6 7
CONTENTS
10 INTRODUCTION
HEROES AND LEGENDS
3000 BCE–1300 CE
20 Only the gods dwell forever
in sunlight
The Epic of Gilgamesh
21 To nourish oneself on
ancient virtue induces
perseverance
Book of Changes, attributed
to King Wen of Zhou
22 What is this crime I am
planning, O Krishna?
Mahabharata, attributed
to Vyasa
26 Sing, O goddess, the anger
of Achilles
Iliad, attributed to Homer
34 How dreadful knowledge
of the truth can be when
there’s no help in truth!
Oedipus the King, Sophocles
40 The gates of hell are open
night and day; smooth the
descent, and easy is the way
Aeneid, Virgil
42 Fate will unwind as it must
Beowulf
44 So Scheherazade began…
One Thousand and One Nights
46 Since life is but a dream,
why toil to no avail?
Quan Tangshi
94 I was born in the Year 1632,
in the City of York, of a
good family
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
DEPICTING REAL LIFE
1855–1900
158 Boredom, quiet as the spider,
96 If this is the best of all was spinning its web in the
47 Real things in the darkness
seem no realer than dreams
72 Laughter’s the property of
man. Live joyfully
possible worlds, what are
the others?
shadowy places of her heart
Madame Bovary
Bovary, Gustave
The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Gargantua and Pantagruel, Candide, Voltaire Flaubert
Shikibu François Rabelais 120 Who shall conceive the
48 A man should suffer greatly 74 As it did to this flower, the
98 I have courage enough to walk
through hell barefoot
horrors of my secret toil
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
164 I too am a child of this
land; I too grew up amid
for his Lord doom of age will blight The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller this scenery
The Song of Roland your beauty 122 All for one, one for all The Guarani, José de Alencar
Les Amours de Cassandre, 100 There is nothing more difficult The Three Musketeers,
49 Tandaradei, sweetly sang Pierre de Ronsard in love than expressing in Alexandre Dumas 165 The poet is a kinsman in
the nightingale writing what one does not feel the clouds
“Under the Linden Tree”, 75 He that loves pleasure must Les Liaisons dangereuses, 124 But happiness I never Les Fleurs du mal, Charles
Walther von der Vogelweide for pleasure fall Pierre Choderlos de Laclos aimed for, it is a stranger Baudelaire
Doctor Faustus, Christopher to my soul
50 He who dares not follow love’s Marlowe 102 Further reading Eugene Onegin, Alexander 166 Not being heard is no reason
command errs greatly Pushkin for silence
Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, 76 Every man is the child of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Chrétien de Troyes his own deeds 125 Let your soul stand cool
Don Quixote, Miguel de ROMANTICISM AND THE and composed before a 168 Curiouser and curiouser!
52 Let another’s wound be
my warning
Cervantes
RISE OF THE NOVEL million universes
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Njal’s Saga 82 One man in his time plays 1800–1855
many parts 126 You have seen how a man 172 Pain and suffering are
54 Further reading First Folio, William Shakespeare 110 Poetry is the breath and the was made a slave; you shall always inevitable for a large
finer spirit of all knowledge see how a slave was made intelligence and a deep heart
90 To esteem everything is to Lyrical Ballads, William a man Crime and Punishment, Fyodor
esteem nothing Wordsworth and Samuel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dostoyevsky
RENAISSANCE TO The Misanthrope, Molière Taylor Coleridge Douglass, Frederick Douglass
ENLIGHTENMENT 91 But at my back I always hear 111 Nothing is more wonderful, 128 I am no bird; and no net
178 To describe directly the life
of humanity or even of a
1300–1800 Time’s winged chariot nothing more fantastic than ensnares me single nation, appears
hurrying near real life Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë impossible
62 I found myself within a Miscellaneous Poems, Nachtstücke, E T A Hoffmann War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
shadowed forest Andrew Marvell 132 I cannot live without my life!
The Divine Comedy
Comedy, Dante 112 Man errs, till he has ceased I cannot live without my soul! 182 It is a narrow mind which
Alighieri 92 Sadly, I part from you; like a to strive Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë cannot look at a subject
clam torn from its shell, I go, Faust, Johann Wolfgang from various points of view
66 We three will swear and autumn too von Goethe 138 There is no folly of the beast Middlemarch, George Eliot
brotherhood and unity of The Narrow Road to the Interior
Interior, of the Earth which is not
aims and sentiments Matsuo Basho
Bashō 116 Once upon a time… infinitely outdone by the 184 We may brave human laws,
Romance of the Three Children’s and Household Tales, madness of men but we cannot resist
Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong 93 None will hinder and none Brothers Grimm Moby-Dick, Herman Melville natural ones
be hindered on the journey Twenty Thousand Leagues
68 Turn over the leef and to the mountain of death 118 For what do we live, but 146 All partings foreshadow the Under the Sea, Jules Verne
chese another tale The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, to make sport for our great final one
The Canterbury Tales, Chikamatsu Monzaemon neighbours, and laugh Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Geoffrey Chaucer at them in our turn?
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 150 Further reading