The Norton Introduction to Literature

This item is Out of Print

The Norton Introduction to Literature, Media Version, offers the same exceptional selection of classic and contemporary stories, poems, and plays as the regular edition in an innovative multimedia format. In the Media Version, the contextual approach to literature is enhanced by ten illustrated slideshows, 50 literary workshops, color-coded MLA citation guidelines, citation practice drills, a brief guide to writing research papers, and an interactive tutorial on avoiding plagiarism.

With these new media resources, two new Exploring Contexts chapters, refreshed pedagogy and writing help, and 54 new selections, The Norton Introduction to Literature is more flexible and attractive than ever.

Diverse New Selections

The Media Version presents a significantly expanded selection of classic and contemporary works. In addition to 383 poems (42 of which are new) and 18 plays (4 new), the anthology offers a field-leading selection of 67 short stories (13 of which are new). This uniquely inclusive selection of stories includes classic favorites alongside exciting contemporary authors such as Sherman Alexie, Michael Chabon, A. S. Byatt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Peter Carey, Andrea Barrett, and Edwidge Danticat.

New Contextual Chapters

The Media Version offers two new contextual chapters focusing on aspects of African American and African history and culture. These chapters provide students with an abundance of textual and visual material to encourage and facilitate research, writing, and discussion. Cultural and Historical Contexts in the Poetry section focuses on the Harlem Renaissance. Providing a compact and teachable selection of some of the best-known poems from this exciting movement, this chapter also includes illuminating prose pieces by Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Rudolph Fisher, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as many visual resources. Cultural and Historical Contexts in the Drama section focuses on two plays—Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. A substantial introduction, complete with photos and other visuals, sets the historical and cultural stage. A selection of essays follows the plays.

Completely Revised Pedagogy

The Media Version offers a completely revised suite of pedagogical elements designed to help students read, think about, and write about literature as creatively and analytically as possible. In addition to revising editorial introductions, the editors have re-written all end-of-selection questions and writing suggestions, selected all new student writing examples, added visual resources, and completely rewritten the anthology’s guide to writing about literature. To encourage students to use the media resources that accompany the text, this edition uses CD and WEB icons to point to works featured on the Audio Companion and the Student Web Site.

Free Access to Norton Literature Online

Every new copy of The Norton Introduction to Literature, Media Version, comes with free access to Norton Literature Online, the gateway to all the outstanding literature resources from Norton. 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.

Multimedia CD-ROM

Using images, sounds, and exercises, this multimedia CD-ROM shows students how literature connects to the world around them, and how working with that connection can help them read and write about literature with increased skill and understanding.

Ten “Making Connections” slideshows encourage students to see literature through diverse lenses. Discussion questions and writing prompts after each slideshow inspire students to connect literary works to a broader historical, cultural, or literary context:

1. Dangerous Literature: From The Satanic Verses to Harry Potter
2. Literature and War
3. Sister Arts: Words and Images
4. Getting the Allusion: Religion and Myth, History and Legend
5. Literature and Popular Culture: The Strange Case of Detective Fiction
6. The Play’s the Thing: Production and Performance
7. Literature and the Law
8. East and West, North and South: Encounters in the Americas
9. The Author’s Work as Context: Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich
10. Literary Travel and the Sense of Space

The CD-ROM also offers 50 enhanced literary workshops that hone students’ close-reading, analytical, and writing skills through a detailed three-part process: reading, re-reading, and contextual exploration. These workshops raise thought-provoking issues and serve as stepping-stones for critical papers. Color-coded MLA citation guidelines, citation practice drills, a brief guide to writing research papers, and an interactive tutorial on avoiding plagiarism complete this useful tool.

Audio Companion

This two-CD companion to The Norton Introduction to Literature is free of charge with every copy of the Media Version. The Audio Companion is a collection of readings, comprised of 28 poems, 4 short stories, and selections from 3 plays, including Eudora Welty reading Why I Live at the P.O., Garrison Keillor reading poems by Christopher Marlowe and Emily Dickinson, Lynn Redgrave and Michael Redgrave in a scene from Pygmalion, Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral read by Peter Riegert; as well as many other authors reading their own works, including Maya Angelou, Willie Perdomo, Dylan Thomas, and Michael S. Harper.

Teaching Poetry: A Handbook of Exercises for Large and Small Classes

Informed by Professor Gedalof’s considerable poetry-teaching experience, this practical handbook offers a wide variety of innovative in-class exercises designed to enliven classroom discussion. Each of these flexible teaching exercises includes straightforward, step-by-step guidelines and suggestions for variation. Free to adopters.

Instructor’s Manual

This thorough guide offers discussions of nearly all the works in the anthology as well as advice for instructors who teach writing through literature.

Video Cassettes and DVDs

Video Cassettes or DVDs of most of the plays in the anthology are available to qualified adopters.

Norton Resource Library

Additional materials available on this password-protected instructor site include:

A free, customizable Blackboard/ WebCT coursepack featuring:

• Bulleted summaries of the fiction, poetry, and drama sections
• Multiple-choice quizzes on the elements of fiction, poetry, and drama
• Multiple-choice quizzes on selected widely-taught individual works of fiction and drama included in the anthology
• Short answer questions on selected widely-taught poems (with suggested answers in the instructor view)
• Glossary flashcards
• Bulleted summaries of the Writing about Literature chapters
• Multiple-choice quizzes on the Writing about Literature chapters
• Tutorials on research writing and on avoiding plagiarism.