensive instruction on the writing process and writing explications, analyses, and arguments about literature, the text reviews the entire process of writing, from generating ideas for writing (by listing or by annotating a text), developing a thesis, and on through the final stages of documenting and editing.
Innovative chapters on writing effective arguments discuss arguing an interpretation and arguing an evaluation of a literary work. Argument coverage is now located at the front of the book (Chapters 3, 6, and 7) to make it easier for students to learn as part of the writing process.
Twenty-seven student sample papers throughout the text model different stages and types of writing.
Helpful discussions of genre and literary forms help students think critically and write analytically about fiction, poetry, drama and the essay.
Thematic anthology presents seven universal themes: Journeys; Love and Hate; Making Men and Women; Innocence and Experience; Identity in America; American Dreams and Nightmares (new); and Law and Disorder.
Nine compelling case studies give a variety of materials and perspectives to stimulate arguments and research projects. The case studies in the Interactive Edition include: Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Emily Dickinson, America Sings the Blues, Comparing Poems and Pictures (art insert), Hamlet, American Indian Identity, the Internment of Japanese Americans, and the National Anthem.
Comprehensive material on research and the Internet covers short, medium-length, and long research papers and provides up-to-date instruction on evaluating, using, and citing electronic sources. Coverage of writing from sources is now found in Chapter 8 to make it easier for students to incorporate sources into their papers.
Abundant visual material—photographs, author images, performance stills, manuscript facsimiles, and a 4-color art insert—help frame the selections and prompt visual learning and critical thinking.
"Short views" open each thematic chapter with a series of provocative quotations ranging from epigrammatic sentences to a paragraph. These memorable quotes are followed by writing prompts to promote students’ inquiry into the chapter theme.
Literature on film is discussed in Chapter 14, “Fiction into Film” featuring Joyce Carol Oates’s essay on the film version of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.” Chapter 15, “Reading and Writing about Drama,” includes a discussion of “Writing about a Filmed Play.”

MyLiteratureLab.com is a Web-based state of the art interactive learning system designed to help students in their writing about literature courses. At the core of the program are Longman Lectures—evocative, richly illustrated audio readings with advice on how to read, interpret, and write about literary works from Longman's own roster of authors. This powerful program also features Diagnostic Tests, Interactive Readings with clickable prompts, sample student papers, Literature Timelines, Avoiding Plargiarism and Research Navigator research aids, and Exchange, an electronic instructor feedback tool. MyLiteratureLab.com can be delivered in Course Compass, Web CT, or Blackboard course management systems, enabling instructors to administer their entire course online.
The “Longman Lectures” are a collection of over 50 audio discussions of the most often assigned readings. These brief, lively audio discussions will help you analyze and interpret literature, and even offer easy, practical tips on how to write effectively.
This edition features several new selections–13 new short stories, 33 new poems, 3 new plays, 6 new essays and 4 new songs–including new works by Sarah N. Cleghorn, Gwendolyn Brooks, Wilfred Owen, Anne Sexton, John Steinbeck, Louise Erdrich, David Ives, Allen Ginsberg, Marge Piercy, Grace Paley, and Lorna Dee Cervantes.
Earlier coverage of Argument is presented in a new Chapter 3, “Literature and Argument” which contains immediately engaging short works that prompt ready arguments, from a man’s attempt to seduce a woman in John Donne’s “The Flea” to Aesopian fables that offer guidance on how to survive in a dangerous world.
Two additional chapters devoted to argument–Ch. 6, "Arguing an Interpretation" and Ch. 7, "Arguing an Evaluation" have been streamlined and appear earlier in the book. The eighth edition expands its coverage of argument and evaluation, not only in these chapters but in the case studies (see Ch. 24) and questions that follow most of the readings. Students are encouraged to question their own assumptions–a key principle of critical thinking–and to turn their responses into coherent, thoughtful arguments.
A new thematic unit, “American Dreams and Nightmares” contrasts the idea of the "American Dream" with the reality in selections that range from Chief Seattle’s “My People,” and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s“Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” and Studs Terkel’s “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dream,” from Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man Without a Country” to Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Grace Paley’s “A Man Told Me the Story of His Life,” from Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “The Bean Eaters” and Billy Collins’s “The Names.”
A new case study in Chapter 24, “Writing Arguments about the National Anthem” features two essayists, Caldwell Titcomb and Hendrik Hertzberg, who suggest alternatives to “The Star-Spangled Banner–“America,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Students are invited to evaluate the arguments, as well as the songs themselves, and to offer their own arguments. In addition, students evaluate three versions of the famous photo of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.
Three additional plays–Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, David Ives’s Sure Thing, and Jane Martin’s Rodeo–bring the total number of plays to ten.

Contents by Genre

List of Illustrations

Preface to Instructors

Letter to Students

PART I

Getting Started: From Response to Argument

CHAPTER 1 The Writer as Reader

Reading and Responding

Kate Chopin, Ripe Figs

Reading as Re-creation

Collecting Evidence, Making Reasonable Inferences

Reading with Pen in Hand

Recording Your First Responses

Identifying Your Audience and Purpose

Your Turn: Arguing a Thesis in an Essay

A Sample Essay by a Student: "Images of Ripening in Kate Chopin’s ‘Ripe Figs’”

The Argument Analyzed

*Behind the Scenes: Tenori’s Essay, from Early Responses to Final Version

Other Possibilities for Writing

*A Second Story about a Young Woman: Michele Serros, Senior Picture Day

Two Stories about a Bitter Argument

Raymond Carver, Mine

Raymond Carver, Little Things

Your Turn: Writing an Argument about Carver’s Two Stories

CHAPTER 2 The Reader as Writer

Developing a Thesis, Drafting, and Writing an Argument

Pre-writing: Getting Ideas

Annotating a Text

More about Getting Ideas: A Second Story by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Brainstorming for Ideas for Writing

Focused Free Writing

Listing

Asking Questions

Keeping a Journal

Arguing with Yourself: Critical Thinking

Arguing a Thesis

Drafting Your Argument

√ Checklist: Thesis Sentence

A Sample Draft: "Ironies in an Hour"

Revising an Argument

Outlining an Argument

Soliciting Peer Review, Thinking about Counterarguments

Final Version of the Sample Essay: "Ironies of Life in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an

Hour’”

A Brief Overview of the Final Version

Writing on Your Computer

√ Checklist: Writing with a Computer

Your Turn: Two Additional Stories

Kate Chopin, The Storm

Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby

*John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

A Note about Literary Evaluations

* CHAPTER 3 Literature and Argument

Beginning with Proverbs: Proverbs as Arguments

Arguments in Lyric Poems

*A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees

*John Donne, The Flea

Fables and Arguments

*Aesop Three Fables: The Pine-tree and the Bramble, The Snake and the Farmer, The

City Mouse and the Country Mouse

*William March, Aesop’s Last Fable

Thinking Further about Messages in Literature

*Emily Wu, The Lesson of the Master

*Linda Pastan, Ethics

CHAPTER 4 Reading Literature Closely: Explication

What is Literature?

Literature and Form

Form and Meaning

Robert Frost, The Span of Life

Reading in Slow Motion

Explication

A Sample Explication

Langston Hughes, Harlem

Working Toward an Explication

Some Journal Entries

A Sample Essay by a Student (Final Version): "Langston Hughes' 'Harlem"'

Explication as Argument

√ Checklist: Drafting an Explication

Why Write? Purpose and Audience

Your Turn: Poems for Explication

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold)

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart, three-personed God )

Emily Brontë, Spellbound

Li-Young Lee, I Ask My Mother to Sing

Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

*Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

CHAPTER 5 Reading Literature Closely: Analysis

Analysis

Analyzing a Story from the Hebrew Bible: The Judgment of Solomon

The Judgment of Solomon

Analyzing the Story