Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Tim O Brien written by Alex Vernon and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The works of Tim O'Brien are among the most significant recent contributions to a lengthy canon of war literature," write the editors of this volume; they serve "as an ideal point of entry for discussions of war and its human impact." The author of the highly acclaimed The Things They Carried, O'Brien is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of a National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. This volume in the Approaches to Teaching series considers the range and depth of O'Brien's writing, with an emphasis on works that focus on the Vietnam War. Part 1, "Materials," provides information on O'Brien's life and an overview of his literary output. It also directs readers to critical and reference works on subjects encountered in his writing. The twenty-three essays in part 2, "Approaches," provide historical background on the Vietnam War; explore narrative issues in O'Brien's works, such as the melding of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir; and suggest ideas for teaching the author's works in a variety of classroom and conceptual settings (e.g., composition, American literature, war fiction, narrative theory, postmodernism).
Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Anton Chekhov written by Michael C. Finke and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chekhov's works are unflinching in the face of human frailty. With their emphasis on the dignity and value of individuals during unique moments, they help us better understand how to exist with others when we are fundamentally alone. Written in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, when the country began to move fitfully toward industrialization and grappled with the influence of Western liberalism even as it remained an autocracy, Chekhov's plays and stories continue to influence contemporary writers. The essays in this volume provide classroom strategies for teaching Chekhov's stories and plays, discuss how his medical training and practice related to his literary work, and compare Chekhov with writers both Russian and American. The volume also aims to help instructors with the daunting array of new editions in English, as well as with the ever-growing list of titles in visual media: filmed theater productions of his plays, adaptations of the plays and stories scripted for film, and amateur performances freely available online.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jack London written by Kenneth K. Brandt and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prolific and enduringly popular author--and an icon of American fiction--Jack London is a rewarding choice for inclusion in classrooms from middle school to graduate programs. London's biography and the role played by celebrity have garnered considerable attention, but the breadth of his personal experiences and political views and the many historical and cultural contexts that shaped his work are key to gaining a nuanced view of London's corpus of works, as this volume's wide-ranging perspectives and examples attest. The first section of this volume, "Materials," surveys the many resources available for teaching London, including editions of his works, sources for his photography, and audiovisual aids. In part 2, "Approaches," contributors recommend practices for teaching London's works through the lenses of socialism and class, race, gender, ecocriticism and animal studies, theories of evolution, legal theory, and regional history, both in frequently taught texts such as The Call of the Wild, "To Build a Fire," and Martin Eden and in his lesser-known works.
Download or read book Tim O Brien written by Tobey C Herzog and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of seven essays, like the carefully linked collection of vignettes within Tim O’Brien’s most popular book The Things They Carried, contains multiple critical and biographical angles with recurring threads of life events, themes, characters, creative techniques, and references to all of O’Brien’s books. Grounded in through research, Herzog’s work illustrates how O’Brien merges his life experiences with his creative production; he rarely misses an opportunity to introduce these critical life events into his writing.
Download or read book Conversations with Tim O Brien written by Patrick A. Smith and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-10-22 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the strength of a National Book Award for his novel Going After Cacciato and a widely acclaimed short-story cycle, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (b. 1946) cemented his reputation as one of the most compelling chroniclers of Vietnam—and, in the process, was cast as a “Vietnam writer.” But to confine O’Brien to a single piece of ground or a particular style is to ignore the broad sweep of a career spanning nearly four decades. In addition to detailed discussions of all of O’Brien’s work—a memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone, and seven books of fiction—the sixteen interviews and profiles in Conversations with Tim O’Brien explore common themes, with subtle differences. Looming large is the experience of Vietnam and its influence as well as O’Brien’s youth in Minnesota and the expectations of a midwestern upbringing. Interviews allowed the writer to fully examine the shifting boundaries of truth and identity, memory, and imagination in fiction; the role of war in society; gender issues; and the craft of writing. O’Brien approaches each of these topics and a host of others with a directness and an evident passion that will resonate with both readers and prospective writers.
Download or read book War in Tim O Brien s The Things They Carried written by Gary Wiener and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This did not happen is a common refrain throughout the stories in The Things They Carried. Tim O'Brien's account of the Vietnam War purposely blurs the line between fact and fiction to get closer to the truth of what soldiers actually experienced. This compelling volume explores the life of Tim O'Brien and his attempts to wrestle with the trauma and shame of war in The Things They Carried. A collection of related essays explore topics such as the moral complexity of war, writing as a path to spiritual redemption, and the novel's portrayal of gender. Contemporary perspectives on war, such as the need to help soldiers suffering from PTSD and not repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, are also presented.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat written by Celucien L. Joseph and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-20 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an intellectual interpretation to the work of Edwidge Danticat, this new edited collection provides a pedagogical approach to teach and interpret her body of work in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat starts out by exploring diasporic categories and postcolonial themes such as gender constructs, cultural nationalism, cultural and communal identity, and moves to investigate Danticat’s human rights activism, the immigrant experience, the relationship between the particular and the universal, and the violence of hegemony and imperialism in relationship with society, family, and community. The Editors of the collection have carefully compiled works that show how Danticat’s writings may help in building more compassionate and relational human communities that are grounded on the imperative of human dignity, respect, inclusion, and peace.
Download or read book Vietnam and Beyond written by Stefania Ciocia and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vietnam and Beyond is a comprehensive, in-depth study of one of the most thought-provoking writers of the Vietnam War generation: Tim O'Brien. Through its thematic—rather than chronological—approach, this volume sets itself apart from previous readings of O'Brien's development as a trauma artist and an outspoken chronicler of American involvement in Vietnam. Stefania Ciocia highlights O'Brien's compelling preoccupation with the role and the ethical responsibility of the storyteller— with his clear privileging of “story truth” over “happening truth”—in order to make a bold statement about the power of fiction and narrative.
Download or read book How to Revise a True War Story written by John K. Young and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2017-01-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it,” Tim O’Brien writes in The Things They Carried. Widely regarded as the most important novelist to come out of the American war in Viet Nam, O’Brien has kept on telling true war stories not only in narratives that cycle through multiple fictional and non-fictional versions of the war’s defining experiences, but also by rewriting those stories again and again. Key moments of revision extend from early drafts, to the initial appearance of selected chapters in magazines, across typescripts and page proofs for first editions, and through continuing post-publication variants in reprints. How to Revise a True War Story is the first book-length study of O’Brien’s archival papers at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. Drawing on extensive study of drafts and other prepublication materials, as well as the multiple published versions of O’Brien’s works, John K. Young tells the untold stories behind the production of such key texts as Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried, and In the Lake of the Woods. By reading not just the texts that have been published, but also the versions they could have been, Young demonstrates the important choices O’Brien and his editors have made about how to represent the traumas of the war in Viet Nam. The result is a series of texts that refuse to settle into a finished or stable form, just as the stories they present insist on being told and retold in new and changing ways. In their lack of textual stability, these variants across different versions enact for O’Brien’s readers the kinds of narrative volatility that is key to the American literature emerging from the war in Viet Nam. Perhaps in this case, you can tell a true war story if you just keep on revising it.
Download or read book The American Short Story Handbook written by James Nagel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-02-23 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a concise yet comprehensive treatment of the American short story that includes an historical overview of the topic as well as discussion of notable American authors and individual stories, from Benjamin Franklin’s “The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” in 1747 to “The Joy Luck Club”. Includes a selection of writers chosen not only for their contributions of individual stories but for bodies of work that advanced the boundaries of short fiction, including Washington Irving, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Jamaica Kincaid, and Tim O’Brien Addresses the ways in which American oral storytelling and other narrative traditions were integral to the formation and flourishing of the short story genre Written in accessible and engaging prose for students at all levels by a renowned literary scholar to illuminate an important genre that has received short shrift in scholarly literature of the last century Includes a glossary defining the most common terms used in literary history and in critical discussions of fiction, and a bibliography of works for further study
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Sand s Indiana written by David A. Powell and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indiana, George Sand’s first solo novel, opens with the eponymous heroine brooding and bored in her husband’s French countryside estate, far from her native Île Bourbon (now Réunion). Written in 1832, the novel appeared during a period of French history marked by revolution and regime change, civil unrest and labor concerns, and slave revolts and the abolitionist movement, when women faced rigid social constraints and had limited rights within the institution of marriage. With this politically charged history serving as a backdrop for the novel, Sand brings together Romanticism, realism, and the idealism that would characterize her work, presenting what was deemed by her contemporaries a faithful and candid representation of nineteenth-century France. This volume gathers pedagogical essays that will enhance the teaching of Indiana and contribute to students’ understanding and appreciation of the novel. The first part gives an overview of editions and translations of the novel and recommends useful background readings. Contributors to the second part present various approaches to the novel, focusing on four themes: modes of literary narration, gender and feminism, slavery and colonialism, and historical and political upheaval. Each essay offers a fresh perspective on Indiana, suited not only to courses on French Romanticism and realism but also to interdisciplinary discussions of French colonial history or law.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Henry Fielding written by Jennifer Preston Wilson and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The works of Henry Fielding, though written nearly three hundred years ago, retain their sense of comedy and innovation in the face of tradition, and they easily engage the twenty-first-century student with many aspects of eighteenth-century life: travel, inns, masquerades, political and religious factions, the '45, prisons and the legal system, gender ideals and realities, social class. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," discusses the available editions of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Shamela, Jonathan Wild, and Amelia; suggests useful critical and contextual works for teaching them; and recommends helpful audiovisual and electronic resources. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," demonstrate that many of the methods and models used for one novel--the romance tradition, Fielding's legal and journalistic writing, his techniques as a playwright, the ideas of Machiavelli--can be adapted to others.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Cervantes s Don Quixote written by James A. Parr and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of Approaches to Teaching Cervantes's Don Quixote highlights dramatic changes in pedagogy and scholarship in the last thirty years: today, critics and teachers acknowledge that subject position, cultural identity, and political motivations afford multiple perspectives on the novel, and they examine both literary and sociohistorical contextualization with fresh eyes. Part 1, "Materials," contains information about editions of Don Quixote, a history and review of the English translations, and a survey of critical studies and Internet resources. In part 2, "Approaches," essays cover such topics as the Moors of Spain in Cervantes's time; using film and fine art to teach his novel; and how to incorporate psychoanalytic theory, satire, science and technology, gender, role-playing, and other topics and techniques in a range of twenty-first-century classroom settings.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Behn s Oroonoko written by Cynthia Richards and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once merely a footnote in Restoration and eighteenth-century studies and rarely taught, Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave (1688), by Aphra Behn, is now essential reading for scholars and a classroom favorite. It appears in general surveys and in courses on early modern British writers, postcolonial literature, American literature, women's literature, drama, the slave narrative, and autobiography. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," provides not only resources for the teacher of Oroonoko but also a brief chronology of Behn's life and work. In part 2, "Approaches," essays offer a diversity of perspectives appropriate to a text that challenges student assumptions and contains not one story but many: Oroonoko as a romance, as a travel account, as a heroic tragedy, as a window to seventeenth-century representations of race, as a reflection of Tory-Whig conflict in the time of Charles II.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Austen s Mansfield Park written by Marcia McClintock Folsom and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There were no reviews of Mansfield Park when it first appeared in 1814. Austen's reputation grew in the Victorian period, but it was only in the twentieth century that formal and sustained criticism began of this work, which addresses the controversies of its time more than Austen's earlier novels did. Lionel Trilling praised Mansfield Park for exploring the difficult moral life of modernity; Edward Said brought postcolonial theory to the study of the novel; and twenty-first-century critics scrutinize these and other approaches to build on and go beyond them. This volume is the third in the MLA Approaches series to deal with Austen's work (Pride and Prejudice and Emma were the subject of the first and second volumes on Austen, respectively). It provides information about editions, film adaptations, and digital resources, and then nineteen essays discuss various aspects of Mansfield Park, including the slave trade, the theme of reading, elements of tragedy, gift theory, landscape design, moral improvement in the spirit of Samuel Johnson and of the Reformation, sibling relations, card playing, and interpretations of Fanny Price, the heroine, not as passive but as having some control.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Chaucer s Canterbury Tales written by Frank Grady and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was the subject of the first volume in the Approaches to Teaching series, published in 1980. But in the past thirty years, Chaucer scholarship has evolved dramatically, teaching styles have changed, and new technologies have created extraordinary opportunities for studying Chaucer. This second edition of Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflects the wide variety of contexts in which students encounter the poem and the diversity of perspectives and methods instructors bring to it. Perennial topics such as class, medieval marriage, genre, and tale order rub shoulders with considerations of violence, postcoloniality, masculinities, race, and food in the tales. The first section, “Materials,†reviews available editions, scholarship, and audiovisual and electronic resources for studying The Canterbury Tales. In the second section, “Approaches,†thirty-six essays discuss strategies for teaching Chaucer’s language, for introducing theory in the classroom, for focusing on individual tales, and for using digital resources in the classroom. The multiplicity of approaches reflects the richness of Chaucer’s work and the continuing excitement of each new generation’s encounter with it.
