Classical Literature

  What might, what gold does Ithaca hold to vex us; Enthralled ‘till when, by whom, for what, and where? Do not the mermaids sing the song that wakes us to pleasured, pampered mornings in their...

Translations by Terry L. Norton. Original Latin by Phaedrus follows each. The Red Kite and the Doves When doves had from a certain kite fled And by the swiftness of their wings escaped, The wily bird of...

“Look not on the face, young girl, look at the heart.” —Quasimodo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame A vile, lumbering mass, so hideous, Rejected and despised by every eye That fears and is repulsed by...

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Sonnet VI. Fiona Zheng Violinist Fiona Zheng and her father spent part of their lives fleeing communist authorities in China after her mother and grandmother were killed for refusing to renounce their...

  This is a tale of sibling rivalry from the 1812 Brothers Grimm collection of Children’s and Household Tales. Similar stories exist in Danish, English, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Slovinian and...

A Journey to the East by Evan Mantyk is a historical and poetical fairytale adventure styled after Journey to the West, by Ming Dynasty writer Wu Cheng’en. The first nine chapters of the former may be read...

  Dust to lust to disgust to trust to must to just to dust.     Wm. Walters is a professor of English and linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, IL. His poems have appeared...

Note: Teaching classical poetry rather than other forms of poetry or modern literature makes a difference. Inherent in classical poetry is a respect for tradition, for order, for discipline, and for the...

The Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion ( 蘭亭集序; Lántíngjí Xu), from the 4th century AD, is generally regarded as the greatest work of Chinese calligraphy. Although...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious...

Homer’s Iliad I.1-47. Translation in the epic hexameter, the meter of the Greek. Sing of the wrath, my goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles, doomed and destructive, which gave the Achaeans numberless...

The Teacher to His Students The ghost… the ghost of Hamlet’s father, came To walk the castle walls one moonless night. This father, once the king, had come to blame His brother, for his grave,...

  Re-visiting Dante “For Dante it was a strict rule not to rhyme the word ‘Christ’ with any other word except itself” – Clive James Inferno Down we went like no other care were there; No...

By James Sale Donald Mace Williams Wolfe and Other Poems is an extraordinarily good collection of poems, clearly written by a veteran writer. The underlying credo of the collection is very aptly summed...

By Joshua Philipp Abbie Farwell Brown described the far north in his 1902 book, "In The Days of Giants," as "the land of the midnight sun, where summer is green and pleasant, but winter is a terrible time...

By Joshua Philipp The Italian poet Dante Alighieri is best known for his journey into hell, purgatory, and heaven which he told of in his "Divine Comedy." But before he took that journey, he took a very...

By Sandeep Kumar Mishra There are two things that came to my mind when I read the book Hare Krishna by Mahathi: First, in this modern era in which every person thinks himself a poet, the shape, size and...

Click here to read Part I. Montague (That afternoon, on the outskirts of Verona, at a Club, getting in an afternoon’s worth of pheasant shooting, having needed to get out of town and “think about...

By Joshua Philipp The Japanese creation story begins in a time of primordial chaos, and from this the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami emerge to create the Japanese islands. This is the first tale in The...

By Sandeep Kumar Mishra and Evan Mantyk English poetry has a rich history dating back at least 1,400 years. Looking at poetry today, it is easy to get trapped into thinking that the flurry of poetic...

If Romeo Had Received the Letter Part I Romeo (in the catacomb, lying down beside Juliet) The friar’s note said: “Romeo she will wake.” Thus here I am now with my life at stake. You’ll...

by Evan Mantyk WHAT DOES THE classic Chinese story Journey to the West have to do with William Shakespeare’s classic play Hamlet? A lot it turns out. Both Hamlet and Journey to the West were...

By Evan Mantyk From The Iliad, Beowulf, and Shakespearean literature in the West to the Chinese Classic of Poetry, the Indian Ramayana, and the Middle Eastern Epic of Gilgamesh, classical poetry is the...