Challenge yourself with diagrams . . .
*** Analyzing the Grammar of Literature ***
Diagrams of 130 Long Sentences from British and American Writers
This book is, to the best of my knowledge, unlike any other book available. It is not for beginners. It offers 130 sentences gleaned from the works of 57 British and American writers. The shortest sentence in the collection has 70 words, the longest 472. The median length (the length of the sentence right in the middle) is 100 words; to be precise, sentence 65 has 99 words, sentence 66 has 100.
Complete diagrams of all 130 sentences are contained in the last section of the book. Each diagram occupies at least one page of the book; the longest covers four pages. Between the first major section of the book, which contains the sentences to be diagrammed, and the section of complete diagrams you will find in this new edition all 130 diagrams in "bare bone" form, i.e., diagrams consisting of lines only (no words).
Degree of syntactic difficulty played no role in the selection of sentences. Sentence length and author’s literary reputation were the major criteria.
The authors represented in this book are Henry Adams, Matthew Arnold, Jane Austin, James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Samuel Butler, George Washington Cable, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, James Fennimore Cooper, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Goldsmith, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, Washington Irving, William James, Thomas Jefferson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Samuel Johnson, James Joyce, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, James Michener, John Stuart Mill, Cardinal Newman, Edgar Allan Poe, Budd Schulberg, John O'Hara, Sir Walter Scott, Adam Smith, Gertrude Stein, Lawrence Sterne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Thackeray, Henry David Thoreau, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Wolfe, and William Wordsworth.
Teachers purchasing a copy of this book may photocopy all or some of its pages for free distribution to their students.
Analyzing the Grammar of Literature has 349 8 1/2" x 11" pages; it has a soft cover. The pages are not photocopies but have been printed from digital files for sharper letters and lines. The price of the book is $27, which includes handling and media-mail shipment within the United States. Multiple copies cost slightly less. If you want to buy one or more copies of this book, please email me at ermoutoux@juno.com. I will send you my address and you can then mail me a check or money order (no cash or credit card numbers, please). Don't forget to include the address to which you want the book or books sent. Shipment is expected to take four to seven days.
July 2013
Click here to see an introductory page.
Click here to see several sentences.
Click here to see a "bare bones" diagram.
Click here to see a complete diagram.