Title List

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Module 1: The Origins of Monotheism See:   Volume I, A   Section 1, 2, 4	•	The Epic of Gilgamesh
	•	Genesis 1-11
	•	Hymn to the Sun
	•	Iliad
	•	The Leiden Hymns
	•	Odyssey
Module 2: The Problem of Violence in the Ancient World See:   Volume I, A   Section 1, 2   Volume I, B   Section 10   Volume II, F   Section 23	•	The Diary of a Madman
	•	Genesis 4, 22
	•	Historical Records
	•	The Mahabharata
	•	The Oresteia
	•	The Sacrifice of Isaac
Module 3: The Paradoxical Nature of Medieval Warriors See:   Volume I, B   Section 8, 9	•	In Praise of War
	•	Beowulf
	•	The Canterbury Tales
	•	The Divine Comedy
	•	Shahname
	•	The Song of Roland
	•	The Tale of the Heike
Module 4: Variations on the Theme of Romantic Love in the Middle Ages See:   Volume I, B   Section 6, 7, 9   Volume I, C   Section 10, 12, 14	•	The Aeneid
	•	"Balade"
	•	The Canterbury Tales
	•	"The Cult of Love"
	•	selections from the Decameron
	•	"A Hymn to Holy Women"
	•	Lanval and Laustic
	•	Orlando Furioso
	•	The Pillow Book
	•	The Tale of Genji
Module 5: Uncertain Identity in a Changing World See:   Volume I, B   Section 7, 8   Volume I, C   Section 11, 12   Volume II, F   Section 22	•	Conference of the Birds
	•	The Divine Comedy
	•	The Epic of Son Jara
	•	Fuente Ovejuna
	•	Mother Crocodile
	•	Othello
	•	The Prince
	•	The Song of Roland
	•	The Story of Sheikh Sam'an
Module 6: The Emergence of the Personal in the European Renaissance: Representations of the Inner Life See:   Volume I, B   Section 6   Volume I, C   Section 12, 13	•	My Thatched Roof is Ruined by the Autumn Wind
	•	The Book of the Courtier
	•	Essays
	•	Hamlet
	•	Letter to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepulcro
	•	The Popol Vuh
Module 7: Fantastic Travels in the Pre-Modern World See:   Volume II, D   Section 14, 16, 17	•	The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love
	•	Bewitched
	•	Book of Travels
	•	Candide
	•	Gulliver's Travels
	•	Journey to the Deep North
	•	Monkey
Module 8: Women and Learning in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries See:   Volume I, C   Section 10   Volume II, D   Section 16, 18   Volume II, E   Section 20   Volume II, F   Section 24	•	The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love
	•	Candide
	•	Confessions
	•	Grasmere Journals
	•	The Peach Blossom Fan
	•	The Portrait of the Prioress, General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
	•	The Rape of the Lock
	•	Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz
	•	The Red Lotus of Chastity
	•	The Story of the Stone
	•	Tartuffe
	•	"You Want Me White"
Module 9: Nature and the Self in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature See:   Volume I, B   Section 9   Volume II, E   Section 18	•	A Pine is Standing Lonely
	•	Candescent Lies the Air
	•	Ghazals
	•	The Grasmere Journals
	•	Hyperion's Song of Fate
	•	The Infinite, To Himself
	•	The Kokinshu
	•	The Lake
	•	Ode to a Nightingale
	•	Tintern Abbey
Module 10: Labor, Free and Unfree, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries See:   Volume II, E   Section 20   Volume II, F   Section 23	•	Billy Budd, Sailor
	•	The Death of Ivan Ilych
	•	Dora
	•	Hedda Gabler
	•	The Lady with the Dog ; The Cherry Orchard
	•	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
	•	Notes from Underground
	•	The Silesian Weavers
	•	Songs of Innocence and Experience
Module 11: Cross-Cultural Aesthetics in a Global Context See:   Volume II, F   Section 21, 22	•	Death and the King's Horseman
	•	The Good Woman of Setzuan
	•	In Praise of Shadows
	•	Lapis Lazuli
	•	Love in a Fallen City
	•	Poems
	•	Zaabalawi
Module 12: Insiders' Views of the Colonial Experience See:   Volume II, F   Section 23, 24	•	Breast-Giver
	•	Facing the Forests
	•	The Guest
	•	The Metamorphosis
	•	To Roosevelt
	•	Things Fall Apart
Module 13: The Purpose of Writing: From Things to Thoughts in the Ancient World * See:   Volume I, A   Section 2, 3, 5, 14	•	Egyptian Love Songs
	•	Classic of Poetry
	•	Lyrics
	•	Chuang Tzu
	•	Metamorphoses
	•	Iliad and Odyssey
	•	Apology
	•	Hamlet
Module 14: The Sharing of Narrative Materials in the Middle Ages * See:   Volume I, B   Section 10	•	The Red Lotus of Chastity
	•	The Thousand and One Nights
	•	Decameron
	•	The Pardoner’s Tale
	•	Jataka Tales (Vol. I, A)
	•	Mother Crocodile (Vol. II, F)
Module 15: Oratory and Oral Performance in Pre-Modern Africa and the Americas * See:   Volume I, C   Sections 13, 14, 15	•	The Florentine Code
	•	Cantares Mexicanos
	•	The Epic of Son-Jara
	•	The Praise of Folly
	•	Popol Vuh
Module 16: Science and Religion in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Literature * See:   Volume II, D   Sections 18	•	Tartuffe
	•	An Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock
	•	Candide
	•	Gulliver’s Travels
Module 17: The Uncanny in Nineteenth-Century Literature * See:   Volume II, E   Sections 20, 22	•	Faust
	•	Kubla Khan, Dejection: An Ode
	•	The Queen of Spades
	•	The Grasmere Journals
	•	The Afternoon of a Faun
Module 18: The Persistence of Memory in Twentieth-Century Literature * See:   Volume II, F   Section 23, 24	•	Fragment of an Analysis of a Case in Hysteria: Dora
	•	Remembrance of Things Past
	•	The Waste Land
	•	The Black Cloth
	•	Pedro Paramo
	•	The Dead
	•	The Bear
	•	Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber
	•	Death Constant Beyond Love
	•	Things Fall Apart
	•	Death and the King’s Horseman
	•	Preface to Lyrical Ballads

These modules are designed to help students look deeply into the analytical perspectives proposed in the introductory essays that provide an overview of the contents of each volume of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition. Each module begins by highlighting a few important lines in one or more of these introductory essays to establish the subjects for study.

Focusing either on a single resonant text or a central unifying theme and supplementing it with materials culled from the Internet, the module invites students to take a closer look both at the text or theme in question and at the world out of which the focal subject developed.  

Study exercises assist students to articulate and document the new insights toward which the supplementary materials should lead: by working not only with the anthology texts, but with images, maps, and supporting articles available online, students have the opportunity to proceed at their own pace, discovering in their own words and by their own investigations the critical conclusions presented by the editors in their rich and closely argued introductions. 

Suggested comparisons with selections found in other volumes of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition reinforce students' comprehension of the thematic continuities that relate readings to each other and to the major intellectual movements and concerns introduced in the discovery modules.