History of European Literature

THEO D’HAEN is Emeritus professor of English, American, and Comparative Literature at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, and the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is former President of The International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures (FILLM). D’haen has authored and co-authored 13 books, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, and published over 200 journal articles and book chapters. Recent publications include A History of World Literature, World Literature in an Age of Geopolitics, and Literature: A World History, Volume II. ANDERS PETTERSSON is Emeritus Professor of Swedish and Comparative Literature at Umeå University, Sweden, and a former Vice-President of the International Comparative Literature Association. His main research interests are fundamental literary theory and transcultural literary history. Pettersson has published six monographs, including The Idea of a Text and the Nature of Textual Meaning, and edited or co-edited seven books, most recently the first volume of Wiley-Blackwell’s Literature: A World History.

• Preface ixIntroduction 1European Antiquity 1Medieval Europe 2Early Modern Europe 4Europe After 1800 5Literature 6Europe 7History 81 Before 400 CE 11Introduction 14Ancient Greece 19Classical Epic and Lyric Poetry 19Classical Greek Drama 34Classical Greek Prose 46Literature in Greek 300 BCE–400 CE 56Ancient Rome 63Latin Literature Before 100 BCE 63First- Century BCE Latin Poetry and Prose 68Latin Literature During the First Four Centuries CE 89Writing, Reading, and Literary Thought in Greco- Roman Culture 95Concluding Remarks: Greco- Roman Literary Culture in a Wider Perspective 992 400 to 1500 105Introduction 108Byzantine Literature 112Literature in Latin 119A New Western Drama 128The New Narrative Literature of Western Europe 133The New Vernacular Lyric Poetry 149Celtic, Germanic, and Slavonic Traditions 159Celtic Poetic Traditions 159Germanic Poetic Traditions 162Slavonic Literary Cultures 169Writing, Reading, and Literary Thought 174Concluding Remarks: European Literary Cultures 400– 1500 in a Wider Perspective 1793 1500 to 1800 185Introduction 188The "Making" of Europe 188Europe's Peoples 188Europe's Languages 189Europe's Shifting Borders 189Military Europe 190Europe as a Christian Continent 191Europe and the Dawn of "Modernity" 191Renaissance 192Baroque 193Neoclassicism 194Printing and Publishing 194Latin and the Rise of the Vernaculars 196The Reformation and the Vernaculars 199The Republic of Letters 201New Institutions of Learning 202Periodicals 204The Social Position of Authors 206Poetry 208The Renaissance Epic 208The Biblical Epic 217Other Uses of the Epic 221Other Classical Poetical Genres 223The Sonnet 228Militant Poetry 234Baroque Poetry 239Landscape Poetry 243Fables 244Ballads 246Minor Genres 247The Drama 248La Celestina 248Italy's Part 250The Spanish Siglo de Oro 250Elizabethan Drama 252Comedy of Humours and Neoclassical Tragedy 255The Lure of the Orient 258Restoration Drama 259Sentimental Drama 260Bourgeois Tragedy 262Prose 264The Picaresque 265The Picaresque at Large 267The Epistolary Novel 271Authenticity and Libertinism 273The Sentimental Novel 277The Bildungsroman or Novel of Education 279Travel Literature 280Philosophical and Oriental Tales 281A New Medium: The Opera 286Conclusion 2884 1800 to the Present 289Introduction 292Demographics 292The Map of Europe 292Imperialism 293World War I to World War II 294Decolonization and European Unification 295Politics 295Economics 297Work 299Education 300Literature 301Romanticism 302Narrative Verse 304Lyric Poetry 315Romantic Prose 321Romantic Drama 325Realism and Naturalism 327Narrative Verse 328Lyric Poetry 330The Realist Novel 334The Naturalist Novel 343Europe's Others 349Regionalism 352Popular Literature 356Drama 359Modernism 364From Symbolism to Modernism 366The Historical Avant-Gardes 373The Modernist Novel 380The "Great War" Novel 386Ideological Battles 389Colonial Fiction 397Drama 398After Modernism; or Post- Modernism 400World War II Fiction 401The Holocaust 405Literature Behind the Iron Curtain 407The Postmodernist Novel 409Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism 414Poetry After World War II 420Drama 423New Media: Opera, Film, Television, Gaming 424Conclusion 428Timelines 429Index of Authors and Works 443