Literature as art: A reader

by Ralph A Britsch

I. Classicism --
from The Iliad / Homer --
from The Odyssey / Homer --
On losing his shield / Archilochus --
Ode to Aphrodite / Sappho --
Hesperus, the bringer / Sappho --
Mother, I cannot mind my wheel / Sappho --
The wounded Cupid / Anacreon --
First Olympian ode / Pindar --
A twofold truth / Empedocles --
Heraclitus / Callimachus --
Crethis / Callimachus --
from Agamemnon / Aeschylus --
Antigone / Sophocles --
from Medea / Eripides --
The death of Socrates from Phaedo / Plato --
The nature of tradegy from On tragedy / Aristotle --
Theocritus / The Incantation --
from Of the nature of things / Lucretius --
from Aeneid / Virgil --
On lesbia / Catullus --
Love is best / Catullus --
After a quarrel / Catullus --
At the grave of his brother / Catullus --
To postumus / Horace --
Orpheus and Eurydice / Ovid --
The Tuscan villa / Pliny the Younger --
from The villas of Pliny the Younger / Pliny the Younger --
from The meditations / Marcus Aurelius --
II. Christianity and the Middle Ages --
The creation / Bible --
The Messiah / Bible --
Psalms / Bible --
The annunciation / Bible --
The birth of Christ / Bible --
The last supper / Bible --
from Confessions / Saint Augustine --
from Beowulf / Anonymous --
from The song of Roland / Anonymous --
Te Deum / Anonymous --
from Little flowers / Saint Francis of Assisi --
Dies Irae / Thomas of Celano --
five cantos from The inferno / Dante Alighieri --
from the Divine comedy / Dante Alighieri --
from Sir Gawain and the green knight / Anonymous --
The Prioress/s tale from The Canterbury tales / Geoffrey Chaucer --
St. Mark's from The stones of Venice / John Ruskin --
The Virgin of Chartres / Henry Adams --
from Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres / Henry Adams --
III. Renaissance --
from An hymn in honour of beauty / Edmund Spenser --
The powers and pleasures of folly / Desiderius Erasmus --
from The praise of folly / Desiderius Erasmus --
The plague of 1348 / Giovanni Boccaccio --
The falcon of Federigo / Giovanni Boccaccio --
Chichibio and the crane / Giovanni Boccaccio --
The patient Griselda / Giovanni Boccaccio --
from the Decameron / Giovanni Boccaccio --
If it be destined / Petrarch --
When I reflect / Petrarch --
In gratitude to love / Petrarch --
Her golden hair / Petrarch --
On hearing of Laura's death / Petrarch --
He sees her everywhere / Petrarch --
Final sonnet / Petrarch --
In what way faith should be kept by princes / Niccolo Machiavelli --
Fortune is a woman / Niccolo Machiavelli --
from The prince / Niccolo Machiavelli --
The casting of the Perseus / Benvenuto Cellini --
Description of the contrarious passions in a lover / Sir Thomas Wyatt --
Complaint of a lover rebuked / Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey --
To Marie / Pierre de Ronsard --
Sonnet 15 (Ye tradeful merchants) / Edmund Spenser --
With how sad steps / Sir Philip Sidney --
Leave me, o love / Sir Philip Sidney --
Since there's no help / Michael Drayton --
Sonnet 8 (music to hear) / William Shakespeare --
Sonnet 18 (shall I compare thee) / William Shakespeare --
Sonnet 30 (when to the sessions) / William Shakespeare --
Sonnet 55 (not marble nor the gilded monument) / William Shakespeare --
Sonnet 73 (that time of year) / William Shakespeare --
Who is Sylvia? / William Shakespeare --
The silver swan / Orlando Gibbons --
La Gioconda / Walter Pater --
from The Renaissance / Walter Pater --
Monna Lisa Gioconda / Dmitri Merezhkovsky --
from The romance of Leonarda da Vinci / Dmitri Merezhkovsky --
The sculpturing of the David / Irving Stone --
from The agony and the ecstasy / Irving Stone --
IV. Mannerism to Neoclassicism --
from The flaming heart or the life of the glorious Saint Teresa / Saint Teresa of Avila --
from Don Quixote / Miguel de Cervantes --
The obscure night of the soul / Saint John of the Cross --
Meditation 17 / John Donne --
Song / John Donne --
Song / John Donne --
from Holy sonnets / John Donne --
A hymn to God the father / John Donne --
The altar / George Herbert --
Easter wings / George Herbert --
The dream called life / Calderón --
from Life is a dream / Calderón --
Lycidas / John Milton --
from Paradise lost / John Milton --
To his coy mistress / Andrew Marvell --
from The bourgeois gentleman / Moliére --
A song for St. Cecilia's Day / John Dryden --
Housewifery / Edward Taylor --
A voyage to Brobdingnag / Jonathan Swift --
from Gulliver's travels / Jonathan Swift --
from An essay on man / Alexander Pope --
from Candide / Voltaire --
To daffodils / Robert Herrick --
Corinna's going a-maying / Robert Herrick --
The syndics from Rembrandt / Gladys Schmitt --
V. Romanticism --
Continental --
Du bist wie eine blume / Heinrich Heine --
The two grenadiers / Heinrich Heine --
The djinns / Victor Hugo --
Art / Théophile Gautier --
Sois sage o ma douleur / Charles Baudelaire --
Correspondences / Charles Baudelaire --
from The confessions / Jean-Jacques Rousseau --
from Fa...

743 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1972