Doing Literary Criticism Helping Students Engage with Challenging Texts Essays on Literary Criticism for Students to Read Bonus Resources for Teachers Additional Chapter on Postmodern Literary Criticism What You Have in This CD This CD includes a wealth of extra features to support you in doing literary criticism with your students. Each chapter includes classroom-ready essays for students to read, and many of the chapters have extra resources for teachers. There is also a complete additional chapter on postmodern criticism. Roam around a bit. I hope you will fi nd some useful materials for your classroom! Essays on Literary Criticism for Students to Read The essays aimed at students are linked to the different critical approaches addressed in this book. (They are basically streamlined versions of the information you read in each chapter, offering the same sort of overview, brief history, and benefi ts and limitations of each approach.) Though they are challenging, these essays have been extensively tested in classrooms with students. For each critical theory, two student essays are offered: a short version and a long version. The short versions generally run two pages, so they can be duplicated front- and-back on a single sheet of paper. The long versions generally run from four to six pages. I have always printed these long versions front-and-back, too, so the packets I handed out to students were never forbiddingly longer than three sheets with text on both sides. If you decide to try out the essays with your students, you’ll have to choose whether to use the long or short versions. The short versions offer a quick overview of each critical lens for students, and the long versions provide a more in-depth explanation. I mostly used the long versions with advanced or particularly motivated classes of seniors. The short versions I used with all my classes. You have permission to print out, duplicate, and use either the long or short essays with students in your classroom only, as long as you duplicate them as is, including giving proper credit to the author and to Stenhouse Publishers on every copy. Bonus Resources for Teachers The bonus resources for teachers supplement and extend the studies of different critical approaches outlined in Doing Literary Criticism. For example, to go along with Chapter 7, “Genre Criticism,” I have added a section on the modern genre of magic realism. To supplement Chapter 10, “Feminist Criticism,” the CD includes a history of women writers for the last 2,000 years. To add dimension to Chapter 11, “Political Criticism,” the CD has an extended description of many varieties of advocacy criticism. Additional resources for Chapter 12, “Formalist Criticism,” include a brief overview of close reading and a lengthy list of literary terms for students. Additional Chapter on Postmodern Literary Criticism Finally, this CD also offers an extra chapter on the most complicated of critical lenses, postmodern literary theory. The book in your hands simply could not be made long enough to accommodate this lengthy chapter on the complex ideas of modernism, postmodernism, and deconstruction. As with the other literary lenses in this book, an extensive discussion of the history, benefi ts, and limitations of postmodern criticism is offered, along with teaching suggestions and considerations and plenty of resource ideas. The bonus chapter also includes one student essay—a long version—to accompany its focus on “po-mo lit crit.” Try as I might, I just could not manage to squeeze all those ideas into a short version for students. So, if you decide to give postmodern criticism a try, you’ve got to go big! CD Contents: Supplementary Materials Chapter 1: Bonus Materials: An Overview of Literary Criticism An Introduction to Literary Criticism for Students: Short Version .....................CD 1 An Introduction to Literary Criticism for Students: Long Version ......................CD 4 Chapter 2: Bonus Materials on Reader Response Criticism Reader Response Criticism for Students: Short Version ....................................CD 11 Reader Response Criticism for Students: Long Version .....................................CD 13 Chapter 3: Bonus Materials on Biographical Criticism Biographical Criticism for Students: Short Version ...........................................CD 20 Biographical Criticism for Students: Long Version ...........................................CD 23 Bonus Feature: On Authorial Identity and Authenticity ................................CD 28 Bonus Feature: An Example of the Contents of a Student-Produced Biographical Criticism Anthology ..................................................................CD 31 Chapter 4: Bonus Materials on Historical Criticism Historical Criticism for Students: Short Version ................................................CD 33 Historical Criticism for Students: Long Version .................................................CD 36 Chapter 5: Bonus Materials on Psychological Criticism Psychological Criticism for Students: Short Version .........................................CD 43 Psychological Criticism for Students: Long Version ..........................................CD 46 Bonus Feature: Some Other Useful Psychological Theories and Frameworks for Analyzing Literature .............................................................CD 53 Chapter 6: Bonus Materials on Archetypal Criticism Archetypal Criticism for Students: Short Version ..............................................CD 55 Archetypal Criticism for Students: Long Version ...............................................CD 58 Bonus Feature: Using the Shadow or “Other” Archetype ..............................CD 65 Bonus Feature: Story Archetypes ....................................................................CD 68 Chapter 7: Bonus Materials on Genre Criticism Genre Criticism for Students: Short Version ......................................................CD 69 Genre Criticism for Students: Long Version .......................................................CD 72 Bonus Feature: A Collection of Essay Exam Questions About Genre ...............CD 76 Bonus Feature: An Extra Modern Genre: Magic Realism ..............................CD 82 Chapter 8: Bonus Materials on Moral Criticism Moral Criticism for Students: Short Version ......................................................CD 85 Moral Criticism for Students: Long Version .......................................................CD 88 Bonus Feature: A Booklist of Classroom-Tested Texts That Raise Complex Moral Issues .....................................................................................CD 95 Bonus Feature: A Collection of Quotes to Further Stimulate Discussion and Writing About Moral Criticism ..............................................CD 96 Chapter 9: Bonus Materials on Philosophical Criticism Philosophical Criticism for Students: Short Version .........................................CD 99 Philosophical Criticism for Students: Long Version ........................................CD 102 Chapter 10: Bonus Materials on Feminist Criticism Feminist Criticism for Students: Short Version ................................................CD 107 Feminist Criticism for Students: Long Version ................................................CD 110 Bonus Feature: The Issue of Gender Versus Sex ..........................................CD 117 Bonus Feature: An Extended History of Women Writers and Feminist Literary Criticism ............................................................................................CD 118 Chapter 11: Bonus Materials on Political or Advocacy Criticism Political or Advocacy Criticism for Students: Short Version ...........................CD 137 Political or Advocacy Criticism for Students: Long Version ............................CD 140 Bonus Feature: Varieties of Political Criticism .............................................CD 147 Bonus Feature: A Collection of Quotes About Political or Advocacy Criticism ...................................................................................CD 169 Chapter 12: Bonus Materials on Formalist Criticism Formalist Criticism for Students: Short Version ..............................................CD 172 Formalist Criticism for Students: Long Version ...............................................CD 175 Bonus Feature: The Methodology of Close Reading ....................................CD 182 Bonus Feature: A List of Literary Terms .......................................................CD 184 Bonus Feature: A Collection of Quotes to Spur Discussion About Formalist Criticism........................................................................................CD 193 Bonus Chapter: On Postmodern Criticism Bonus Feature: On Postmodern Criticism ...................................................CD 194 Postmodern Criticism for Students: Long Version ...........................................CD 241 CD 1 An Introduction to Literary Criticism for Students By Tim Gillespie The only critical method is to be intelligent. —T. S. Eliot A dozen critics can extract a dozen meanings from the same text. Which is right? All of them and none. The name of the critical game is not certainty, it’s having fun. —Margot Peters What Is Literary Criticism? Sometimes the word criticism puts people off, because in everyday use it has negative connotations. We usually think of a “critic” as the kind of grumpy person who seems to exist solely to fi nd problems and stress faults. The word means more than