Providing the most thorough coverage available in a single volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a rich variety of international writers and their works in three genres: short fiction, poetry, and drama. Newly revised and expanded introductory essays discuss the principal characteristics of each genre and offer students an overview of contemporary critical perspectives. The new fourth Canadian edition adds fiction by Charles G.D. Roberts and poems by John Donne, Alexander Pope, W.B. Yeats, and Archibald Lampman. Organized chronologically by author and birth date, the impressive scope of authors and strong Canadian representation make this volume the essential text for introductory literature courses.

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Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, David Staines specializes in medieval literature and culture and Canadian literature and culture. In the former, he has published Tennyson’s Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources, and translated The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes; in the latter, he published The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, The Forty-Ninth and Other Parallels: Contemporary Canadian Perspectives, and The Letters of Stephen Leacock. He has also edited volumes on Morley Callaghan, Stephen Leacock and Margaret Laurence, and co-edited volumes of the writings of Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan. A long-time friend of Carol Shields, he wrote Carol Shields: Cultural Context, a part of Library and Archives Canada’s Web exhibition Canadian Writers.

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"Elements of Literature does an excellent job of straddling the line between giving students readable and accessible content while still gesturing to the academy at large, so that students understand that this is only part of the picture. The writing is largely clean and straightforward, and compares favourably to other first year texts." --Rhiannon Don, Nipissing University