本书的编写主旨是让学生在欣赏文学作品、了解文学知识的同时，能够进行感性和理性的思维训练并体味思维的快乐；让学生在文学作品的启发下思考人生的主题，开启人生的智慧。本书的编排以文学主题为线索，以便读者直接面对文学作品，欣赏咀嚼文学作品，避开文学史实对文学欣赏的干扰。

本书包括介绍和以文学主题划分的5个单元。它们分别是：第一单元：自我认知(Identity)；第二单元：心理历程(Spiritual Growth)；第三单元：爱(Love)；第四单元：家庭(Family)；第五单元：人与社会(Man and Society)。其中每单元包括：文学作品、作者简介、注解、文学知识点、思考问题、推荐书目、推荐电影和插图，有的单元带有附录。

本书适合大学本科英语或非英语专业二、三年级学生使用，也可作为英语文学爱好者的自学教材。

前言

Introduction

Unit One Identity

I. I'm Nobody/Who are you ? by Emily Dickinson

II. Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

III. Theme for English B by Langston Hughes

IV. Two Songs by John Lennon/Paul McCartney

V. Dumplings by Yi Sha

VI. Hamlet's Soliloquy from the play Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1) by William Shakespeare

VII. A Clean, Well-lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway

VIII. A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka

IX. Rice by Mary Loh Chieu Kwuan

Unit Two Spiritual Growth

I. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth

II. Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens

III. Incident by Countee Cullen

IV. Araby by James Joyce

V. A Handful of Dates by Tayeb Salih

VI. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

Unit Three Love

I. Guan Sui from Shijing (Book of Verse)

II. Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare

III. The Lorelei by Heinrich Heine

IV. A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

V. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

VI. Variations on the Word Love by Margaret Atwood

VII. "Balcony Scene", a Selection from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

VIII. The Blue Jar by Isak Dinesen

IX. The Beggar by Anton Chekhov

Unit Four Family

I. The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson

II. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

III. My Father's Song by Simon J. Ortiz

IV. A Story Wet as Tears by Marge Piercy

V. The Victims by Sharon Olds

VI. The Photos by Diane Wakoske

VII. My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor

VIII. "Chapter 1" from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

IX. Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck

Unit Five Man and Society

I. Two Poems by W. H. Auden

II. Mending Wall by Robert Frost

III. Trust by Andy Rooney

IV. The Man Who Married Himself by Charlie Fish

V. Dead Men's Path by Chinua Achebe