Great Books on the Internet

Great Books on the Internet Dave Andrews Heather Caddell Sara Jones

Contents • Overview • Great Books on the Web • Case Studies • Research and Interpretation

Overview With the dawn of the age where most everything can be accessed through the Internet, literature is becoming widely available. As opposed to buying several books, a computer will suffice as a library of works. If the interest grows to read Macbeth, navigating the web can get the work for you along with notes or research on the text. Great Books on the Internet displays sites, which contain full text and how to research great books, for those who want to discover the library contained in your computer.

Great Books on the Web There are thousands of internet sights that provide full text versions of classic literature, and even some that have contemporary literature. I have picked three sights that I feel do a particularly good job in organizing and making these books easily accessible to the average computer user.

This is a company that sells books, but it also has an extensive library of full texts online separated into categories, such as fiction, non-fiction and reference. It is organized by author and then by individual works. The works are split into chapters which makes the whole site functional and easy to use. http://www.bartleby.com

http://www.literature.org/ • Although this site has less of a selection as the previous one, it is organized quite well and easy to use. • Each full text version is in an easily readable font and formatted so the text doesn’t fill the entire screen. • I picked this site for it’s conducive reading conditions.

http://www.concordance.com/ • Although this site is not as esthetically pleasing as the first two, it has a wide variety of ways to search for the text you are looking for. • Once the text is chosen there are many ways to choose which part of the book you would like to read. For example, instead of just picking a chapter, key words can be typed in to read about a certain theme in the text.

Case Studies • Macbeth • The Grapes of Wrath • Beloved

Macbeth http://www.macbethessays.com/ As was stated earlier in this presentation, sometimes you just can’t trust what you will get off of the web. When I started my search for Macbeth, I was looking for sites that might have some kind of critical essays about the play. Instead, I got this site which offers to let you buy mediocre (at best) essays right off of the Internet. At least, for those of us who are above purchasing our homework, the site did offer some pointers on writing an essay, should you actually choose to do it the old fashioned way. These pointers were good ones to follow, but they were also ones that have been drilled into our head since Junior High. The bottom-line? Don’t waste your time, it certainly won’t tell you anything new.

Macbeth http://students.roanoke.edu/t/tnunez/MACBETHomepage.html This website was actually pretty good at giving information about the play, Shakespeare, and the time frame in general. Background information is given over the actual person Macbeth, as well as historical information about the play itself. There is also a section that deals with witches and the role they play within the piece. This includes links to related web sites as well as specific references to witches from within the play. One of the main features that I really enjoyed about this website was the fact that it gave information on the history of Scotland and its clans. Each character is listed according to which clan they belong to in the play. An example of their tartan is also given and a description about the clan itself. I never saw any information like this on the other websites I examined, and thought that it was a very unique way to approach the play. There is also a final section within this site that is devoted to art that is inspired by Shakespeare. This is a good opportunity to gather pictures for a presentation or simply to enjoy some one else’s interpretation of a beautiful piece of literature. Several good links are given throughout this site and the information is arranged in a way that is both attractive to the eye and easy to follow.

Macbeth http://library.thinkquest.org/2888/ This site was very impressive and contained quite a wealth of information. It even begins with a forward that provides instructions for optimum use of the site. This site contains the entire text of the play and it can be linked to through various acts and scenes as well as read straight through. To help aid in the reading of the piece, a glossary is provided as well as various links which lead to discussions of themes and so forth. Reviews of several different editions of the play are also available to make sure that you select the copy that would be best suited to your needs. This site is a total multi media presentation that incorporates text as well as pictures, audio excerpts, and scene videos. There is also an interactive zone where you can post any questions or information that you may have about the play. These will then be responded to by the “Macbeth Discussion Board,” as well as others who may be enjoying the site. Finally, this site provides a lengthy list of other sites as well as a small abstract about what they include within them. Several of these links also seemed to prove worth while and would probably be helpful to research.

The Grapes of Wrath http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/steinbec/srchome.html This web site turned out to be the official site for the San Jose State College’s Center for Steinbeck Studies. As a result, roughly about half of it deals with the classes and administration of the center. However, there is still valuable information to be gained from here. One of the main things that I liked about this site was that interpretations of its text are available in French or Spanish as well. This would allow people who were not native English speakers to also access the information presented. As far as content is concerned, there are a few areas which might prove to be helpful. There is a list provided of Steinbeck’s life works along with the year in which they were published. Also, there is a fairly detailed biography of his life which includes time lines, pictures, and other visual aids. Several recommended web sites are also given. Many of which seemed to be fairly developed sites with good information.

The Grapes of Wrath http://www.teachwithmovies.com/guides/grapes-of-wrath.html My first impulse upon encountering this site was to simply leave it and explore another. After looking at it for a few minutes, however, I decided that it might actually be of some value, particularly for teaching majors. Obviously the subject of this web site is using movies in the classroom. Here, the example is the Grapes of Wrath. The site starts out by giving basic information about the movie such as who starred in it, what year it was made, etc. Then, however, it goes on to list the benefits that would and the possible problems that might occur if the film were to be shown. Helpful background information is also given as to the historical context of the movie and the piece from which the film is based, in this case, Steinbeck’s novel. The themes of the piece are explored in detail and several other pieces of literature or film which share parallel themes are suggested. Finally, at the end of the site we are given a list of discussion questions that a teacher may wish to ask her class. I thought that these could be especially helpful if someone was trying to develop a lesson plan.

The Grapes of Wrath http://www.go.com./WebDir/Arts_and_Humanities/Books_and_ Literature/All_authors/S_U/Steinbeck_John/Grapes_of_ Wrath_The This web page is helpful and short. It doesn’t have any real information on the piece, it is simply a list of web pages that are related to Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath. Many of these proved to be helpful and all of the sites provided seemed to be of the more academic variety.

The Grapes of Wrath http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/grapes.html\ This page was by far the best that I could find on Steinbeck and his novel. In fact, I think it was one of the best sites that I have ever come across for any novel. The thing is absolutely huge! There are several special features included in this site. One of these is the fact that a summary is given of the piece, but it is very detailed and can be linked to by chapter. This breaking down of the book into smaller segments creates room for a lot more detail. Also, if you are focusing on a particular portion of the novel, you don’t have to scroll through everything else to reach it. There is also a forum area available where questions or comments can be posted and responded to. From the amount of material in there, it seemed that the place was actually pretty busy.

The Grapes of Wrath One of the neatest features of this web site was that besides having several critical essays and discussions of theme available, it actually provided a format for which to write a paper. There are several different topics which are given such as “imagery” and when you select one, it will link you to an outline that will have questions already arranged in a nice, coherent package. While it is obviously not necessary to follow the outline, the questions that they contain are very good starting points when you are beginning to write your paper. There is also a section in which one can read a variety of book reviews over the novel and see what the critics thought of Steinbeck’s work when it was first published. A variety of other links provide historical information on the author as well as the piece, and even explore various related topics such as the Depression, Woody Guthrie, and Operation Grapes of Wrath. Various links to other Internet web sites are also provided.

The Grapes of Wrath http://www.awerty.addr.com/grapes2.html This site would be helpful in gathering background information. It provides character overviews as well as a fairly detailed summary of the plot. One of the things that I thought made this site stand out a little is the fact that it has a section for commentary in which some of the writing techniques are given attention

Beloved http://www.az.com/~andrade/morrison/start.html This site was fairly decent for being a non academic site. It is posted by a fan of Morrison’s, and she makes a point of stating that she is not an authority. However, the site does examine the use of symbolism in the text of Beloved with suporting citations from the text itself. Also, there is a list of frequently asked questions which she responds to rather well. The bottom line? This site is a good one to get your wheels turning about the book. If you are doing an official academic paper, however, you might want to find a source with more credibility.

Beloved http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/beloved.htm There wasn’t much meat to this site, unfortunately. A few critical essays are provided which offer a pretty good insight into the text. The only thing that I really considered worthwhile, however, were that the links this site offers to other sites are pretty decent and would probably yield more information than this site.

Beloved http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~mmaynard/Morrison/biograph.html This was one of the better sites that I found over Beloved. For starters, this was the first site that I ran across that actually had personal background information on Morrison herself. Also, there are a number of critical reviews available over her works that could prove useful in research. There is also a section that gives historical information into the background of Beloved, as well as a time line showing major events in history that would have happened around the time the novel would have taken place. Several parallel themes are also discussed and are explored using citations from the text as well as other sources. Internet links are also given to other sites that might yield information.

Beloved http://wcuvax1. Wcu.edu./~amiller/smith/Bio.htm This site also includes a personal biography into the life of Toni Morrison. Internet links are also provided to other sites containing biographical information. A brief overview of the book itself is also given along with other site links about the actual piece. However, neither set of links is something to wrote home about.

Beloved http://www.homework-online.com/beloved/index.asp This was an incredibly good site with lots of useful information. A detailed summary is presented of the novel along with an extensive character analysis. There is also a lengthy section which examines many of the complex themes which weave in and out of the novel. Likewise, there is also a section that is dedicated to the use of symbols in the piece as well as the structure of it as a whole. These areas not only delve deeper into the text than most of the other sites, but they provide a really unique outlook on the book itself. Another feature that I really enjoyed was the fact that there is an entire section that is devoted to Morrison’s writing style and structure, which is an area that most of the other sites just barely touched on.

Research and Interpretation The Internet, besides being the place to check your e-mail, can be extremely useful when trying to gather information about great books. Most books have some site dedicated to help you further your knowledge about what you had read or what you want to read. Going to any search engine and typing in the name of the book can lead you to many sites that could either be the site you were looking for or something totally unrelated to Moby Dick, but rather a site that should be blocked by Parental Control. The problem with researching great books on the Internet is sorting through the helpful and the helpless. When going to research on a novel on the Internet, the usual guidelines should be followed such as: .org, .gov, and .edu are usually more reliable sources, always check why the site is in existence, and who is the author. It is easy to find a commercial site that is a homepage of your best friend’s high school brother that contains a work copied from another website word for word on the criticism of Moby Dick being a symbol for soap. Basing your central argument on these findings don’t quite hold up. There are good sites out there and finding them doesn’t require a day of surfing, but just a careful and judgmental eye.

Useful Sites for Research These following sites are all excellent sites in helping you research a great book on the Internet. http://lang.nagoya-.ac.jp/~matsuoka/AmeLit.html http://www.novelguide.com/novelanalysis.html http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/asw/lit.html#litcrit http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/authors.html http://www.teleport.com/~mgroves/index.shtml http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/index.html http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/.dir/