Approaches to Teaching World Literature – serie

In 1881, Carlo Collodi intended simply to write a children’s story about an inexplicably animate piece of wood. The Adventures of Pinocchio has since become one of Italy’s most successful literary exports, giving life to numerous adaptations. The novel is meaningful to college students today, as it deals with the difficulty of abandoning childhood, the value of education, and what it means to be human.This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” gives the instructor bibliographic information on the text and contexts of the book, the critical literature, and audiovisual and electronic resources. Part 2, “Approaches,” contains nineteen essays on teaching Pinocchio and its adaptations, which cover such topics as Collodi’s life, society in post-Unification Italy, the gothic element, the Frankenstein theme, myths and archetypes, the influence of Ariosto and other writers, children’s literature and censorship, the animal fable, and how the famous Disney movie is both a help and a hindrance in the classroom.

In 1881, Carlo Collodi intended simply to write a children’s story about an inexplicably animate piece of wood. The Adventures of Pinocchio has since become one of Italy’s most successful literary exports, giving life to numerous adaptations. The novel is meaningful to college students today, as it deals with the difficulty of abandoning childhood, the value of education, and what it means to be human.This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Materials,” gives the instructor bibliographic information on the text and contexts of the book, the critical literature, and audiovisual and electronic resources. Part 2, “Approaches,” contains nineteen essays on teaching Pinocchio and its adaptations, which cover such topics as Collodi’s life, society in post-Unification Italy, the gothic element, the Frankenstein theme, myths and archetypes, the influence of Ariosto and other writers, children’s literature and censorship, the animal fable, and how the famous Disney movie is both a help and a hindrance in the classroom.

Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 10591133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 10591133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 1059-1133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

Today Rousseau's diverse writings are listed in the syllabi of innumerable courses in many different disciplines. Thus this volume truly responds to a need on the part of teachers and students. A useful book to the specialist as well as the educated reader and a notable contribution to the profession.

Don DeLillo’s satiric novel White Noise, prophetic in 1985 about American society’s rampant consumerism, information overload, overreliance on the media, and environmental problems, may seem to today’s students simply a description of their lived reality. The challenge for teachers, then, is to help them appreciate both the postmodern qualities of the novel and its social critique.This volume, like others in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” suggests readings and resources for both instructor and students of White Noise. The second part, “Approaches,” contains eighteen essays that establish cultural, technological, and theoretical contexts (e.g., whiteness studies); place the novel in different survey courses (e.g., one that explores the theme of American materialism); compare it with other novels by DeLillo (e.g., Mao II); and give examples of classroom techniques and strategies in teaching it (e.g., the use of disaster films).

Widely considered one of the twentieth century's great novels, Lolita maintains an established place on the syllabus--in English departments, Russian and Slavic departments, and departments of comparative literature. Yet its particular mix of narrative strategies, ornate allusive prose, and troublesome subject matter complicates its presentation to students.This volume aims to help instructors make Lolita accessible to students. Part 1, "Materials," opens with an extensive chronology of the author's life, outlines the novel's convoluted publication history, and identifies useful textual and audiovisual resources for teaching Lolita. In part 2, "Approaches," instructors reflect on the best ways to illuminate the novel's ethical quandries and introduce its textual intricacies. The twenty-two essays are grouped by three themes: instructors' experiences teaching Lolita in specific courses; the literary, generic, and cultural contexts of the novel, including its Russian roots, Romantic tropes and themes, and representation of 1950s American culture; and the theoretical approaches to the novel, which address ethics and aesthetics, the role of readers, and the connection between the author and the narrator.

The work of Bartolomé de Las Casas poses a number of challenges in the classroom: students need help seeing the relevance of a sixteenth-century Dominican missionary to their lives, understanding his colonial-imperial context, and negotiating the apparent contradictions among his evangelizing and his varying stances on Indian and black slavery in the New World. The essays gathered in this volume show teachers how to introduce and engage with Las Casas—one of the first voices to criticize European treatment of the native populations of the Americas and crucial today to studies of imperialism, colonialism, and human rights—in a wide range of courses, undergraduate and graduate.Like all volumes in the Approaches series, this collection includes a convenient survey of original and supplementary materials and a comprehensive array of classroom tactics. The first group of essays incorporates Las Casas into the interdisciplinary classroom, while the next group focuses on teaching the Las Casas text most widely used in literature courses: the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, a dramatic, largely firsthand view of colonial violence. The essays that follow explore the Spanish friar's letters, treatises, and petitions to the Crown; locate his connection to such broader issues as independence movements in Latin America, inter-European politics, abolition, and human rights; and suggest ways of teaching him alongside colonial figures such as Christopher Columbus and within the literary traditions of a variety of nations and languages.

Each book contains a CD featuring performances of the Song of Roland.The Song of Roland is a well-known hallmark of medieval French literature, yet students often read only excerpts and receive general introductions to the poem and its context. The challenges of teaching Roland include its age and subject matter, its form and composition in Old French, and its representation of Christians and Muslims. This volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature aims to help nonspecialist instructors teach Roland more comprehensively and to offer seasoned medievalists ways to invigorate their pedagogical tactics. Part 1, “Materials,” surveys available editions, a wide range of secondary studies devoted to the poem, and electronic aids to teaching. Essays in part 2, “Approaches,” elaborate on the poem’s contexts, avatars, language techniques, and characters and episodes; describe the diverse classroom strategies that experienced instructors have implemented; and review the voluminous critical canon about the poem.The musical quality of the Song of Roland is vital for students to grasp. A compact disc accompanying the volume showcases reconstructions of sung performances of the Song of Roland in Old French. The examples offered here illuminate the rich quality of Roland’s archaic language and demonstrate a few efforts to recover its lost music. Paired with performances of Roland are melodies used as models for singing the poem.

A central text both in Dickens's career and in the history of the novel itself, Bleak House provides students and teachers occasion to discuss Victorian social concerns involving law, crime, family, education, and money and to learn about every stratum of English society, from the aristocracy to the homeless. But the sheer size of the novel and its narrative intricacy pose pedagogical obstacles. The essays in this volume offer instructors an array of practical strategies for use in the classroom: some describe courses organized exclusively around Bleak House; others offer ideas for teaching a single scene or topic in the novel.The book opens with part 1, "Materials," which assesses editions and provides a guide to the wealth of resources available to instructors, including reference works, critical studies, and background readings, in print and on the Web. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," discuss nineteenth-century British culture and Victorian social texts; present ways to teach specific scenes, patterns, and problems in the novel; describe intertextual approaches; and detail specific courses taught in different settings and at a variety of educational levels.

A poet who wrote fluently in Middle English, Anglo-French, and Latin, John Gower typifies the English Middle Ages. His economical and sober style, the topics he addressed—marriage, love, chivalry, social class, law, and religious faith—and the depth and breadth of his references to earlier literature, myth, and folktale made his work attractive not only to contemporaries such as Chaucer but also to later poets such as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Gower is increasingly acknowledged as a poet whose texts offer unique opportunities to teachers wishing to introduce their students to the riches of medieval literature and culture.The essays in part 1, “Materials,” review the available editions and translations of Gower’s works, compile useful electronic resources for teaching, and discuss the sources and analogues and critical work on his canon. In part 2, “Approaches,” contributors make recommendations for teaching the historical context of Gower’s writing, involving topics from estates theory and law to confession and medicine; for examining his language and rhetoric in the classroom, including reading his work aloud; and for studying his works in various theoretical and comparative ways, with a special focus on his relation to classical as well as other Middle English authors. A final section considers the various classroom contexts in which Gower is taught, from community college to graduate school.

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.