Elements of Literature: Essay, Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Film - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195060253 ISBN 13: 9780195060256

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Scholes, Research Professor of Modern Culture and Media; Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and Modern Culture and Media; and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Brown University. Carl H. Klaus, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Iowa.
Nancy R. Comley, Chair and Professor of English, Queens College.

Review

"This text assembles, as in earlier editions, 'the best that has been thought and said in the world' of representative works for introducing young, college initiates into the genres older ones of us have come to breathe and love. I am still happy with what it does for my students: it starts
their hearts to palpitate."--L.P. Sego, Indiana State University

"I like the inclusion of essays as a literary form in addition to the usual selection of plays, poems and short fiction."--Ruth Oleson, Huron University

"An extremely well put together collection--very useful for an intro course."--David L. Frey, Medaille College

"A representative reader which is unencumbered with text book apparatus and suitable for a variety of classes ranging from composition to literature for majors."--Beverly Schneller, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

"An excellent selection of stories and novellas and outlines a critical vocabulary for students to use in their discussions. I like it and so do my students."--Aliki Barnstone, Marquette University

"Robert Scholes's text is clearly better than those that cross my desk. The introductory comments are lucid and touch on historically key concepts of critical understanding in form--a necessity for their introductory course. Then the demonstrations of analysis provide my students with models
for their own analysis. Excellent selections--Boccaccio to Borges, Sophocles to Welles! Typeface is beautiful!"--Royce Wicks, Sierra Heights College

"An exceptional text in every way. The correspondence between the essay, film, and other standardized genres is noteworthy. Should become an industry standard based on the critical approaches alone."--Robert R. Hill, Seminole Junior College

"What I like about this text is its comprehensiveness."--H. Bogdan, St. John's University

"I love this anthology!"--Brenda Serotte, Lehman College

"Appropriate for the senior seminar review of literature....A fine work."--Louie W. Attebery, The College of Idaho

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0195060253
• ISBN 13: 9780195060256
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 1632
• Editor: Scholes Robert, Klaus Carl H., Comley Nancy R., Silverman Michael