Literature in the News: These contemporary newspaper, magazine, and journal accounts of literary events and controversies demonstrate that literature is alive and well in the modern world--that, as Pound once noted, "literature is news that stays news."
New Voices sections showcase two writers in each genre who are writing new works today, reinforcing to students that literature is a living art:
Fiction: Maile Meloy and Timothy A. Westmoreland
Poetry: Kay Ryan and Simon Armitage
Drama: Mary Gallagher and Warren Leight
Eight Authors in Context: These sections offer textual and visual introductions to the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Ibsen. The sections on Poe, O'Connor, Dickinson, Frost, and Hughes also include selections from the work of writers they have inspired.
Transformations: Robert DiYanni pioneered the dicussion of art that inspires literature and in Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama he has expanded that discussion. Chapter 10: Transformations features poems and paintings that have inspired each other; works of satire, along with the writing that they satirize, and early drafts of well-known poems that reveal the creative process.
16 Plays: In addition to two plays by Shakespeare--The Tragedy of Othello and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark--the drama section includes: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; August Wilson, Fences; Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly; Mary Gallagher, Brother; and Susan Glaspell, Trifles.
Poetry of the World: offers students an introduction to the poetic traditions of other cultures in this collection of poems in translation by writers from 20 countries.
Author Portraits: Fiction authors, playwrights, and all poets represented by two or more poems are introduced with a brief biographical sketch and a photograph or portrait.
Hardcover Version Available:Literature: Approaches is also available in a durable cloth-bound version (ISBN: 0-07-288184-4).
Three Part Structure: Robert DiYanni is best known for his three-step approach to reading and understanding literature that helps students appreciate the connection between literature and their lives. The text asks students to do the following:
experience literature, or reflect on what it means to them and how it makes them feel; and, finally,
interpret literature (with the help of Literature's comprehensive introductions to the elements of fiction, poetry, and drama);
evaluate literature, or form judgments about aesthetic, social, cultural, political and other values that the work reflects or embodies.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education