The middle years of John Milton's career were devoted to prose. Caught up in the Puritan movement and the English Civil War, he penned political pamphlets and idealistic treatises on religious freedom and the glory of the new Commonwealth. True, a peculiarly personal sensibility revealed itself in th

17th century poetry, Epic, Lyrical, Mythic, Overflowing, Religious, Sublime

All around the globe, dog-eared paperbacks sit on nightstands waiting to postpone their readers' rest. From the salacious to the literary, novels entertain and inspire with plots to follow and characters to root for. Though we take that dog-eared paperback for granted in the twenty-first century, suc

Charming, Epic, Medieval fiction, Pioneering, Sprawling

As the story goes, Don Quixote has read too many books about knights and experiences the world through the eyes of a valiant soldier. He is a hero and a fool. He is, simply speaking, insane. When Don Quixote encounters windmills, he sees giants and attacks them as any good knight would. As his

16th century (renaissance) literature, Epic, Funny, Hallucinatory, Huge, Layered, Parody, Pioneering, Playful

We don't know whether or not Homer wrote his poems down. Nor do we know if he alone composed them. The author of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" may have been more than one person, or he may have been only one -- it may even be the case that the distinction, when applied to the ancient Greeks, is meani

Classical & biblical literature, Dramatic, Epic, Lyrical, Monumental, Mythic, Overflowing