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Set in prerevolutionary France, Histoire d’Ernestine tells of the love between an innocent young woman and an aristocrat. Ernestine, German-born and orphaned, is an apprentice painter putting the finishing touches on a portrait when the marquis de Clémengis, elegant and handsome, enters the studio. Recognizing him as the subject of the portrait, she gestures for him to be seated and goes on working, looking back and forth between him and his likeness. The world-weary aristocrat is smitten.
In graceful, understated prose, Marie Riccoboni shows how her heroine learns to negotiate questions of honor and appearances and to find a precarious balance between economic security and the potentially compromising nature of male generosity. The story raises questions about sexual enlightenment and social prejudice and reexamines the links of money, reputation, and marriageability that preoccupied eighteenth-century writers.
When the knight Adelbert leaves his beloved Adelheit for the Crusades, her father arranges for her to marry the rich and powerful Robert von Rastenberg, whom she does not love. Several years later, while strolling through the forest, Adelheit encounters her former lover, who has returned to persuade her to run off with him. Torn between her love for Adelbert and her honor and duty as wife, Adelheit chooses to remain with Robert, but her manipulative stepson, Franz, hungry for his father’s love and his inheritance, conspires to trick Adelheit into fleeing—and precipitates a series of events that end in tragedy.
Purporting to chronicle historical events, Eleonore Thon’s play reveals more about the changing roles of women at the dawn of the Industrial Age than it does about knightly conduct in the German Middle Ages. Published in 1788 and translated here for the first time in English, Adelheit von Rastenberg will be of interest to students of German literature, comparative literature, women’s studies, and theater.
Set in prerevolutionary France, The Story of Ernestine tells of the love between an innocent young woman and an aristocrat. Ernestine, German-born and orphaned, is an apprentice painter putting the finishing touches on a portrait when the marquis de Clémengis, elegant and handsome, enters the studio. Recognizing him as the subject of the portrait, she gestures for him to be seated and goes on working, looking back and forth between him and his likeness. The world-weary aristocrat is smitten.
Jonathan Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World—more commonly known as Gulliver’s Travels—is rightly considered one of literature’s great satires. Many students, however, regard the book as children’s literature and Swift himself as a misanthrope. Teachers face the additional challenge that inexperienced readers will be overwhelmed by the book’s unfamiliar political and historical landscape. The essays in this volume of the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series help instructors deal with the enormous amount of background material incorporated into Gulliver’s Travels, the book’s seeming lack of structural and thematic unity, the author’s often ambivalent attitude toward his “hero” and the peoples and creatures Gulliver encounters during his voyages, and the essence of Swift’s satire.
The first of the two parts of this volume, “Materials,” reviews classroom editions of Gulliver’s Travels, required and recommended student readings, audiovisual materials, and background and biographical works for instructors. The second part, “Approaches,” offers strategies, by twenty teachers, for presenting Swift’s work in a variety of settings. Fourteen essays suggest different methodologies for introducing the text to students—such as considering whether Gulliver’s Travels is a novel and using Swift’s letters to reveal the “real” author. The final six essays propose specific assignments for students, from performing dramatic readings to writing satires.
Laurence Sterne never would have imagined, according to the volume editor Melvyn New, “that The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy would two hundred years later be read in classrooms and endorsed by professorial types.” Yet this formidable and great novel is indeed “swimming down the gutter of time,” as Sterne prayed it would. The nineteen essays here, written by experienced “professorial types” who teach at a variety of levels, prove that Sterne is an author whose comic wit must be taken seriously and whose novel students can learn to appreciate and enjoy.
This 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 Tristram Shandy, other primary works, biographical resources, background studies, and critical commentary. In the second part, “Approaches,” teachers—including both nonspecialists and well-known Sterne scholars—suggest strategies for presenting the novel in courses ranging from English literature surveys (where Tristram Shandy might be taught) to seminars on the eighteenth-century novel (where Sterne’s work must be taught).
“Candide is probably the most frequently taught work of French literature,” writes Renée Waldinger, yet “students are often misled by the apparent simplicity of the tale.” The challenge for the teacher, then, is to guide student reading in a way that reveals the richness of the text and the depth of its comic aspect. Responding to this challenge, twenty-four experienced teachers of Candide offer their reflections on the tale, examine its humor, provide crucial historical and philosophical background information, review varying interpretations, and discuss specific teaching strategies.
The volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” surveys essential references, including critical and biographical studies and works on historical and intellectual contexts, and evaluates French and English language editions of Candide. In the second part, “Approaches,” teachers describe how they present Voltaire’s classic work, offering practical ideas for a variety of disciplines and on different levels, from freshman writing courses to graduate seminars.
Responses to a survey conducted for this volume indicate that most teachers of Blake begin with Songs of Innocence and of Experience; the work is included in the syllabi of courses on literature and poetry at all levels, as well as courses in religious studies, humanities, and composition. The book’s continuing fascination can be attributed to the many intellectual, theoretical, and pedagogical challenges it presents for students and teachers alike, such as the particulars of Blake’s language and punctuation, his use of illustrations, differences in the order of the poems among the various extant editions, and considerations of what—for Blake and for other poets—constitutes “writing” and “the book.”
This Approaches volume, like other volumes in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” reviews editions and anthologies, critical works (including a survey of available commentaries on each poem), background materials, and facsimile and microfiche reproductions. In the second part, “Approaches,” distinguished teachers and scholars describe strategies for presenting the Songs in the classroom. The first four essays discuss how teachers can bring theoretical concerns, such as textual and feminist approaches, to bear on specific poems. The following four essays address the inclusion of Songs in particular classes, from a survey on English Romanticism to a literature course at a technological institute. The third set of essays examines the Songs from specific literary perspectives, such as an analysis of the variations among different editions and an investigation of the work’s biblical foundations. The final four essays present approaches for teaching individual poems.
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