The Norton Anthology of American Literature
Volume E: American Literature since 1945
There are several anthologies of American literature. Only one is a Norton.
Firmly grounded in the core strengths that have made it the best-selling undergraduate survey in the field, The Norton Anthology of American Literature has been revitalized in this Seventh Edition through the collaboration between three new period editors and five seasoned ones. Under Nina Baym's direction, the editors have considered afresh each selection and all the apparatus to make the anthology an even better teaching tool.
Free Norton Critical Editions
Package The Norton Anthology of American Literature with any Norton Critical Edition at no extra charge. Contact your Account Representative for more information and the complete list of 189 titles, including such frequently assigned novels as Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, among many others. Each Norton Critical Edition gives students an authoritative, carefully annotated text accompanied by rich contextual and critical materials.
37 Complete Longer Works
The Seventh Edition includes more complete major works than any other anthology of American literature. Nine of these appear for the first time: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography; Hannah Foster, The Coquette; Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave (never before in a survey anthology); Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; Abraham Cahan, The Imported Bridegroom; Willa Cather, My Antonia; Raymond Chandler, Red Wind; Sam Shepard, True West; Louise Glück, October.
34 New Authors; Strengthened Classic Writers
With 34 new writers represented in depth, the Seventh Edition offers greater diversity, notably of works by women writers and writers of many ethnic, racial, and regional origins. At the same time, it provides expanded representation of many central figures—Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson, among others. Headnotes for these and many other frequently-assigned writers have been rewritten to reflect the changes in selections.
Lecture-Length Contextual Clusters
The Seventh Edition introduces twelve in-text clusters that illuminate cultural, historical, intellectual, and literary concerns. Bringing into conversation markedly diverse voices—48 new to the anthology—on compelling topics such as “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature” or “Writing in a Time of Terror: September 11, 2001,” these carefully constructed clusters are designed to be taught in a class period or two. Cluster headnotes, as well as “Teaching Strategy” sections in the Instructor’s Guide, suggest ways that the selections can work together as a unit.
Newly merged “American Literature since 1945”
A major organizational change, “American Literature since 1945” for the first time combines poetry and prose to give a more accurate presentation of the writers themselves, many of whom wrote in multiple genres. A substantially revised period introduction and refreshed headnotes provide a more nuanced, vital picture of the postwar literary scene.
Reconsidered Native American Traditions
Two new clusters—“Native Americans: Contact and Conflict (1700-1820)” and “Native Americans: Struggle and Survival (1820-1865)”—provide a more coherent framework for teaching early Native oratory and writing. In addition, the Seventh Edition offers more works by Native women writers, with two new writers, Sarah Winnemucca and Jane Johnson Schoolcraft, and expanded selections by Zitkala-Sa.
Color Plates
The Seventh Edition features forty pages of color plates in five new color inserts. More than 50 images—paintings, engravings, architecture, photography, textiles, site-specific art—relate to and cross-reference literary works in the anthology. In addition, new graphic works—a segment from Art Spiegelman’s canonical graphic novel Maus and from the colonial children’s classic, The New-England Primer, a facsimile page from Eliot’s The Waste Land, a facsimile page of Emily Dickinson manuscript, an original illustration from Twain’s Roughing It—open possibilities for teaching visual texts.
Extensively Revised Apparatus
Period introductions, headnotes, footnotes, and bibliographies in the Seventh Edition have been extensively updated to reflect recent scholarship and in some cases rewritten to be clearer and more accessible to undergraduate readers. Thousands of annotations and glosses have been fine-tuned. Selected Bibliographies have been thoroughly updated, and General Resources Bibliographies categorized by Reference Works, Histories, and Literary Criticism, have been added for every period.
Student Web Site
Completely redesigned for the Seventh Edition, the Student Web Site features a wealth of material for study and review, including:
- New 6 Contextual Clusters Prepared by Bruce Michelson, these clusters augment the in-text Contextual Clusters, helping students draw connections among authors and literary periods and explore broader questions in cultural and historical context. Each cluster includes illustrations, annotated links, and questions for writing and discussion.
- New Quizzes on Individual Works In addition to updated period summaries and review quizzes, these self-grading quizzes allow students to test their understanding of 50 of the most widely taught works in the anthology.
Norton Literature Online
Norton Literature Online provides students with the most robust offering of literature resources on the Web, including an extensive glossary of literary terms, a valuable “Writing about Literature” section, MLA documentation guidelines, links to textbook-specific sites that include student review materials, and much more. In addition to general tools for reading and writing, the site features a gallery of nearly 400 author portraits, more than 100 maps, timelines, and dozens of recorded readings and musical selections. Access to Norton Literature Online is free with new copies of the anthology.
American Passages: A Literary Survey
American Passages: A Literary Survey features a searchable online archive of over 3,000 items, including visual art, audio files, primary-source materials, and additional texts to support and enrich the understanding of American literature. Students can also use a slide-show tool to create their own multimedia presentations.
Course Guide
This much-praised guide opens with detailed reading lists for a variety of approaches—the historical approach, the "major authors" approach, the literary traditions approach, the approach by genre or theme. Each author/work entry offers teaching suggestions and Discussion Questions. A chapter of sample essay topics and exam questions completes the guide.
New Web-CT/BlackBoard Coursepack
Suitable for traditional and distance learning courses, this useful tool offers quizzes on both period introductions and 60 widely taught individual works, period lecture outlines, image-based assignments, and more. These password-protected materials are available at the Norton Resource Library.
New Instructor DVD-ROM
This disc is designed for instructors to use in classroom presentations. Organized by period, it includes over 250 images and maps that may be incorporated into your own PowerPoint presentations or displayed as slideshows on a television or screen connected to a DVD player.
Free Video Offer
Instructors who adopt The Norton Anthology of American Literature have access to an extensive array of films and videos. In addition to videos of the plays by O’Neill, Williams, and Miller in the anthology, segments of the award-winning video series American Passages: A Literary Survey are available without charge on orders of specified quantities of the Norton Anthology. Funded by Annenberg/CPB, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, and developed with the Norton Anthology as its exclusive companion anthology, American Passages contains sixteen segments, each covering a literary period by exploring two or three authors in depth. Original interviews with writers and scholars, archival interviews, archival footage, still images, music, and reading by contemporary authors and by professional voice talent bring the work, its language, and its context to life. A rich website, instructor’s guide, and student guide are also available.
