King Margaret L. - The Western Literary Tradition: Volume 1

The Western Literary Tradition

An Introduction in Texts

V OLUME 1

The Hebrew Bible to John Milton

The Western Literary Tradition

An Introduction in Texts

V OLUME 1

The Hebrew Bible to John Milton

Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by

M ARGARET L. K ING

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright 2020 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

P.O. Box 44937

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Interior design by Laura Clark

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933148

ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-910-1 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-909-5 (pbk.)

ePub3 ISBN: 978-1-62466-940-8

For more Hackett titles in literatureand to review specially curated lists of key full-length texts that complement this anthologyplease visit www.hackettpublishing.com/literature-anthology

For my grandchildren,

a look back, for the way forward

Contents

The page numbers in curly braces {} correspond to the print edition of this title.

Section I
Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

Section III
Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal

1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer (1345, 1360)
and Sonnets (13271368)

4. Lauro Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of
Constantinople (1453)

Section IV
Early Modern: New Horizons

{xii}

Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition

Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal

Early Modern: New Horizons

{xvii}

This volume introduces students to major writers of the Western tradition from Antiquity to 1700. It cannot include all authors of high significance, but in the sum, it presents a sampling of essential literary texts, highlights significant themes, and traces prominent trends over a more than two thousand year span. It includes exemplars of a range of genres including epic, lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and novel; and nonfiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech, dialogue, and essay. Languages represented include the ancient languages Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the modern languages (in different stages of development) English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.