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When The Golden Notebook was published in 1962, Irving Howe called it “the most exciting piece of new fiction” produced in the decade. Throughout this complex novel, Doris Lessing invites the reader to contemplate the fragmentation of modern life, to grapple with conflicting elements in order to see the world anew. The novel touches on a variety of themes—including African history, leftist politics before Stalin’s death, trends in psychoanalysis, the effects of war, male-female relations, and madness—and has attracted a wide range of critical and pedagogical approaches.
This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first, “Materials,” evaluates the corpus of scholarly and critical material published on the novel and recommends background reading. In the second part, “Approaches,” seventeen essays place the novel historically, politically, philosophically, and aesthetically—examining it in such contexts as Lessing’s life, Jungian psychology, modernism and postmodernism, feminism, film theory, and musical forms—and discuss the teaching of The Golden Notebook in different times, circumstances, and classrooms.
Teaching The Woman Warrior can be a challenging project for instructors who are unfamiliar with the work’s cultural and historical traditions. As the volume editor, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, explains in her preface, one of the goals of Approaches to Teaching Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is “to introduce teachers and students to the larger body of Asian American and ethnic literature [and] to inform them of the immigrant and ethnic traditions that Kingston’s work comes from and contributes to.”
This Approaches volume, like others in the series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys resources for classroom instruction (such as anthologies, background materials, and cultural studies), presents bibliographic and biographical information, and describes other works by Maxine Hong Kingston. In part 2, “Approaches,” seventeen essays discuss The Woman Warrior in cultural, historical, pedagogical, and critical contexts and suggest ways to include the work in courses on women’s studies, American literature, ethnic literature, history, and composition. The volume features a personal statement by Kingston on the reception of The Woman Warrior and on its relation to her other works.
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.
Waiting for Godot offers as much of a challenge in the classroom today as it did to its early audiences in the 1950s. It has become “the centerpiece of a range of college and university courses. Whatever the context and approach, the play continues to yield readings that richly contribute to the study of both drama and culture,” write June Schlueter and Enoch Brater, the book’s editors.
This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first, “Materials,” gives editions and productions, readings for students, reference works, background and critical studies, and audiovisual resources. The second part, “Approaches,” contains twenty essays that situate the play in the Beckett canon, explore what it does rather than what it means, discuss its absurdity, put it in the context of contemporary drama, interpret it from different critical perspectives, examine its relation to Charlie Chaplin, compare its French and English texts, and share the pedagogical insights obtained by a teacher who directed it in a maximum-security prison in Florida.
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.
Greatly influenced by writers ranging from Dickens and Proust to Woolf and Colette, Anna Banti was a prominent figure on the Italian literary scene from the 1940s until her death in 1985. The five tales in “The Signorina” and Other Stories display her talent across many genres—fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery.
Banti’s stories portray the ageless conflict between the expectations of society and the aspirations of the individual. In “Uncertain Vocations,” the young Ofelia becomes a pianist after her marriage prospects fail, but self-doubt turns her success into miserable mediocrity. In the futuristic “The Women Are Dying,” men acquire a new evolutionary ability; women, lacking that ability, are consigned to the status of an inferior race. “Joveta of Betania,” set in the time of the Crusades, follows the daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem as she escapes to a life of seclusion as an abbess—a life that becomes for her a source of proud freedom and deep bitterness. In “Sailing Ships,” a young boy creates an imaginary world from an uncertain childhood memory. “The Signorina” tells of a young woman who eventually finds herself, as a writer.
Greatly influenced by writers ranging from Dickens and Proust to Woolf and Colette, Anna Banti was a prominent figure on the Italian literary scene from the 1940s until her death in 1985. The five tales in “La signorina” e altri racconti display her talent across many genres—fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery.
Banti’s stories portray the ageless conflict between the expectations of society and the aspirations of the individual. In “Vocazioni indistinte,” the young Ofelia becomes a pianist after her marriage prospects fail, but self-doubt turns her success into miserable mediocrity. In the futuristic “Le donne muoiono,” men acquire a new evolutionary ability; women, lacking that ability, are consigned to the status of an inferior race. “Joveta di Betania,” set in the time of the Crusades, follows the daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem as she escapes to a life of seclusion as an abbess—a life that becomes for her a source of proud freedom and deep bitterness. In “I velieri,” a young boy creates an imaginary world from an uncertain childhood memory. “La signorina” tells of a young woman who eventually finds herself, as a writer.
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