student analyzing a
30 A Collection of Plays 1383 Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman 1384
A Context for Death of a Salesman 1452 Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common
Man 1452 Luis Valdez, Los Vendidos 1456
A Context for Los Vendidos 1465 Luis Valdez, The Actos 1465 Jane Martin, Rodeo 1467 August Wilson, Fences 1471
A Context for Fences 1521 August Wilson, Talking about Fences 1521
David Ives, Sure Thing 1523 Terrence McNally, Andre’s Mother 1532
P A R T V
Critical Perspectives 1535
31 Critical Approaches: The Nature of Criticism 1536 Formalist (or New) Criticism 1537 Deconstruction 1539 Reader-Response Criticism 1540 Archetypal (or Myth) Criticism 1543 Historical Scholarship 1544 Marxist Criticism 1545 The New Historicism 1545
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Biographical Criticism 1546 Psychological (or Psychoanalytic) Criticism 1547 Gender (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay) Criticism 1548 Suggestions for Further Reading 1555
Appendix A: Remarks about Manuscript Form 1559 Basic Manuscript Form 1559 Corrections in the Final Copy 1560 Quotations and Quotation Marks 1561 Quotations Marks or Underlining? 1563 A Note on the Possessive 1563 Documentation 1564 What to Document: Avoiding Plagiarism 1564 Footnotes 1565 Internal Parenthetical Citations 1566 Parenthetical Citations and List of Works Cited 1567 Forms of Citation in Works Cited 1569 Checklist: Citing Sources on the World Wide Web 1575 MLA General Conventions 1576 Documentation: Footnotes, Internal Parenthetical Citations,
and a List of Works Cited (MLA format) 1565 Citing Sources on the World Wide Web 1575
Appendix B: Writing Essay Examinations 1580 Why Do Instructors Give Examinations? 1580 Getting Ready 1580 Writing Essay Answers 1581
Appendix C: Glossary of Literary Terms 1584 Photo Credits 1595 Literary Credits 1597 Index of Terms 1609 Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines of Poems 1615
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P R E F A C E
An Introduction to Literature, Fifteenth Edition, begins with three intro- ductory chapters concerning reading, thinking, and writing (drawing on stories and poems ranging from “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” to works by Robert Frost, Grace Paley, Lorna Dee Cervantes, José Armas, Jamaica Kincaid,Tobias Wolff,and Lydia Davis).The book then offers an an- thology arranged by genre (stories, poems, plays). This genre anthology, like the introductory chapters, includes ample material to help students become active readers and careful, engaged writers.
NEW TO THIS EDITION
• New Chapter 2 puts students at ease. The chapter opens with some engaging quotations (“Edna Ferber said that writing ‘is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill, and childbirth’”) and then quickly moves to give an example of a student analyzing and writing about a very short story.This snap- shot of the reading and writing process gives students an easy-to- comprehend “how to” approach to their own writing.
• Seventeen new stories. We have restored several classics asked for by instructors including Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery,” D. H. Lawrence,“The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” and Ambrose Bierce,“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” We have also added very recent stories by contemporary writers Chris Adrian and Lydia Davis.
• Thirty new poems. As in Fiction, we are adding instructor fa- vorites including:Billy Collins,“The Names,”Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Constantly Risking Absurdity,” Thomas Hardy,“The Ruined Maid,” John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” Linda Pastan,“Baseball,” William Carlos Williams,“The Artist,” Edgar Allan Poe,“To Helen,” and Shihab Nye,“The Traveling Onion.”Also newly included are poems from Linda Pastan and Dan Chiasson.
• Two new one-act plays about contemporary themes. David Ives’s Sure Thing and Terrence McNally’s Andre’s Mother are one- act plays that allow instructors to teach a play in a single meeting
