W. W. Norton College Books : English : The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces

Part I Beginnings to A.D. 100
The Invention of Writing and the Earliest Literatures
Map: The Ancient Middle East
Timeline
Gilgamesh (Akkadian, ca. 2500–1500 B.C.)

Translated by N. K. Sandars

Ancient Egyptian Poetry (Egyptian, ca. 1500–1000 B.C.)

The Leiden Hymns
- [How splendid you ferry the skyways]
- [God is a master craftsman]
- [When Being began back in days ofthe genesis]
Love Songs
- [My love is one and only, without peer]
- [Love, how I'd love to slip down to the pond]
- [Why, just now, must you question your heart]
- [I was simply off to see Nefrus my friend]
- [I think I'll go home and lie very still]
Translated by John L. Foster

The Bible: The Old Testament (Hebrew, ca. 1000–300 B.C.)

Genesis 1-3 [The Creation-The Fall
Genesis 4 [The First Murder]
Genesis 6-9 [The Flood]
Genesis 11 [The Origin of Languages]
Genesis 37, 39-46 [The Story of Joseph]
From Job
Psalm 8
Psalm 19
Psalm 23
Psalm 137
Isaiah 52-53 [The Song of the Suffering Servant]
The King James Version

Ancient Greece and the Formation of the Western Mind
Map: Greece and Western Asia Minor, ca. fifth century B.C.
Timeline
Homer (eighth century B.C.)

The Odyssey (Greek)
Book V. Sweet Nymph and Open Sea
Book VI. The Princess at the River
Book VII. Gardens and Firelight
Book VIII. The Songs of the Harper
Book IX. New Coasts and Poseidon’s Son
Book X. The Grace of the Witch
Book XI. A Gathering of Shades
Book XII. Sea Perils and Defeat
Book XIII. One More Strange Island
Book XIV. Hospitality in the Forest
Book XV. How They Came to Ithaka
Book XVI. Father and Son
Book XVII. The Beggar at the Manor
Book XVIII. Blows and a Queen’s Beauty
Book XIX. Recognitions and a Dream
Book XX. Signs and a Vision
Book XXI. The Test of the Bow
Book XXII. Death in the Great Hall
Book XXIII. The Trunk of the Olive Tree
Book XXIV. Warriors, Farewell
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Sappho of Lesbos (born ca. 630 B.C.)

Lyrics (Greek)
- [Throned in splendor, deathless, O Aphrodite]
- [Like the very gods in my sight is he]
- [Some there are who say that the fairest things seen]
Translated by Richmond Lattimore

Aeschylus (524?–456 B.C.)

The Oresteia (Greek)
Agamemnon
Translated by Robert Fagles

Sophocles (ca. 496–406 B.C.)

Oedipus the King (Greek)
Translated by Robert Fagles

Euripides (480–406 B.C.)

Medea (Greek)
Translated by Rex Warner

Aristophanes (450?–385? B.C.)

Lysistrata (Greek)
Translated by Charles T. Murphy

Plato (429–347 B.C.)

The Apology of Socrates (Greek)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

From Poetics (Greek)
Translated by James Hutton

Poetry and Thought in Early China
Map: China during the "Spring and Autumn" and "Warring States" Periods
Timeline
The Book of Songs (Chinese, ca. 1000–ca. 600 B.C.)

17 ("Plop fall the plums; but there arestill seven")
18 ("She threw a quince to me")
22 ("Of fair girls the loveliest")
24 ("I beg of you, Chung Tzu")
25 (""The lady says: ’The cock has crowed’")
28 ("Cold blows the northern wind")
54 ("HE: The gourd has bitter leaves")
56 ("If along the highroad")
57 ("By the willows of the Eastern Gate")
63 ("In the wilds there is a dead doe")
75 ("Tossed is that cypress boat")
131 (""We plucked the bracken, plucked the bracken")
157 ("They clear away the grass, the trees")
238 ("She who in the beginning gave birth to the people")
276 ("Big rat, big rat")
278 ("’Kio’ sings the oriole")
Translated by Arthur Waley

Confucius (551–479 B.C.)

From Analects (Chinese)
Translated by D. C. Lau

Chuang Chou (ca. 369–ca. 286 B.C.)

Chuang Tzu (Chinese)
Chapter 2. Discussion on Making All Things Equal

India’s Heroic Age
Map: India, 1200 B.C.–A.D. 400
Timeline
The Ramayan.a of Valmiki (Sanskrit, ca. 550 B.C.)

From Book 2. Rama Exiled
Translated by Robert P. Goldman

The Bhagavad-Gita (Sanskrit, first century B.C.)

The First Teaching [Arjuna’s Dejection]
The Second Teaching [Philosophy and Spiritual Discipline]
The Third Teaching [Discipline of Action]
The Sixth Teaching [The Man of Discipline]
The Eleventh Teaching [The Vision of Krishna’s Totality]
Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

The Roman Empire
Map: The Roman Empire, ca. 117
Timeline
Catullus (84?–54? B.C.)

Lyrics (Latin)
5 ("Come, Lesbia, let us live and love")
87 ("No woman, if she is honest")
107 ("When at last after long despair, our hopes ring true again")
109 ("My life, my love, you say our love will last forever")
83 ("Lesbia speaks evil of me")
70 ("My woman says that she would rather wear the wedding-veil for me")
72 ("There was a time, O Lesbia")
85 ("I hate and love")
8 ("Poor damned Catullus, here’s no time for nonsense")
11 ("Furius, Aurelius, bound to Catullus")
76 ("If man can find rich consolation")
Translated by Horace Gregory

Virgil (70–19 B.C.)

The Aeneid (Latin)
From Book I
- [Prologue]
- [Aeneas Arrives in Carthage]
Book IV [The Passion of the Queen]
From Book VI [Aeneas in the Underworld]
From Book VIII [The Shield of Aeneas]
From Book XII [The Death of Turnus]
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)

Metamorphoses (Latin)
From Book I
- [The Creation]
- [The Four Ages]
- [Jove’s Intervention]
- [The Story of Lycaon]
- [The Flood]
- [Deucalion and Pyrrha]
- [Apollo and Daphne]
From Book IV [Pyramus and Thisbe]
Translated by Rolfe Humphries

Part II 100 to 1500
From Roman Empire to Christian Europe
Map: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Spread of Christianity
Timeline
The Bible: The New Testament (Greek, ca. first century)

Luke 2 [The Birth and Youth of Jesus]
Matthew 5-7 [The Teaching of Jesus: The Sermon on the Mount]
Luke 15 [The Teaching of Jesus: Parables]
Matthew 26 [The Betrayal of Jesus]
Matthew 27 [The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus]
Matthew 28 [The Resurrection]
The King James Version

Augustine (354–430)

Confessions (Latin)
From Book I [Childhood]
From Book II [The Pear Tree]
From Book III [The Student at Carthage]
From Book VI [Worldly Ambitions]
From Book VIII [Conversion]
Translated by F. J. Sheed

India’s Classical Age
Map: India, 100–1200
Timeline
Kalidasa (fourth century) Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection (Sanskrit)

Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

China’s "Middle Period"
Map: T’ang China, ca. 650
Timeline
T’ao Ch’ien (365–427)

Selected Poetry and Prose (Chinese)
The Peach Blossom Spring
The Return
Translated by James Robert Hightower
Biography of Master Five Willows
Translated by Stephen Owen
Returning to the Farm to Dwell
- I ("From early days I have been at odds with the world")
- II ("Here in the country human contacts are few")
Begging for Food
On Moving House
- I ("For long I yearned to live in Southtown")
- II ("In spring and fall are many perfect days")
In the Sixth Month of 408, Fire
From Twenty Poems After Drinking Wine
- Preface
- V ("I built my hut beside a traveled road")
- IX ("I heard a knock this morning at my door")
- X ("Once I made a distant trip")
From On Reading the Seas and Mountains
- Classic
- I ("In early summer when the grasses grow")
Translated by James Robert Hightower

T’ang Poetry (Chinese)
Li Po (701–762)

The Sun Rises and Sets
Bring in the Wine
Yearning
Ballad of Youth
The Girls of Yüeh
Dialogue in the Mountains
Summer Day in the Mountains
My Feelings
Drinking Alone by Moonlight
Sitting Alone by Ching-t’ing Mountain
Translated by Stephen Owen

Tu Fu (712–770)

Song of P’eng-ya
Moonlit Night
Chiang Village
Thousand League Pool
My Thatched Roof Is Ruined by the Autumn Wind
A Guest Comes
Spending the Night in a Tower by the River
Writing of My Feelings Traveling by Night
Translated by Stephen Owen

Yüan Chen (779–831)

The Story of Ying-ying (Chinese)
Translated by James Robert Hightower

Li Ch’ing-chao (1084–ca. 1151)

Afterword to Records on Metal and Stone (Chinese)
Song Lyrics (Chinese)
To "Southern Song"
To "Free-Spirited Fisherman"
To "Like a Dream"
To "Drunk in the Shadow of Flowering Trees"
To "Spring in Wu-ling"
To "Every Note Slow"
Translated by Stephen Owen

The Rise of Islam and Islamic Literature
Map: Islam’s Golden Age
Timeline
The Koran (Arabic, 610–632)

1. The Exordium
From 4. Women
5. The Table
12. Joseph
19. Mary
55. The Merciful
62. Friday, or the Day of Congregation
71. Noah
76. Man
Translated by N. J. Dawood

Abolqasem Ferdowsi (932–1025)

Sh’hn’me (Persian)
The Tragedy of Sohr·b and Rost·m
Translated by Jerome Wright Clinton

The Thousand and One Nights (Arabic, fourteenth century)

Prologue
[The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, His Vizier's Daughter]
[The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey]
[The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife]
[The Story of the Merchant and the Demon]
[The First Old Man’s Tale]
[The Second Old Man’s Tale]
Translated by Husain Haddawy
[The Third Old Man’s Tale]
Translated by Jerome Wright Clinton

The Formation of a Western Literature
Map: Europe, ca. 1360
Timeline
From The Song of Roland (French, twelfth century)

Translated by Frederick Goldin

Marie de France (twelfth century)

Eliduc (French)
Translated by John Fowles

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

The Divine Comedy (Italian)
Inferno
Translated by John Ciardi

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375)

The Decameron (Italian)
The First Day
The Second Tale of the Fourth Day
The Ninth Tale of the Fifth Day
Translated by Mark Musa and Peter E. Bondanella

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)

The Canterbury Tales (Middle English)
General Prologue
Prologue to the Miller’s Tale
The Miller’s Tale
Prologue to the Pardoner’s Tale
The Pardoner’s Tale
Translated by Theodore Morrison
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English, fourteenth century)
Translated by Marie Borroff

The Golden Age of Japanese Culture
Map: Medieval Japan
Timeline
The Man’yōshū (Japanese, eighth century)

29-31. Poem written by Kakinomoto Hitomaro when he passed the ruined capital at Omi
135-137. Poem written by Kakinomoto Hitomaro when he parted from his wife in the land of Iwami and came up to the capital
220-222. Poem written by Kakinomoto Hitomaro upon seeing a dead man lying among the rocks on the island of Samine in Sanuki
338-350. Thirteen poems in praise of wine by Lord Otomo Tabito, the Commander of the Dazaifu
804-805. Poem sorrowing on the impermanence of life in this world
892-893. Dialog of the Destitute
Translated by Ian Hideo Levy

Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973–ca. 1016) The Tale of Genji (Japanese)

Chapter 2. The Broom Tree
Chapter 4. Evening Faces
Chapter 12. Suma
Chapter 13. Akashi
Chapter 25. Fireflies
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker

Nō Drama (Japanese)
Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu (1435–1516)

Dojoji
Translated by Donald Keene

Medieval India: The Age of the Devotional Lyric
Map: India, 1200–1600
Timeline
Poems of the Virasaiva Saints (Kannada)
Mahadeviyakka (twelfth century)

17 ("Like a silkworm weaving")
114 ("Husband inside")
119 ("What’s to come tomorrow")
124 ("You can confiscate / money in hand")
283 ("I love the Handsome One")
294 ("O brothers, why do you talk")
336 ("Look at / love's marvellous / ways")
Translated by A. K. Ramanujan

The Bengali Vaisnava Saints’ Songs of Devotion to Krishna (Bengali)
Govindadasa (fifteenth century)

[O Madhava, how shall I tell you of my terror]
[When they had made love]
[She speaks]
Translated by E. C. Dimock and Denise Levertov

Mirabai (late sixteenth-early seventeenth century)

Poems (Hindi and Gujerati)
37 [I’m colored with the color of dusk, oh rana]
42 [Life without Hari is no life, friend]
82 [I saw the dark clouds burst]
84 [Hey love bird, crying cuckoo]
153 [Go to where my loved one lives]
166 [Murali sounds on the banks of the Jumna]
193 [Let us go to a realm beyond going]
Translated by John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer

Africa: The Mali Epic of Son-Jara
Map: West Africa, 1200–1400
Timeline
The Epic of Son-Jara (Maninka, late thirteenth-early fourteenth century)

Text by Fa-Digi Sisoko
Translated by John William Johnson

Part III 1500 to 1650
The Renaissance in Europe
Map: Western Europe, ca. 1560
Timeline
Francis Petrarch (1304–1374)

Letter to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro
- [The Ascent of Mount Ventoux] (Latin)
Translated by James H. Robinson and Henry W. Rolfe
Sonnets (Italian)
- 3 ("It was the morning of that blessèd day")
- 61 ("Blest be the day, and blest the month and year")
Translated by Joseph Auslander
90 ("She used to let her golden hair fly free")
Translated by Morris Bishop
292 ("The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise")
333 ("Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone")
Translated by Morris Bishop

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

The Prince (Italian)
- [Princely Virtues]
- ["Fortune Is a Woman"]
- [The Roman Dream]
Translated by Allan H. Gilbert

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

Essays (French)
To the Reader
Of Cannibals
Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions
Of Repentance
Translated by Donald Frame

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)

Don Quixote (Spanish)
From Part I
- ["I Know Who I Am, And Who I May Be, If I Choose"]
- [Fighting the Windmills and a Choleric Biscayan]
- ["To Right Wrongs and Come to the Aid of the Wretched"]
- ["Set Free at Once That Lovely Lady..."]
From Part II
- ["Put into a Book"]
- [A Victorious Duel]
- ["For I Well Know the Meaning of Valor"]
- [Last Duel]
- [Homecoming and Death]
Translated by Samuel Putnam

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Native America and Europe in the New World
Map: The Americas, 1500–1650
Timeline
Florentine Codex (Nahuatl and Spanish, 1547–1579)

[The Midwife Addresses the Woman Who Has Died in Childbirth]
Translated by John Bierhorst
[The Midwife Addresses the Woman Who Has Just Delivered]
Translated by Thelma Sullivan

Cantares Mexicanos (Nahuatl, 1550–1581)

Song IV. Mexican Otomi Song
Song XII. A Song for Admonishing Those Who Seek No Honor in War
Translated by John Bierhorst

Popol Vuh (Quiché, 1554–1558)

From Part 1 [Preamble, Creation]
From Part 2 [The Twins Defeat Seven Macaw]
From Part 3 [Victory over the Underworld]
From Part 4 [Origin of Humanity, First Dawn]
From Part 5 [Prayer for Future Generations]
Translated by Dennis Tedlock

Part IV 1650 to 1800
Vernacular Literature in China
Map: China, ca. 1645
Timeline
Cao Xueqin (Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in) (1715–1763)

From The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber) (Chinese)
Translated by David Hawkes

The Enlightenment in Europe
Map: Europe, ca. 1740
Timeline
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622–1673)

Tartuffe (French)
Translated by Richard Wilbur

Jean Racine (1639–1699)

Phaedra (French)
Translated by Richard Wilbur

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695)

Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Spanish)
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Jonathan Swift (1677–1745)

A Modest Proposal
Edited by Herbert Davis

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778)

Candide, or Optimism (French)
Translated by Robert M. Adams

The Rise of Popular Arts in Japan
Map: Japan, ca. 1700
Timeline
Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694)

The Narrow Road of the Interior (Japanese)
Translated by Helen Craig McCullough and Steven D. Carter

Part V 1800 to 1900
Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America
Map: Europe, 1815–1866
Timeline
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

From Confessions. Part 1 (French)

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

Faust (German)
Prologue in Heaven
The First Part of the Tragedy
Translated by Walter Kauffman

William Blake (1757–1827)

Songs of Innocence
Introduction
The Lamb
The Little Black Boy
Holy Thursday
The Chimney Sweeper
Songs of Experience
Introduction
Earth’s Answer
The Tyger
The Sick Rose
London
The Chimney Sweeper
Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau
And Did Those Feet

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
The World Is Too Much with Us

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837)

The Queen of Spades (Russian)
Translated by Gillon R. Aitken

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

From Song of Myself

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

216 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers-")
258 ("There’s a certain Slant of light")
303 ("The Soul selects her own Society-"")
328 ("A Bird came down the Walk-")
341 ("After great pain, a formal feeling comes-")
435 ("Much Madness is divinest Sense-")
449 ("I died for Beauty-but was scarce")
465 ("I heard a Fly buzz-when I died")
519 ("’Twas warm-at first-like Us-")
585 ("I like to see it lap the Miles-")
632 ("The Brain-is wider than the Sky-")
657 ("I dwell in Possibility-")
712 ("Because I could not stop for Death-")
754 ("My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-")
1084 ("At Half past Three, A Single Bird")
1129 ("Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-")
1207 ("He preached upon 'Breadth' till it argued him narrow-")
1564 ("Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light")
1593 ("There came a Wind like a Bugle-")

Realism, Symbolism, and European Realities
Map: Europe, 19th Century
Timeline
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)

A Simple Heart (French)
Translated by Arthur MacDowall

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)

Notes from Undergound (Russian)
Translated by Michael Katz

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

The Flowers of Evil (French)
To the Reader
Translated by Robert Lowell
Correspondences
Translated by Richard Wilbur
Correspondances
Her Hair
Translated by Doreen Bell
A Carcass
Translated by James McGowan
Invitation to the Voyage
Translated by Richard Wilbur
Song of Autumn I
Translated by C. F. MacIntyre
Spleen LXXVIII
Translated by Kenneth O. Hanson
Spleen LXXIX
Translated by Anthony Hecht
Paris Spleen (French)
Anywhere out of the World
Translated by Louis Varèse

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

The Death of Iv·n Ilyich (Russian)
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)

Hedda Gabler (Norwegian)
Translated by Michael Meyer

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

The Cherry Orchard (Russian)
Translated by Avraham Yarmolinsky

Part VI The Twentieth Century: Self and Other in Global Context
Maps: The World, ca. 1900.
The World Now, Eastern Projection
The World Now, Western Projection
Timeline
The Night Chant (Navajo, ca. 1897–1902)

Prayer to Thunder
Finishing Song
Translated by Washington Matthews

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)

Punishment (Bengali)
Translated by William Radice

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Italian)
Translated by John Linstrum

Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

Remembrance of Things Past (French)
Swann’s Way. Overture
Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)

From New Poems (German)
The Panther
The Swan
Spanish Dancer
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
ArchaÔscher Torso Apollos
Duino Elegies (German)
The First Elegy
The Ninth Elegy
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Lu Xun (Lu Hsün) (1881–1936)

Diary of a Madman (Chinese)
Translated by William A. Lyell

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

An Unwritten Novel

Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

The Metamorphosis (German)
Translated by Stanley Corngold

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966)

Requiem (Russian)
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

Mother Courage and Her Children (German)
Translated by Ralph Manheim

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)

The Garden of Forking Paths (Spanish)
Translated by Donald A. Yates

Naguib Mahfouz (born 1911)

Zaabalawi (Arabic)
Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

Kojima Nobuo (born 1915)

The American School (Japanese)
Translated by William F. Sibley

Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, born 1923)

Oral History

Chinua Achebe (Nigeria, born 1930)

Things Fall Apart

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W. W. Norton & Company : College Books

The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces

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