This shorter anthology retains the characteristics of the original in
that it is arranged according to genre rather than chronology and
interprets "literature" very broadly to include not just literary
fiction, poetry, and drama, but folk and popular literature, lyrics and
arias, elegies and rhapsodies, biographies, autobiographies and memoirs,
letters, criticism and theory, and travelogues and jokes. It also
contains fresh translations by newer voices in the field.