توضیحات
Essentials of European Literature by Vincent Hopper was written with the express intention of filling the long-felt need for a dependable and comprehensive guide to Continental European Literature. Essentials of European Literature by Vincent Hopper is hoped that herein will be found the answers to the many questions that inevitably plague the reader who adventures into an unfamiliar literary realm.
There was a time when our teaching of literature was confined exclusively to the study of English and American authors, because it was then believed that advanced study of a foreign language was necessary for the reading of non-English men of letters. But, gradually, educators have come to realize the absurdity of turning out college graduates who had studied works of minor English writers but who had never even read such masterpieces as Dante’s Divine Comedy or Goethe’s Faust. Even in the traditional survey course in English literature, the relationship of English to continental literatures soon became apparent; the English Renaissance, for example, must be understood as much more an outgrowth of continental literary trends than a development of its Anglo-Saxon and Middle English predecessors.
Considerations such as these prompted the gradual introduction into college curricula of literature than in the past approximate Matthew Arnold conception of literature as the best that has been thought and said in the world. Under such titles as Comparative Literature, General Literature, Humanities and Great Books, many new courses have accordingly been advised in which translations of foreign books are studied as texts either exclusively or in conjunction with English works.
Concurrently, several excellent new anthologies and many new translations and inexpensive reprints of good earlier translation have been published or are in the process of being prepared. The attractiveness of these translations, together with the popularity of a few excellent radio programs which range far and wide in their discussions of great books, has disclosed to many literate adults and hitherto unsuspected treasures which exist outside of the strictly “Anglo-Saxon” world.
Having all these things in mind, the authors have tried to put together a book which will be as readily available outstanding as the translation themselves a book which will acquaint the reader with the outstanding European authors, which will relate these authors to the cultural patterns of their respective milieux, and which will heighten the reader’s understanding and enjoyment of the books themselves. In order to bring into focus the many historical trends, aesthetic developments, national tendencies, and highly individualized artistic talents, the authors have adopted what they believe to be a sensible plan of organization.
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