Search Modern Language Association
Log in to Modern Language Association
Widely taught in undergraduate and graduate courses, the works of Thomas Mann, the 1929 Nobel Prize laureate for literature, continue to fascinate readers. This collection of essays for teachers focuses primarily on Death in Venice, Tonio Kröger, and Tristan, which, on the basis of responses to an international survey conducted to prepare this volume, are Mann’s most frequently taught works of short fiction.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” is a comprehensive overview of instruction resources: editions and translations, reference works, background materials, general introductions and critical studies, and audiovisual materials. In the second part, “Approaches,” fourteen scholars provide illuminating descriptions of effective ways to teach Mann’s work, whether in translation or in the original German. Essays discuss the literary importance of Death in Venice, Tonio Kröger, and Tristan and examine Mann’s fiction from historical, cultural, psychoanalytic, feminist, and philosophical viewpoints.
“Milton’s influence on later poets and his debt to earlier ones,” writes the editor of this book, “define him as central to the study of English literature.” Of all Milton’s works, Paradise Lost is his supreme and most influential accomplishment, but the scope of the epic, the difficulties in its form, and the strangeness of its contexts challenge student and teacher alike. The essays collected here will help teachers at all levels make Milton’s poem accessible to today’s students.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions of Paradise Lost and of other works by Milton and surveys anthologies, reference works, background resources, and critical studies. In the second part, “Approaches,” seventeen teachers, most of whom have taught Paradise Lost regularly for years, offer suggestions for presenting the work in the classroom. The first group of essays provides overviews of the epic and ways of introducing it to students. The next section offers specific teaching strategies, which range from approaching Paradise Lost by first reading Milton’s sonnets to dealing with his treatment of Eve and of relations between the sexes. The final group suggests teaching the backgrounds and contexts of the poem, including the contemporary response to Paradise Lost and the epic’s many allusions to classical literature.
The 1969 Pulitzer Prize winner for literature, N. Scott Momaday is considered one of the greatest of twentieth-century Native American writers. The Way to Rainy Mountain, the author’s personal favorite among his works, combines contemporary Indian prose and poetry with tribal history, autobiography, lyric versions of tribal narratives, and songs. Its diversity has proved valuable to teachers of a wide range of subjects, including American literature, comparative literature, history, sociology, anthropology, and English composition.
This Approaches to Teaching volume, like the others in the series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys materials useful to classroom instruction (such as anthologies, reference works, teachers’ guides, and audiovisual aids), discusses bibliographic and biographical information, and includes sections on Momaday’s other works and on oral and written Native American literatures. Part 2, “Approaches,” includes seventeen essays by contributors who have taught Rainy Mountain in a variety of settings, from large state and small private universities to Indian community-based projects. An interview with the respected Kiowa leader Gary Kodaseet concludes the section.
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.
The plays of Molière are immensely popular with both teachers and students, perhaps because, as the editors of this collection of essays observe, they are “immediately accessible despite their being firmly rooted in the French seventeenth-century tradition.” Noted Molière scholars suggest ways to present the plays, focusing on Tartuffe—”an easy play to teach, for beginning students and advanced graduate students alike find it engaging”— and also discussing his other dramatic works.
Literary-critical approaches to the Hebrew Bible have influenced courses in secondary schools, colleges, and universities throughout North America—and courses in a variety of disciplines, including English, Hebrew, comparative literature, theology, religious studies, history, sociology, anthropology, and archaeology. Approaches to Teaching the Hebrew Bible as Literature in Translation will therefore serve many teachers, from those who wish to incorporate sections of the Bible into literature courses to those who wish to adopt interdisciplinary strategies for presenting the Bible to their students.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” surveys translations and editions of the Hebrew Bible, recommended readings for students, background materials for teachers, and works of literary criticism. In the second part, “Approaches,” teachers suggest ways to present the Bible in the classroom. The first three essays discuss the challenges of studying the Bible in translation and teaching the differences between Tanakh (Jewish Scriptures) and the Old Testament (Christian Scriptures). The next eight essays demonstrate the application of specific pedagogical and theoretical approaches—socioliterary, textual, feminist, comparative—to the Bible as a whole. The last eight essays suggest ways of teaching parts of the Bible, including the genealogy in Genesis, the flood story, Exodus 32, the prophetic literature, Psalm 23, Ruth, Job, and the Song of Songs.
Homer’s epics usually appear first in anthologies used for the general literature courses required of most college and high school students throughout the country. His influence extends beyond the confines of English and classics departments into seminars offered in comparative literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences. This volume in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series describes how teachers present Homer in the classroom and convey to students the importance of his epics in Western culture.
Like other books in the series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions and translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and surveys secondary readings and audiovisual materials for both students and instructors. The second part, “Approaches,” consists of seventeen essays by specialists and nonspecialists on teaching Homer in upper-division literature seminars, in undergraduate surveys, in composition courses, and in disciplines other than English and classics. The essays discuss backgrounds, influences, and themes and describe specific approaches, such as using the Iliad as a springboard for teaching literary history, examining what the Odyssey offers modern readers, and reading Aristotles’s Poetics to glean insights into Homer’s achievement.
Since its publication over a century ago, A Doll House has often been narrowly read as a single-thesis play—as a commentary on women’s rights. Recent scholarship and criticism, however, suggest multiple interpretations of Ibsen’s most famous work; teachers of A Doll House can profit from these new perspectives and lead their students to an appreciation of many different aspects of the play.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” analyzes the faults and merits of the many available translations of A Doll House and recommends background materials and supplemental readings for both teachers and students. The second part, “Approaches,” samples many ways to teach the play in the classroom. The first three essays show how to incorporate the play into introductory courses on literature and composition; the following four essays focus on teaching the play in more advanced classes on dramatic literature. The remaining seven essays present specific strategies, such as using feminist approaches, examining performances of the play, and comparing A Doll House to Ibsen’s other plays in a graduate seminar.
Ulysses is generally recognized as the most influential of all modernist literary texts, and seven decades after its publication the novel continues to fascinate, tease, and engage students. The essays collected in this Approaches volume offer suggestions for teaching Ulysses in courses ranging from first-year literature surveys to graduate-level seminars.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions of Ulysses (as well as manuscripts and prepublication materials), biographical resources, critical works, and audiovisual materials. The sixteen essays in the second part, “Approaches,” discuss the aesthetic and political backgrounds against which Ulysses was written and examine the changing perspectives from which it has been read. The book includes course syllabi and essay assignments, conversion formulas for two recent United States editions of Ulysses, and several adaptations of Joyce’s schema of Homeric correspondence for classroom use.
“Few poets are as congenial to undergraduates as Keats,” write the volume editors. But they warn that if the poetry and the life and character of the poet are attractive and accessible, there is more to Keats than at first meets the eye.
This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first, “Materials,” reviews works on Romanticism and on Keats, editions of Keats, critical studies, various other reference materials, and audiovisual resources. It also gives reading lists for students, the poems most frequently taught, sample assignments, and a subject index of the poet’s letters. The second part, “Approaches,” contains sixteen essays gathered into three groups: classroom strategies, to help students interact with the poems; theoretical approaches, which all have a practical classroom dimension; and thematic orientations, including myths, death, images of women, and the problem of imagination. “If there is any single characteristic that mediates the diversity of these essays,” write Walter Evert and Jack Rhodes, “it is clearly the abhorrence of interpretive closure in teaching.” The collection attempts to present a balanced spectrum of the ways that Keats is taught.
View Cart