This textbook provides students with an approach to literary works that emphasizes the reading process as an active enterprise, involving thought and feeling, as well as the intellectual acts. It introduces the traditional literary elements by means of discussions closely tied to works in each of the four genres: fiction, poetry, drama, and the essay in which the students are asked to return to certain works to reconsider them from different perspectives. Regarding the poetry section two special features are included: a substantial number of poems in translation (35 trans. fr. 8 languages) and a special selection of poetic transformations (the way poets have modified their own and other artists' work by means of.