The Longman Anthology Of World Literature

This volume samples a broad range of literature from the ancient world. It offers extensive selections from The Bible, The Book of Songs, The Mahabharata, The Ramayana, and Virgil's Aenid, as well as seven longer works in their entirety, including The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey .

The Longman Anthology is designed to open up the horizons of world literature, placing major works within their cultural contexts and fostering connections and conversations between eras as well as regions.

This volume samples a broad range of literature from the ancient world. It offers extensive selections from The Bible , The Book of Songs , The Mahabharata , The Ramayana , and Virgil's Aenid , as well as seven longer works in their entirety, including The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey . Editorial essays address such topics as the culture of Rome and the definition of "literature." Throughout the volume, the editors identify both what is most distinctive and what is commonly shared among the world's literatures. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The goal of this anthology is to present a wealth of poetry, prose, and drama from the full sweep of the literary history of the British Isles, and to do so in ways that will bring out both the works' original cultural contexts and their lasting aesthetic power.-

World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. In case studies ranging from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, David Damrosch looks at the ways works change as they move from national to global contexts. Presenting world literature not as a canon of texts but as a mode of circulation and of reading, Damrosch argues that world literature is work that gains in translation. When it is effectively presented, a work of world literature moves into an elliptical space created between the source and receiving cultures, shaped by both but circumscribed by neither alone. Established classics and new discoveries alike participate in this mode of circulation, but they can be seriously mishandled in the process. From the rediscovered Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century to Rigoberta Menchú's writing today, foreign works have often been distorted by the immediate needs of their own editors and translators. Eloquently written, argued largely by example, and replete with insightful close readings, this book is both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales.

The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Volume I, offers a fresh and highly teachable presentation of the varieties of world literature from the ancient world through the early modern period. The editors of the anthology have sought to find economical ways to place texts within their cultural contexts and have selected and grouped materials in ways intended to foster connections and conversations across the anthology, between eras as well as regions. The anthology includes epic and lyric poetry, drama, and prose narrative, with many works in their entirety. Classic major authors are presented alongside more recently recovered voices as the editors seek to suggest something of the full literary dialogue of each region and timeline. Engaging introductions, scholarly annotations, regional maps, pronunciation guides, and illustrations provide a supportive editorial setting. An accompanying Instructor's Manual written by the editors offers practical suggestions for the classroom.

"The introductions in this anthology are meant to be just that: a basic overview of what students need to know before they begin reading, with topics that students can research further. An open access literature textbook cannot be a history book at the same time, but history is the great companion of literature: The more history students know, the easier it is for them to interpret literature. In an electronic age, with this text available to anyone with computer access around the world, it has never been more necessary to recognize and understand differences among nationalities and cultures. The literature in this anthology is foundational, in the sense that these works influenced the authors who followed them. A word to the instructor: The texts have been chosen with the idea that they can be compared and contrasted, using common themes. Rather than numerous (and therefore often random) choices of texts from various periods, these selected works are meant to make both teaching and learning easier. While cultural expectations are not universal, many of the themes found in these works are."--Open Textbook Library.