Teaching Literature Inductively

Canterbury Press [Published date: 1995]. Paper covers, 225 pp. Second Edition, 1995. [From back cover] This methods text has enjoyed widespread use among English teachers not only because it provides apparatus for the most widely taught literary pieces in American junior and senior high schools but also because it works. Whether teachers apply the methods of inquiry at the lowest levelâthe improvisational, or at the highestâthe intellectual, the results are the same: satisfaction, both for student and teacher. Though it provides easy and intense access to the many popular pieces modeled here, the method is applicable to all literature. Added to the very popular works of the first edtion is apparatus for five more short stories: "The Most Dangerous Game," "Flight," "The Killers," "The Necklace," and 'The Rocking Horse Winner." The poetry section includes treatment of five more poems: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, "Mending Wall," "My Last Duchess," "The Raven," and "Ulysses." The section on novels includes five more: The Outsiders, A Separate Peace, The Red Badge of Courage, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Scarlet Letter. Added to The Glass Menagerie and Tnhe Death of a Salesman is apparatus for A Raisin in the Sun, popular among adolescents. Apparatus for all works treated in the earlier text remains. Continued application has strenghtened their popularity and usefulness. Frost, Robinson, Tobias, Auden, and Cummings are the earlier poets. Short story writers include Shirley Jackson, Willa Cather, James Thurber, Poe, and Hawthorne. Apparatus for teaching the novels O fMice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, and The Chocolate War is still very much in demand, still workable at whatever level of inquiry desired: improvisational, interpretive, or intellectual.