New to this edition

• Unparalleled technology support. New "Online Resources" boxes in each chapter indicate the additional resources that students can find on ARIEL, McGraw-Hill's new fully interactive literature CD-ROM, or on the book's Online Learning Center (http://www.mhhe.com/stanford). Available for packaging free with Responding to Literature, ARIEL contains 28 author casebooks, annotated texts, video and audio clips, critical essays, essay topics, an extensive glossary of literary terms, and more. The Online Learning Center features casebooks for over 20 authors along with glossaries of literary terms, advice on avoiding plagiarism, and help with online research.
• A new chapter on writing a researched paper and writing an argument. Chapter 5, "Argument, Critical Thinking, and Research," gives students guidelines for writing a paper that argues for a particular interpretation of a literary work, along with advice on locating evidence outside the work to back up an argumentative thesis and guidelines for citing sources using the MLA system of documentation. The chapter includes a sample student paper on Kate Chopin's short story "The Storm."
• A new theme on technology and ethics. This new theme deals with a topic that has an enormous impact on students' everyday lives and will continue to have an impact on their futures. The chapter includes "The Birthmark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne; "Videotape" by Don DeLillo; poems by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Atwood, Charles Bukowski, and Rita Dove; and Wit, the Pulitzer-prize-winning play by Margaret Edson.
• Over 50 NEW selections. The new selections in the fifth edition include works by Naomi Shihab Nye, Sherman Alexie, N. Scott Momaday, W. S. Merwin, Gish Jen, Kate Chopin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Dillard, and Bharati Mukherjee.
• Then and Now Photo Essays. New photo essays offer visual texts that complement and enrich the selections in three of the thematic chapters. For example, Chapter 6, Innocence and Experience, includes a photo essay with pictures of Hamlet as portrayed by different actors in different eras. "Considerations" questions following each photo essay help student to make connections between the images and works they have studied.
• An In-Depth Consideration of Four American Poets: Chapter 15, Four Poets: Then and Now, includes works by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost (with critical studies of his work) as well as works by the contemporary poets Billy Collins and Rita Dove. This chapter highlights the associations between these four poets, providing a sample of themes that are considered quintessentially American and giving students more possibilities for response.
• "Art and Poetry" is now a separate chapter. The 16 works of art and accompanying poems in this color chapter offer a rich variety of opportunities for response.
• A Focus on Film as a Dramatic Genre. New Film Connection sections in the text discuss three films and offer exercises that prompt students to respond to them: Hamlet (the version released in 2000, starring Ethan Hawke), Wit, and Three Kings. Each of these films offers expanded teaching opportunities.
• New Web Connections Questions. At the end of each thematic chapter, new Web Connections questions encourage students to explore issues using the enormous resources available on the World Wide Web.

Proven Features

• An emphasis on making connections among works. The thematic organization of the text helps students make thoughtful connections to their own lives. Throughout the book, "Considerations" and "Connections" questions about the works provide ways of thinking and writing about the selections that lead readers away from a single "correct" interpretation, and instead, suggest multiple possibilities—always, of course, to be supported by evidence in the work itself.
• Strong coverage of the writing process. Chapter 4 devotes special attention to the writing process, including strategies for discovering and exploring ideas, considering the audience, drafting, revising, and editing. Sample student writings are accompanied by clear and thorough explanations of each student's process.
• Enhanced coverage of argument and research. The coverage of argument has been expanded and moved to a new chapter. Chapter 5 also provides detailed coverage of the research process. An extended example demonstrates one student's process through the stages of writing a research argument. In addition, this chapter explains MLA documentation and provides numerous illustrations of the most recent MLA guidelines.
• Plenty of topics for writing and discussion. These topics invite students to think about the important issues inherent in each chapter's theme.
• Opportunities for collaborative work. Sharing ideas and writings with other students can often enrich each student's experience of a literary work. Therefore, at the end of each thematic chapter, at least one collaborative project is included in the "Connections" for writing and discussion. In addition, Chapter 4 includes "Strategies for Collaborative Work."
• An approach grounded in personal response. To invite students to become more engaged with the literary works they are studying, the text stresses the importance of the reader's interaction with and response to what he or she reads. Chapter 1 explores the relationship between reading as a choice and reading as a requirement; this emphasis on the reader's engagement with the literary work is reflected throughout the text.
• A thorough introduction to literary terms. Chapter 2 invites students to become part of the literary conversation by showing how literary terms relate to ideas and concepts with which they are already familiar.
• A thorough introduction to genres and approaches to literary criticism. Chapter 3 provides clear definitions and short historical overviews of short fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction, thus providing students with the background information that will help them form their responses. In addition, students are introduced to five approaches to scholarly criticism.