Literature for Composition

Introduction to Literature for Composition

POETRY
“Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden
“Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold
“Neutral Tones,” Thomas Hardy
“We Wear the Mask,” Paul Laurence Dunbar
“Indian Movie, New Jersey,” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
“The Towers,” Sylvia Hicks
“The Race Industry,” Benjamin Zephaniah
“My Heart Leaps Up,” William Wordsworth
“Richard Cory,” Edwin Arlington Robinson
“The Rhodora,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Dead My Old Fine Hopes,” Anonymous Haiku
“The World Is Too Much With Us,” William Wordsworth

Links of Poems for Further Study
“Heritage,” Linda Hogan
“Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes
“The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost
“Traveling Through the Dark,” William Stafford
“The Red Wheel Barrow,” William Carlos Williams
“The Gift,” Li-Young Lee
“A Red, Red Rose,” Robert Burns
“When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be,” John Keats
“The Fury of Overshoes,” Anne Sexton
“On Aging,” Maya Angelou
“Incident,” Countee Cullen
“Mending Wall,” Robert Frost
“The Convergence of the Twain,” Thomas Hardy
“Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Richard Cory,” Simon & Garfunkel

SHORT STORY
“The Lament,” Anton Chekhov
“The Gift of the Magi,” O. Henry
“The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin
“The Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck
“Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid
“Araby,” James Joyce
“A & P,” John Updike
“The Mark on the Wall,” Virginia Woolf
“The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe
“The Open Boat,” Stephen Crane
“The Chief ’s Daughters,” An Otoe Woman from Nebraska

Links for Further Study
“The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien
“Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway
“The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” Irwin Shaw
“A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty
“Everyday Use,” Alice Walker
“Barn Burning,” William Faulkner
“The Birthday Party,” Katharine Brush
“The Chaser,” John Collier
“Sweat,” Zora Neale Hurston
“The Hunger Artist,” Franz Kafka
“The Portable Phonograph,” Walter Van Tilburg Clark
“The Other Side of the Hedge,” E. M. Forster
“The Door,” E. B. White
“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Rocking Horse Winner,” D. H. Lawrence
“When the Mind Is At Peace,” Layman P’ing

DRAMA
“Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller
“The Glass Menagerie,” Tennessee (Thomas Lanier) Williams
“A Doll’s House,” Henrik Ibsen
“Oedipus the King,” Sophocles

LITERARY CRITICISM
“Tragedy and the Common Man,” Arthur Miller (1949)
LINK www.nytimes.com/books/11/12/specials/miller-common.html
“Nobel Prize Speech,” William Faulkner (1949)
Audio Recording of the Speech at the Nobel Banquet
LINK www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html
“Nobel Prize Speech,” John Steinbeck (1962)
LINK www.nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/steinbeck-speech.html
Interviews with Alice Walker
LINK Films on Demand through College Library Data Bases
LINK www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/alicewalker.html
LINK http://makers.com/alice-walker

WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
Literary Criticism
Sample Essays
Steinbeck’s Use of Setting to Reveal Character in “The Chrysanthemums”
An Analysis of “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid – Mihir Kumar Patel (Student)
Paraphrase of a Poem: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Synopsis of a Short Story: “The Story of an Hour”