Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

The expert team of Ann Charters and Samuel Charters join forces to provide college and university students with a thorough resource in their textbook Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, ISBN 9780312556419. This book integrates a wide variety of renowned stories, poems, and plays along with a myriad of useful commentaries about the literature from the writers themselves. This conversational style challenges students to respond to literature effectively and actually 'join the conversations' taking place in the book. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters strategically lay out the concepts, reading selections, and commentaries included in Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama across four sections and 28 chapters. This book begins with a section entitled 'Introduction: Connecting with Literature' followed by part 1 delving into 'Fiction.' This section provides a glimpse into short stories, elements of fiction, the art of the story, stories and storytellers, as well as commentaries and conversations on stories and storytellers. Selections and commentaries are included from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, Sherman Alexie, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, and Amy Tan. Part 2 devotes itself to 'Poetry' with chapters discussing the elements of poetry, different forms of poetry, reading, thinking, and writing about poetry, poets speaking out, conversations on modern traditions in poetry, as well as commentaries and conversations on poetry and poets. Renowned works are included in these chapters from poets including Marianne Moore, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Bruce Springsteen, Lewis Carroll, Emily Bronte, John Keats, and William Shakespeare. 'Drama' is the topic of choice in part 3. These chapters present readers with a look at the elements of drama, reading, thinking, and writing about drama, plays and playwrights, commentaries and conversations on plays and playwrights. Selections and writers featured in this section include Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, and Arthur Miller. The concluding section of this book is that of part 4 which presents strategies for 'Writing About Literature.'