First published between 1932 and 1940, this is a three-volume study of the historical development of literature. It explores the oral and written literatures of regions from Iceland and the British Isles, to Russia, the Balkans, Africa, India and the Pacific, placing them in their historical context and examining similarities between them. The authors discuss both ancient and recent texts, illustrating the connections within each group and considering the question of whether all literary growth is influenced by common factors. Praised on publication as ' ... a work that is not, probably could not be, superseded' (International Journal of Comparative Sociology), the book remains a benchmark for those studying comparative literature or the history of literary criticism. Volume 1 analyses a range of medieval British and Icelandic poetry and sagas, drawing analogies with the literature of early Greece and focusing particularly on the concept of heroic literature.

This book explores poems, novels, legends, operas and other genres of writing from the Ming Dynasty. It is composed of two parts: the literary history; and comprehensive reference materials based on the compilation of several chronologies. By studying individual literary works, the book analyzes the basic laws of the development of literature during the Ming Dynasty, and explores the influences of people, time, and place on literature from a sociological perspective. In turn, it conducts a contrastive analysis of Chinese and Western literature, based on similar works from the same literary genre and their creative methods. The book also investigates the relationship between literary theory and literary creation practices, including those used at various poetry schools. In closing, it studies the unique aesthetic traits of related works. Sharing valuable insights and perspectives, the book can serve as a role model for future literary history studies. It offers a unique resource for literary researchers, reference guide for students and educators, and lively read for members of the general public.

A distinguished critic traces the growing, but always threatened, trend toward political and religious tolerance from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century in Britain. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780 chronicles changes in contentious politics and religion and their varied representations in British letters from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. An uncertain trend toward tolerance and away from painful discord significantly influenced authors who reflected on and enhanced germane aspects of British literary and intellectual life. The movement was stymied during the painful Gordon Riots in June 1780, from which Britain needed to repair itself. Howard D. Weinbrot's broad-ranging interdisciplinary study considers sermons, satire, political and religious polemic, Anglo-French relations, biblical and theological commentary, Methodism, legal history, and the novel. Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780 analyzes the texts and contexts of several major and minor authors, including Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Olaudah Equiano, Maria De Fleury, Lord George Gordon, Nathaniel Lancaster, Henry Sacheverell, Tobias Smollett, and Edward Synge.

Although much has been written about how the novel relates to the epic, the drama, or autobiography, no one has clearly analyzed the complex connections between prose fiction as it evolved before 1800 and the literature of travel, which by that date had a long and colorful history. Percy Adams skilfully portrays the emergence of the novel in the fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and traces in rich detail the history of travel literature from its beginnings to the time of James Cook, contemporary of Richardson and Fielding. And since the recit de voyage and the novel were then so international, he deals throughout with all the literatures of Western Europe, one of the book's chief themes being the close literary ties among European nations. Equally important in the present study is its demonstration that, just as early travel accounts were often a combination of reporting and fabrication, so prose fiction is not a dichotomy to be divided into the "adult" novel on the one hand and the "childish" romance on the other, but an ambivalence—the marriage of realism and romanticism. Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel not only shows the novel to be amorphous and changing, it also proves impossible the task of defining the recit de voyage with its thousand forms and faces. Often the two types of literature are almost indistinguishable; even before Don Quixote, Adams writes, many travel accounts could have been advertised as having "the endless fascination of a wonderfully observed novel." This study by Percy Adams will both modify opinions about the novel and its history and provide an excellent introduction to the travel account, a form of literature too little known to students of belles lettres.

First published between 1932 and 1940, this is a three-volume study of the historical development of literature. It explores the oral and written literatures of regions from Iceland and the British Isles, to Russia, the Balkans, Africa, India and the Pacific, placing them in their historical context and examining similarities between them. The authors discuss both ancient and recent texts, illustrating the connections within each group and considering the question of whether all literary growth is influenced by common factors. Praised on publication as '... a work that is not, probably could not be, superseded' (International Journal of Comparative Sociology), the book remains a benchmark for those studying comparative literature or the history of literary criticism. Volume 1 analyses a range of medieval British and Icelandic poetry and sagas, drawing analogies with the literature of early Greece and focusing particularly on the concept of heroic literature.