Approaches to Teaching World Literature
There are 176 products in Approaches to Teaching World Literature
Approaches to Teaching Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, with sales exceeding three million copies, is one of the most widely read works of contemporary fiction. A classic of African literature, it is taught in college courses ranging from graduate seminars in English and comparative literature to undergraduate offerings in English, history, ethnic studies, anthropology, folklore, and political science; it is also studied in high school literature and social studies classes. Yet teaching such a book presents special problems; Things Fall Apart is rooted in African social and historical realities that are often unfamiliar to North American readers. This collection of essays, all written by experienced teachers, aims to help instructors introduce students to the rich cultural background of the novel as well as to its narrative and structural complexities.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys biographical sources and interviews, background studies, critical commentaries, films based on Things Fall Apart, and other instructional aids. In part 2, “Approaches,” sixteen contributors describe strategies they have used to teach Achebe’s work. Several essays were solicited from eminent African scholars who, having taught abroad, know firsthand the challenges of conveying cross-cultural understanding through African literature. The volume features an introductory statement by Chinua Achebe, in which he comments on the responses his novel has elicited from readers around the world and offers advice on probing the significance of the story.
Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition
In Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition, instructors who have taught Arthurian material in contexts from high school to graduate school draw on their experience to address a range of challenges: Where does one begin a course that embraces the most important continuous tradition of British literary history? Which works from which periods and countries should one include? What kinds of background sources in mythology and Celtic tradition are most helpful? What is the place of history, art, music, or film in such a course?
This volume, like others in the Approaches series, is divided into two parts. “Materials” surveys editions of medieval and modern texts and anthologies and highlights reference works, supplemental readings, and aids to teaching. “Approaches” contains twenty-five essays on teaching Arthuriana. Topics include background studies, interdisciplinary courses, major authors (e.g., Chrètien de Troyes, Gottfried, Wolfram, Malory, and Tennyson), and specific pedagogical approaches such as teaching the Arthurian tradition through film, popular culture, and archaeology.
Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works
Margaret Atwood’s works, especially The Handmaid’s Tale, are widely taught not only in literature courses but also in economics, political science, sociology, film, and business courses. Her writings span a variety of genres and address such themes as identity, Canadian nationalism, struggle for survival, sexual politics, and shamanism; this rich and diverse range has proved fertile ground for teachers and critics alike. Approaches to Teaching Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Other Works is the first book to focus on the teaching of this writer’s oeuvre exclusively.
Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Emma
Critics of Austen’s Emma have remarked on both its pleasures and its difficulties. Teachers seeking to introduce Austen’s intricate, subtly crafted world to new readers often find that students are put off by the novel’s seeming lack of action and preoccupation with the details of daily life. This volume in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching series outlines the specific challenges of teaching Emma and shows teachers how to construct lectures, initiate classroom discussions, and devise writing assignments that illuminate for first-time readers the novel’s many layers of meaning, its hospitality to different interpretations, and the sheer delights of reading and rereading the book.
Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Mansfield Park
There were no reviews of Mansfield Park when it first appeared in 1814. Austen’s reputation grew in the Victorian period, but it was only in the twentieth century that formal and sustained criticism began of this work, which, more than Austen’s earlier novels, addresses the context and controversies of its time. Lionel Trilling praised Mansfield Park for exploring the difficult moral life of modernity; Edward Said brought postcolonial theory to the study of the novel; and twenty-first-century critics scrutinize these and other approaches to build on and go beyond them.
This volume is the third in the MLA Approaches series to deal with Austen’s work (Pride and Prejudice and Emma were the subject of the first and second volumes on Austen, respectively). It provides information about editions, film adaptations, and digital resources, and then nineteen essays discuss various aspects of Mansfield Park, including the slave trade, the theme of reading, elements of tragedy, gift theory, landscape design, moral improvement in the spirit of Samuel Johnson and of the Reformation, sibling relations, card playing, and interpretations of Fanny Price, the heroine, not as passive but as having some control.
Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular and widely taught works of English literature. Despite its enormous appeal—the novel has been in print almost continuously since its publication in 1812—there are few scholarly works devoted to teaching it. As Marcia McClintock Folsom notes in her introduction to Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, respondents to an MLA survey on teaching this Austen novel expressed the need for relevant background materials, brief reviews of criticism, and descriptions of pedagogical strategies
This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews available editions of Pride and Prejudice and works of criticism. The section also includes a handy biographical chronology and a map. In the second part, “Approaches,” sixteen teachers offer ideas for presenting the novel in the classroom, such as examining the social and economic conditions of late-eighteenth-century England; discussing biographical details, Austen’s unpublished writing (e.g., her juvenilia and letters), and the influence of other works on her fiction; considering the structure and themes of the novel; and analyzing Austen’s use of language. This collection is an indispensable resource for teachers of courses ranging from introductory literature surveys and continuing-education classes to graduate-level seminars.
Approaches to Teaching Austen’s Persuasion
Jane Austen is a favorite with many students, whether they’ve read her novels or viewed popular film adaptations. But Persuasion, completed at the end of her life, can be challenging for students to approach. They are surprised to meet a heroine so subdued and self-sacrificing, and the novel’s setting during the Napoleonic wars may be unfamiliar. This volume provides teachers with avenues to explore the depths and richness of the novel with both Austen fans and newcomers.
Part 1, “Materials,” suggests editions for classroom use, criticism, and multimedia resources. Part 2, “Approaches,” presents strategies for teaching the literary, contextual, and philosophical dimensions of the novel. Essays address topics such as free indirect discourse and other narrative techniques; social class in Austen’s England; the role of the navy during war and peacetime; key locations in the novel, including Lyme Regis and Bath; and health, illness, and the ethics of care.
Approaches to Teaching Balzac’s Old Goriot
Old Goriot is not only the most read of Balzac’s works but also one of the most commonly taught of all French novels. This collection of essays, as the editor says, offers “fresh interpretations that reflect on and revise the critical tradition.” It thus conveys a sense of what Balzac’s realist novel may mean to students and teachers more than a hudred and fifty years after its first publication.
Approaches to Teaching Baraka’s Dutchman
First performed in 1964, Amiri Baraka’s play about a charged encounter between a black man and a white woman still has the power to shock. The play, steeped in the racial issues of its time, continues to speak to racial violence and inequality today.
This volume offers strategies for guiding students through this short but challenging text. Part 1, “Materials,” provides resources for biographical information, critical and literary backgrounds, and the play’s early production history. The essays of part 2, “Approaches,” address viewing and staging Dutchman theatrically in class. They help instructors ground the play artistically in the black arts movement, the beat generation, the theater of the absurd, pop music, and the blues. Background on civil rights, black power movements, the history of slavery, and Jim Crow laws helps contextualize the play politically and historically.
Approaches to Teaching Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil
Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) may be the most influential, and perhaps the greatest, book of lyric poetry in French literature. At once Romantic and modernist, it belongs to both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This volume in the MLA’s series Approaches to Teaching World Literature is the first devoted to a lyric poet who did not write in English, and it seeks to promote the study, teaching, and enjoyment of this intriguing and sometimes troubling French poet.
