This groundbreaking Norton Anthology offers the best of the literatures of India, China, Japan, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and native America alongside the masterpieces of the Western tradition. Containing most of the works included in the standard Sixth Edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, this new Expanded Edition devotes approximately 2,000 pages to outstanding non-Western literary landmarks. These texts have been selected and prepared by specialists new to the editorial team, expert scholars and translators who are also committed undergraduate teachers.
Like all Norton Anthologies, the Expanded Edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces is foremost a teaching anthology, edited to meet the needs of today's students discovering a range of literary traditions for the first time.

A Global Collection
The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition, introduces students to the rich variety of the world's great literary traditions. Included complete or in generous excerpts are such works as Gilgamesh, The Mahabharata, The Tale of Genji, and Things Fall Apart--and authors such as Chuang Chou, Rabindranath Tagore, Wole Soyinka, and Leslie Marmon Silko. The best of the literatures of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas are gathered together to form a truly global anthology.

World Literature in Depth
The Expanded Edition is committed to presenting works in their entirety or in substantial and teachable excerpts. Instructors reluctant to teach snippets and concerned with the cost of individual works will find a singularly plentiful offering of complete works: twelve complete short novels, twenty-five complete plays, four complete long poems, and thirty short stories ensure that all traditions are represented in sufficient depth to be taught coherently and well.

Superb Translations
Translators themselves, the editors of the Expanded Edition have chosen the most exciting and readable translations available. Robert Fagles's vibrant rendering of The Iliad, Barbara Stoler Miller's accessible version of The Bhagavad-Gita, and the collaborative translation by Adrienne Rich, W. S. Merwin, and others of Asadulla Khan Ghalib's Ghazals, among other translations, mark the editors' dedication to providing foreign language texts that convey in contemporary English the essential character of the original.

Helpful Apparatus; A Readable Format
The Expanded Edition, like other Norton Anthologies, provides headnotes and introductions that are concise yet thorough, and annotations that are explanatory, not interpretive. For this anthology, all apparatus has been revised to provide more historical and cultural information and to allow for cross-cultural comparisons. New apparatus--timelines, maps, pronouncing glossaries, and an expanded Note on Translation--provide a rich context for understanding and appreciating world literature. As always, too, the Norton offers an attractive page, with a line length designed for maximum ease of reading.

Each sweep in the Expanded Edition opens with a map--25 in all--of the country or area as it looked during the period covered by the sweep. Specially drawn to facilitate understanding of the geographical settings of the civilizations whose literary works the Anthology includes, each map highlights the significant geographical features, borders, principal cities, and journeys mentioned in that sweep's selections.

To help students place works in context, each sweep begins with a timeline--23 in all--that situates authors and works in the Expanded Edition in relation to literary, cultural, and historical events. In the "Texts" column, authors and works included (and a few not included) in each sweep are arranged chronologically; "Contexts" lists important cultural and historical events of the period.

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.)

Akhenatens Hymn to the Sun
The Leiden Hymns
[How splendid you ferry the skyways]
[God is a master craftsman]
[When Being began back in days of the genesis]
[The Mind of God is perfect knowing]
The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor
The Song of the Harper Love Songs
[My love is one and only, without peer]
[I wish I were her Nubian girl]
[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 104
Psalm 137
Isaiah 52-53 [The Song of the Suffering Servant]
Jonah
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 Iliad (Greek)
Book I. The Rage of Achilles
From Book VI [Hector Returns to Troy]
From Book VIII [The Tide of Battle Turns]
Book IX. The Embassy to Achilles
Book XVIII. The Shield of Achilles
Book XIX. The Champion Arms for Battle
Book XXII. The Death of Hector
Book XXIV. Achilles and Priam
Translated by Robert Fagles
The Odyssey (Greek)
Book I. A Goddess Intervenes
Book II. A Hero's Son Awakens
Book III. The Lord of the Western Approaches
Book IV. The Red-Haired King and His Lady
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
The Libation Bearers (Summary)
The Eumenides
Translated by Robert Fagles

Sophocles (ca. 496-406 B.C.)

Oedipus the King (Greek)
Antigone (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)
From Phaedo [The Death 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.)

10 ("That the mere glimpse of a plain cap")
17 ("Plop fall the plums; but there are still 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'")
26 ("THE LADY: The cock has crowed")
28 ("Cold blows the northern wind")
34 ("Thick grow the rush leaves")
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")
101 ("Wild and windy was the day")
109 ("Zip, zip the valley wind")
122 ("How few of us are left, how few")
131 ("We plucked the bracken, plucked the bracken")
148 ("How can you plead that you have no wraps?")
157 ("They clear away the grass, the trees")
191 ("On the mountain is the thorn-elm")
238 ("She who in the beginning gave birth to the people")
242 ("Mighty is God on high")
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 1. Free and Easy Wandering
Chapter 2. Discussion on Making All Things Equal
Chapter 3. The Secret of Caring for Life
From Chapter 4. In the World of Men
From Chapter 6. The Great and Venerable Teacher
From Chapter 7. Fit for Emperors and Kings
From Chapter 12. Heaven and Earth
From Chapter 13. The Way of Heaven
From Chapter 17. Autumn Floods
From Chapter 18. Perfect Happiness
From Chapter 19. Mastering Life
From Chapter 20. The Mountain Tree
From Chapter 21. T'ien Tzu-fang
From Chapter 22. Knowledge Wandered North
From Chapter 24. Hsu Wu-Kuei
Translated by Burton Watson

The Nine Songs (Chinese, fourth or third century B.C.)

The Sovereign of the East: The One
Lord in the Clouds
The Lady of the Hsiang River
The Senior Master of Lifespans
The Junior Master of Lifespans, Who Is "Lord Iris"
The Lord of the East
The Yellow River's Earl
The Hillwraith
The Kingdom's Dead
Rites for Souls
Translated by Stephen Owen

India's Heroic Age

Map: India, 1200 B.C.-A.D. 400
Timeline

The Ramayana of Valmiki (Sanskrit, ca. 550 B.C.)

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

The Mahabharata (Sanskrit, ca. 400 B.C.- A.D. 400)

From Book II
The Game of Dice
The Sequel to the Game of Dice
Translated by J. A. B. van Buitenen

The Jataka (Pali, fourth century B.C.)

The Cheating Merchant
Translated by E. B. Cowell
The Hare's Self-Sacrifice
The Monkey's Heroic Self-Sacrifice
Translated by H. T. Francis and E. J. Thompson

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 Tamil Anthologies (Tamil, ca. 100 B.C.- A.D. 250)

What She Said (1)
What She Said (2)
What She Said (3)
What She Said (4)
What She Said (5)
What Her Girl-Friend Said
What the Concubine Said
What She Said (6)
What He Said (1)
What He Said (2)
A Chariot Wheel
His Hill
Mothers
Earth's Bounty
Translated by A. K. Ramanujan

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")
86 ("There are many who think of Quintia in terms of beauty")
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")
60 ("Were you born of a lioness in the Libyan mountains")
85 ("I hate and love")
75 ("You are the cause of this destruction, Lesbia")
8 ("Poor damned Catullus, here's no time for nonsense")
58 ("Caelius, my Lesbia, that one that only Lesbia")
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 II [How They Took the City]
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]
[Jove and Io]
From Book XV [The Teachings of Pythagoras]
Translated by Rolfe Humphries

Petronius (died A.D. 65)

The Satyricon [Dinner with Trimalchio] (Latin)
Translated by J. P. Sullivan

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]
From Book IX [Death of His Mother]
Translated by F. J. Sheed

India's Classical Age

Map: India, 100-1200
Timeline

Visnusarman (second or third century)

From Pancatantra (Sanskrit)
From Book I. The Loss of Friends
Leap and Creep
The Blue Jackal
Forethought, Readywit, and Fatalist
From Book III. Crows and Owls
Mouse-Maid Made Mouse
From Book V. Ill-Considered Action
The Loyal Mungoose
Translated by Arthur B. Ryder

Kalidasa (fourth century)

Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection (Sanskrit)
Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

Bharthrhari (fifth century)

From Satakatrayam (Sanskrit)
4 ("Wise men are consumed by envy")
7 ("A splendid palace, wanton maids")
11 ("A gem carved by the jeweler's stone")
35 ("When silent, the courtier is branded dumb")
70 ("Knowledge is man's crowning mark")
76 ("Armlets do not adorn a person")
85 ("Why all these words and empty prattle?")
102 ("A melodious song")
148 ("So I have roamed through perilous lands")
155 ("We savored no pleasure")
166 ("You are a king of opulence")
172 ("Should I sojourn in austerity")
190 ("Earth his soft couch")
191 ("Why do men need scriptures revealed, remembered")
Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

Cilappatikaram (Tamil, late fifth century)

From Book 2
Canto 16. The Scene of the Murder
Canto 18. The Wreath of Sorrow
Canto 19. Kannaki Goes Round the City
Canto 20. The Demand for Justice
Canto 21. The Crown of Wrath
Translated by R. Parthasarathy

Amaru (seventh century)

From Amarusataka (Sanskrit)
23 ("Lying on the same bed")
34 ("She's just a kid")
38 ("When anger / was a crease in the brow")
57 ("My girl")
69 ("At first, / our bodies were as one")
101 ("When my lover came to bed")
102 ("She's in the house")
Translated by Martha Ann Selby

Somadeva (eleventh century)

From Kathasaritsagara (Sanskrit)
The Red Lotus of Chastity
Translated by J. A. B. van Buitenen

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
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit
I. Substance to Shadow
II. Shadow to Substance
III. Spirit's Solution
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")
From A Reply to Secretary Kuo
I ("The trees before the house grow thick, thick")
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")
Elegy
Translated by James Robert Hightower

T'ang Poetry (Chinese)

Wang Wei (ca. 699-761)

Villa on Chung-nan Mountain
When Living Quietly at Wang-ch'uan I Gave This to P'ei Ti
Answering Magistrate Chang
Various Topics on Huang-fu Yueh's Cloudy Valley
The Torrent Where the Birds Sang Cormorant Dike
From Wang Stream Collection
Deer Fence
Lodge in the Bamboo
Written Crossing the Yellow River to Ch'ing-ho
Parting
Translated by Stephen Owen

Han-shan (seventh-ninth century?)

40 ("I climb the road to Cold Mountain")
45 ("Cold Mountain is full of weird sights")
48 ("Wonderful, this road to Cold Mountain--")
57 ("When people see the man of Cold Mountain")
62 ("High, high from the summit of the peak")
80 ("Man, living in the dust")
82 ("People ask the way to Cold Mountain")
96 ("Have I a body or have I none?")
99 ("So Han Shan writes you these words")
Translated by Burton Watson

Li Po (701-762)

The Sun Rises and Sets
Bring in the Wine
Yearning
Ballad of Youth
The Girls of Y�eh
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

Li Ho (791-817)

Magic Strings
Translated by A. C. Graham
Song of an Arrowhead from the Battlefield of Ch'ang-p'ing
Translated by Stephen Owen
The King of Ch'in Drinks Wine
The Grave of Little Su
The Northern Cold
A Dream of Heaven
Translated by A. C. Graham

Po Chu-yi (772-846)

Watching the Reapers
Passing T'ien-men Street in Ch'ang-an and Seeing a Distant View of Chung-nan Mountains
The Flower Market
Golden Bells
Lazy Man's Song
Winter Night
Remembering Golden Bells
On Board Ship: Reading Yuan Chen's Poems
Madly Singing in the Mountains
The Cranes
Pruning Trees
Last Poem
Translated by Arthur Waley

Tu Mu (803-852)

Easing My Heart
Egrets
Spring in Chiang-nan
To Judge Han Ch'o at Yang-chou
Pien River Blocked by Ice
Traveling in the Mountains
Recalling Former Travels No. 1
Recalling Former Travels No. 3
Translated by A. C. Graham

Li Shang-yin (813-858)

1 ("Coming was an empty promise, you have gone, and left no footprint")
2 ("The East wind sighs, the fine rains come")
4 ("Last night's stars, last night's winds")
6 ("For ever hard to meet, and as hard to part")
8 ("Double curtains hang deep in the room of Never Grieve")
Night Rains: To My Wife up North
Written on a Monastery Wall
Translated by A. C. Graham

Yuan 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
10. Jonah
12. Joseph
19. Mary
55. The Merciful
62. Friday, or the Day of Congregation
71. Noah
76. Man
Translated by N. J. Dawood

Ibn Ishaq (704-767)

The Biography of the Prophet (Arabic)
How Salman Became a Muslim
The Beginning of the Sending Down of the Quran
Khadija, Daughter of Khuwaylid, Accepts Islam
From The Prescription of Prayer
From Ali ibn Abu Talib, the First Male to Accept Islam
From The Apostle's Public Preaching and the Response
From Al-Walid ibn Al-Mughira
How the Apostle Was Treated by His Own People
Hamza Accepts Islam
[The Burial Preparations]
Translated by A. Guillame

Abolqasem Ferdowsi (932-1025)

Shahname (Persian)
The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam
Translated by Jerome W. Clinton

Farid al-Din Attar (1145/6-1221)

The Conference of the Birds [The Story of Sheikh Sam'an] (Arabic)
Translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis

Jalaloddin Rumi (1207-1283)

Lyrics (Persian)
Robais
[Listen, if you can stand to]
[What I most want]
[Don't come to us without bringing music]
[Sometimes visible, sometimes not]
[Friend, our closeness is this]
[Today, like every other day, we wake up empty]
[Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing]
Ghazals
An Empty Garlic
Dissolver of Sugar
Spiritual Couplets
[A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot]
Why Wine is Forbidden
The Question
Translated by Coleman Barks

Sa'di (thirteenth century)

The Golestan (Persian)
From Book I. On the Nature of Shahs
Translated by Dick Davis

The Book of Dede Korkut (Turkish, fourteenth century)

Boghach Khan Son of Dirse Khan
Wild Dumrul Son of Dukha Koja
Translated by Geoffrey Lewis

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 W. Clinton

The Formation of a Western Literature

Map: Europe, ca. 1360
Timeline

Beowulf (Old English, eighth century)

Translated by Burton Raffel

The Story of Deirdre (Irish, eighth century)

Translated by Jeffrey Gantz

The Wanderer (Old English, eighth or ninth century)

Translated by Charles W. Kennedy

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
From Purgatorio
From Paradiso
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
The Knight's Interruption of the Monk's Tale
The Nun's Priest's Tale
Translated by Theodore Morrison

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English, fourteenth century)

Translated by Marie Borroff

Francois Villon (1431-?)

Ballade (French)
From The Testament (French)
Translated by Galway Kinnell

Everyman (Middle English, ca. 1485)

Modernized text by E. Talbot Donaldson

The Golden Age of Japanese Culture

Map: Medieval Japan
Timeline

The Man'yoshu (Japanese, eighth century)

29-31. Poem written by Kakinomoto Hitomaro when he passed the ruined capital at Omi
135. Poem written by Kakinomoto Hitomaro when he parted from his wife in the land of Iwami and came up to the capital
220. 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. Poem sorrowing on the impermanence of life in this world
Translated by Ian Hideo Levy

The Kokinshz (Japanese, ca. 905)

9 ("When snow comes in spring--")
43 ("Shall I each springtime")
53 ("If ours were a world")
83 ("I cannot agree")
89 ("In the lingering wake")
113 ("Alas! The beauty")
145 ("O cuckoo singing")
153 ("Where does he journey--")
166 ("Now that dawn has come")
191 ("With what radiance")
232 ("Autumn has not come")
273 ("Did an age slip by")
297 ("Unseen by men's eyes")
305 ("I must pause to gaze")
310 ("Watching the colors")
315 ("It is in winter")
342 ("My heart fills with gloom")
349 ("Scatter at random")
460 ("Is this hair of mine")
471 ("Swift indeed has been")
478 ("Ah! You of whom I saw")
493 ("Others have told me")
522 ("Less profitable")
552 ("Did you come to me")
553 ("Since encountering")
625 ("The hours before dawn")
635 ("Autumn nights, it seems")
647 ("But little better")
656 ("In the waking world")
657 ("Yielding to a love")
658 ("Though I go to you")
676 ("Pillows know, they say")
712 ("If this were a world")
741 ("Since your heart is not")
746 ("This very keepsake")
747 ("Is this not the moon?")
756 ("How fitting it seems")
770 ("At my dwelling place")
791 ("Could I think myself")
797 ("So much I have learned")
810 ("If it had ended")
834 ("I should have called it")
861 ("Upon this pathway")
884 ("Must the moon vanish")
895 ("If I had but known")
901 ("For sorrowing sons")
938 ("In this forlorn state")
1000 ("I long for the way")
Translated by Helen Craig McCullough

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

Sei Shonagon (ca. 966-ca. 1017)

The Pillow Book (Japanese)
In Spring It Is the Dawn
Especially Delightful Is the First Day
The Sliding Screen in the Back of the Hall
When I Make Myself Imagine
Depressing Things
Hateful Things
Oxen Should Have Very Small Foreheads
A Preacher Ought to Be Good-Looking
Flowering Trees
Elegant Things
Insects
Unsuitable Things
Small Children and Babies
Things That Cannot Be Compared
To Meet One's Lover
Rare Things
Embarrassing Things
During the Long Rains in the Fifth Month
Things That Give a Hot Feeling
Shameful Things
Things That Have Lost Their Power
Awkward Things
I Remember a Clear Morning
Things That Give a Clean Feeling
Things That Give an Unclean Feeling
Wind Instruments
When Crossing a River
Things That Should Be Large
Things That Should Be Short
Men Really Have Strange Emotions
It Is Absurd of People to Get Angry
Features That I Particularly Like
Pleasing Things
It Is Getting So Dark
Translated by Ivan Morris

The Tale of the Heike (Japanese, thirteenth century)

From Chapter 6. The Death of Kiyomori
From Chapter 7 The Flight of the Heike from the Capital
The Flight from Fukuhara
From Chapter 9 The Assault from the Cliff
The Death of Atsumori
From Chapter 11. The Drowning of the Former Emperor
From The Initiates' Chapter
The Imperial Lady Becomes a Nun
The Imperial Lady Goes to Ohara
The Death of the Imperial Lady
Translated by Helen Craig McCullough

Yoshida Kenko (ca. 1283-ca. 1352)

From Essays in Idleness (Japanese)
Translated by Donald Keene

No Drama (Japanese)
Zeami Motokiyo (1364-1443)

Atsumori
Haku Rakuten
Translated by Arthur Waley

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)
Basavanna (1106-1167)

212 ("Don't you take on / this thing called bhakti")
125 ("See-saw watermills bow their heads")
487 ("Feet will dance")
494 ("I don't know anything like time beats and metre")
563 ("The pot is a god")
703 ("Look here, dear fellow")
820 ("The rich / will make temples for Siva")
Translated by A. K. Ramanujan

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 Vaisnava Saints' Songs of Devotion to Krsna (Bengali)
Vidyapati (fourteenth century)

[The girl and the woman]
[As the mirror to my hand]
Translated by E. C. Dimock and Denise Levertov

Govindadasa (fifteenth century)

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

Chandidasa (sixteenth century)

[This dark cloudy night]
[To her friend]
Translated by E. C. Dimock and Denise Levertov

Mirabai (late sixteenth-early seventeenth century)

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

Tulsidas (late sixteenth-early seventeenth century)

Ramcaritmanas (Hindi)
From Book 5. The Beautiful Book
Translated by Philip Lutgendorf

Africa: The Mali Epic of Son-Jara

Map: West Africa, 1200-1400
Timeline

The Epic of Son-Jara (Maninka, late thirteenth- early fourteenth century)

From Episode 1. Prologue in Paradise
From Episode 2. Mecca
From Episode 3. Sankaran
From Episode 4. The Manden
From Episode 5. Mema
From Episode 6. Kulu-Koro
From Episode 7. Kanbi
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 blessed day")
61 ("Blest be the day, and blest the month and year")
Translated by Joseph Auslander
62 ("Father in heaven, after each lost day")
Translated by Bernard Bergonzi
90 ("She used to let her golden hair fly free")
Translated by Morris Bishop
292 ("The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise")
300 ("Great is my envy of you, earth, in your greed")
Translated by Edwin Morgan
333 ("Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone")
Translated by Morris Bishop

Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536)

The Praise of Folly (Latin)
From Part 1 [Folly Herself]
From Part 2 [The Powers and Pleasures of Folly]
From Part 4 [The Christian Fool]
Translated by Leonard F. Dean

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

Letter to Francesco Vettori ["That Food Which Alone Is Mine"] (Italian)
The Prince (Italian)
[Princely Virtues]
["Fortune Is a Woman"]
[The Roman Dream]
Translated by Allan H. Gilbert

Baldesar Castiglione (1478-1529)

The Book of the Courtier (Italian)
From Book I
Chapters 2-4 [The Setting]
Chapters 17-26 ["Everything He May Do or Say Shall Be Stamped with Grace"]
Translated by Leonard E. Opdycke

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549)

The Heptameron (French)
From Story Three
Story Thirty
From Story Forty
Translated by P. A. Chilton

Francois Rabelais (1495?-1553)

Gargantua and Pantagruel (French)
Book I
[Education of a Giant Humanist]
[The Abbey of Theleme]
Book II
[Pantagruel: Birth and Education]
[Father's Letter from Home]
Translated by Burton Raffel

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Essays (French)
Of Cannibals
Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions
From Apology for Raymond Sebond
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]
[Of Goatherds, Roaming Shepherdesses, and Unrequited Loves]
[Fighting the Sheep]
["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

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
Text by Hallett Smith

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

John Donne (1572-1631)

The Good-Morrow
Song ("Go and catch a falling star")
The Indifferent
The Canonization
The Apparition
The Funeral
Holy Sonnets
7 ("At the round earth's imagined corners, blow")
10 ("Death, be not proud, though some have called thee")

Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681)

Life Is a Dream (Spanish)
Translated by Roy Campbell

John Milton (1608-1674)

Paradise Lost
From Book I ["This Great Argument"]
Book IX [Temptation and Fall]
From Book X [Acceptance, Reconciliation, Hope]
From Book XII ["The World Was All before Them"]

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 (Quiche, 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

A Note on Translation
About the Editors
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index