Teaching Particulars: Literary Conversations in Grades 6-12

by Helaine L. Smith

Overview

In Teaching Particulars, Helaine Smith engages her students, grammar school through twelfth grade—and any avid reader—in the questions that great literature evokes. Included are chapters on Homer and Genesis; plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Beckett; poems by Jonson, Donne, Coleridge, Browning, Hopkins, Yeats, Bishop, Hecht, Dove, and Lowell; essays by Baldwin, Lamb, and White; and fiction by Flannery O’Connor, Dickens, Joyce, Poe, Tolstoy, Mann, and Kafka. Whether Helaine Smith is talking to young or older students, she shows how any devoted reader can uncover all sorts of subtle beauty and meaning by reading closely and by assuming that virtually every word and phrase of a great text is deliberate. The question-and-answer form of these jargon-free dialogues creates the feeling of a vibrant classroom where learning and delight are the watchwords.

“After her forty years of teaching, Smith’s keen understanding of the literary canon makes her the perfect candidate to write this humorous and insightful book." —Foreword Reviews

“Teaching Particulars is an exemplary series of literary conversations by a master teacher on a great variety of important, life-shaping books. The guidance is unfailingly humane, the essays thoughtfully presented by someone who cares as much for the written word as she does about her classroom and her subject matter. Her commentary on Hecht’s ‘Rites and Ceremonies,’ the poet’s complex response to Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land,’ ranks among the very best anywhere, as is true for her reading of Hecht’s ‘Devotions of a Painter,’ which has the further advantage of illuminating that work in light of Elizabeth Bishop’s profound meditation on painting in her ‘Poem.’ Reading Teaching Particulars makes me wish that all of my students could have had Helaine Smith as their teacher.” —Jonathan F. S. Post, Distinguished Professor of English and former Chair of the Department, UCLA

“There’s simply nothing else like Teaching Particulars, a book packed with so much wisdom and practical advice about teaching literature that every instructor of grades 6 to 12—and of college classes, too—will want to get a copy right now. Even if you’re not a teacher, I highly recommend it. The love of books pulses through every page Helaine Smith writes, and her passion is infectious. She opens our eyes to the pleasures of reading in a way that few critics can, and she does it all in a book whose style is both elegant and friendly.” —David Mikics, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English, University of Houston, and author of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

“Teaching Particulars…is a bounteous resource for all teachers, as well as a pleasure just to curl up with and read away.” —Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English, Princeton University

“Helaine Smith is a genius of a teacher: witty, imaginative, precise, intuitive, and gracefully learned. Now anyone who opens her Teaching Particulars can have the rare privilege of learning from her how to read, in the truest sense. It’s never too late to be startled into delight by the power of language, and that is the experience offered on every page of this book. It’s a book not only for the schoolroom, but for the school of life.” —Rosanna Warren, Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor, The Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago

For forty years, Helaine L. Smith has taught English to grades 6 through 12 at Hunter College High School and at The Brearley School in Manhattan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781589880917
Publisher:	Dry, Paul Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/14/2015
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Helaine L. Smith has, for forty years, taught English to students in grades 6 through 12 at Hunter College High School and at The Brearley School in Manhattan. For ten years she was a Reader of English Composition Essays and AP Essays in Language and in Literature for The College Board. She is the author of two volumes for high school and college English and Humanities instruction:  Masterpieces of Classic Greek Drama (2005) and Homer and the Homeric Hymns: Mythology for Reading and Composition (2011), has written articles for Arion, Semicerchio, The Classical Journal, Style, and Literary Matters, and recently completed eight adaptations of Aristophanes' comedies for middle school. She received the Sandra Lea Marshall Award at Brearley in 2005, and teaches Brearley's senior Shakespeare elective.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

Grade 6

1 Genesis 1

In which we begin to think about what each word and phrase of a great text implies.

2 The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story Joel Chandler Harris ("Uncle Remus") 7

In which we discover, to our delight, that we know more than we think we know.

3 The Odyssey, Homer 13

In which we find that tiny details contain clues to character.

Grade 7

4 My Last Duchess Robert Browning 19

In which we see the connection between the whole and its parts.

5 Great Expectations Charles Dickens David Lean 25

In which we find, to our regret, that films can't do all the things novels can.

Grade 8

6 The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe 33

In which we talk about sources of sympathy and suspense.

7 Araby James Joyce 41

In which we discover how important setting can be in revealing character and theme.

8 This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Samuel Taylor Coleridge Pied Beauty Gerard Manley Hopkins 51

In which we discover the lyrical possibilities of grammar.

9 On My First Sonne Ben Jonson Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots Mark Twain 66

In which we think about tone, and compare a great poem to an awful one.

10 Twelfth Night William Shakespeare 74

In which we discover the importance of image categories and juxtapositions.

Grade 9

11 No Second Troy William Butler Yeats 82

In which we follow a series of interrogatives in a verse argument.

12 Sonnets 29, 102, and 33 William Shakespeare 87

In which we delight in the beauty of Shakespeare's imagery and think about how sonnets work.

13 Goodfriday, 1613, Riding Westward John Donne 99

In which we look at the structure of Donne's argument and the power of paradox.

14 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 105

In which we distinguish between direct and indirect discourse, and talk about Austen's wit.

Grade 10

15 The House Slave Rita Dove 120

In which we find that good poems can address issues of social justice without stridency.

16 A Good Man Is Hard to Find and The River Flannery O'Connor 124

In which we set aside religious preconceptions in order to consider the beliefs of others.

Grade 11

17 Devotions of a Painter Anthony Hecht Poem Elizabeth Bishop 133

In which we compare two superb ecphrastic poems.

18 Rites and Ceremonies Anthony Hecht 149

In which we discover the searing power of understatement.

19 Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles 161

In which we consider the effect of ritual patterns interrupted.

20 The Death of Ivan Ilych Leo Tolstoy 167

In which we see the genius of Tolstoy's shift in point of view.

21 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 174

In which we assess the protagonist and his love of the beautiful.

22 The Judgment Franz Kafka 182

In which we consider envy, guilt, and dream narrative.

23 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 189

In which we see how essential to meaning stage business can be.

Grade 12

24 Man and Wife Robert Lowell 197

In which we find in rhyme pattern a clue to the whole.

25 Once More to the Lake E. B. White 202

In which we address temporality and its grammatical markers.

26 Notes of a Native Son Tames Baldwin 209

In which we admire Baldwins hrilliant analysis of the sources of hate and bias.

27 Old China Charles Lamb 217

In which we find loss and aging presented with lightness and grace.

28 Hamlet William Shakespeare 222

In which tracing images of war takes us to the play's center.

Grade 12 Special Topics

29 The Iliad, Homer Antony and Cleopatra William Shakespeare 229

In which we contemplate deaths that convey a sense of the sublime.

30 An Imaginary Life David Malouf The Parnas Silvano Arieti 237

In which we discuss the generous endings imagined for real protagonists.

Credits 247

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Helaine L. Smith and Teaching Particulars

“After her forty years of teaching, Smith’s keen understanding of the literary canon makes her the perfect candidate to write this humorous and insightful book." —Foreword Reviews

“Teaching Particulars is an exemplary series of literary conversations by a master teacher on a great variety of important, life-shaping books. The guidance is unfailingly humane, the essays thoughtfully presented by someone who cares as much for the written word as she does about her classroom and her subject matter. Her commentary on Hecht’s ‘Rites and Ceremonies,’ the poet’s complex response to Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land,’ ranks among the very best anywhere, as is true for her reading of Hecht’s ‘Devotions of a Painter,’ which has the further advantage of illuminating that work in light of Elizabeth Bishop’s profound meditation on painting in her ‘Poem.’ Reading Teaching Particulars makes me wish that all of my students could have had Helaine Smith as their teacher.” —Jonathan F. S. Post, Distinguished Professor of English and former Chair of the Department, UCLA

“There’s simply nothing else like Teaching Particulars, a book packed with so much wisdom and practical advice about teaching literature that every instructor of grades 6 to 12—and of college classes, too—will want to get a copy right now. Even if you’re not a teacher, I highly recommend it. The love of books pulses through every page Helaine Smith writes, and her passion is infectious. She opens our eyes to the pleasures of reading in a way that few critics can, and she does it all in a book whose style is both elegant and friendly.” —David Mikics, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English, University of Houston, and author of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

“Teaching Particulars…is a bounteous resource for all teachers, as well as a pleasure just to curl up with and read away.” —Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English, Princeton University

“Helaine Smith is a genius of a teacher: witty, imaginative, precise, intuitive, and gracefully learned. Now anyone who opens her Teaching Particulars can have the rare privilege of learning from her how to read, in the truest sense. It’s never too late to be startled into delight by the power of language, and that is the experience offered on every page of this book. It’s a book not only for the schoolroom, but for the school of life.” —Rosanna Warren, Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor, The Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago

From the Publisher