The Literature Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - James Canton 2016
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