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This bibliography supplements the New Variorum Edition of 1901.
This bibliography supplements the New Variorum Edition of 1936 and the supplement of 1956.
Arguably the most important work of premodern Japanese literature, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji is a fictional narrative of courtly life in ancient Japan. This thousand-year-old text is now being taught with increasing frequency in college courses and seminars on comparative literature, women’s studies, world literature, Asian studies, and medieval studies. Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji brings together seventeen essays on teaching the work, primarily in translation, in different settings.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” discusses the texts, translations, reference works, critical studies, and other materials most commonly used and recommended by teachers of Genji. In the second part, “Approaches,” experienced teachers describe methods of presentation that they have found effective for enlivening classroom discussion and enhancing students’ appreciation of the text. Their essays outline the challenges posed by The Tale of Genji and its translations; suggest ways to incorporate it in courses in other disciplines, such as religion or art; evaluate problems of interpretation and cultural difference; and provide examples of teaching the text alongside other works of literature.
“The Faerie Queene,“ according to Alexander Dunlop (coeditor of the present volume), “may be the most undervalued classic in the canon of English poetry.” The epic poem’s archaic language, formal structure, historical references, and literary allusions all present special challenges to both student and teacher—challenges that the contributors to this book believe can be overcome with creativity and wit. Designed for beginning instructors as well as for specialists still looking for the lesson plan of their dreams, Approaches to Teaching Spenser’s Faerie Queene offers a thorough discussion of recent work on Spenser and on the social and cultural milieu of Elizabethan England.
This Approaches volume, like others in the series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys resources useful for classroom instruction (such as editions, anthologies, and student readings), reviews background studies and critical scholarship, and reprints eight illustrations related to the poem. Part 2, “Approaches,” presents six essays suggesting methods for introducing The Faerie Queene to students and nine essays describing advanced classroom strategies incorporating a variety of topics, including the visual arts, feminism, and colonialism.
Debated and discussed by countless writers and readers during the last four hundred years, Montaigne’s Essays constitutes the first example of a major new literary genre and originates the moralist tradition in France. While Montaigne has long been a staple of the French language classroom, recent scholarship on genre and gender studies, intertextuality, reader-response theory, rhetoric, and other critical perspectives has brought the Essays into an impressive array of undergraduate courses and seminars. This volume in the popular Approaches to Teaching World Literature series evaluates the abundant analytic and bibliographic material on the Essays and offers detailed strategies and suggestions for teaching the text in both French and English.
Like other books in the Approaches series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews French and English editions of the Essays and lists helpful reference works for students and teachers. The first two essays in part 2, “Approaches,” discuss effective ways of presenting background information on Montaigne and the Renaissance. Subsequent essays outline general, interdisciplinary, and contemporary critical approaches to the text: for example, Montaigne’s Essays and political philosophy; the ethics of the author; the book’s use of plastic arts, of other texts, of metaphors; the sociological significance of the language; “deconstructive moments” in the Essays; gender; a psychoanalytic interpretation of “Of Friendship.” The volume concludes with an in-depth look at how five of Montaigne’s essays have been taught in various undergraduate courses and contexts.
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