Literature, the human experience

The Fourth Edition of Literature: The Human Experience offers a rich collec- tion of fiction, poetry, and drama. Its 33 short stories, 4 novellas, 190 poems, and 13 plays are arranged in four thematic sections and, within each section, by genre, chronologically. Selections range from the classics of antiquity and the Renaissance to works published during the past five years, and they represent a careful balance of American, British, and non-English- language authors. Among the new features in the Fourth Edition: • expanded drama sections, offering 5 new plays, by Molière, August Strindberg, Sean O'Casey, Arthur Miller, and Arthur Kopit • 8 new works of fiction, including stories by Grace Paley, Ursula Le Guin, Arna Bontemps, Alice Walker, Alice Munro, and Bobbie Ann Mason • 18 new poems, including selections by Anne Sexton, Muriel Rukeyser, Denise Levertov, David Kirby, Carolyn Forché, Kathleen Cushman, and Mary Gordon • increased opportunities throughout the anthology for students to write about literature --back cover

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.