GENERATING IDEAS 621
Considering Expectations 621 • Exploring Your Topic 625 Achieving Subtlety 628
STRUCTURING IDEAS 633
Thesis Statements 634 • Introductions 638 • Transitions 641 Conclusions 646
SUPPORTING IDEAS 649
Supporting Claims with Evidence 650 • Logos: Appeals to Logic and Reason 652 • Pathos: Appeals to Emotion 661 • Ethos: The Writer's Appeal 663 • Anticipating Counterarguments 666
SYNTHESIZING IDEAS 668
Summarizing Multiple Sources 669 • Comparing and
Contrasting 670 • Finding Themes and Patterns 672 • Synthesizing
Ideas to Form Your Own Argument 676
INCORPORATING IDEAS 681
Finding Sources 682 • Evaluating Sources 684 • Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing 685 • Documenting Sources 690 Documentation Styles 692 • Sample Documented Essay (MLA Format) 698
REVISING AND EDITING 702
Rethinking 703 • Rewriting 704 • Editing 705 • Revising and Editing Checklist 706
Credits 709 Index 713
Preface
ROM THE START Reading the World: Ideas That Matter has been based on a simple premise: that the great-ideas tradition is fully compatible with the objectives of multiculturalism. To me, this has always seemed obvious. Great ideas are not the exclusive province of any culture, or of any historical epoch. Understanding diversity—really understanding it—requires us to understand the great ideas that have formed diverse societies. And overcoming prejudice requires us to see the essential sameness between our own experiences and those that seem alien to us. By exploring the most important and influential ideas of a variety of human cultures, we can accomplish both objectives.
In the world of contemporary writing instruction, however, these two approaches have come to be seen as, if not quite antithetical, at least incompatible. Multicultural readers largely confine themselves to twentieth- and twenty-first-century issues and readings, while great-ideas readers focus almost exclusively on Western traditions. Those who argue in favor of a multicultural approach to teaching reading and writing often find themselves—in the textbook debates for which English departments are justly famous—on the other side of the table from those who value a rigorous introduction to the great-ideas tradition. Reading the World places itself, squarely and unapologetically, on both sides of the table.
I have been extremely gratified by the responses to Reading the World: Ideas That Matter. Since it first appeared, I have heard from many instructors who have used the book and a number of students who have benefitted from its unique approach. What has gratified me the most is the number of readers who have "gotten it," who have understood the power of the two approaches that I have tried to combine in this textbook. I believe now more than ever in both the importance and the viability of a meaningfully multicultural, intellectually rigorous introduction to the intellectual traditions of the world's cultures.
Like earlier editions, the new edition groups its reading into chapters devoted to universal themes. Several possible chapter groupings are purposely absent. The book does not have, for example, a chapter called "Religion," but not because religion is unimportant in the world's intellectual traditions—quite the opposite. Religion has been so important to the development of ideas that its influence can be seen across the spectrum of human thought. Reading the World attempts to show this influence by presenting the ideas of the world's great religions and religious leaders in every chapter of the book. Likewise, Reading the World includes no chapter titled "Women" or "Feminism." To include such a chapter would, in my view, suggest that women writers have limited themselves to a narrow set of issues. Women have written about all the issues covered by this book; therefore, women writers appear in all of its sections. Every chapter in Reading the World has been carefully constructed to incorporate multiple perspectives on a particular theme.
English translations of many texts in this volume vary greatly. I have tried to maintain consistency among the different translations while, at the same time, remaining faithful to the original sources. In some cases, however, fidelity seemed more important to the goals of this book than consistency. Thus, the translated texts include some minor variations in spelling, accenting, diacritic marks, and other types of punctuation. Similarly, all British spellings and punctuation have been retained in translated and nontranslated texts.
HIGHLIGHTS
The third edition of Reading the World includes a number of new and updated texts. In deciding which texts to add and which to retire, I have been guided by the feedback that I have received from both instructors and students who have used the first two editions. Some of this feedback has been very specific—comments about the ways that specific texts have worked in a classroom setting. Much of it, though, fits into several large patterns that I have tried to address in the third edition. Among the changes that readers will find are the following:
A new chapter, "The Arts," explores our appreciation of art—and seeks to understand our fascination with it. With selections from Boethius, Murasaki Shikibu, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Walker, and more, this chapter explores music, painting, poetry, novels, aesthetics, and other ways that human beings have exercised their desire to create.
An expanded chapter, "Human Nature and the Mind," highlights the role of the mind in fashioning human nature. A drawing from Carl Jung's The Red Book and an excerpt from Daniel Kahneman's bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow are two examples of this chapter's exploration of our attempts to understand the mind in all its complexity.
More selections by women: Selections by women have always been important to Reading the World. In the third edition, they have become more important than ever.
New readings from important women across time and culture include selections from Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Virginia Woolf, Zeynep Tufekci, and Nobel Prize winners Wangari Maathai and Tawakkol Karman.
More readings from contemporary authors: Along with the classical texts and influential ideas from across the spectrum of human cultures, the new edition includes more recent texts from such influential thinkers as Martha Nussbaum, Joseph Stiglitz, Vandana Shiva, and Elaine Scarry.
I believe that these changes will help students get more out of their experience with the new ideas that they will encounter in Reading the World. The essential features of the book remain unchanged and include
Challenging texts made accessible: The detailed editorial apparatus in Reading the World will guide students through the process of reading and writing about sophisticated texts and ideas. Chapter introductions begin with a single question that all of the selections in a chapter are responding to in some way. These introductions set out the major issues and concerns that each chapter deals with and situate each reading in a bigger overall scheme. Text headnotes offer necessary historical contextual information about the authors and texts. Explanatory footnotes describe unfamiliar terms, concepts, and references in the selections. Study questions prompt students to think about the major ideas in each selection, consider the elements of writing, and think about how texts interact. And writing suggestions prompt creative, analytical, and comparative responses.