(Ebook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson - Ebook PDF All Chapter

Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound,
and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson -

eBook PDF
Go to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/download/perrines-literature-structure-sound-and-sense-ebo
ok-pdf/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
(eBook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and

Sense 13th Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-perrines-literature-
structure-sound-and-sense-13th-edition/
Mycorrhizal Mediation of Soil. Fertility, Structure,

and Carbon Storage 1st Edition Edition Nancy Collins
Johnson - eBook PDF
https://ebooksecure.com/download/mycorrhizal-mediation-of-soil-
fertility-structure-and-carbon-storage-ebook-pdf/
Mechanics of Flow-Induced Sound and Vibration Volume 2_

Complex Flow-Structure Interactions 2nd Edition William
K. Blake - eBook PDF
https://ebooksecure.com/download/mechanics-of-flow-induced-sound-
and-vibration-volume-2_-complex-flow-structure-interactions-
ebook-pdf/
(eBook PDF) The Norton Introduction to Literature

(Shorter Thirteenth Edition) 13th Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-the-norton-introduction-
to-literature-shorter-thirteenth-edition-13th-edition/
(eBook PDF) Literature: An Introduction to Fiction,
Poetry, Drama, and Writing, MLA Update Edition 13th
Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-literature-an-
introduction-to-fiction-poetry-drama-and-writing-mla-update-
edition-13th-edition/
(eBook PDF) Sense and Nonsense About Crime, Drugs, and

Communities 8th Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-sense-and-nonsense-
about-crime-drugs-and-communities-8th-edition/
(eBook PDF) Chemistry: Structure and Properties 2nd

Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-chemistry-structure-and-
properties-2nd-edition/
Purchasing and Supply Management, 16e 16th Edition P.

Fraser Johnson - eBook PDF
https://ebooksecure.com/download/purchasing-and-supply-
management-16e-ebook-pdf/
(eBook PDF) Making Sense in Education 2nd Edition
http://ebooksecure.com/product/ebook-pdf-making-sense-in-
education-2nd-edition/
To register or access your online learning solution or purchase materials
for your course, visit www.cengagebrain.com.
SE/Johnson/Perrine’s Literature: Structure Sound & Sense, 13th Edition ISBN-978-1-305-97103-5

©2018 Designer: Chen Design Text & Cover printer: XXX Binding: PB Trim: 5.5 x 8.5" CMYK
Perrine’s
LITERATURE
STRUCTURE, SOUND & SENSE
71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 1 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Perrine’s
LITERATURE
Structure, SOUND & SENSE
T hir te e nth E dit ion
Greg Johnson
Kennesaw State University
Thomas R. Arp
Late, Southern Methodist University
Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

Perrine’s Literature: © 2018, 2015, 2012 Cengage Learning
Structure, Sound & Sense,
Thirteenth Edition ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by
the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed
Greg Johnson, Thomas R. Arp in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S.
copyright law, without the prior written permission of the
Product Director: Monica Eckman
copyright owner.
Product Manager: Vanessa Coloura
Content Developer: Karl Yambert
Senior Content Developer: Kathy
For product information and technology assistance,
Sands-Boehmer
contact us at Cengage Learning Customer & Sales
Associate Content Developer: Erin Support, 1-800-354-9706
Bosco
Product Assistant: Claire Branman For permission to use material from this text or
Senior Marketing Manager: Kina Lara product, submit all requests online at
www.cengage.com/permissions.
Senior Content Project Manager:
Further permissions questions can be emailed to
Michael Lepera
permissionrequest@cengage.com.
Senior Art Director: Marissa Falco
Manufacturing Planner: Betsy
Donaghey Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952391
IP Analyst: Ann Hoffman Student Edition:
IP Project Manager: Betsy Hathaway ISBN: 978-1-305-97103-5
Production Service and Compositor:
SPi Global Cengage Learning
20 Channel Center Street
Text Designer: Anne Bell Carter,
Boston, MA 02210
a bell design company
USA
Cover Designer: Chen Design
Associates Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized
learning solutions with employees residing in nearly 40
different countries and sales in more than 125 countries
around the world. Find your local representative at
www.cengage.com
Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada

by Nelson Education, Ltd.
To learn more about Cengage Learning Solutions, visit

www.cengage.com.
Purchase any of our products at your local college store

or at our preferred online store www.cengagebrain.com.
Printed in the United States of America

Print Number: 01 Print Year: 2016

BRIEF CONTENTS
Writing about Literature 1
FICTION
The Elements of Fiction 55
Chapter One Reading the Story 56

Chapter Two Plot and Structure 97
Chapter Three Characterization 142
Chapter Four Theme 192
Chapter Five Point of View 240
Chapter Six Symbol, Allegory, and Fantasy 286
Chapter Seven Humor and Irony 330
Chapter Eight Evaluating Fiction 365
Three Featured Writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor,
Joyce Carol Oates 389
Stories for Further Reading 549
POETRY
The Elements of Poetry 705
Chapter One What Is Poetry? 706

Chapter Two Reading the Poem 725
Chapter Three Denotation and Connotation 743
Chapter Four Imagery 759
Chapter Five Figurative Language 1: Simile, Metaphor, Personification,
Apostrophe, Metonymy 773
Chapter Six Figurative Language 2: Symbol, Allegory 792

vi Brief Contents
Chapter Seven Figurative Language 3: Paradox, Overstatement,

Understatement, Irony 814
Chapter Eight Allusion 834
Chapter Nine Meaning and Idea 850
Chapter Ten Tone 863
Chapter Eleven Musical Devices 883
Chapter Twelve Rhythm and Meter 900
Chapter Thirteen Sound and Meaning 926
Chapter Fourteen Pattern 945
Chapter Fifteen Evaluating Poetry 1: Sentimental, Rhetorical,
Didactic Verse 963
Chapter Sixteen Evaluating Poetry 2: Poetic Excellence 975
Poems for Further Reading 1009
DRAMA
The Elements of Drama 1075
Chapter One The Nature of Drama 1076

Chapter Two Realistic and Nonrealistic Drama 1123
Chapter Three Tragedy and Comedy 1250
Plays for Further Reading 1543

CONTENTS
Preface xxvi
Professional Acknowledgments xxix
Foreword to Students xxxi
Writing about Literature 1
I. Why Write about Literature? 3

II. For Whom Do You Write? 3
III. Two Basic Approaches 5
1. Explication 5
2. Analysis 6
IV. Choosing a Topic 6
1. Essays That Focus on a Single Literary Work 7
2. Essays of Comparison and Contrast 7
3. Essays on a Number of Works by a Single Author 8
4. Essays on a Number of Works with Some Feature Other than
Authorship in Common 9
V. Proving Your Point 10
VI. Writing the Essay 11
VII. Writing In-Class Essays or Essay Tests 14
VIII. Introducing Quotations 15
1. Principles and Guidelines 16
IX. Documentation 22
1. Textual Documentation (TD1–TD4) 23
2. Parenthetical Documentation (PD1–PD6) 24
3. Documentation by List of Works Cited 27
4. Documentation of Electronic Sources 28
X. Stance and Style (S1–S6) 30
vii
71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 7 6/16/17 9:41 AM

viii Contents
XI. Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage: Common Problems 33

1. Grammar (G1–G2) 33
2. Punctuation (P1–P5) 34
3. Usage (U1–U2) 35
XII. Writing Samples 38
1. Fiction Explication: The Indeterminate Ending in
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” 38
2. Fiction Analysis: The Function of the Frame Story in
“Once upon a Time” 41
3. Poetry Explication: “A Study of Reading Habits” 43
4. Poetry Analysis: Diction in “Spring in the Classroom” 46
5. Drama Explication: Iago’s First Soliloquy 48
6. Drama Analysis: Othello’s Race 52
FICTION
The Elements of Fiction 55
CHAPTER ONE Reading the Story 56

Reviewing Chapter One 62
Richard Connell The Most Dangerous Game 62
Tobias Wolff Hunters in the Snow 79
Suggestions for Writing 93
Understanding and Evaluating Fiction 94
CHAPTER TWO Plot and Structure 97

Reviewing Chapter Two 104
Graham Greene The Destructors 105
Alice Munro How I Met My Husband 118
Kazuo Ishiguro A Family Supper 133
CHAPTER THREE Characterization 142

Reviewing Chapter Three 146
Alice Walker Everyday Use 147

Contents ix
Katherine Mansfield Miss Brill 155

James Baldwin Sonny’s Blues 159
James Joyce Araby 186
CHAPTER FOUR Theme 192
Reviewing Chapter Four 198

F. Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited 199
Anton Chekhov The Darling 216
Eudora Welty The Worn Path 227
Nadine Gordimer Once upon a Time 234
CHAPTER FIVE Point of View 240

Reviewing Chapter Five 246
Willa Cather Paul’s Case 247
Shirley Jackson The Lottery 264
Katherine Anne Porter The Jilting of Granny Weatherall 272
Ernest Hemingway Hills Like White Elephants 280
CHAPTER SIX Symbol, Allegory, and

Fantasy 286
Reviewing Chapter Six 296
D. H. Lawrence The Rocking-Horse Winner 297
Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper 310
Ray Bradbury There Will Come Soft Rains 324
CHAPTER SEVEN Humor and Irony 330

Reviewing Chapter Seven 334
Daniel Orozco Orientation 334
Mark Twain Cannibalism in the Cars 339
Albert Camus The Guest 347
John Updike A & P 358

x Contents
CHAPTER EIGHT Evaluating Fiction 365

Reviewing Chapter Eight 368
Guy de Maupassant The Necklace 369
Edith Wharton Roman Fever 376
Three Featured Writers:

Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Flannery O’Connor,
Joyce Carol Oates 389
Introduction 391
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown 392
The Minister’s Black Veil 404
The Birthmark 415
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find 438
Good Country People 451
Revelation 468
Joyce Carol Oates
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 502
Life after High School 516
The Scarf 530
Stories for Further Reading 549

Raymond Carver Neighbors 550
Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour 554
William Faulkner A Rose for Emily 557
Susan Glaspell A Jury of Her Peers 564
Zora Neale Hurston Sweat 583
Henry James The Real Thing 593
Franz Kafka The Metamorphosis 614
Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies 653
Ursula K. Le Guin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 670
Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House of Usher 675
Annie Proulx Job History 691
Ron Rash The Ascent 695

Contents xi
POETRY
The Elements of Poetry 705
CHAPTER ONE What Is Poetry? 706

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Eagle 708
William Shakespeare Winter 709
Wilfred Owen Dulce et Decorum Est 710
Understanding and Evaluating Poetry 714
William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 715

Sylvia Plath Black Rook in Rainy Weather 715
John Donne The Triple Fool 717
Gwendolyn Brooks The Bean Eaters 718
Louise Glück Labor Day 718
William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow 719
Elizabeth Bishop Filling Station 720
Langston Hughes Suicide’s Note 721
Edwin Arlington Robinson Richard Cory 721
Ben Jonson On My First Son 722
Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry 723
CHAPTER TWO Reading the Poem 725

Thomas Hardy The Man He Killed 727
Philip Larkin A Study of Reading Habits 728
A. E. Housman “Is my team plowing” 732
John Donne Break of Day 734

Emily Dickinson There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House 735
Ted Hughes Hawk Roosting 736
John Keats Ode on Melancholy 737
Robert Herrick Upon Julia’s Clothes 738
Sylvia Plath Mirror 739
Natasha Trethewey Collection Day 739
Walt Whitman The Dalliance of Eagles 740

xii Contents
Adrienne Rich Storm Warnings 741

CHAPTER THREE Denotation and

Connotation 743
Emily Dickinson There is no Frigate like a Book 744
William Shakespeare When my love swears that she is made of truth 745
Mary Oliver Spring in the Classroom 746
Exercises 748
Langston Hughes Cross 749

William Wordsworth The world is too much with us 750
Robert Frost Desert Places 750
Natasha Trethewey Accounting 751
Sharon Olds 35/10 752
J. D. McClatchy The Ledger 753
Julia Alvarez Dusting 753
Elizabeth Bishop In the Waiting Room 754
Wallace Stevens Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock 757
CHAPTER FOUR Imagery 759

Robert Browning Meeting at Night 760
Robert Browning Parting at Morning 761
Exercises 762
Reviewing Chapter Four 762
Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring 762

William Carlos Williams The Widow’s Lament in Springtime 763
Emily Dickinson I felt a Funeral, in my Brain 764
Adrienne Rich Living in Sin 765
Seamus Heaney The Forge 766
Robert Frost After Apple-Picking 767
Robert Hayden Those Winter Sundays 768
Walt Whitman I Saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing 769
Wallace Stevens The Snow Man 770
John Keats To Autumn 771

Contents xiii
CHAPTER FIVE Figurative Language 1:

Simile, Metaphor, Personification,
Apostrophe, Metonymy 773
Langston Hughes Harlem 774

Emily Dickinson It sifts from Leaden Sieves 775
Anne Bradstreet The Author to Her Book 777
John Keats Bright Star 778
Exercise 781
Reviewing Chapter Five 782
Sylvia Plath Metaphors 782

Emily Dickinson I taste a liquor never brewed 783
Philip Larkin Toads 784
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Snowstorm 785
Rachel Hadas Ghost Yogurt 786
Billy Collins Divorce 787
John Donne A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 787
Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress 789
CHAPTER SIX Figurative Language 2:

Symbol, Allegory 792
Robert Frost The Road Not Taken 792

Walt Whitman A Noiseless Patient Spider 794
William Blake The Sick Rose 796
Seamus Heaney Digging 797
Robert Herrick To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 800
George Herbert Redemption 801
Exercises 802
Reviewing Chapter Six 803
Louise Glück Purple Bathing Suit 803

Clive James Whitman and the Moth 804
Archibald MacLeish You, Andrew Marvell 805
Robert Frost Fire and Ice 806
Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death 807
John Donne Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness 808
Sylvia Plath Spinster 810
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses 811

xiv Contents
CHAPTER SEVEN Figurative Language 3:

Paradox, Overstatement,
Understatement, Irony 814
Emily Dickinson Much Madness is divinest Sense 815

John Donne The Sun Rising 816
Marge Piercy Barbie Doll 819
William Blake The Chimney Sweeper 820
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias 822
Exercise 823
Reviewing Chapter Seven 823
William Wordsworth A slumber did my spirit seal 824

John Donne Batter my heart, three-personed God 824
Seamus Heaney Mid-Term Break 825
W. H. Auden The Unknown Citizen 826
Lucille Clifton in the inner city 827
Emily Dickinson What Soft—Cherubic Creatures 828
Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz 828
Sylvia Plath The Colossus 829
Robert Browning Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister 830
CHAPTER EIGHT Allusion 834

Robert Frost “Out, Out—” 835
William Shakespeare from Macbeth (“She should have died
hereafter”) 836
Sylvia Plath Wuthering Heights 838
Reviewing Chapter Eight 839
Louise Glück Eurydice 839

e. e. cummings in Just— 840
John Milton On His Blindness 841
Edwin Arlington Robinson Miniver Cheevy 842
Sharon Olds My Son the Man 843
T. S. Eliot Journey of the Magi 844
Billy Collins Genesis 846
William Butler Yeats Leda and the Swan 847
Emily Dickinson A little East of Jordan 848

Contents xv
CHAPTER NINE Meaning and Idea 850

A. E. Housman Loveliest of Trees 851
Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 852
Reviewing Chapter Nine 854
Emily Dickinson Four Trees—upon a solitary Acre 854

Robert Frost Design 855
e. e. cummings O sweet spontaneous 856
Walt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer 857
John Keats On the Sonnet 857
Billy Collins Sonnet 858
Natasha Trethewey Southern History 859
Carolyn Forché The Colonel 860
William Blake The Lamb 861
William Blake The Tiger 861
CHAPTER TEN Tone 863

Denise Levertov To the Snake 865
Emily Dickinson A narrow Fellow in the Grass 865
Michael Drayton Since there’s no help 867
Louise Glück Lost Love 868
Reviewing Chapter Ten 869
William Shakespeare My mistress’ eyes 870

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Crossing the Bar 870
Thomas Hardy The Oxen 871
John Donne The Flea 872
Sharon Olds Bop After Hip Op 873
William Butler Yeats Among School Children 874
Natasha Trethewey History Lesson 877
Matthew Arnold Dover Beach 877
Philip Larkin Church Going 879
Alexander Pope Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His
Royal Highness 881

xvi Contents
CHAPTER ELEVEN Musical Devices 883

W. H. Auden That night when joy began 885
Theodore Roethke The Waking 886
Gerard Manley Hopkins God’s Grandeur 888
Reviewing Chapter Eleven 889
William Shakespeare Blow, blow, thou winter wind 890

Gwendolyn Brooks We Real Cool 890
Edna St. Vincent Millay Counting-Out Rhyme 891
Edgar Allan Poe The Bells 892
Sylvia Plath Morning Song 895
Sharon Olds Rite of Passage 896
Mary Oliver Music Lessons 897
William Stafford Traveling through the dark 898
Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay 899
CHAPTER TWELVE Rhythm and Meter 900

George Herbert Virtue 905
Exercises 914
Reviewing Chapter Twelve 915
William Blake “Introduction” to Songs of Innocence 915

Walt Whitman Had I the Choice 916
George Gordon, Lord Byron Stanzas 917
Elizabeth Bishop Insomnia 917
Sylvia Plath Old Ladies’ Home 918
Linda Pastan To a Daughter Leaving Home 919
Robert Browning Porphyria’s Lover 920
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Break, break, break 922
Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee 923
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Sound and Meaning 926

Anonymous Pease Porridge Hot 926
A. E. Housman Eight O’Clock 928

Contents xvii
Alexander Pope Sound and Sense 929

Emily Dickinson I heard a Fly buzz—when I died 933
Exercise 935
Reviewing Chapter Thirteen 937
Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth 937

Sylvia Plath Suicide off Egg Rock 938
Pattiann Rogers Night and the Creation of Geography 939
Adrienne Rich Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers 940
Galway Kinnell Blackberry Eating 940
Seamus Heaney The Skunk 941
Dylan Thomas Fern Hill 942
William Carlos Williams The Dance 944
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Pattern 945

George Herbert The Pulley 946
John Keats On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer 948
William Shakespeare That time of year 949
Dylan Thomas Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night 950
Exercises 952
Reviewing Chapter Fourteen 952
Elizabeth Bishop One Art 953

Sylvia Plath Mad Girl’s Love Song 954
William Shakespeare from Romeo and Juliet 955
John Donne Death, be not proud 955
William Butler Yeats The Folly of Being Comforted 956
Claude McKay The White City 957
Billy Collins Villanelle 957
Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear the Mask 958
Robert Frost Acquainted with the Night 959
Seamus Heaney Villanelle for an Anniversary 960
Robert Herrick Delight in Disorder 961

xviii Contents
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Evaluating Poetry 1:

Sentimental, Rhetorical,
Didactic Verse 963
Reviewing Chapter Fifteen 966
God’s Will for You and Me 966

Pied Beauty 967
Pitcher 967
The Old-Fashioned Pitcher 967
A Poison Tree 968
The Most Vital Thing in Life 968
Lower New York: At Dawn 969

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 970
Piano 970
The Days Gone By 971
I would not paint—a picture 971
If I can stop one Heart from breaking 972
When I have fears that I may cease to be 973

O Solitude! 973
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Evaluating Poetry 2:

Poetic Excellence 975
John Donne The Canonization 976

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ode to the West Wind 978
John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn 981
Robert Browning My Last Duchess 983
Emily Dickinson There’s a certain Slant of light 985
Robert Frost Home Burial 986
T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 990
William Butler Yeats Sailing to Byzantium 995
Wallace Stevens Sunday Morning 996
Langston Hughes The Weary Blues 1000
Elizabeth Bishop The Fish 1002
Sylvia Plath Lady Lazarus 1004

Contents xix
Featured Poets
The following poems appear as illustrations in various chapters of the
book, but these five poets are represented by a sufficient number of poems
to warrant studying them as individual artists. Approaches to analysis and
writing are suggested on pages 5–9 of this book.
Emily Dickinson
A little East of Jordan 848
A narrow Fellow in the Grass 865
Because I could not stop for Death 807
Four Trees—upon a solitary Acre 854
I died for Beauty—but was scarce 1021
I felt a Funeral, in my brain 764
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died 933
I taste a liquor never brewed 783
I would not paint—a picture 971
If I can stop one Heart from breaking 972
It sifts from Leaden Sieves 775
Much Madness is divinest Sense 815
There is no Frigate like a Book 744
There’s a certain Slant of light 985
There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House 735
What Soft—Cherubic Creatures 828
John Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 787
Batter my heart, three-personed God 824
Break of Day 734
Death, be not proud 955
Hymn to God My God, in my Sickness 808
Song: Go and catch a falling star 1021
The Apparition 1022
The Canonization 976
The Flea 872
The Good-Morrow 1023
The Sun Rising 816
The Triple Fool 717
Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night 959
After Apple-Picking 767
Birches 1025
Desert Places 750

xx Contents
Design 855
Fire and Ice 806
Home Burial 986
Mending Wall 1027
Nothing Gold Can Stay 899
“Out, Out—” 835
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 852
The Road Not Taken 792
John Keats
Bright Star 778
La Belle Dame sans Merci 1042
O Solitude! 973
Ode on a Grecian Urn 981
Ode on Melancholy 737
Ode to a Nightingale 1044
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer 948
On the Sonnet 857
This living hand 1046
To Autumn 771
To Sleep 1046
When I have fears that I may cease to be 973
Sylvia Plath
Black Rook in Rainy Weather 715
Lady Lazarus 1004
Mad Girl’s Love Song 954
Metaphors 782
Mirror 739
Morning Song 895
Old Ladies’ Home 918
Spinster 810
Suicide off Egg Rock 938
The Colossus 829
Wuthering Heights 838

Contents xxi
A Contemporary Collection
These five contemporary poets are represented by six poems each,
included at various points in the book. They offer students the opportunity
to sample at greater lengths the works of poets of their own time.
Billy Collins
Divorce 787
Genesis 846
Introduction to Poetry 723
The Dead 1018
Villanelle 957
Weighing the Dog 1018
Louise Glück
Cousins 1028
Eurydice 839
Labor Day 718
Lost Love 868
Primavera 1029
Purple Bathing Suit 803
Seamus Heaney
Digging 797
Follower 1034
Mid-Term Break 825
The Forge 766
The Skunk 941
Villanelle for an Anniversary 960
Sharon Olds
Bop After Hip Op 873
I Go Back to May 1937 1056
My Son the Man 843
Rite of Passage 896
The Connoisseuse of Slugs 1056
35/10 752
Natasha Trethewey
Accounting 751
Blond 1065
Collection Day 739
History Lesson 877
Miscegenation 1066
Southern History 859

xxii Contents
Poems for Further Reading

Kim Addonizio Sonnenizio on a Line from Drayton 1010
W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts 1010
Aphra Behn On Her Loving Two Equally 1011
Elizabeth Bishop Manners 1011
William Blake The Garden of Love 1013
Gwendolyn Brooks a song in the front yard 1013
Gwendolyn Brooks Sadie and Maud 1014
George Gordon, Lord Byron She Walks in Beauty 1014
Amy Clampitt Witness 1015
Lucille Clifton good times 1016
Henri Cole Mask 1016
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan 1017
Billy Collins The Dead 1018
Billy Collins Weighing the Dog 1018
Stephen Crane War Is Kind 1019
e. e. cummings Buffalo Bill’s defunct 1020
e. e. cummings the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls 1020
Emily Dickinson I died for Beauty—but was scarce 1021
John Donne Song: Go and catch a falling star 1021
John Donne The Apparition 1022
John Donne The Good-Morrow 1023
Mark Doty Pescadero 1023
Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy 1024
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson I Sit and Sew 1025
Robert Frost Birches 1025
Robert Frost Mending Wall 1027
Louise Glück Cousins 1028
Louise Glück Primavera 1029
Thomas Hardy “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?” 1029
Thomas Hardy Channel Firing 1030
Thomas Hardy Hap 1032
Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush 1032
Thomas Hardy The Ruined Maid 1033
Seamus Heaney Follower 1034
George Herbert Love 1035
George Herbert Peace 1035
A. E. Housman “Terence, this is stupid stuff” 1037
A. E. Housman To an Athlete Dying Young 1039

Contents xxiii
Langston Hughes Theme for English B 1040

Randall Jarrell The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 1041
Ben Jonson Still to be Neat 1041
Ben Jonson To Celia 1042
John Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci 1042
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale 1044
John Keats This living hand 1046
John Keats To Sleep 1046
Galway Kinnell After Making Love We Hear Footsteps 1047
Archibald MacLeish Ars Poetica 1047
Christopher Marlowe The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 1048
Cleopatra Mathis Survival: A Guide 1049
Judson Mitcham Story 1050
Judson Mitcham Stroke 1050
Meghan O’Rourke Apartment Living 1051
Joyce Carol Oates Bloodline, Elegy: Su Qijian Family, Beijing 1051
Joyce Carol Oates Playlet for Voices 1054
Sharon Olds I Go Back to May 1937 1056
Sharon Olds The Connoisseuse of Slugs 1056
Katha Pollitt Moth 1057
Alexander Pope Ode on Solitude 1058
Edwin Arlington Robinson Eros Turannos 1059
Edwin Arlington Robinson Mr. Flood’s Party 1060
Christina Rossetti Song 1062
Christina Rossetti Up-Hill 1062
William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds 1063
Edmund Spenser One day I wrote her name upon the strand 1063
Wallace Stevens Anecdote of the Jar 1064
Jonathan Swift A Description of the Morning 1064
Natasha Trethewey Blond 1065
Natasha Trethewey Miscegenation 1066
Walt Whitman A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim 1066
Walt Whitman Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted 1067
William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud 1068
William Wordsworth My heart leaps up when I behold 1069
William Wordsworth The Solitary reaper 1069
Thomas Wyatt My galley chargèd with forgetfulness 1070
William Butler Yeats The Lake Isle of Innisfree 1070
William Butler Yeats The Second Coming 1071
William Butler Yeats The Song of Wandering Aengus 1072
William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole 1072

xxiv Contents
DR AMA
The Elements of Drama 1075
CHAPTER ONE The Nature of Drama 1076

Understanding and Evaluating Drama 1080
John Millington Synge Riders to the Sea 1082
Susan Glaspell Trifles 1091
Jane Martin Rodeo 1103
Lynn Nottage POOF! 1106
David Ives Time Flies 1113
CHAPTER TWO Realistic and Nonrealistic

Drama 1123
Henrik Ibsen A Doll House 1128
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie 1188
Luis Valdez Los Vendidos 1239
CHAPTER THREE Tragedy and Comedy 1250

Sophocles Oedipus Rex 1257
William Shakespeare Othello, the Moor of Venice 1303
Anton Chekhov The Cherry Orchard 1397
Molière The Misanthrope 1441
Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest 1492
Plays for Further Reading 1543
Emily Mann Mrs. Packard 1544

Neil LaBute The Wager 1599
LeRoi Jones Dutchman 1607
Eugene O’Neill Before Breakfast 1625

Contents xxv
Glossary of Terms 1633
Copyrights and Acknowledgments 1647
Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines 1663

Preface
In preparing this thirteenth edition of Perrines’s Literature: Structure,

Sound, and Sense, I have striven to be faithful to the principles established
by Laurence Perrine more than sixty years ago while also acknowledg-
ing the evolving nature of literature. Not only have I been guided by my
own experience but also by the rich legacy of Thomas R. Arp, who joined
Perrine in 1979, and by the helpful suggestions of many teachers who have
contributed the results of their classroom experience. Many of them are
identified in the “Professional Acknowledgments” pages. Their insights
have been invaluable in helping me replace more than 25 percent of the
literature printed in the previous edition.
Here I must expand briefly on the contribution of Thomas R. Arp,
who passed away in 2015 but whose work on Literature for more than
thirty-five years has left an indelible imprint. Professor Arp’s depth of
knowledge and experience with the book as a whole, combined with his
perspicacity in choosing stories to illustrate the principles of each chapter,
has been a source of inspiration to me during the many years I worked with
him, and here I wish to salute his achievement. Although any faults in this
new edition are mine alone, I continued to benefit from his wisdom and
insight in his last years, since he graciously consented to serve in a consult-
ing role as we revised the book. Thus his name, I’m happy to say, continues
to grace the cover of the book, a fitting reminder of his past contributions.
In keeping with Perrine’s and Arp’s shared principles, the book works
to balance the classic with the contemporary, to represent a wide diversity
of writers, and to emphasize the importance of understanding the elements
of literature as the avenue to enjoy and appreciate it. Although there are
many flourishing approaches to literature and its effects, all three of us have
always believed that the initial step must be understanding the major ele-
ments of fiction, poetry, and drama.
This book is written for the student who is beginning a serious study
of literature. It seeks to give that student a sufficient grasp of the nature
and variety of fiction, poetry, and drama; some reasonable means for read-
ing with appreciative understanding; and a few primary ideas on how to
evaluate literature. The separate chapters gradually introduce the student
to the elements of literature, putting the emphasis always on how and why:
How can the reader use these elements to get at the meaning of the work, to
xxvi

Preface xxvii
interpret it correctly, and to respond to it adequately. Why does the writer

use these elements? What values have they for the writer and the reader?
In matters of theory, some issues are undoubtedly simplified, but I
hope none seriously, and some more sophisticated theoretical approaches
have had to be excluded. The purpose has always been to give the begin-
ning student something to understand and use. The first assumption
of Literature is that literature needs to be read carefully and considered
thoughtfully, and that, when so read, it gives readers continuing rewards in
experience and understanding. I also assume that some works repay more
richly than others the trouble and effort expended in reading them, and my
objective is to help the student identify, understand, enjoy, and prefer such
works. To this end, the book examines the major elements of literature and
suggests some criteria for judgment.
The organization and structure of the book reinforce the step-by-step
approach to understanding literature. Each chapter contains two parts:
(1) a discussion of the topic indicated by the chapter title, with illustrative
works, and (2) a relevant selection of additional works with study questions
for further illustration of the topic. Also, in each chapter I include a list of
review topics for the materials, and a list of Suggestions for Writing about
those materials as they are illustrated elsewhere in the book.
The book opens with a section on “Writing about Literature,” which
embraces the important assumption that the fullest understanding and
appreciation of a literary work arises from the reader’s ability to express
in language its meaning and emotional effects. The process of finding the
right words to make these clear, and the additional clarity that results from
the correct and effective presentation of these materials, is a significant part
of making a work part of one’s experience.
Although the book emphasizes the study of literature, not writers, I
have continued the practice of representing some authors with a sufficient
number of works to support the study of them as individual artists. In
the fiction section, I include three stories each by a great nineteenth-
century writer (Nathaniel Hawthorne), by a important modernist writer
(Flannery O’Connor), and by a major contemporary author (Joyce Carol
Oates). In this edition, there are also five poets amply represented as “Fea-
tured Poets”: John Donne from the Renaissance, John Keats and Emily
Dickinson from the nineteenth century, and Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath
from the modern era. The table of contents gathers the titles of their
poems in a boxed format for easy reference.
This edition also presents “A Contemporary Collection,” five poets repre-
sented by six or more poems each, placed throughout the text: Billy Collins,
Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, and Natasha Trethewey. These
too are identified in a boxed format in the table of contents.

xxviii Preface
Finally, to provide an introduction to the further works of individual

poets, the book contains at least three poems each by more than two dozen
writers, both classic and modern. These poems can easily be referenced in
the index of the book.
In the drama section, I have maintained the practice of including
a number of one-act plays, both within the section’s chapters and the
additional “Plays for Further Reading,” so as to provide a wider range of
dramatic styles and approaches, and to include contemporary playwrights
of diverse backgrounds.
An Instructor’s Manual has again been prepared to accompany this
book. It is available to all teachers who adopt the book for their classes.
The manual contains an analytical article on every selection, suggesting
approaches to interpretation and providing information that places the
works in their contexts. These articles are the work of the author who pre-
pared this edition as well as the man who created the first edition, Laurence
Perrine, and the man who worked on the series for several decades, Thomas
R. Arp. In the interests of space, the main text does not provide extended
biographical information about the writers, but instructors and students
who feel the need for such material are urged to consult Wadsworth’s valu-
able Literature resource Center at http://trials.galegroup.com/thomson.
Through the thirteen editions of this book, which originated in the
middle of the twentieth century, Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense has
evolved in many ways, responding to shifts in interest, concern, and taste
expressed by its users. However, certain abiding principles remain as rel-
evant in the current century as they were in the last. Among these are the
conviction that the close reading of a text is basic to understanding and
appreciating it; that to understand the means by which a work achieves its
ends is an essential part of experiencing it fully; and that reading imagina-
tive literature is important to the development of the whole person.
G. J.

Professional
Acknowledgments
The following instructors have offered helpful reactions and suggestions

for this thirteenth edition of Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense.
Michael Coker Douglas King

Western Oklahoma State College Gannon University
Eric Devillez Clark W. Lemons
Moraine Valley Community College Oxford College of Emory University
David C. Downing Sally Levan
Elizabethtown College Gannon University
Wayne Dunlop Jerome McKeever
Mount Vernon Nazarene University Cuyahoga Community College
Richard Fellinger Cynthia Pettie
Elizabethtown College Gallaudet University
Roger Friedmann Susan Smith Roads
Kansas State University Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Karyn Hecht Kim Russell
Moody Bible Institute West Kentucky Community and Technical College
Marilyn Johnson Mary Thornton
Cabrini College Lon Morris College
Cristina Karmas
Graceland University
xxix

AP Reviewers for
Perrine’s Literature 13e
Tracy Amaral William Kolbe

Medway High School Northern Garrett High School
Sara Berry Eric Larew
School for Creative and Performing Arts Pleasant Valley High School
Scott Bokash Jason Lovera
South Lake High School Parkway Central High School
Keri Bostwick Jennifer Magrini
Bartlesville High School St. Rose High School
Fred Bracher John Manear
Castle High School Seton-La Salle High School
Elizabeth Brammer Shanna Miller
Robstown High School Fruita Monument High School
Susan Buice Raymond Nighan
Cherokee High School St. John’s College High School
Helen Chaffins Beverly Slavens
Antioch High School Arkadelphia High School
Diane Clark Kelly Stollings
Sherman High School Watauga High School
Tara Cotton Michele Sullivan
Millville Senior High School Patchogue-Medford High School
Brad Edom Roberta Teran
East Union High School Lakewood High School
Deborah Gill Michelle Waters
Jenks High School Deep Creek High School
Michelle Goins Sarah Whittier
Union-Endicott High School City and Country School
Sheri Goldstein Wendi Wooddell
Ida Crown Jewish Academy Winter Haven High School
Nicholas Jackson Sharon Wright
Herbert Hoover High School Heritage High School
Mary Jindra Leah Zika
Mayfield High School Prairie High School
Melissa Kevonian Deidre Zongker
Utica High School Olathe North High School
xxx

Foreword
to Students
You’ve been reading stories ever since you learned to read; your first
exposure to verse came with “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man”; you’ve
been watching dramatized life since your family planted you in front of
the TV. You’ve developed your own tastes and your own attitudes toward
what these varieties of “literature” can give you. In a sense, there’s no need
to take an introductory course in reading literature, because you’ve moved
beyond the “introductory” phase. Let’s say, then, that it’s time to become
familiar and friendly with the literary arts.
But let’s take stock of where you stand. What have you been getting
out of the things that you enjoy reading and watching? For most people, the
first answer is “vicarious experience,” the impression that you are temporar-
ily able to live in some other world than your own private one—a world that
may be as familiar as your own neighborhood or as alien to your experience
as space travel in some future time or the adventures of explorers of the past.
What you want is for the author to take you to where you have never been,
so that you can imagine yourself as a person in a world other than your own.
You probably also want to be able to “relate” to the characters in the things
you read or watch, discovering in them some features of yourself or some qualities
that you would like to have. Or you like to share vicariously the excitements, joys,
and sorrows of people who are not very much like you, but whose lives seem rich
and interesting. Or you get a lift from watching some characters making major
mistakes with their lives, and turning themselves around just in time—or maybe
you are thrilled to see such people brought to justice and punished for misdeeds.
Whatever the sources of your pleasure and enjoyment from read-
ing, you may now be ready to find both broader and deeper reasons for
continuing that pastime. No matter how much experience you bring to
the study of these works, you’re in for a few surprises. Some of them will
be the surprises that come from broadening your vicarious experience,
from “traveling” with us to India and Russia, to Paris and Pittsburgh
and Dublin, and to sixteenth-century London and seventeenth-century
Massachusetts. Some will be the surprises that come from penetrating to
the secret recesses of the human mind and soul in joys and agonies, from
observing people whom you have never met or imagined and with whom
you have nothing in common but your humanness.
xxxi

xxxii Foreword to Students
And, we hope, there will be the surprises and pleasures that come from
feeling yourself growing in control or even mastery of your responses and reac-
tions as you learn how literature does what it does. This, of course, is what the
formal study of literature can bring you. We all know how we feel when we
first read through a work. We probably start by thinking “I like this” or “it
doesn’t say much to me” or “what in the world is that supposed to mean?” If
you could, you’d act on your first reaction and read the work again, or try to see
what it’s trying to say, or drop it and go on to do something more pleasurable.
But you’re in a special situation. You’re taking a course (either by your
own choice or because you’re required to), and one of the rules of the game
is that you’re supposed to move from your initial reaction to some sort of
“serious” response that will satisfy your teacher. If you like something and
want to reread it, your teacher will pester you with wanting to know why
you liked it, and might even insist that you offer reasons why other people
should like it too. If you are only a little bit curious about it, or think that
it is a waste of time, your teacher will lead (or nudge, or bash) you into
finding things in it that might change your first opinion. In any case, the
terms of your special situation, as a student in a course with a grade on the
horizon, make it necessary for you to have more than an initial reaction.
You’ll need to develop an understanding of the work, and you’ll need to
show in discussion or writing both what you understand and how the work
itself led to that understanding.
That’s where this book will help. In addition to a systematic guide for
discovering how and what a literary work means, we’ve provided you with
Suggestions for Writing at the ends of the chapters and standards for your
written work in the first section of the book.
Why is writing so important? It’s the most straightforward way of
sorting out your feelings and ideas, putting them into shape, nailing down
your own experience. All writing about literature has a double motive—it
sharpens your grasp of the work, and it helps you lead other people to
share your experience. Writing about literature is writing persuasively,
and persuading others to see what you see helps you to see it more clearly.
So at the most basic level, we want to help you with reading and writ-
ing. But you have every right to ask, “Why literature?” That’s a good ques-
tion, because in our world there are so many ways of gaining experience and
insight into our lives and the lives of others that focusing on one resource
based on the spoken and written word may seem narrow and old-fashioned.
We’re willing to grant that, and we’ll go even further: in a sense, it is also elit-
ist, and turning to literature as a source of experience will set you apart from
the majority of people. Thus, literature provides not only vicarious experience
and opportunities to relate to others’ lives, but it also permits you to join a
special group of scholars, instructors, critics, and other students who share in
the wealth of enjoyment and intellectual challenge that it has to offer.

Writing about
Literature
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 1 8/25/16 6:41 AM

2 Writing about Literature
I. Why Write about Literature? 3

1. Explication 5
2. Analysis 6
1. Essays That Focus on a Single Literary Work 7
2. Essays of Comparison and Contrast 7
3. Essays on a Number of Works by a Single Author 8
4. Essays on a Number of Works with Some Feature Other than
Authorship in Common 9
V. Proving Your Point 10
VII. Writing In-Class Essays or Essay Tests 14
VIII. Introducing Quotations 15
1. Principles and Guidelines 16
IX. Documentation 22
1. Textual Documentation 23
2. Parenthetical Documentation 24
3. Documentation by Works Cited 27
4. Documentation of Electronic Sources 28
X. Stance and Style 30
XI. Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage: Common
Problems 33
1. Grammar 33
2. Punctuation 34
3. Usage 35
XII. Writing Samples 38
1. Fiction Explication: The Indeterminate Ending in “Where Are
You Going, Where Have You Been?” 38
2. Fiction Analysis: The Function of the Frame Story in “Once upon
a Time” 41
3. Poetry Explication: “A Study of Reading Habits” 43
4. Poetry Analysis: Diction in “Spring in the Classroom” 46
5. Drama Explication: Iago’s First Soliloquy 48
6. Drama Analysis: Othello’s Race 52
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 2 8/25/16 6:41 AM

I. Why Write about Literature?

Written assignments in a literature class have two purposes: (1) to
give you additional practice in writing clearly and persuasively, and (2) to
deepen your understanding of literary works by leading you to read and
think about a few works more searchingly than you might otherwise do.
But these two purposes are private. To be successful, your essay must have
a public purpose as well: it should be written to enlighten others besides
yourself. Even if no one else ever reads your essay, you should never treat
it as a private note to your instructor. You should write every essay as if it
were intended for publication.
II. For Whom Do You Write?

The audience for whom you write will govern both the content and
the expression of your essay. You need to know something about your
readers’ backgrounds—national, racial, social, religious—and be able to
make intelligent guesses about their knowledge, interests, and previous
reading. In writing about George Herbert’s “Peace” (page 331) for a Hindu
audience, you would need to include explanations of Christian belief

and biblical stories that would be unnecessary for a western European
or American audience. In presenting Graham Greene’s “The Destruc-
tors” (page 105), your editors have felt it necessary to provide informa-
tion (in footnotes) that would not be needed by a British audience; for
“Los Vendidos” by Luis V aldez (page 1239), footnotes provide translations
and explanations that would not be necessary for an audience familiar with
the Spanish-language slang of contemporary America. But the most crucial
question about an audience is: Has it read the work you are writing about? The
book reviewer in your Sunday paper generally writes about a newly pub-
lished book that the audience has not read. A reviewer’s purpose is to let
readers know something of what the book is about and to give them some
notion of whether they will enjoy or profit from reading it. At an opposite
extreme, the scholar writing in a specialized scholarly journal can generally
assume an audience that has read the work, that has a knowledge of previ-
ous interpretations of the work, and that is familiar with other works in its
period or genre. The scholar’s purpose, not infrequently, is to persuade this
audience that some new information or some new way of looking at the
work appreciably deepens or alters its meaning or significance.
Clearly, essays written for such different audiences and with such dif-
ferent purposes differ considerably in content, organization, and style. Book
reviewers reviewing a new novel will include a general idea of its plot while
being careful not to reveal the outcome. Scholars will assume that readers
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 3 8/25/16 6:41 AM

already know the plot, and will have no compunction about discussing its
outcome. Reviewers will try to write interestingly and engagingly about
the novel and to persuade readers that they have valid grounds for their
opinions of its worth, but their manner will generally be informal. Scholars
are more interested in presenting a cogent argument, logically arranged
and solidly based on evidence. They will be more formal, and may use
critical terms and refer to related works that would be unfamiliar to non-
specialized readers. In documentation the two types of essays will be quite
different. Reviewers’ only documentation is normally the identification
of the novel’s title, author, publisher, and price, at the top of the review.
For other information and opinions, they hope that a reader will rely on
their intelligence, knowledge, and judgment. Scholars, on the other hand,
may furnish an elaborate array of citations of other sources of information,
allowing the reader to verify the accuracy or basis of any important part of
their argument. Scholars expect to be challenged, and they see to it that all
parts of their arguments are buttressed.
For whom, then, should you write? Unless your instructor stipulates (or
you request) a different audience, the best plan is to assume that you are writ-
ing for the other members of your class. Pretend that your class publishes a
journal of which it also constitutes the readership. Your instructor is the editor
and determines editorial policy. If you write on a work that has been assigned
for class reading, you assume that your audience is familiar with it. (This kind
of essay is generally of the greatest educational value, for it is most open to
challenge and class discussion and places on you a heavier burden of proof.) If
you compare an assigned work with one that has not been assigned, you must
gauge what portion of your audience is familiar with the unassigned work
and proceed accordingly. If the unassigned story were A. Conan Doyle’s “The
Adventure of the Speckled Band,” you would probably not need to explain
that “Sherlock Holmes is a detective” and that “Dr. Watson is his friend,” for
you can assume that this audience, through movies, TV, or reading, is familiar
with these characters; but you could not assume familiarity with this particu-
lar story for all audiences. You know that, as members of the same class, your
readers have certain backgrounds and interests in common and are at com-
parable levels of education. Anything you know about your audience may be
important for how you write your essay and what you put in it.
Assuming members of your class as your audience carries another
advantage: you can also assume that they are familiar with the definitions
and examples given in this book, and therefore you can avoid wasting
space by quoting or paraphrasing the book. There will be no need to tell
them that an indeterminate ending is one in which the central conflict is
left unresolved, or that Emily Dickinson’s poems are untitled, or that Miss
Brill is an unmarried Englishwoman living in France.
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 4 8/25/16 6:41 AM

III. Two Basic Approaches

In a beginning study of literature, most writing will focus on a careful
reading of details of the assigned work as the basis for any further exploration.
Traditionally, the approach will be structured as an explication or an analysis.
1. Explication
An explication (literally, an “unfolding”) is a detailed elucidation of
a work, sometimes line by line or word by word, which is interested not
only in what that work means but in how it means what it means. It thus
considers all relevant aspects of a work—speaker or point of view, connota-
tive words and double meanings, images, figurative language, allusions,
form, structure, sound, rhythm—and discusses, if not all of these, at least
the most important. (There is no such thing as exhausting the meanings
and the ways to those meanings in a complex piece of literature, and the
explicator must settle for something less than completeness.) Explication
follows from what we sometimes call “close reading”—looking at a piece
of writing, as it were, through a magnifying glass.
Clearly, the kinds of literature for which an explication is appropriate
are limited. First, the work must be rich enough to repay the type of close
attention demanded. One would not think of explicating “Pease Porridge
Hot” (page 928) unless for purposes of parody, for it has no meanings
that need elucidation and no “art” worthy of comment. Second, the work
must be short enough to be encompassed in a relatively brief discussion.
A thorough explication of Othello would be much longer than the play
itself and would tire the patience of the most dogged reader. Explications
work best with short poems. (Sonnets like Shakespeare’s “That time of
year” [page 949] and Frost’s “Design” [page 855] almost beg for explica-
tion.) Explication sometimes may also be appropriate for passages in long
poems, as, for example, the lines spoken by Macbeth after the death of
his wife (page 836) or the “sonnet” from Romeo and Juliet (page 955), and
occasionally for exceptionally rich or crucial passages of prose, perhaps the
final paragraphs of stories like “Paul’s Case” (page 247) or “Miss Brill”
(page 101). But explication as a critical form should perhaps be separated
from explication as a method. Whenever you elucidate even a small part
of a literary work by a close examination that relates it to the whole, you
are essentially explicating (unfolding). For example, if you point out the
multiple meanings in the title of “Time Flies” (page 1113) as they relate
to that play’s themes, you are explicating the title.
For examples of explication, see the three sample essays in Part XII
of this section (pages 38–54). The discussions in this book display the
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 5 8/25/16 6:41 AM

e xplicative method frequently, but except for the sample essays, there are
no pure examples of explication. The discussions of “A Noiseless Patient
Spider” (pages 794–795) and “Digging” (pages 797–800) come close to
being explications and might have been so had they included answers to
the study questions and one or two other matters. The exercises provided
in “Understanding and Evaluating Poetry” on page 714 should be helpful
to you in writing an explication of a poem. Not all the questions will be
applicable to every poem, and you need not answer all those that are appli-
cable, but you should start by considering all that apply and then work
with those that are central and important for your explication.
2. Analysis
An analysis (literally a “breaking up” or separation of something into
its constituent parts), instead of trying to examine all parts of a work in
relation to the whole, selects for examination one aspect or element or part
that relates to the whole. Clearly, an analysis is a better approach to longer
works and to prose works than is an explication. A literary work may be
usefully approached through almost any of its elements—point of view,
characterization, plot, setting, symbolism, structure, and the like—so long
as you relate this element to the central meaning or the whole. (An analysis
of meter is meaningless unless it shows how meter serves the meaning; an
analysis of the vocabulary and grammar of “Sweat” [page 569] would be
pointless unless related to the characterization of the speakers.) The list
of exercises on pages 94–96 may suggest approaches to stories, plays, and
narrative poems; the list on page 714 to anything written in verse; and
that on pages 1080–1081 to dramas. As always, it is important to choose
a topic appropriate to the space available. “Characterization in Lawrence’s
‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ ” is too large a topic to be usefully treated in a
few pages, but a character analysis of Paul or of his uncle and mother might
fit the space neatly. For examples of analyses of three literary forms, see the
sample essays in Part XII of this section (pages 38–54).
IV. Choosing a Topic

As editor of this imaginary publication, your instructor is responsible
for the nature of its contents. Instructors may be very specific in their
assignments, or they may be very general, inviting you to submit an essay
on any subject within a broadly defined area of interest. They will also have
editorial policies concerning length of essays, preparation of manuscripts,
and deadlines for submission (all of which should be meticulously heeded).
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 6 8/25/16 6:41 AM

Instructors may further specify whether the essay should be entirely the
work of your own critical thinking, or whether it is to be an investiga-
tive assignment—that is, one involving research into what other writers
have written concerning your subject and the use of their findings, where
relevant, to help you support your own conclusions.
Let us consider four kinds of essays you might write: (1) essays that
focus on a single literary work, (2) essays of comparison and contrast,
(3) essays on a number of works by a single author, and (4) essays on a
number of works having some feature other than authorship in common.
1. Essays That Focus on a Single Literary Work

If your assignment is a specific one (How is the landscape symbolic
in “The Guest” [page 347]? What emotions are evoked by the imagery
in “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” [page 763]?) your task is clear-
cut. You have only to read the selection carefully (obviously more than
once), formulate your answer, and support it with corroborating evidence
from within the text as cogently and convincingly as possible. In order to
convince your readers that your answer is the best one, you will need to
examine and account for apparently contrary evidence as well as clearly
supportive evidence; otherwise, skeptical readers, reluctant to change their
minds, might simply refer to “important points” that you have “over-
looked.”
Specific questions like these, when they are central to the work and
may be a matter of dispute, make excellent topics for essays. You may dis-
cover them for yourself when you disagree with a classmate about the inter-
pretation of a story or poem or play. The study questions following many
of the selections in this anthology frequently suggest topics of this kind.
If your assignment is more general, and if you are given some choice as
to what selection you wish to write on, it is usually best to choose one you
enjoyed, whether or not you entirely understood it. (You are more likely to
write a good essay on a selection you liked than on one you disliked, and
you should arrive at a fuller understanding of it while thinking through
your essay.) You must then decide what kind of essay you will write, tak-
ing into account the length and kind of selection you have chosen and the
amount of space at your disposal.
2. Essays of Comparison and Contrast

The comparison and contrast of two stories, poems, or plays having
one or more features in common may be an illuminating exercise because
the similarities highlight the differences, or vice versa, and thus lead to a
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 7 8/25/16 6:41 AM

better understanding not only of both pieces but of literary processes in

general. The works selected may be similar in plot but different in theme,
similar in subject but different in tone, similar in theme but different in
literary value, or, conversely, different in plot but similar in theme, differ-
ent in subject but similar in tone, and so on. In writing such an essay, it
is usually best to decide first whether the similarities or the differences are
more significant, begin with a brief summary of the less significant, and
then concentrate on the more significant.
A number of selections in this collection have been included to encour-
age just this kind of study: “The Most Dangerous Game” and “Hunters in
the Snow” in Chapter 1 of the Fiction section; “The Necklace” and “Roman
Fever” in Chapter 8; in the Poetry section, “Spring” and “The Widow’s
Lament in Springtime” in Chapter 4; all six pairs of poems in Chapter 9;
“To the Snake” and “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” “Crossing the Bar”
and “The Oxen,” “Dover Beach” and “Church Going” in Chapter 10; all
poems in Chapter 15; and “Terence, this is stupid stuff” and “Ars Poetica”
in Poems for Further Reading. In addition, many of the Suggestions for
Writing at the ends of chapters group together comparable works.
3. Essays on a Number of Works by a

Single Author
Most readers, when they discover a work they particularly like, look
for other works by the same author. The essay that focuses on a single
author rather than a single work is the natural corollary of such an interest.
The most common concern in an essay of this type is to identify the char-
acteristics that make this author different from other authors and therefore
of particular interest to the writer. What are the author’s characteristic
subjects, settings, attitudes, or themes? With what kinds of life does the
author characteristically deal? What are the author’s preferred literary
forms? Is the author’s approach ironic, witty, serious, comic, tragic? Is the
author’s vision directed principally inward or outward? In short, what con-
figuration of patterns makes the author’s fingerprints unique? Your essay
may consider one or more of these questions.
Several writers are represented in this book by a sufficient number
of works to support such an essay without turning to outside sources. In
the Fiction section, three stories each by Nathaniel Hawthome, Flannery
O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates are grouped together for comparative
study. In the Poetry section, there are numerous poems by John Keats,
John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Sylvia Plath, six or more
poems each by authors listed in the table of contents as a “Contemporary
Collection,” and at least three poems each by eighteen poets, both classic
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 8 8/25/16 6:41 AM

and modern. The author listings in the index will help you locate the mul-
tiple poems by a single author.
A more ambitious type of essay on a single author examines the works
for signs of development. The attitudes that any person, especially an
author, takes toward the world may change with the passing from adoles-
cence to adulthood to old age. So also may the author’s means of expressing
attitudes and judgments. Though some writers are remarkably consistent
in outlook and expression throughout their careers, others manifest surpris-
ing changes. To write an essay on the development of an author’s work, you
must have accurate information about the dates when works were writ-
ten, and the works must be read in chronological order. When you have
mastered the differences, you may be able to illustrate them through close
examination of two or three works, one for each stage.
When readers become especially interested in the works of a particu-
lar author, they may develop a curiosity about that author’s life as well.
This is a legitimate interest, and, if there is sufficient space and your edi-
tor/instructor permits it, you may want to incorporate biographical infor-
mation into your essays. If so, however, you should heed three caveats.
First, your main interest should be in the literature itself: the biographical
material should be subordinated to and used in service of your examina-
tion of the work. In general, discuss only those aspects of the author’s life
that bear directly on the work: biography should not be used as “filler.”
Second, you should be extremely cautious about identifying an event in a
work with an event in the life of the author. Almost never is a story, poem,
or play an exact transcription of its author’s personal experience. Authors
fictionalize themselves when they put themselves into imaginative works.
If you consider that even in autobiographies (where they intend to give
accurate accounts of their lives) writers must select incidents from the vast
complexity of their experiences, that the memory of past events may be
defective, and that at best writers work from their own points of view—in
short, when you realize that even autobiography cannot be an absolutely
reliable transcription of historical fact—you should be more fully pre-
pared not to expect such an equation in works whose object is imaginative
truth. Third, you must document the sources of your information about
the author’s life (see pages 22–30).
4. Essays on a Number of Works with Some

Feature Other than Authorship in Common
You might also write a successful essay on works by various authors
that have some features in common, such as subject matter, form, setting,
point of view, literary devices, and the like; discovering the ways in which
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 9 8/25/16 6:41 AM

different works employ a particular feature can be illuminating. Probably

the most familiar essay of this type is the one that treats works having a
similar thematic concern (love, war, religious belief or doubt, art, ado-
lescence, initiation, maturity, old age, death, parents and children, racial
conflict, social injustice). But an essay may also examine particular forms
of literature, for example, the Italian sonnet, the dramatic monologue, the
short story with an unreliable narrator. Topics of this kind may be further
limited by time or place or number—four attitudes toward death; Eliza-
bethan love lyrics; poetry on the experience of war; satires of bureaucracy.
V. Proving Your Point

In writing about literature, your object generally is to convince your
readers that your understanding of a work is valid and important and to
lead them to share that understanding. When writing about other subjects,
it may be appropriate to persuade your readers through various rhetorical
means—through eloquent diction, structural devices that create suspense,
analogies, personal anecdotes, and the like. But readers of essays about
literature usually look for “proof.” They want you to show them how the
work, or the element you are discussing, does what you claim it does. Like
scientists who require proof of the sort that they can duplicate in their own
laboratories, readers of criticism want access to the process of inference,
analysis, and deduction that has led to your conclusions, so that they may
respond as you have done.
To provide this proof is no easy task, for it requires the development of
your own reading and writing skills. In addition, you must have developed
a responsible interpretation of the work and of the way it achieves its effect;
you should be able to point out precisely how it communicates its mean-
ings; and you should be able to present your experiences of it clearly and
directly. When you have spent considerable time in coming to understand
and respond to a work of literature, it may become so familiar that it seems
self-evident to you, and you will need to “back off” sufficiently to be able to
put yourself in your readers’ position—they may have vague feelings about
the work (“I like it” or “It moves me deeply”), without knowing what it is
that produced those feelings. It is your job to refine the feelings and define
away the vagueness.
Some forms of “proof” rarely do the job. Precision does not result
from explaining a metaphor metaphorically (“When Shakespeare’s Juliet
calls parting from Romeo a ‘sweet sorrow,’ the reader is reminded of
taking bitter-tasting medicine”). Nor can you prove anything about a
work by hypothesizing about what it might have been if it did not con-
tain what it does (“If Desdemona had not lost her handkerchief, Othello
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 10 8/25/16 6:41 AM

would never have murdered her”—this is equivalent to saying, “If the

play were not what it is, it would not be what it is”). Your own per-
sonal experiences will rarely help your readers (“My anxiety, excitement,
and awkwardness at my first skiing lesson were like the mixed feelings
Prufrock imagines for himself at the tea party”—your reader hasn’t shared
your experience of that lesson). Even your personal history of coming to
understand a literary work will seldom help, though you present it in
more general terms (“At a first reading, the opening paragraphs of ‘The
Lottery’ are confusing because they do not explain why the villagers are
gathering”—most literature does not yield up its richness on a first read-
ing, so this approach has nothing to add to your reader’s understanding).
Just as argument by analogy is not regarded as valid in formal logic, so
in critical discourse, analogies are usually unconvincing (“Desdemona’s
ignorance about adultery is like a child’s inability to balance a bank
account”). These strategies all have in common the looseness and vague-
ness of trying to define something by saying what it is not, or what it is
like, rather than dealing with what it is.
“Proof” in writing about literature is primarily an exercise in strict
definition. Juliet’s phrase “sweet sorrow” (quoted in the preceding para-
graph) derives its feeling from the paradoxical linking of sweetness and
grief as a representation of the conflicting emotions of love. To provide
an appropriate definition of the effect of the phrase, you would need to
identify the figure of speech as paradox and to investigate the way in
which love can simultaneously inflict pain and give pleasure, and you
might find it useful to point to the alliteration that ties these opposites
together. Obviously, comparing this kind of proof to that required by
science is inexact, since what you are doing is reminding your readers, or
perhaps informing them, of feelings that are associated with language,
not of the properties of chemical compounds. Furthermore, a scientific
proof is incomplete if it does not present every step in a process. If that
requirement were placed on literary analysis, a critical essay would be
interminable, since more can always be said about any interpretive point.
So, rather than attempting to prove every point that you make, you
should aim to demonstrate that your method of analysis is valid by provid-
ing persuasive proof of your major point or points. If you have shown that
your handling of a major point is sound, your readers will tend to trust
your judgment on lesser matters.
VI. Writing the Essay

The general procedures for writing a good essay on literature are much
the same as the procedures for writing a good essay on any subject.
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 11 8/25/16 6:41 AM

1. As soon as possible after receiving the assignment, read carefully

and thoughtfully the literary materials on which it is based, mulling over
the problem to be solved or—if the assignment is general—a good choice
of subject, jotting down notes, and sidelining or underlining important
passages if the book is your own. (If you use a library book, note the page
or line numbers of such passages so that you can readily find them again.)
Be sure to read the assigned material more than once.
2. Then, rather than proceeding directly to the writing of the essay,
put the materials aside for several days and let them steep in your mind.
The advantage of this is that your subconscious mind, if you have truly
placed the problem in it, will continue to work on the problem while you
are engaged in other activities, indeed even while you are asleep. Repeated
investigations into the psychology of creativity have shown that great solu-
tions to scientific and artistic problems frequently occur while the scientist
or artist is thinking of something else; the answer pops into consciousness
as if out of nowhere but really out of the hidden recesses of the mind, where
it has been quietly incubating. Whether this apparent “miracle” happens
to you or not, it is probable that you will have more ideas when you sit
down to write after a period of incubation than you will if you try to write
your essay immediately after reading the materials.
3. When you are ready to write (allow yourself as long an incubation
period as possible, but also allow ample time for writing, looking things
up, revising, copying your revision, and correcting your final copy), jot
down a list of the ideas you have, select connecting ideas relevant to your
problem or to a single acceptable subject, and formulate a thesis statement
that will clearly express in one sentence what you wish to say about that
subject. Make a rough outline, rearranging your ideas in the order that will
best support your thesis. Do they make a coherent case? Have you left out
anything necessary to demonstrate your thesis? If so, add it in the proper
place. Then begin to write, using your rough outline as a guide. Write this
first draft as swiftly as possible, not bothering about sentence structure,
grammar, diction, spelling, or verification of sources. Concentrate on your
outline and on writing down what is in your head without interrupting
the flow of thought for any other purpose. If alternative ways of expressing
a thought occur to you, put them all down for a later decision. Nothing
is more unprofitable than staring at a blank computer screen, wondering,
“How shall I begin?” Just begin. Get something written down. It may look
awful, but you can shape and polish it later.
4. Once you have something written out, it is much easier to see
what should be done with it. The next step is to revise. Does your essay
proceed from an introductory paragraph that either defines the problem to
71035_wal_hr_001-054.indd 12 8/25/16 6:41 AM

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
de ces conversions à la Dostoïewsky et abandonnant les erreurs
qu’il croyait vérités, sinon la vérité qu’il croit erreur, en un
foudroiement final… Nulle part, certes, les vicissitudes du pouvoir
(arbitral, tyrannique, renversé), — les superstitions qui
accompagnent le doute, — d’un côté les soubresauts de la
conscience populaire, d’un autre l’anxiété d’attendre, — les
désespoirs et leurs blasphèmes, — l’espérance, jusqu’au dernier
souffle, vivace, — la brutalité aveugle du fait réveilleur — que sais-
je !… ne peuvent se condenser et éclater avec autant de force que
dans cette première situation, de nos jours méconnue…
L’enthousiaste sympathie que la France a ressentie durant la moitié
de ce siècle pour la Pologne, celle qu’elle a manifestée, en tant de
circonstances, à l’Écosse, puis à l’Irlande, trouveraient ici leur
expression tragique ; le cri d’humanité avec lequel ce prêtre, au
massacre de Fourmies, a rallié à l’Église une fraction de la France
révolutionnaire, — le culte des morts, cette dernière, primitive et la
plus indestructible forme du sentiment religieux, — l’agonie, drame
qui nous attend tous, l’agonie se traînant vers un coin d’ombre
comme une bête forcée, — et ce profondément humilié désir de
l’homme qu’un meurtre a privé de ce qu’il avait de plus cher,
supplication misérable, à deux genoux, qui fit pleurer même, en sa
sauvage rancune, le dur Achille et lui fit oublier son serment, — eh
quoi ! toutes ces fortes émotions, d’autres encore, sont dans cette
situation première, elles ne sont pleinement que là, — et notre art
oublie cette situation…
II e SITUATION
Le Sauveur
(Techniquement : Infortuné — Menaçant — Sauveur)
… La réciproque, en quelque sorte de la Ire, où le faible se

réfugiait auprès d’une puissance indécise, tandis que c’est, à
présent, au-devant du faible, sans espoir, le Protecteur inattendu qui,
de lui-même, se dresse subitement.
A — Condamné, voir apparaître un sauveur
chevaleresque : — Andromèdes de Sophocle, d’Euripide et de
Corneille. Ex. fragm. : 1er acte de Lohengrin, 3e acte du Tancrède de
Voltaire, rôle du patron généreux dans Boislaurier (M. Richard, 1884.
Ce dernier exemple et le suivant montrent particulièrement l’honneur
du faible en jeu). Ex. hist. : Daniel et Suzanne ; divers exploits de la
chevalerie. Ex. ord. : l’assistance judiciaire. Le dénouement de
Barbe-Bleue (la parenté s’y ajoute, sous la condition la plus normale,
celle de frères défendant leur sœur, et grandit le pathétique par un
moyen des plus simples, mais oublié des dramaturges).
B 1 — Être remis sur le trône par ses enfants (voir la
donnée « Retrouver ») : — Égée et Pélée de Sophocle, Antiope
d’Euripide. Ces enfants ont été jadis abandonnés dans : Athamas I
et Tyro de Sophocle aussi (ce goût du futur auteur d’Œdipe à Colone
pour les fables où l’Enfant joue ainsi un rôle de sauveur et de
justicier ne forme-t-il pas un assez amer contraste avec le sort qui
attendait le poète dans son ultime vieillesse ?).
2 — Être secouru par des amis ou des étrangers
recueillis : — Œnée, Iolas, Phinée de Sophocle. Ex. fragm. : 2e
partie d’Alceste d’Euripide. — Être protégé par l’hôte qui donna
asile : — Dictys d’Euripide.
Rien qu’à parcourir ces subdivisions, on aperçoit ce que nos
écrivains auraient dû tirer de la IIe des données. Elle doit être,
franchement, quelque peu attrayante, pour qu’une fois de plus
l’humanité l’ait choisie, cette histoire du Sauveur, il y a deux mille
ans bientôt, et depuis lors ait tant souffert, aimé, pleuré, à chacun
des souvenirs qui lui en reviennent. Cette Situation, c’est aussi la
Chevalerie, l’héroïsme si original et individuel du moyen-âge ; — et
c’est la Révolution française devant les peuples ! Malgré cela, l’art, si
l’on excepte l’aristophanerie de Cervantès et l’éblouissant et unique
éclair jailli de l’armure d’argent de Lohengrin, l’art, à peine encore, y
songea…
III e SITUATION
La Vengeance poursuivant le crime.
(Techniquement : Vengeur — Coupable)
La vengeance est une joie divine, dit l’Arabe ; et elle fut celle plus
d’une fois, en effet, du Tout-Puissant d’Israël. Les deux poèmes
homériques se dénouent chacun par une enivrante vengeance, de
même que la légende des Pandavas, à l’orient des littératures ; pour
les races latine et espagnole, c’est le plus satisfaisant spectacle
toujours que celui de l’individu capable de se faire justice légitime,
encore qu’illégale. Tant il est vrai que vingt siècles de christianisme,
après cinq siècles de socratie, n’ont pu substituer à cette base de
l’honneur le pardon. Et ce dernier, même sincère (chose rare !),
qu’est-il, — sinon la subtile quintessence de la vengeance, sur terre,
en même temps que la réclamation d’une espèce de wergeld, vis-à-
vis du ciel ?
A 1 — Venger un ascendant assassiné : — La Chanteuse
(drame chinois anonyme), la Tunique confrontée (de la courtisane
Tchang-koué-pin), les Argiens et les Épigones d’Eschyle, Alétès et
Érigone de Sophocle, les deux Foscari de Byron, Attila de Werner, le
Crime de Maisons-Alfort (M. Cœdès, 1881. La vengeance en ces
deux derniers cas, ainsi que pour le sujet suivant, s’accomplit par la
fille et non le fils). — Ex. romanesque et ordinaire : Colomba de
Mérimée ; la plupart des vendette. Dans le Prêtre (M. Buet, 1881), la
lutte psychologique entre le pardon et la vengeance est
spécialement représentée.
2 — Venger un descendant assassiné : — Nauplius de
Sophocle. La fin de l’Hécube d’Euripide. Ex. épique : Neptune
poursuivant Ulysse à cause de la cécité de Polyphème.
3 — Venger un descendant déshonoré : — Le meilleur
alcade, c’est le Roi (Lope de Véga), l’Alcade de Zalaméa (Calderon).
Ex. hist. : la mort de Lucrèce.
4 — Venger épouse ou époux assassiné : — Pompée de
Corneille. Ex. contemporain : les tentatives de Mme Vve Barrême.
5 — Venger épouse déshonorée ou que l’on tenta de
déshonorer : — Ixions d’Eschyle, de Sophocle et d’Euripide ; les
Perrhœbides d’Eschyle. Ex. historique : le lévite d’Ephraïm. —
Même cas, où l’épouse n’a été qu’insultée : — la Chevelure
renouée de Bhatta Naragma, les fils de Pandou outragés de
Radjasekhara. Ex. ord. : un bon nombre de duels.
6 — Venger sa maîtresse assassinée : — Aimer après la mort
(Calderon), Amhra (M. Grangeneuve, 1882), Simon l’enfant trouvé
(M. Jonathan, 1882).
7 — Venger son ami assassiné, tué : — Les Néréides,
d’Eschyle. Ex. contemporain : Ravachol. — Cette vengeance est
perpétrée sur la maîtresse du vengeur : — La Casserole (M.
Méténier, 1889).
8 — Venger sa sœur séduite : — Clavijo de Gœthe, les
Bouchers (Icres, 1888), la Casquette au père Bugeaud (M. Marot,
1886). Ex. romanesques : la Kermesse rouge dans le recueil de M.
Eekhoud, la fin du Disciple de M. Bourget.
B 1 — Se venger d’avoir été dépouillé sciemment : — La
Tempête de Shakespeare (et l’opéra qui en est issu en 1889). Ex.
contemp. : Bismarck dans sa retraite de Varzin.
2 — Se venger d’avoir été dépouillé parce que disparu : —
Les Joueurs d’osselets et Pénélope d’Eschyle, le Repas des
Achéens de Sophocle.
3 — Se venger d’avoir été assassiné : — Le ressentiment de
Te-oun-go par Kouan-han-king. Même cas et sauver, à la fois, un
être aimé d’une erreur judiciaire : La Cellule no 7 (M. Zaccone,
1881).
4 — Se venger d’une fausse accusation : — Les Phrixus de
Sophocle et d’Euripide, Monte-Cristo de Dumas, la Déclassée (M.
Delahaye, 1883), Roger-la-Honte (M. Mary, 1881).
5 — Se venger d’un viol : — Térée de Sophocle, les Cenci de
Shelley (parricide pour punir et faire cesser l’inceste).
6 — Se venger d’avoir été dépouillé des siens : — Le
Marchand de Venise, un peu Guillaume Tell, et (en rentrant dans
l’« Adultère ») le triomphe de M. Armingaud.
7 — Trompé, se venger sur tout un sexe : — Jack
l’Éventreur (MM. Bertrand et Clairian, 1889) ; héroïnes fatales des
romans et pièces « second Empire » : l’Étrangère, etc. Cas
symétrique appartenant à la nuance A : — le mobile, peu
vraisemblable, de la corruptrice du Possédé de Lemonnier.
Elle offre une première apparition ici du personnage grimaçant
qui forma clef de voûte au drame noir et extraordinaire, — du
« traître ». Dès le début de notre troisième donnée, nous aurions pu
les évoquer à chaque pas, ce traître et sa politique profonde qui fait
parfois sourire : don Salluste présidant à Ruy-Blas, Iago à Othello,
Guanhumara aux Burgraves, Homodei à Angelo, Mahomet à la
tragédie de ce nom, Léontine à Héraclius, Maxime à la Tragédie de
Valentinien, et à celle d’Aétius, Émire à Siroès, Ulysse aux
Palamèdes grecs.
Si remaniée qu’ait été de nos jours la IIIe Situation, maint cas
ancien attend son rajeunissement ; et surtout d’innombrables
lacunes persistent : en effet, parmi les liens qui peuvent unir le
« Vengeur » à la « Victime », plus d’un degré de parenté fut omis,
ainsi que la majorité des attaches sociales ou contractuelles ; la liste
des torts qui peuvent provoquer ces représailles est bien loin d’être
épuisée, comme on s’en assurera en énumérant les variétés de
délits possibles contre les personnes et les propriétés, les nuances
d’opinions et de partis, et les diverses manières dont s’accommode
une insulte ; enfin combien et quelles sortes de relations existent,
d’autre part, entre le « Vengeur » et le « Coupable » ! Et il ne s’agit
jusqu’à présent que des prémisses de l’action.
Que l’on y mette, maintenant, toutes les allures, lentes ou
foudroyantes, tortueuses ou directes, sûres ou éperdues, que va
prendre le châtiment, les mille ressources dont il dispose (car, recuit
en son désir concentré, il se choisit les plus chatoyants effets), puis
les points qu’il peut viser, de sa meurtrière ; ensuite les obstacles qui
surgiront du hasard ou de la défensive… Introduisez les figures
secondaires, allant chacune à son but, comme dans la vie, s’entre-
croisant, et croisant le drame…
J’estime assez le lecteur pour ne pas développer davantage.
IV e SITUATION
Venger proche sur proche
(Souvenir de parent victime — Parent vengeur — Parent

coupable)
Au moyen de l’énergie âpre de la situation qui précède,

augmenter l’horreur de la XVIIe (« Découvrir le déshonneur des
siens »), c’est créer l’action présente, — laquelle s’enferme dans la
vie privée, devenue un enfer pire que le cachot du Puits et du
Pendule d’Edgar Poe. L’atrocité en est telle que la foule, terrifiée,
n’ose intervenir ; elle semble assister, de loin, à quelque scène
démoniaque, se silhouettant dans une maison en flammes.
… Et la foule des dramaturges semble ne pas oser, non plus,
intervenir pour modifier une fois la tragédie grecque, telle quelle
depuis trente siècles d’épouvante…
A nous il est facile, du haut de la « plateforme » retrouvée après
le mot de Gozzi, de supputer les variations infinies à écrire, — en
multipliant les combinaisons que nous venons de voir pour la IIIe
donnée par celles que nous produira la XVIIe.
Mais d’autres germes de fécondité nous arrivent à leur tour avec
les circonstances qui auront déterminé le justicier à agir ; ce serait
un désir spontané chez lui (motif le plus simple) ; — la volonté de la
victime agonisante ou du mort mystérieusement apparu ; — un
serment imprudent ; — le devoir professionnel (quand le Vengeur est
magistrat, etc.) ; — la nécessité de sauver d’autres parents, un être
aimé (c’est ainsi que Talien a vengé les Dantonistes) ou ses
concitoyens ; — l’ignorance de la parenté qui rattache le « Vengeur »
au « Coupable »… Il y aurait encore le cas où cet acte du Vengeur
frapperait le Proche criminel, sans que le Vengeur le reconnût (dans
une salle sombre, je suppose). Il y aurait le cas où ce prétendu acte
de vengeance ne serait que le résultat d’une erreur : le Parent dit
coupable serait découvert innocent, et le pseudo-Exécuteur, trop
stoïque, apprendrait qu’il n’est qu’un criminel détestable. Il y aurait…
On a traité :
A 1 — Venger son père sur sa mère : — Les Choéphores
d’Eschyle, les Électres de Sophocle, d’Euripide, d’Attilius, de Q.
Cicéron, de Pradon, de Longepierre, de Crébillon, de Rochefort, de
Chénier et l’opéra de Guillard, les Orestes de Voltaire et d’Alfieri ;
puis les Épigones de Sophocle, les Eriphyles de Sophocle et de
Voltaire ; et enfin Hamlet, où se reconnaît si bien la méthode
constante dont le poète rajeunissait ses sujets : par un changement
presque antithétique des caractères et du milieu.
2 — Venger sa mère sur son père : — Zoé Chien-Chien (M.
Matthey, 1881), où le parricide s’équilibre d’une passion incestueuse
et se perpètre par la fille au lieu du fils. Saluons, en passant, cet
unique effort original de notre drame devant la Situation IV.
B — Venger ses frères sur son fils (mais sans
préméditation et presque en tombant dans la donnée
« Imprudence ») : — Atalante d’Eschyle et Méléagre de Sophocle.
Sur 20 œuvres, 18 donc de la même nuance, 17 de la même
sous-nuance, 13 sur le même sujet. Deux nuances et une sous-
nuance en tout d’employées. Amusons-nous seulement à compter
celles qu’on oublia :
Le père du justicier sera vengé par celui-ci sur son propre frère.
Sur sa sœur. Sur sa maîtresse (ou sur son amant, car chacun des
cas ci-énumérés se dédouble, selon le sexe du vengeur). Sur sa
femme (ou son mari). Sur le propre fils du justicier. Sur sa fille. Sur
son oncle paternel. Sur son oncle maternel. Sur sa tante paternelle.
Sur sa tante maternelle. Sur son grand’père paternel, ou maternel ;
sur sa grand’mère paternelle, ou maternelle. Sur son frère utérin, sur
sa sœur utérine, etc. Sur tel allié de la famille (beau-frère, belle-
sœur, etc.) ou collatéral. — Cette cinquantaine de variations dont
une vingtaine au moins sont pathétiques se répétera
successivement pour chacun des cas : venger un frère, une sœur,
un époux, un fils, un aïeul, et ainsi de suite.
On fera, pour changer, assouvir ces vindictes, non sur la
personne du coupable, mais sur un être qui lui soit cher (c’est de
cette manière que Médée et Atrée frappèrent Jason et Thyeste sur
les enfants de ceux-ci) ; des objets insensibles, quelquefois, tiennent
aussi lieu de victimes.
V e SITUATION
Traqué
(Châtiment — Fugitif)
La IIe situation était la réciproque de la Ire ; la situation traqué

représente aussi une transposition au passif des IIIe et IVe et de
toutes celles, en somme, où un danger poursuit une tête. Pourtant
une démarcation reste creusée : dans Traqué l’élément sévisseur
se tient au second plan ou n’en n’occupe, voire, aucun, pouvant être
invisible, abstrait… Seul, le Fugitif nous intéresse, parfois innocent,
toujours excusable ; car la faute, — s’il y en eut une — ainsi reculée
dans le vague antérieur, apparaît fatale, acquise ; nous ne la
discutons plus ni ne la reprenons, ce serait oiseux, mais
sympathiquement nous en subissons les conséquences avec notre
héros, qui n’est plus, quel qu’il soit, qu’un Homme en danger, c’est-
à-dire un de notre parti, de notre bande, un moi. On se souvient de
la vérité jetée à la face des hypocrisies par Wolfgang Gœthe :
qu’ayant chacun en nous, à l’état de puissance, tous les crimes qui
se commirent jamais, il ne s’en produit pas un qu’il ne nous soit
loisible d’imaginer, très bien, accompli par nous-mêmes. Nous nous
sentons, on dirait, complices des pires attentats. Ce qui s’explique
d’ailleurs en pensant que nous en avons de bien autres parmi la
ligne de nos hérédités ; et la valeur d’une vertu consisterait, peut-
être, dans ce blasement d’instruite devant les fautes qui lui font
antithèse ; auquel cas, hérédité et milieu, loin d’être des fatalités
oppressives, deviendraient les germes de la sagesse qui, la satiété
venue, en triomphe : voilà pourquoi le génie (non plus une névrose,
mais l’inattendue victoire sur les névroses) naîtrait surtout dans des
familles qui lui transmirent l’expérience de la folie ou parmi des
malheureux qui lui en montrèrent, dans leur destruction mentale,
l’anatomie entière. C’est à acquérir d’une façon moins coûteuse
cette expérience de l’erreur et des catastrophes, c’est à en évoquer
vivement pour mieux dire les innombrables souvenirs qui dormaient
dans notre sang, afin d’en purifier à force de répétitions et y
accoutumer nos âmes ombrageuses, que paraît correspondre le
besoin d’une littérature à personnages et à émotions ; comme la
musique, elle finit, exorcisme divin, par « adoucir les mœurs » et
nous douer de cette force dans le sang-froid, base de toute vertu…
— Le caractère d’isolement, propre à la situation V donne une
singulière unité à l’action et un champ très net pour l’observation
psychologique ; la variété des décors et le romanesque des
évènements n’y font non plus défaut.
A — Traqué par la justice pour brigandage, politique,
etc. : — Louis Pérez de Galice et la Dévotion à la Croix de
Calderon, les Brigands de Schiller. Ex. historique : les
conventionnels proscrits ; la duchesse de Berry. Ex. roman. :
Rocambole, romans de Gaboriau. Ex. ord. : histoires de police.
B — Poursuivi pour une faute d’amour : — Très injustement :
Indigne ! (M. Barbier, 1884) ; — d’une façon plus juste : Don Juan de
Molière et Le Festin de Pierre de Th. Corneille (sans parler des
œuvres de Tirso de Molina, Tellez, Villiers, Sadwell, Zamora,
Goldoni, Grabbe, Zorilla, Dumas père, etc.) ; — pour des raisons très
justes : Ajax Locrien de Sophocle. Ex. ordinaires : depuis les
mariages imposés aux séducteurs jusqu’aux rafles policières sur les
trottoirs.
C — Héros en lutte contre une puissance : — C’est le
Prométhée enchaîné d’Eschyle, le Laocoon de Sophocle ; puis le
rôle de Porus dans les Alexandres de Racine et de Métastase,
Nicomède, Gœtz de Berlinchingen, en partie Egmont, Caton de
Métastase, Adelghis de Manzoni et un côté de son Comte de
Carmagnola, la mort d’Hector au fond de ce Troïlus et Cressida, où
Shakespeare se posait déjà, d’une attitude si significative, en contre-
pied d’Homère ; c’est de nos temps Nana-Sahib de Richepin (1883),
Édith (M. G. Bois, 1885), et la tétralogie des Nibelungen ; c’est
l’Ennemi du Peuple.
D — Un pseudo-fou en lutte contre un aliéniste
iagique [6] : — La Vicomtesse Alice (M. Second, 1882).
[6] Tiré de Iago ; néologisme qui me paraît utile.
VI e SITUATION
Désastre
(Ennemi vainqueur ou Messager — Puissant frappé)
La Peur même, l’inattendu et la catastrophe, et le grand

renversement des rôles, le puissant est jeté bas et le faible exalté !
Refrain des livres bibliques et immortelle clameur de la chute d’Ilios,
dont nous pâlissons comme d’un pressentiment.
A 1 — Subir une défaite : — Les Myrmidons et les Perses
d’Eschyle ; les Pasteurs de Sophocle. Roman : la Débâcle de Zola.
L’histoire n’est faite que de récits de ce genre.
2 — La patrie détruite : — Les Xoanéphores de Sophocle,
Sardanapale de Byron (se confond avec B et rappelle aussi vers le
dénouement la Ve). Histoire : la Pologne, les grandes Invasions.
B — Un roi renversé (réciproque passive de la VIIIe) — Henri
VI et Richard II de Shakespeare — Histoire : Charles Ier, Louis XVI,
Napoléon, etc. ; et en leur substituant un puissant quelconque :
Colomb, Lesseps et tous les ministres disgrâciés. Romans : fin de
Tartarin, l’Argent, César Birotteau.
C 1 — Subir l’ingratitude. — De toutes les attaques du
Malheur, naturellement la plus poignante : Archélaüs d’Euripide (sauf
le dénouement où l’action se renverse), Timon d’Athènes et le roi
Lear de Shakespeare, début de son Coriolan, Marino Faliero de
Byron, un côté du Comte de Carmagnola de Manzoni. M. de
Bismarck renvoyé par M. de Hohenzollern fils. Les martyres, les
dévouements méconnus par la stupide vanité de ceux qui après
avoir bénéficié de ces sacrifices s’y croient supérieurs, les trépas les
plus magnanimes se sont dessinés sur ce triste fond : la mort de
Socrate et la Passion n’en sont que les exemples les plus célèbres.
2 — Subir un injuste ressentiment. — (Se confond avec
l’« Erreur judiciaire ») : les Salaminiennes d’Eschyle, Teucer de
Sophocle, etc.
3 — Subir un outrage : — Ier acte du Cid, Ier acte de Lucrèce
Borgia. Le point d’honneur offre mieux que ces simples épisodes : le
roman russe de l’Esprit Souterrain l’a comme pressenti. Qu’on
imagine après sa bastonnade un Voltaire plus sensible encore, plus
« hermine » et réduit à l’impuissance, jusqu’à mourir de désespoir.
D 1 — Être abandonné par son amant ou son époux : —
Faust, Ariane de Th. Corneille, début des Médées.
2 — Enfants perdus par leurs parents : — Le Petit Poucet.
Mais si les nuances tout individuelles B, C et D n’ont pas été
développées de beaucoup autant qu’il était facile de le faire, que dire
des cas de Désastres Sociaux (comme la nuance A) ? Shakespeare
n’a pu aller assez loin dans cette voie grandiose. Chez les Grecs
seuls, une telle œuvre édifiée présenta du même coup cette
conception des événements humains, grande, fatale et poétique,
avec laquelle Hérodote devait un jour créer l’histoire.
VII e SITUATION
En Proie
(Maître ou Malheur — Faible)
Ici se voit qu’il n’y a aucune limite dans l’infinie douleur : au fond
de la détresse en apparence la pire, s’en ouvrira une plus affreuse.
Point de pitié dans les cieux qui au-dessus de nos nuées sont
démontrés complètement noirs et vides. On dirait un dépècement
savant et féroce du cœur que cette VIIe situation, celle du
pessimisme par excellence.
A — L’innocence victime d’ambitieuses intrigues : — La
Princesse Maleine ; La Fille naturelle de Gœthe, les Deux Jumeaux
de Hugo.
B — Dépouillée par ceux qui devaient la protéger : — Les
Convives et le début des Joueurs d’Osselets d’Eschyle (au premier
frémissement du grand arc aux mains du Mendiant inconnu, quel
souffle d’espérance devait s’élever, enfin !), les Corbeaux de
Becque.
C 1 — La puissance dépossédée et misérable : — Débuts des
Pélées de Sophocle et d’Euripide, du Prométhée enchaîné, de Job ;
Laërte dans son jardin.
2 — Favori ou familier se voit oublié : — En détresse (M.
Fèvre, 1890.)
D — Des malheureux sont dépouillés de leur seul espoir :
— Les Aveugles de Maeterlinck.
Et que de cas encore ! les Juifs en captivité, la Case de l’oncle
Tom, les horreurs de la guerre de cent ans, les ghettos envahis,
l’appareil qui attire la foule aux reproductions du bagne et des
scènes de l’Inquisition, l’attrait des Prisons de Pellico, de l’Enfer du
Dante, l’amertume enivrante du Gautama, de l’Ecclésiaste, de
Schopenhauer.
VIII e SITUATION
Révolte
(Tyran — Conspirateur)
Réciproque partielle, comme j’ai dit, de B de la VIe.

L’intrigue, si chère au public de ces trois derniers siècles, est du
moins fournie par la nature propre du sujet que nous abordons.
Mais, par un étrange hasard, on l’a presque toujours traité, au
contraire, avec la plus grande candeur. Une ou deux péripéties,
quelques surprises vraiment trop faciles à prévoir et étendues
uniformément à tous les personnages de la pièce, voilà les
agréments presque invariables qu’on a attachés à cette action, — si
propice pourtant aux doutes, à l’équivoque, l’« entre chien et loup »,
crépuscule dont la vague incertitude ne prépare que mieux l’aurore
de la révolte et de la liberté !
A 1 — Conspiration d’un individu surtout : — La Conjuration
de Fiesque de Schiller, Cinna de Corneille, un peu du Catilina de
Voltaire (cette tragédie appartient à « Ambition », XXXe), Thermidor ;
la Conspiration du général Malet (M. Augé de Lassus, 1889).
2 — Conspiration de plusieurs : — La Conspiration des Pazzi,
d’Alfieri ; le Roman d’une Conspiration (d’après le roman de M.
Ranc, par MM. Fournier et Carré, 1890).
B — Révolte. 1, d’un individu qui entraîne les autres : —
Egmont de Gœthe (et avec ce drame l’espèce de parodie qui en fut
jouée naguère à Paris sous l’euphémisme bien connu d’adaptation),
Jacques Bonhomme (M. Maujan, 1886), la Mission de Jeanne d’Arc
(M. Dallière, 1888). Roman : Salammbô. Histoire : Solon feignant la
folie.
2, de plusieurs : — Fontovéjune de Lope de Véga ; Guillaume
Tell de Schiller, Germinal de Zola, les Tisserands de Silésie de M.
Hauptmann (drame interdit en 1893 avec l’approbation d’un
Parlement peu après dissous), et l’Automne de MM. Paul Adam et
Gabriel Mourey (drame interdit en 1893 avec l’approbation d’un
autre Parlement dès avant dissolu). — Roman : partie de la Fortune
des Rougon de Zola. Histoire : la prise de la Bastille et les
nombreuses émeutes de ce siècle.
Particulier, comme on voit, aux scènes modernes, ce genre
d’action a donné de beaux drames virils à l’Angleterre, à l’Espagne,
à l’Italie et à l’Allemagne, d’un caractère autoritaire et violent dans
les deux premiers pays, généreux et jeune dans les deux derniers.
La France, à coup sûr, mieux qu’aucune est faite pour comprendre
et rendre de telles émotions.
Mais… Thermidor fut interdit « de peur » qu’il ne froissât des
amis, centenaires apparemment, de Maximilien ; le Pater « de peur »
qu’il ne déplût à des communistes ; Germinal de Zola, l’Automne
d’Adam et de Mourey (deux tableaux peints en nuances quelque peu
différentes, les titres l’indiquent assez) furent arrêtés « de peur »
d’insurger quelques conservateurs ; l’Argent d’autrui de M. Hennique
le fut un certain temps de « peur » de choquer des gens de finance,
actuellement sous les verrous ; Lohengrin (sujet celtique), longtemps
de « peur » d’irriter six chauvins français illettrés ; un nombre infini de
drames « de peur » de fâcher l’Allemagne, ou nos diplomates de
salon qui en parlent… D’autres encore « de peur » de vexer le Grand
Turc [7] !
[7] Historique. Qu’on se rappelle l’aventure du
Mahomet de M. de Bornier, qu’a fait interdire dans notre
république « franco-russe et libre-penseuse » un individu
que nos lois jugeraient digne des travaux forcés à
perpétuité.
Et pourtant y a-t-il un exemple d’une pièce de théâtre amenant

une calamité nationale, comme on nous en menace ?
Ce prétexte n’est vraiment pas plus sincère que ceux allégués,
par exemple, pour répudier du théâtre toute peinture nette de
l’amour. Il suffirait en effet à nos pudibonds de faire refuser aux
contrôles les enfants (qui d’ailleurs s’y présentent bien rarement
sans être accompagnés). Est-ce donc qu’elle trouve plus dangereux,
notre Bourgeoisie éprise du seul roman, d’écouter en public que de
lire, seule, d’une main, comme disait le XVIIIe siècle ?… Car à notre
art dramatique, demeuré, notez-le, malgré son épuisement, le grand
moyen de propagande, sans rival quoique envié, de la langue et de
la pensée françaises dans l’Europe, — voici qu’on interdit, peu à
peu, de toucher directement : à la théologie (notre libre originalité
depuis le XIIe jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle), — à la politique, — à la
sociologie, — au langage de la Foule pour laquelle il est fait et qui y
assiste, refoulée et tassée de par l’architecture néo-
louisquatorzième, dans l’obscurité étouffante de l’amphithéâtre, —
aux personnes, — aux mœurs criminelles, sauf (pourquoi ? oui,
dites-moi pourquoi ?) à l’adultère, — dont vit, ce qui était fatal, notre
personnel théâtral, au moins deux jours sur trois.
… Les anciens disaient que l’homme en esclavage perd la moitié
de son âme : un dramaturge est un homme.

(Ebook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson - Ebook PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

(Ebook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson - Ebook PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Ebook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson - Ebook PDF All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound,

and Sense 13th Edition Greg Johnson -

(eBook PDF) Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and

Mycorrhizal Mediation of Soil. Fertility, Structure,

Mechanics of Flow-Induced Sound and Vibration Volume 2_

(eBook PDF) The Norton Introduction to Literature

(eBook PDF) Sense and Nonsense About Crime, Drugs, and

(eBook PDF) Chemistry: Structure and Properties 2nd

Purchasing and Supply Management, 16e 16th Edition P.

(eBook PDF) Making Sense in Education 2nd Edition

SE/Johnson/Perrine’s Literature: Structure Sound & Sense, 13th Edition ISBN-978-1-305-97103-5

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 1 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 3 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada

To learn more about Cengage Learning Solutions, visit

Purchase any of our products at your local college store

Printed in the United States of America

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 4 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Writing about Literature 1

The Elements of Fiction 55

Chapter One Reading the Story 56

Stories for Further Reading 549

The Elements of Poetry 705

Chapter One What Is Poetry? 706

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 5 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Chapter Seven Figurative Language 3: Paradox, Overstatement,

Poems for Further Reading 1009

The Elements of Drama 1075

Chapter One The Nature of Drama 1076

Plays for Further Reading 1543

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 6 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Writing about Literature 1

I. Why Write about Literature? 3

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 7 6/16/17 9:41 AM

XI. Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage: Common Problems 33

The Elements of Fiction 55

CHAPTER ONE Reading the Story 56

CHAPTER TWO Plot and Structure 97

CHAPTER THREE Characterization 142

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 8 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Katherine Mansfield Miss Brill 155

CHAPTER FOUR Theme 192

Reviewing Chapter Four 198

CHAPTER FIVE Point of View 240

CHAPTER SIX Symbol, Allegory, and

CHAPTER SEVEN Humor and Irony 330

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 9 8/26/16 7:11 PM

CHAPTER EIGHT Evaluating Fiction 365

Three Featured Writers:

Stories for Further Reading 549

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 10 8/26/16 7:11 PM

The Elements of Poetry 705

CHAPTER ONE What Is Poetry? 706

William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 715

CHAPTER TWO Reading the Poem 725

John Donne Break of Day 734

71035_FM_hr_i-xxxii.indd 11 8/26/16 7:11 PM

Chapter Seven Figurative Language 3: Paradox, Overstatement,

CHAPTER SIX Symbol, Allegory, and

CHAPTER THREE Denotation and

CHAPTER FIVE Figurative Language 1:

CHAPTER SIX Figurative Language 2:

CHAPTER SEVEN Figurative Language 3:

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Evaluating Poetry 1:

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Evaluating Poetry 2:

CHAPTER TWO Realistic and Nonrealistic