The Literature Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)
INTRODUCTION
HEROES AND LEGENDS ✵ 3000BCE–1300CE
Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight ✵ The Epic of Gilgamesh
What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? ✵ Mahabharata, attributed to Vyasa
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles ✵ Iliad, attributed to Homer
The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way ✵ Aeneid, Virgil
Fate will unwind as it must ✵ Beowulf
So Scheherazade began… ✵ One Thousand and One Nights
Since life is but a dream, why toil to no avail? ✵ Quan Tangshi
Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams ✵ The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
A man should suffer greatly for his Lord ✵ The Song of Roland
Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale ✵ “Under the Linden Tree”, Walther von der Vogelweide
Let another’s wound be my warning ✵ Njal’s Saga
RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT ✵ 1300–1800
I found myself within a shadowed forest ✵ The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
Turn over the leef and chese another tale ✵ The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Laughter’s the property of man. Live joyfully ✵ Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall ✵ Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
Every man is the child of his own deeds ✵ Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
One man in his time plays many parts ✵ First Folio, William Shakespeare
To esteem everything is to esteem nothing ✵ The Misanthrope, Molière
I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family ✵ Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? ✵ Candide, Voltaire
I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot ✵ The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller
ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL ✵ 1800–1855
Nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life ✵ Nachtstücke, E T A Hoffmann
Man errs, till he has ceased to strive ✵ Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Once upon a time… ✵ Children’s and Household Tales, Brothers Grimm
Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil ✵ Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
All for one, one for all ✵ The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
But happiness I never aimed for, it is a stranger to my soul ✵ Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes ✵ Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me ✵ Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! ✵ Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
All partings foreshadow the great final one ✵ Bleak House, Charles Dickens
DEPICTING REAL LIFE ✵ 1855–1900
I too am a child of this land; I too grew up amid this scenery ✵ The Guarani, José de Alencar
The poet is a kinsman in the clouds ✵ Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire
Not being heard is no reason for silence ✵ Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Curiouser and curiouser! ✵ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
In Sweden all we do is to celebrate jubilees ✵ The Red Room, August Strindberg
She is written in a foreign tongue ✵ The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
Human beings can be awful cruel to one another ✵ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle ✵ Germinal, Émile Zola
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it ✵ The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
There are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men’s eyes ✵ Dracula, Bram Stoker
One of the dark places of the earth ✵ Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
BREAKING WITH TRADITION ✵ 1900–1945
I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I’ve no idea where I was born ✵ I Am a Cat, Natsume Sōseki
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ✵ Poems, Wilfred Owen
Ragtime literature which flouts traditional rhythms ✵ The Waste Land, T S Eliot
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit ✵ Ulysses, James Joyce
When I was young I, too, had many dreams ✵ Call to Arms, Lu Xun
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself ✵ The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
Criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment ✵ The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
The old world must crumble. Awake, wind of dawn! ✵ Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin
Dead men are heavier than broken hearts ✵ The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
It is such a secret place, the land of tears ✵ The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
POST-WAR WRITING ✵ 1945–1970
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU ✵ Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland ✵ Poppy and Memory, Paul Celan
I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me ✵ Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul ✵ Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
He leaves no stone unturned, and no maggot lonely ✵ Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
He was beat – the root, the soul of beatific ✵ On the Road, Jack Kerouac
What is good among one people is an abomination with others ✵ Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings ✵ The Tin Drum, Günter Grass
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. ✵ To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt ✵ Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Everyday miracles and the living past ✵ Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney
There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did ✵ In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE ✵ 1970–PRESENT
Our history is an aggregate of last moments ✵ Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ✵ Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Heaven and Earth were in turmoil ✵ Red Sorghum, Mo Yan
A historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment ✵ Omeros, Derek Walcott
I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy ✵ American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river ✵ A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
It’s a very Greek idea, and a profound one. Beauty is terror ✵ The Secret History, Donna Tartt
Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are ✵ Blindness, José Saramago
English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa ✵ Disgrace, J M Coetzee
The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one ✵ The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
There was something his family wanted to forget ✵ The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
It all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together ✵ The Guest, Hwang Sok-yong