Table Of ContentTHE
LITERATURE
BOOK
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THE
LITERATURE
BOOK
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DK LONDON original styling by CONTRIBUTORS
STUDIO8 DESIGN
SENIOR EDITOR
Sam Atkinson
produced for DK by
SENIOR ART EDITOR JAMES CANTON, CONSULTANT EDITOR
COBALT ID
Gillian Andrews
ART EDITOR ART EDITORS Our consultant and coauthor James Canton
Saffron Stocker Darren Bland, Paul Reid is a lecturer in literature at the University
MANAGING EDITOR EDITORS of Essex, England, where he teaches the
Gareth Jones Richard Gilbert, Diana Loxley, MA “Wild Writing: Literature and the
Kirsty Seymour-Ure, Marek Walisiewicz, Environment.” His published work includes
MANAGING ART EDITOR Christopher Westhorp
Lee Griffiths From Cairo to Baghdad: British Travellers in
Arabia (2011) and Out of Essex: Re-Imagining
US EDITORS First American Edition, 2016
Jane Perlmutter, Margaret Parrish Published in the United States by a Literary Landscape (2013), which explores
DK Publishing the ties between our landscapes and our
ART DIRECTOR 345 Hudson Street selves, delving into the natural world and
Karen Self New York, New York 10014
its wonders. He is currently writing a tale
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DK, A Division of Penguin Random House LLC
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR 16 17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Jonathan Metcalf 001—274739—March/2016 HELEN CLEARY
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Natalie Godwin Without limiting the rights under the copyright A nonfiction writer and editor, Helen Cleary
JACKET EDITOR reserved above, no part of this publication may be studied English literature at Cambridge
Claire Gell reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval University, England. She went on to complete
system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, the prestigious creative writing MA at the
Sophia MTT or otherwise), without the prior written permission University of East Anglia, where she was
of the copyright owner. taught by W. G. Sebald and Lorna Sage. Helen
SENIOR PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION
Tony Phipps Published in Great Britain by is a published writer of poetry and short fiction
Dorling Kindersley Limited. as well as nonfiction.
PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION
Nadine King A catalog record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress. ANN KRAMER
SENIOR PRODUCERS
Mandy Innes, Rita Sinha ISBN: 978-1-4654-2988-9
A writer and historian, Ann Kramer worked
DK books are available at special discounts when for various publishers, including DK, before
ILLUSTRATIONS purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, becoming a full-time writer. Over the years
James Graham fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact:
DK Publishing Special Markets, 345 Hudson Street, she has written numerous books for the
New York, New York 10014 general reader on subjects ranging from
DK DELHI [email protected] art, literature, and the humanities through
JACKET DESIGNER Printed and bound in China. to women’s history. Having a deep love of
Dhirendra Singh books and literature, Ann has also taught
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Harish Aggarwal A WORLD OF IDEAS:
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ROBIN LAXBY HILA SHACHAR NICK WALTON
A freelance editor and writer, Robin Laxby A lecturer in English literature at De Montfort Nick Walton is Shakespeare Courses
has a degree in English from Oxford University, University, England, and writer for The Development Manager at the Shakespeare
England, and has worked as a publishing Australian Ballet, Hila Shachar has a doctorate Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon,
director in London. He has reviewed fiction in English literature from The University of England. He has written introductory material
for The Good Book Guide and has published Western Australia. She has published widely for the Penguin editions of Timon of Athens
five books of poetry since 1985. The Society on literature and film, including her New York and Love’s Labour’s Lost, and is coauthor
of Authors recently awarded him a grant to Times featured book, Cultural Afterlives and of The Shakespeare Wallbook. He is also a
complete a 30,000-word prose poem. Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature (2012). contributor to DK’s The Shakespeare Book
She is also the author of several studies on in the Big Ideas series.
DIANA LOXLEY the adaptation of literary works, feminism
in literature, and popular and classic fiction. MARCUS WEEKS
Diana Loxley is a freelance editor and writer, She is currently writing a monograph on
and a former managing editor of a publishing literary biopics, examining the screen Marcus Weeks studied music, philosophy, and
company in London, England. She has a adaptation of the figure of the author. musical instrument technology, and had a
doctorate in literature from the University varied career, first as a teacher of English as a
of Essex. Her published works include an ALEX VALENTE foreign language, then a musician, art-gallery
analysis of colonial and imperial ideology manager, and instrument restorer before
in various key texts of 19th-century fiction. A researcher at the University of East Anglia, becoming a full-time writer. He has written
England, literary translator, and writer, and contributed to numerous books on the
ESTHER RIPLEY Alex Valente has contributed to the Oxford humanities, arts, and popular sciences aimed
Companion to Children’s Literature (2015), at making big ideas accessible and attractive,
Esther Ripley has a first-class degree in the Cultures of Comics Work (2016), and including many titles in DK‘s Big Ideas’ series.
literature with psychology and has worked several smaller poetry and prose publications,
for many years as a journalist, education in both Italian and English. He has also taught PENNY WOOLLARD
magazine editor, book reviewer, and short- first-year English literature modules at the
story competition judge. A former managing University of East Anglia. A theater studies administrator at the
editor at DK, she has written books for children University of Essex, England, Penny Woollard
and now writes on a range of cultural subjects. BRUNO VINCENT has a doctorate in literature, from the same
university, titled “Derek Walcott’s Americas:
MEGAN TODD As a former bookseller, then a book editor, the USA and the Caribbean.” She has lectured
and now a freelance writer, Bruno Vincent on Walcott and has also taught American
A senior lecturer in social science at the has spent his entire working life around books literature at Essex university.
University of Central Lancashire, England, and the written word. He is the author of ten
Megan Todd has a degree in English literature titles, including two Sunday Times top ten
from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. best sellers and two volumes of Dickensian
She taught English literature at a grammar Gothic horror stories for children.
school in Cumbria and completed a Masters
in gender studies at Newcastle University,
with a focus on women’s writing.
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CONTENTS
10 INTRODUCTION 47 Real things in the darkness 72 Laughter’s the property of
seem no realer than dreams man. Live joyfully
The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Gargantua and Pantagruel,
Shikibu François Rabelais
HEROES AND LEGENDS
3000 BCE–1300 CE 48 A man should suffer greatly 74 As it did to this flower, the
for his Lord doom of age will blight
The Song of Roland your beauty
20 Only the gods dwell forever Les Amours de Cassandre,
in sunlight 49 Tandaradei, sweetly sang Pierre de Ronsard
The Epic of Gilgamesh the nightingale
“Under the Linden Tree,” 75 He that loves pleasure must
21 To nourish oneself on Walther von der Vogelweide for pleasure fall
ancient virtue induces Doctor Faustus, Christopher
perseverance 50 He who dares not follow love’s Marlowe
Book of Changes, attributed command errs greatly
to King Wen of Zhou Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, 76 Every man is the child of
Chrétien de Troyes his own deeds
22 What is this crime I am Don Quixote, Miguel de
planning, O Krishna? 52 Let another’s wound be Cervantes
Mahabharata, attributed my warning
to Vyasa Njal’s Saga 82 One man in his time plays
many parts
26 Sing, O goddess, the anger 54 Further reading First Folio, William Shakespeare
of Achilles
Iliad, attributed to Homer 90 To esteem everything is to
esteem nothing
34 How dreadful knowledge RENAISSANCE TO The Misanthrope, Molière
of the truth can be when ENLIGHTENMENT
there’s no help in truth! 91 But at my back I always hear
1300–1800
Oedipus the King, Sophocles Time’s winged chariot
hurrying near
40 The gates of hell are open 62 I found myself within a Miscellaneous Poems,
night and day; smooth the shadowed forest Andrew Marvell
descent, and easy is the way The Divine Comedy, Dante
Aeneid, Virgil Alighieri 92 Sadly, I part from you; like a
clam torn from its shell, I go,
42 Fate will unwind as it must 66 We three will swear and autumn too
Beowulf brotherhood and unity of The Narrow Road to the Interior,
aims and sentiments Matsuo Basho¯
44 So Scheherazade began… Romance of the Three
One Thousand and One Nights Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong 93 None will hinder and none
be hindered on the journey
46 Since life is but a dream, 68 Turn over the leef and to the mountain of death
why toil to no avail? chese another tale The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,
Quan Tangshi The Canterbury Tales, Chikamatsu Monzaemon
Geoffrey Chaucer
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94 I was born in the Year 1632,
DEPICTING REAL LIFE
in the City of York, of a
good family 1855–1900
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
158 Boredom, quiet as the spider,
96 If this is the best of all was spinning its web in the
possible worlds, what are shadowy places of her heart
the others? Madame Bovary, Gustave
Candide, Voltaire Flaubert
120 Who shall conceive the
98 I have courage enough to walk horrors of my secret toil 164 I too am a child of this
through hell barefoot Frankenstein, Mary Shelley land; I too grew up amid
The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller this scenery
122 All for one, one for all The Guarani, José de Alencar
100 There is nothing more difficult The Three Musketeers,
in love than expressing in Alexandre Dumas 165 The poet is a kinsman in
writing what one does not feel the clouds
Les Liaisons dangereuses, 124 But happiness I never Les Fleurs du mal, Charles
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos aimed for, it is a stranger Baudelaire
to my soul
102 Further reading Eugene Onegin, Alexander 166 Not being heard is no reason
Pushkin for silence
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
125 Let your soul stand cool
ROMANTICISM AND THE and composed before a 168 Curiouser and curiouser!
RISE OF THE NOVEL million universes Alice’s Adventures in
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
1800–1855
126 You have seen how a man 172 Pain and suffering are
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
Lyrical Ballads, William a man Crime and Punishment, Fyodor
Wordsworth and Samuel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dostoyevsky
Taylor Coleridge Douglass, Frederick Douglass
178 To describe directly the life
111 Nothing is more wonderful, 128 I am no bird; and no net of humanity or even of a
nothing more fantastic than ensnares me single nation, appears
real life Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë impossible
Nachtstücke, E. T. A. Hoffmann War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
132 I cannot live without my life!
112 Man errs, till he has ceased I cannot live without my soul! 182 It is a narrow mind which
to strive Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë cannot look at a subject
Faust, Johann Wolfgang from various points of view
von Goethe 138 There is no folly of the beast Middlemarch, George Eliot
of the Earth which is not
116 Once upon a time… infinitely outdone by the 184 We may brave human laws,
Children’s and Household Tales, madness of men but we cannot resist
Brothers Grimm Moby-Dick, Herman Melville natural ones
Twenty Thousand Leagues
118 For what do we live, but 146 All partings foreshadow the Under the Sea, Jules Verne
to make sport for our great final one
neighbours, and laugh Bleak House, Charles Dickens
at them in our turn?
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 150 Further reading
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185 In Sweden all we do is to 234 The old world must crumble.
BREAKING WITH
celebrate jubilees Awake, wind of dawn!
The Red Room, August TRADITION Berlin Alexanderplatz,
Strindberg Alfred Döblin
1900–1945
186 She is written in a foreign 235 Ships at a distance have
tongue 208 The world is full of obvious every man’s wish on board
The Portrait of a Lady, things which nobody by any Their Eyes Were Watching God,
Henry James chance ever observes Zora Neale Hurston
The Hound of the Baskervilles,
188 Human beings can be awful Arthur Conan Doyle 236 Dead men are heavier than
cruel to one another broken hearts
The Adventures of Huckleberry 209 I am a cat. As yet I have no The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Finn, Mark Twain name. I’ve no idea where I
was born 238 It is such a secret place,
190 He simply wanted to go I Am a Cat, Natsume So¯seki the land of tears
down the mine again, to The Little Prince, Antoine de
suffer and to struggle 210 Gregor Samsa found himself, Saint-Exupéry
Germinal, Émile Zola in his bed, transformed into
a monstrous vermin 240 Further reading
192 The evening sun was now Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
ugly to her, like a great
inflamed wound in the sky 212 Dulce et decorum est pro
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, patria mori POSTWAR WRITING
Thomas Hardy Poems, Wilfred Owen 1945–1970
194 The only way to get rid of a 213 Ragtime literature which
temptation is to yield to it flouts traditional rhythms 250 BIG BROTHER IS
The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot WATCHING YOU
Oscar Wilde Nineteen Eighty-Four,
214 The heaventree of stars hung George Orwell
195 There are things old and with humid nightblue fruit
new which must not be Ulysses, James Joyce 256 I’m seventeen now, and
contemplated by men’s eyes sometimes I act like I’m
Dracula, Bram Stoker 222 When I was young I, too, about thirteen
had many dreams The Catcher in the Rye,
196 One of the dark places of Call to Arms, Lu Xun J. D. Salinger
the earth
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 223 Love gives naught but itself 258 Death is a gang-boss aus
and takes naught but Deutschland
198 Further reading from itself Poppy and Memory, Paul Celan
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
259 I am invisible, understand,
224 Criticism marks the origin of simply because people
progress and enlightenment refuse to see me
The Magic Mountain, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Thomas Mann
260 Lolita, light of my life, fire
228 Like moths among the of my loins. My sin, my soul
whisperings and the Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
champagne and the stars
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott 262 He leaves no stone unturned,
Fitzgerald and no maggot lonely
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
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