Literature (11th edition) by Kennedy and Gioia

Publisher: Longman
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Product Description

The most popular introductory anthology of its kind, Kennedy/Gioia’s Literature continues to inspire people with engaging insights on reading and writing about stories, poems, and plays.

Poets in their own right, editors X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia bring personal warmth and a human perspective to this comprehensive anthology. Literature presents readable discussions of the literary devices, illustrated by engaging works, supported by useful writing tips, and followed by seven chapters devoted to writing that have been thoroughly updated to reflect MLA’s latest guidelines. Conversations between Dana Gioia and celebrated fiction writer Amy Tan, current U. S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, and contemporary playwright David Ives, offer readers an insider’s look into the importance of reading to three contemporary writers. A Latin American Writers casebook is new to Fiction and collects some of the finest authors from the region including Octavia Paz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Ines Arendondo. A casebook on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is now featured as part of the Three Stories In-depth chapter. Many new writers have been added including Naguib Mahfouz, Virginia Woolf, Sherman Alexie, Mary Oliver, Bettie Sellers, and Anne Deavere Smith.

For anyone who enjoys literature presented with personal warmth and a human perspective.

Customer Reviews

The Best Teaching Anthology

Review Date: January 29, 2001

Reviewer: Nessander,

... First of all, it is massive and contains three books in one - fiction, poetry and drama. Each section includes a plethora of selections as well as longer works (like the full length plays of Hamlet and Macbeth). So one is really getting quite a library from this one book.

Even better, the sections are organized along themes in order to teach the student (or interested reader) how to appreciate the various forms. So the poetry section has sections on sound, figures of speech, rhythm, closed and open form, etc. I suppose this comes from it being a textbook for undergraduate courses - in any case, it pays off. I've learned a tremendous amount already. It's all in very easy to understand non-technical language, too.

At the end of the book, there is even a brief section on various forms of literary criticism. The book contains numerous student essays, brief author biographies, reflections by the authors on their own works (this is really great), and it reflects a really broad range of genres and time periods (unfortunately the section on haiku is plagued by bad translations, and there aren't enough examples of Chinese and other Japanese poetry... oh well!). There is also an emphasis on getting the reader to practice (and write for him or herself) what is being taught. So if you want to be a writer, this is great.

If you're a beginner interested in getting into literature, this is really a great way to do it. Don't be put off by the massiveness of this book - it's really a resource. Just start in one small place (I started in 'poetry') and work your way around. It will definitely increase your appreciation for literature.

Surprsingly Wonderful!

Review Date: September 28, 2007

Reviewer: Catherine, Harrisburg, Panama

I picked this book up for a class, expecting to be perfectly bored. Instead, this book woke up my sleeping love of learning and literature. The book is easy to understand and contains MANY great stories and poems in it. It also has a great glossary and index was well. It came with an additional feature, MyLiteratureLab, which is an accompanying web page. That is also very helpful indeed.
This book is so good, there were even people at work wanting to check it out!

One of my personal favorite anthologies!

Review Date: April 30, 2007

Reviewer: Sylviastel,

Literature textbooks like these are quite worth the price that you're paying for. First, it lacks the visual colorful photos of another textbooks and focuses in on literature. I am glad to see Philip Roth's story, Conversion of the Jews, to be included in the short story section. Primarily because Roth writes novels, his short stories are few. he should be in the anthologies because he is one of America's foremost writers and most American particularly New Jerseyans don't know who he is. In 2005, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Anyway, I picked this book up at a yard sale. This book is filled with tremendous assortment of authors, writers, and poets like Somerset Maugham, John Updike, James Thurber, William Faulkner, Katherine Mansfield, Toni Cade Bambara, Edgar Allen Poe, Katherine Anne Porter, Jamaica Kincaid, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kate Chopin, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Anne Tyler, Stephen Crane, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., John Steinbeck, Shirley Jackson, Alice Munro, Leo Tolstoi, Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, Ambrose Bierce, Jorge Luis Borges, Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce Carol Oates, Frank O'Connor, Tillie Olsen, Edith Wharton, William Carlos Williams, Charlotte Bronte, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, Thoeodore Roethke, Countee Cullen, Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, John Milton, William Wordsworth, W.H. Auden, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, JOnathan Swift, William Blake, Robert Grave, John Donne, Herman Melville, Wole Soyinka, Lewis Carroll, Wallace Stevens, E.E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Oscar Wilde, Jean Toomer, John Keats, Walt Whitman, H.D., Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, John Ashbery, Ben Jonson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Paul Simon, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Aphra Behn, A.E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alexander Pope, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Olson, Louise Bogan, Anne Sexton, and so many countless other authors, writers, poets, playwrights, etc. that makes this book nearly perfect for a classroom without all the notes and nonsense that clutter some textbooks.

Outstanding reference book

Review Date: August 28, 2008

Reviewer: Skip, SC, USA

This book is massive and contains three sections - fiction, poetry and drama. Each section includes an excess of selections as well as longer works (like the full length plays of Hamlet and Macbeth). This makes this book an exceptional teaching aid or introduction into many facets of literature.

Even better, the sections are organized along themes in order to teach the student (or interested reader) how to appreciate the various forms. So the poetry section has sections on sound, figures of speech, rhythm, closed and open form, etc. I suppose this comes from it being a textbook for undergraduate courses - in any case, it pays off. I've learned a tremendous amount already. It's all in very easy to understand non-technical language, as well.

At the end of the book, there is even a brief section on various forms of literary criticism. The book contains numerous student essays, brief author biographies, reflections by the authors on their own works (this is really great), and it reflects a really broad range of genres and time periods (unfortunately the section on haiku is plagued by bad translations, and there aren't enough examples of Chinese and other Japanese poetry... oh well!). There is also an emphasis on getting the reader to practice (and write for him or herself) what is being taught. So if you want to be a writer, this is great.

If you're a beginner interested in getting into literature, this is really a great way to do it. Don't be put off by the massiveness of this book - it's really a resource. Just start in one small place (I started in 'poetry') and work your way around. It will definitely increase your appreciation for literature.

Great buy

Review Date: February 15, 2010

Reviewer: J. Silva,

Book came fast and in perfect condition looked as if no one had used it. Will buy from again