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 | | The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Package 1: Volumes A-B by Nina Baym (Editor) ISBN-10: 9780393977936 ISBN-10: 0-393-97793-5 ISBN-13: 9780393977936 ISBN-13: 978-0-393-97793-6 Paperback 2002-07 W. W. Norton & Company Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Book Description Now available in a portable multi-volume format, The Norton Anthology of American Literature is the classic survey of American literature from its sixteenth-century origins to its flourishing present. The Sixth Edition offers the work of 242 writers—30 newly included—representing the extraordinary wealth and diversity of American literature. Among the many major works included in their entirety are Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Clemens's Huckleberry Finn, Chopin's The Awakening, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Larsen's Quicksand, Ginsberg's "Howl," Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and Parks's The America Play. Informative introductions, headnotes, footnotes, and bibliographies accompany the texts. Package 1, "Literature to 1865," contains two slipcased volumes: "Literature to 1820" (Volume A) and "1820-1865" (Volume B). | ||
Reviews | ||
Wrong Product Seller would not accept return or even respond when informed about it being the wrong product. | ||
"Canon" balls Except for the silliness of Avishai Mallinger, I can sympathize with the view points of all the reviews of the anthology. I am using the 1820-1865 vol in a class right now and must say, I find the selections over-all quite varied and enjoyable. I do fear that in our pluralistic society, the American Literary Canon is being distorted to fit material that is only included due to the minority status of it's author, or the political correctness of its subject matter. An example, I think, is the inclusion of the rather churlish William Apess. I have always been dismayed by the American pedagogy's fetish for slavery, and that preoccupation is well exemplified here. I must ask if the inclusion of both Harriet Beecher Stowe AND Harriet Jacobs was strictly necessary, and I find it unnecessary to sound the beautiful deeps of Thoreau to bring up his opinion of the same institution. And not only his, but Longfellow's as well. And not only his, but Emerson's as well. In my own class, "Nature" was dismissed with a cursory glance, while "Last of the Anti-slavery Lectures" became a paper topic. However, if the Canon were not revised, I might not have been treated to the wonderful Margaret Fuller or the fascinating Enlightenment piece of the first of the Cherokee Memorials. It is only by reading and testing such material that we can determine if it is truly worthy of being canonized. Anthology revision, in it's successes and failures is a part of that process. | ||
Terrible...F- As a student who is forced to read this book, I must say that it is one of the most dense and boring compilations of literature I have ever read. All of these writings are so dull and pointless that they just make me want to rip up this junk. But then again I want to re-sell this at the end of the semester to get some kind of money back. I can buy like 6 CDs or 3/4 DVDs for the amount of money i had to waste to support the Norton series. I now associate having to read any kind of Norton book with hell. | ||
Not revisionism, breadth The reviewer who complains about the great authors being excluded in favour of the mediocre is missing the point. For me, to study American literature is not just to study the great works. Instead, it's to study American literature. That includes slave songs, native American chants, and anything else that was produced with a commitment to art and expression rather than simple commerce. We can't, of course, read everything but have to limit ourselves to reading representitive samples. And those representitive samples will include the great works which should, rightly, dominate. But to exclude the rest of the American works that those great works grew out of is to give, I think, a perverse view of what "American literature" means. Do you read only the flowers or view the field as a whole and see the flowers as they fit into the ecology? Is it a study of American literature or a study of selected great works? Lately, the Norton anthologies have been moving towards the broader view. It may not be what you want to do but to disparage it as unworthy is wrong. | ||
More Mathers Please Is this all the Mathers you get? What about Jerry and Marshall. And we all know that early American lit is more boring than the late stuff. This anthology would really benefit from some Chuck Palaniak. My favorite novel included is Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to go without church for all that time. She really had strength. NOTE ON THE TEXT: If you really love American Lit, you'll find the puritan stuff much more engaging than the 19th Century. I keep a copy of Volume A by my bedside. | ||