Approaches to Teaching World Literature
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Approaches to Teaching Grass’s The Tin Drum
The career of Günter Grass began dramatically in 1959, with the publication of his first novel. The Tin Drum brought instant fame to the thirty-two-year-old author and led to his receiving the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. Translated into dozens of languages, the novel has sold over four million copies worldwide. Its status as a major text of postwar German literature, however, has not diminished its provocative nature. In both style and content, it continues to challenge scholars, teachers, and students.
This volume, like others in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” provides the instructor with bibliographic information on the text, critical studies, and audiovisual and Internet resources. Part 2, “Approaches,” contains eighteen essays on teaching The Tin Drum, including three that discuss Völker Schlöndorff’s 1979 film adaptation of the novel. Some of the topics covered are the historical context (Nazism, World War II, the Holocaust), Oskar Matzerath as an unreliable narrator, the imagery (e.g., eels, the Virgin Mary), the use of German fairy tales, and how Grass’s satirical treatment of Germany speaks to postwar generations.
Approaches to Teaching H.D.’s Poetry and Prose
The poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) came on the literary scene in the 1910s as a young American expatriate living in England. Her early lyric poems, in Sea Garden, helped launch the free verse movement known as imagism. Her work as a whole, spanning five decades, includes long narrative poems, novels, memoirs, and translations. Her experience of the two world wars in Europe is felt throughout her oeuvre, much of which focuses on the power and destructiveness of war. Other recurring topics are ancient models of civilization, comparative mythology, and female deities suppressed in the modern era.
Since the 1970s, H.D.’s poetry and prose have appeared regularly on undergraduate and graduate syllabi, in courses ranging from American or British modernism and gender and sexuality studies to literature of war and classical literature and mythology. Yet her work—complex and densely allusive—can be difficult for students to comprehend and for instructors to teach. This volume aims to assist instructors in helping their students navigate the intricacies of H.D.’s work and overcome some of the frustration of deciphering modern poetry. The first part, “Materials,” presents resources useful to instructors of H.D.’s work, and the second part, “Approaches,” offers specific ways to teach her wide-ranging corpus. Contributors describe courses that teach H.D. in the context of modernism, alongside such writers as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. Others follow the themes of myth and religion in her long epic poems Helen in Egypt and Trilogy and her autobiographical work The Gift. H.D.’s analysis with Freud and her subsequent memoir of the experience find their place in a course on critical theory. Many instructors teach H.D. through the lens of sexuality, feminism, or race; others use interdisciplinary approaches that focus on H.D.’s engagement with film.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eliza Haywood
During her long and varied career, Eliza Haywood acted onstage, worked as a publisher and bookseller, and wrote prolifically in many genres, from novels of seduction to essays in periodicals. Her works illuminate the private emotional lives of people in eighteenth-century England, invite readers to consider how women in that culture defined themselves and criticized oppression, and help us better understand the social debates of the period.
This volume addresses a broad range of Haywood’s works, providing literary and sociopolitical context from writings by Aphra Behn, Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, and others, and from contemporary documents such as advice manuals and court records. The first section, “Materials,” identifies high-quality editions, reliable biographical sources, and useful background information. The second section, “Approaches,” suggests ways to help students engage with Haywood’s work, gain a nuanced understanding of the time period, work with primary documents, and participate in digital humanities projects.
Approaches to Teaching the Hebrew Bible as Literature in Translation
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.
Approaches to Teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
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.
Approaches to Teaching Hugo’s Les Misérables
The greatest work of one of France’s greatest writers, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables has captivated readers for a century and a half with its memorable characters, its indictment of injustice, its concern for those suffering in misery, and its unapologetic embrace of revolutionary ideals. The novel’s length, multiple narratives, and encyclopedic digressiveness make it a pleasure to read but a challenge to teach, and this volume is designed to address the needs of instructors in a variety of courses that include the novel in excerpts or as a whole.
Part 1 of the volume, “Materials,” provides guidance on editions in French and in English translation, biographies, criticism, and maps. Part 2, “Approaches,” contains essays that discuss the novel’s conceptions of misère, sexuality, and the politics of the time and that demonstrate techniques for teaching context including the book’s literary market, its adaptations, its place in popular culture, and its relation to other novels of its time.
Approaches to Teaching Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works
Zora Neale Hurston emerged as a celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, fell into obscurity toward the end of her life, yet is now recognized as a great American author. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is popular among general readers and is widely taught in universities, colleges, and secondary schools. A key text of African American and women’s literature, it has also been studied by scholars interested in the 1930s, small-town life, modernism, folklore, and regionalism, and it has been viewed through the lenses of dialect theory, critical race theory, and transnational and diasporan studies.
Considering the ubiquity of Hurston’s work in the nation’s classrooms, there have been surprisingly few book-length studies of it. This volume helps instructors situate Hurston’s work against the various cultures that engendered it and understand her success as short story writer, playwright, novelist, autobiographer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Part 1 outlines Hurston’s publication history and the reemergence of the author on the literary scene and into public consciousness. Part 2 first concentrates on various approaches to teaching Their Eyes, looking at Hurston’s radical politics and use of folk culture and dialect; contemporary reviews of the novel, including contrary remarks by Richard Wright; Janie’s search for identity in Hurston’s all-black hometown, Eatonville; and the central role of humor in the novel. The essays in part 2 then take up Hurston’s other, rarely taught novels, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Moses, Man of the Mountain, and Seraph on the Suwanee. Also examined here are Hurston’s anthropological works, chief among them Mules and Men, a staple for many years on American folklore syllabi, and Tell My Horse, newly reconsidered in Caribbean and postcolonial studies.
Approaches to Teaching Ibsen’s A Doll House
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.
Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw
Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw, two of Henry James’s most frequently taught works, have great appeal to both students and instructors. They are accessible and engaging yet offer interpretive challenges and explore intriguing issues: social-class tensions, an unstable narrative, ambiguity, and a possibly horrific view of parental and sexual relations.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” suggests background readings, critical texts to use in the classroom, and various teaching resources. In part 2, “Approaches,” twenty-three essays cover different approaches to Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (among others, new-historicist, biographical, metatextual, semantic, queer-theoretical, visual), show how these two novellas may be taught alongside their film adaptations, and discuss the use of these works in a composition course.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Samuel Johnson
The works of Samuel Johnson—in particular, the famous Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets—have long held a central place in the English curriculum. This volume from the MLA derives its rationale from a different source, however: reports from experienced teachers of Johnson that students truly enjoy reading him. Johnson’s writings can speak directly to students’ concerns about identity and vocation, the role of authority, the relations between the sexes, and the challenge of trying to live according to one’s own ideas. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Samuel Johnson shows the ways successful teachers have used these topics to enliven classroom discussion.
Like other books in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, this one is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” weighs the merits of various anthologies of Johnson’s works and evaluates the relevant scholarly and critical resources. In the second part, “Approaches,” sixteen contributors offer thematic teaching strategies for use in courses ranging from composition to women’s studies; explore methods of teaching Johnson’s works to nonmajors, particularly in survey courses of British literature or Western civilization; and focus on teaching specific works, both the familiar ones and those that are less well known, including Johnson’s letters, the Soame Jenyns review, and A Journey to the Western Islands.
