Western Literature

1
Western Literature

• A Very Basic Introduction

2
Historical Periods of Development

• Oral origins
• The Sumerians
• The Greeks
• The Romans
• The Middle Ages
• The Renaissance
• Post-Renaissance to Present Day

3
Oral Origins

• Western Literature traces its origins to the time
  before writing. Tales, legends, and oral
  histories were told and retold, down across the
  generations. Over time, bits and pieces of these
  distinct forms blended together to become the
  literary form we now call the Epic.

4
Oral Origins, cont.

• The epic began as an oral form. Epics were
  recited by poets/performers who memorized vast
  amounts of information and then recited/performed
  that information for listeners.
• Over time, as writing was developed, these epics
  were written down.

5
Oral Origins, cont.

• An epic or heroic poem is
• A long narrative poem
• On a serious subject
• Written in a grand or elevated style
• Centered on a larger-than-life hero.

6
Oral Origins, cont.

• Epics tend to have the following characteristics
  
• An opening in medias res (that is, they begin in
  the middle)
• An invocation to the Muse (a goddess whom the
  poet hopes will inspire her/him)
• A concern with the fate of a nation or people
• The intervention of supernatural figures who are
  interested in the outcome of the action
• Long catalogues (lists of ships, characters,
  and/or places)
• Extensive battle scenes
• A few stock episodes, including a visit to the
  underworld.

7
The Sumerians

• The first known epic to be written down was The
  Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was an historical
  king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates
  in modern Iraq he lived about 2700 B.C. Although
  historians tend to emphasize Hammurabi and his
  code of law, the civilizations of the
  Tigris-Euphrates area, among the first
  civilizations, focus rather on Gilgamesh and the
  legends accruing around him to explain, as it
  were, themselves. Many stories and myths were
  written about Gilgamesh, some of which were
  written down about 2000 B.C. in the Sumerian
  language on clay tablets which still survive.
  These Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated
  into a longer poem, versions of which survive not
  only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related
  to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on
  tablets written in Hittite (an Indo-European
  language, a family of languages which includes
  Greek and English). The Epic of Gilgamesh was
  originally written in the script known as
  cuneiform, which means wedge-shaped.

8
The Greeks

• Around 700 B.C., a Greek poet named Homer wrote
  the Iliad.
• The Iliad belongs to the epic genre. Since the
  epic is by its very nature lengthy (and the Iliad
  is no exception), it tends to be rather loosely
  organized. Not every episode is absolutely
  necessary to the main story and digressions are
  not uncommon. In the Units to follow, you will
  notice how different in this regard is the genre
  of drama, in which every episode tends to be
  essential to the plot and digressions are
  inappropriate.
• The events narrated in epics are drawn from
  legend rather than invented by the poet and are
  typically of great significance, as in the case
  of the Iliad, which relates an important incident
  centering around Achilles, the greatest hero of
  the Greeks in the Trojan War, the most celebrated
  war of Greek legend. A second epic by Homer, the
  Odyssey, tells the story of the journey of
  Odysseus, another celebrated Greek hero, on his
  way home from the Trojan War, after the Greeks
  have won.
• Epics were written in poetic form.

9
The Greeks, cont.

• Homers epics were just the beginning of the
  great literary tradition of ancient Greece. It is
  difficult to overestimate the importance of this
  body of written work. All of Western Literature
  traces its origins to Classical Greece, and the
  literary works of ancient Greek authors. Homer,
  Sappho, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus,
  and many other writers produced works of
  literature that have been read and re-read for
  more than two thousand years.

10
The Greeks, cont.

• Unlike Homer, who wrote epic poetry around 700
  B.C., writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles,
  Euripides, and Aristophanes wrote plays in the
  fifth century B.C.
• Plays that were acted succeeded epic poems that
  were recited. They were still poetry, but with
  actors and dancing. Plays were often performed
  in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and
  revelry.  The plays had 3 actors (all men,
  playing a number of roles), a fifteen-member
  chorus, and a paucity of props. Like epics, they
  were usually dramatizations of well-known
  stories/legends.
• Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Sophocles (496-406
  B.C.), and Euripides (486-406 B.C.), are known
  for their tragedies. Aristophanes (450-385 B.C.)
  is known for his comedies.
• Tragedy and comedy formed separate genres, but
  both types of drama were performed on stage,
  originally at the Festival of Dionysus in Athens.

11
The Greeks, cont.

• Characteristics of Greek Tragedy
• Protagonist (hero) has a tragic flaw, a single
  character flaw that eventually arouses pity and
  terror (according to Aristotle)
• A chorus (the chorus commented on events, filled
  in gaps, helped create the proper moods,
  counseled actors to speak their thoughts, and
  acted as "the conscience" for the actors)
• Reliance on supernatural elements
• Respect for fate
• Destruction of the hero because of the flaw
• Catharsis (a point at which the audience is
  purged of the character flaw.  They learn a moral
  lesson through the hero's destruction and come
  away clean).

12
The Greeks, cont.

• Greek Comedy
• Both comedy and tragedy evolved from religious
  rituals to the god Dionysus.
• Tragedy evolved from the more serious aspects of
  worship. Comedy evolved from the more sexual,
  orgiastic aspect of the rituals.
• Greek Comedy is divided into two periods Old
  Comedy (5th century B.C.) and New Comedy (4th and
  3rd century B.C.)

13
The Greeks, cont.

• Old Comedy generally included the following
  characteristics
• It was very bawdy, with frequent intimations of
  sexuality (it was, after all, part of a ritual
  worship to Dionysus).
• It was full of a lot of physical (slapstick)
  humor.
• It had elements of farce things were portrayed
  as ridiculous and over the top.
• It almost always contained harsh satirical
  critiques of religious, political, military, or
  intellectual institutions.
• It often lampooned specific individuals
  (especially those in power).
• The only practitioner of Old Comedy whose works
  remain extant is Aristophanes.

14
The Greeks, cont.

• After the end of the Peloponnesian War (a long
  conflict between the Greek city-states of Athens
  and Sparta, which Athens eventually lost),
  freedom of speech was curtailed in Athens, and
  the practitioners of the Old Comedy had to work
  under severe censorship. These conditions gave
  birth to the New Comedy, which later came to
  dominate the classical stage.
• We are most familiar with the New Comedy through
  Shakespeare, who adopted its models as his own.
• The plot was generally based around a frustrated
  romance a man and a woman who want to get
  married but cannot, due to some combination of
  scheming servants, feuding parents, etc.
• The comedy consisted in the overcoming of the
  obstacles and the final marriage of the couple in
  love.

15
The Greeks, cont.

• The Greeks made too many contributions to
  literature (and art, and architecture, and math,
  and politics, and history, etc.) to list even a
  meaningful fraction of them here.
• The main thing to remember is that much of that
  which we think of as Western descends from the
  culture they developed.
• In a way, we are all their heirsnot only
  literarily and culturally, but epistemologically
  (in the way we see and experience our world).

16
The Romans

• In its earliest phases, Roman literature was
  entirely inspired by Greek literature, and it
  remained heavily indebted to Greek models.
• Livius Andronicus (240-207 B.C.), the father of
  Latin literature, was himself a Greek, reputedly
  from Tarentum, and wrote Latin adaptations of
  Homers Odyssey and of Greek tragedies and
  comedies.
• Such adaptations, presented in Greek dress and
  with a notional Greek setting, became a staple
  element in public dramatic performances from the
  late third century B.C. The comedies of Plautus
  (died 184 B.C.) and Terence (190-159 B.C.) are
  examples of this adaptation.
• Later, from the time of the Civil Wars and into
  the reign of the early Emperors and beyond, Roman
  literature took on a more distinctive flavor.
• As with the Greeks, so many great Roman authors
  lived and worked over a period of years that it
  is impossible to mention even a significant
  fraction. A few key examples will have to do.

17
The Romans, cont.

• Examples of great Roman poets from the period of
  the civil wars and the early Empire include
  Virgil (70-19 B.C.) and Ovid (43 B.C. to 17
  A.D.).
• Virgils Aeneid, for example, tells the story of
  the founding of Rome by Aeneas, a Trojan prince
  who escaped the fall of Troy and journeyed to
  Italy to found the city of Rome.
• The Aeneid is modeled on the great epics of
  Homer however, Virgil incorporates uniquely
  Roman themes and other elements into his epic
  that separate it from its Greek predecessors.
• Ovids Metamorphoses is one of the great works of
  all time. In Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts a
  series of 250 myths that all have to do with a
  metamorphosis of some kind. But some stories
  (for example Phaethon, Pentheus, Heracles) only
  have metamorphosis tacked on as an incidental
  element, almost as an afterthought. Ovid is more
  interested in metamorphosis as a universal
  principle which explains the nature of the world
  Troy falls, Rome rises. Nothing is permanent.

18
The Romans, cont.

• Perhaps the greatest Roman contribution to the
  body of Western literature was the way in which
  they not only adopted and adapted, but also kept
  alive and disseminated, the literature of the
  Greeks.
• When the Romans conquered Western Europe, they
  brought their taste for Greek civilization and
  culture with them.
• As the Romans civilized Western Europe, they
  spread these tastes to the peoples they
  conqueredincluding the eventual inhabitants of
  modern-day England, France, Germany, Italy,
  Spain, Portugal, etc.
• In a way, our literature is descended from the
  Greeks, through the Romans.

19
The Middle Ages

• For several hundred years, from about the first
  to around the fifth century A.D., Rome was the
  greatest power on Earth, ruling Britain, France,
  Germany, and the countries around the
  Mediterranean Sea. The Romans brought relative
  peace and stability to the areas under their
  control.
• However, in northern Europe, there were many
  fierce tribes that were only held at bay by the
  armed might of the Romans.
• Around 400 AD, the Roman Empire began to weaken
  and these northern tribes swept across the
  continent of Europe and plundered the city of
  Rome.
• In 476 A.D., the Western Roman Empire collapsed
  and was gradually replaced by many small kingdoms
  ruled by a strong warrior.

20
The Middle Ages, cont.

• For many years, Europe was without the luxuries
  and richesas well as the peace and
  stabilitythat had marked the height of Rome.
  Many centuries later, a new interest in learning
  would mark the beginning of the Renaissance. The
  thousand years between is called the Middle Ages
  or the Medieval period.
• The early Middle Ages are often called the "Dark
  Ages" because the great civilizations of Greece
  and Rome had fallen. Life in Europe during the
  Middle Ages was very hard. Very few people could
  read or write (only the rich and the clergy) and
  nobody expected conditions to improve. The only
  hope for most people during the Middle Ages was
  their strong belief in Christianity, and the hope
  that life in heaven would be better than life on
  earth.
• This period began and ended for different
  countries at different times across Europe. It
  also affected different areas of the continent in
  different ways.

21
The Middle Ages, cont.

• The northern tribes did not stamp out learning
  completely, only momentarily set it back. The
  Catholic Church was already a powerful
  institution at the end of the Roman Empire and it
  continued to be the unifying force between the
  many small kingdoms that would become Europe.
• The Church salvaged much from the ruins of the
  ancient world and became one of the centers of
  learning during the Middle Ages.
• The people of the Middle Ages had a rich culture
  and produced many advances in art, literature,
  science, and medicine, and paved the way for the
  ideas that would become the beginning of the
  Renaissance.

22
The Middle Ages, cont.

• During the thousand years of the Middle Ages,
  many works of literature were written by many
  authors in different parts of Europe. So any
  sort of comprehensive coverage is impossible
  here. As an example, we will focus on a
  particular area (France), during a particular
  time period (the twelfth century).
• A period of great development and achievement in
  written works, the twelfth century produced a
  genre unique to literary history. It is named by
  the linguistic coincidence of its language and
  form "roman," translated as romance.
• The period from 1150 to 1165 is marked by the
  appearance of the four so-called "romans
  antiques (old romances). The first three of
  these romances are anonymous (the Roman d'Eneas,
  the Roman d'Alexandre, and the Roman de Thèbes),
  while the fourth, the Roman de Troie, is
  attributed to Benoît de Sainte-Maure.

23
The Middle Ages, cont.

• In the last third of the twelfth century,
  Chrétien de Troyes composed his five romances of
  King Arthur, master works which, in the case of
  the Chevalier de la Charrette (circa 1177-1179,
  referred to by many as Lancelot), and the Conte
  du Graal (circa 1181-1190, also known as
  Perceval) gave rise to copious and divergent
  continuations and served as starting points for
  the elaboration of properly medieval myths (the
  love of Lancelot and Guenevere, the holy Grail)
  which are still popular today. Chrétien's other
  romances include Erec et Enide (1170), Cligés
  (circa 1176), and the Chevalier au Lion (circa
  1177-1179, also known as Yvain).
• Along with the Charrette and the Graal, these
  romances serve as basic texts for the
  understanding of the cultured aristocracy of the
  twelfth century and as we will see later in the
  course, they serve as important milestones in the
  development of Western Literature from the poetic
  epic form of antiquity to the modern prose forms
  of the novel and short story cycle.

24
The Middle Ages, cont.

• Whether they are concerned with ancient violence
  (the Roman de Troie and the Roman de Thèbes),
  historical characters and the origins of powerful
  military and political states (the Roman d'Eneas
  and the Roman d'Alexandre), or whether, as Erich
  Auerbach has said of the works of Chrétien de
  Troyes, they seek a self-portrayal of feudal
  knighthood with its mores and ideals, these
  twelfth-century romances are linked by a basic
  concern for the secular past and a vision of
  history which, in a world where daily life was
  imbued with Christianity, diverges from the
  historical vision of medieval theologians, that
  is to say salvation history.
• In the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the focus
  is on an idealized secular world (a sort of
  perfected version of the world in which people
  lived their lives), rather than on the eternal
  reward that awaited the long-suffering citizens
  of Medieval Europe. Chivalry, unrequited love,
  heroic deedsall of these appear in the romances
  of 12th century France.

25
The Renaissance

• Europe began to experience great change by about
  1450. Within one hundred years, Columbus had
  sailed to America, literacy spread, scientists
  made great discoveries, and artists created work
  that still inspires us today.
• Historians call the next period of European
  history the "Renaissance," or the "rebirth." The
  Renaissance is the beginning of modern history.
• Perhaps the most important thing to remember
  about the Renaissance is that it was, above all,
  a kind of rediscovery. The Europeans of the
  early Renaissance looked back across time to the
  examples of Greece and Rome. But they wrote
  their works in their own languages.

26
The Renaissance, cont.

• One of the most important inventions in all of
  history, and the one which helped most to usher
  in the general rebirth of learning that defined
  the Renaissance, was the printing press.
• Invented in 1436 by a 39 year old German man
  named Johann Gutenberg, the printing press was a
  great improvement over hand-copying.
• Before the development of this time-saving and
  economical machine, monks had to hand copy
  everything. This time-consuming and tedious
  process made books and scripts extremely hard to
  come by, and astronomically expensive.
• Gutenberg used his printing press to put ink on
  hundreds of individual letters that could be
  combined in numerous ways to create a entire page
  of text. After this stage was completed, as many
  copies as desired could be rendered. However, to
  print a different page, the individual letters
  had to be completely rearranged.
• This great invention helped Gutenberg reach his
  greatest achievement of the first mass-production
  of the Bible, which he published in 1456 in
  Mainz, Germany.

27
The Renaissance, cont.

• Although the Renaissance officially began in the
  fifteenth century, it peaked in the sixteenth.
  The sixteenth century in Europe was a time of
  unprecedented change. It was the beginning of the
  modern era, and it saw a revolution in almost
  every aspect of life.
• The century opened with the discovery of a new
  continent. The renaissance, which began in Italy,
  was peaking and spreading north, even arriving in
  backwaters like England. Life was largely
  prosperous for the average person, the economy
  was growing.
• The mechanisms of commerce, systems of
  international finance, ocean-going trading
  fleets, an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, were all
  building a recognizably capitalist, money-based
  economy.
• Geniuses were stepping all over each other on the
  street corners producing scientific innovation
  after innovation. Technological innovations like
  gunpowder were changing the nature of warfare and
  the military caste nature of society the cannon
  probably had a great deal to do with the rise of
  the centralized nation state as we know it.

28
The Renaissance, cont.

• Because the Renaissance was so wide-spread, and
  involved such a major change in all areas of
  Europeand by a less-than-peaceful extension, the
  worldwe will focus here on the English
  Renaissance of the sixteenth century.
• Sixteenth century England was ruled by the Tudor
  dynasty. This dynasty began with Henry VII, then
  continued through the reigns of Henry VIII,
  Edward VI, Mary I (Bloody Mary), and Elizabeth I.
  
• The English Renaissance reached its height during
  the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This period
  (1558-1603) has often been called The Golden
  Age of England.
• During Elizabeths reign, England went from a
  backwater to the most powerful country in the
  world. Arts and literature flourished, along
  with commerce. Many of the writers that worked
  in Elizabeths time are still read today. One of
  them, William Shakespeare, is believe by many to
  be the greatest of all time.

29
The Renaissance, cont.

• In fact, so many great writers created so many
  great works during the Elizabethan Age, it is
  impossible to discuss even a meaningful fraction
  of them here.
• Writers like Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney,
  Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William
  Shakespeare, John Lyly, Thomas Nashe, Mary
  Herbert, and Thomas Campion (to name a few)
  thrived in the can-do atmosphere of Elizabethan
  England.
• As you will see later on, drama was reborn during
  the Elizabethan Age. Christopher Marlowe and
  William Shakespeare were the foremost dramatists
  during the reign of Elizabeth. Their plays were
  performed on stage in London to audiences that
  ranged from groundlings (commoners who paid
  almost nothing to stand in front of the stage) to
  royalty.
• William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote many of his
  plays, and his celebrated sonnets, during this
  time.

30
The Renaissance, cont.

• We know that A Midsummer Night's Dream (probably
  written in late 1594 or 1595), Romeo and Juliet
  (probably 1595) Richard II (probably 1595), King
  John (probably 1596) The Merchant of Venice
  (1596-97) and the Henry IV plays (probably
  1597-98) date from the last decade of the
  sixteenth century. 
• The 1590s are often called Shakespeare's lyric
  period based on the poetry in plays such as
  Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet and
  Richard II. 
• By 1599 Shakespeare must have composed Much Ado
  About Nothing.  He may well have also composed As
  You Like It in 1599.   He certainly composed
  Henry V that year and began his string of great
  tragedies with Julius Caesar. There is a record
  of a performance of Julius Caesar at the Globe on
  September 21, 1599.  The Merry Wives of Windsor
  probably also belongs to this period, following
  upon the popularity of the Henry IV plays, though
  it may be slightly later.  
• Had Shakespeare died in 1599, he would still be
  thought the greatest playwright the world had
  ever known, even before his most mature work had
  been accomplished.

31
The Renaissance, cont.

• The most important thing to remember about the
  Renaissance is that it was just that a rebirth.
  Shakespeare, like many other Renaissance writers,
  took much of his inspiration (and even some of
  his material) from the Greeks and Romans who came
  before him.
• Although Shakespeare and others took their
  inspiration from Greek and Roman models, their
  works were products of the age in which they
  lived and wrote.
• It was during the time of the Renaissance that
  our modern age was born.

32
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• The centuries following the end of the
  Renaissance are marked by a continuing diversity
  in Western Literature.
• All three of the genres we will study this
  semesterdrama, poetry, and fictionflowered in
  every country of Europe, as well as in North and
  South America.
• To cover individual writers across such a period
  would be impossible. We will therefore look at
  the historical development of literary movements,
  and talk about a few key examples.

33
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• Classicism "Classicism" refers (after-the-fact)
  to the literature of Greece and Rome. The general
  argument is that this literature is characterized
  by harmony, balance, discipline, and a searching
  for the essence of the universally "true."
• Neo-Classicism The decline of the Roman Empire
  was followed by centuries, often called the "Dark
  Ages," with no great flowering of culture. The
  next outburst, so to speak, occurred in Italy in
  the 15th and 16th centuries. Known as the
  Renaissance, this period was a rediscovery, and
  thus in a sense, of re-birth, of classical
  values. In literary theory, this rebirth was
  eventually formalized into a very rigid set of
  "rules" that defined and evaluated literature,
  but often robbed it of the original classical
  spirit of inquiry. This can best be seen in the
  work of the French critic Nicolas
  Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1711). As a a result,
  "Neo-Classical" is sometimes used with the
  negative connotation of "formally imitative, but
  spiritually empty." Other critics, however, view
  "Neo-Classical" as a neutral term simply
  signifying the Classical emphasis on harmony,
  balance, and the universal. In England,
  Neo-Classicism flourished in the eighteenth
  century, the most important representatives
  being  John Dryden and Alexander Pope.    

34
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• Romanticism In the early 1800's, the
  Neo-Classical focus on the past was supplanted by
  an interest on the more recent past of individual
  nations the classical sense of reason, by a
  focus on emotion and the classical focus on the
  universal, by a sense of the particular and
  individual. In effect, Romanticism was a
  rebellion against Neo-Classicism, and, like most
  rebellions, it pushed toward the opposite
  extreme. In doing so, however, it brought the
  specifics of different countries and different
  people into the subject matter of literature.
  Usually, however, the tone of Romantic literature
  is idyllic, sentimental, exotic, and/or what we
  still call romantic.
• Realism A reaction against, and a natural
  development of, Romanticism, Realism was a
  transcontinental movement that shifted the focus
  of literature away from the exotic and
  adventurous toward the everyday lives of the
  common people (primarily the middle class).
  Clerks, civil servants, and their love lives
  become a common topic of literary works. Although
  the primary time frame differs in different
  countries, the Realist movement began around 1840
  and ended in 1880. In France, the most famous
  realist writers were Flaubert and Balzac in
  Russia, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.

35
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• Naturalism The causes of literary movements are
  complex, but in order to be noticed, art has to
  be both good and different. By the end of the
  1880's, writers found it extremely difficult to
  match the realistic skills of a Flaubert or
  Tolstoy and find new "middle class" topics to
  write about. A new movement arose as Naturalist
  writers applied a deterministic philosophy to
  descriptions of the lower classes. The most
  famous Naturalist is probably Emile Zola, in
  France, but the movement also included Maksim
  Gorky in Russia, and Theodore Dreiser in the
  United States. The Naturalists tended to focus on
  the sordid lives of the people on the fringes of
  society, usually suggesting that the sordidness
  of their  lives was caused by external factors
  society, economics, fate.
• Symbolism The 1890's also saw a different
  reaction to the exhaustion of Realism the
  Symbolists. The Symbolists are, in a sense, a
  return to the Classical tradition. Primarily
  poets, although there are some important prose
  works, the Symbolists emphasized the spiritual,
  mystical, and metaphysical. In France, there was
  Stephane Mallarme in the U.S., Wallace Stevens
  in England/U.S. there was T.S. Eliot.

36
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• Modernism Modernists like American author Ernest
  Hemingway, working in the years between 1910 and
  1950, radically changed the way literature is
  written. Modernists, disillusioned by the
  build-up toward, and the aftermath of, World War
  I, no longer trusted authority figures like
  governments and churches. They put their trust
  in art instead, and tried to make a break with
  the past by experimenting with formseeking to
  make it new. Because they thought that they
  had been let down by religion, they sought to
  live for today, rather than trying to live for
  some type of afterlife.
• Post-Modernism Post-Modernists like John Barth
  sought to write about life in late twentieth
  century. Their writings were characterized by
  Barth as the literature of exhaustion. These
  writers tend to write metafictionthat is,
  fiction that is aware of itself as fiction. They
  emphasize play, and games. And mass media
  pervades their works.

37
Post-Renaissance to Present Day

• The Marginalized The work of those groups that
  have been marginalized over the course of Western
  history has risen to prominence over the course
  of the twentieth century and promises to carry
  the arc of Western Literature forward through the
  century that is now unfolding. Native American
  writers like Sherman Alexie are now speaking out
  through their writing in ways that were
  impossible in times past. These writers tend to
  write ethnically-based fiction. Often, they use
  culture-based myth to help tell their stories.
  Many times, the oral tradition is emphasized as
  an alternative to the written.
• This list of literary movements is by no means
  comprehensive or complete. It is merely a
  guideline for the beginning student of Western
  Literature. Over the course of the semester, we
  will look at these movements in much more depth.
  
• However, before we can move up to the
  twenty-first century, we must begin our study of
  Western Literature in the past, with the Greeks.