The book contains 70 stories
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or even in half a meeting. In addition, both plays deal with con- temporary themes of great student interest. Andre’s Mother is about the death of a young man from AIDS and Sure Thing is a hu- morous romantic encounter between two young people.
• New chapters devoted to student writing. Three new chap- ters—“Students Writing about Stories,” “Students Writing about Poems,” and “Students Writing about Plays”—offer several student papers in addition to those found throughout the text.The selec- tions featured in the papers are those that are most frequently as- signed. These papers also provide helpful examples for writing about the literary elements.
• Increased emphasis on student writing. An Introduction to Literature now offers more student essays than any comparable anthology.The 15th edition includes student essays in the writing process chapters at the front of the book, in the casebooks, and in the new chapters described above.The new essays are annotated and include writing prompts to show how to move from assign- ment to essay. These student samples give instructors and stu- dents a rich reservoir of models to choose from.
• Increased attention to literature and film. We now discuss film as a medium, and we offer extensive suggestions for experi- encing and writing about a film derived from a story or play.
ABOUT THE LITERATURE
• Canonical works. The book contains 70 stories, 280 poems, and 14 plays. About a third of the selections are canonical works that for many decades—in some cases even centuries—have given readers great pleasure.Writers such as Sophocles, Shakespeare,Walt Whitman,and Emily Dickinson have stood the test of time, including the test of today’s students enrolled in introductory courses in liter- ature and composition. No editor and no instructor need apologize for asking students to read, think, and write about these authors. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S.Eliot makes the point well: “Someone said, ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.”
• A new canon.The remaining two-thirds of the selections are con- temporary material, some of it by writers who established their reputations several decades ago (for instance, John Updike and Alice Walker), but much of it by writers who are still young (for in- stance, Amy Tan and Lorrie Moore). We have tried to read widely in today’s writing, and we think we have found important new sto-
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