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Classics of Pre-Modern Europe

Aligheri, Dante. Inferno
The first part of Dante's classic poem of faith follows the author with his guide Virgil through the circles of hell, describing the sinners and punishments witnessed there.
Call number: 851.1 D235i 2001
Anonymous. El Cid
Students of Spanish literature have long been familiar with this eight-hundred-year-old epic detailing the legendary exploits of the soldier-adventurer Ruy Díaz of Bivar, El Cid, and of his part in the long struggle between Christianity and Islam. The epic poem recounts the adventures of the Cid; of his peerless steed, Babieca, and of his two famous swords, Colada and Tizón; of his wife, Doña Ximena, and his two daughters, Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, who found sanctuary with Abbot Don Sancho in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña during the Cid's exile; and of the despicable and black-hearted princes of Carrión, Diego and Fernando González.
Call number: 808.813 M46
Anonymous. The Song of Roland
First and greatest French epic, this 11th-century tale of romance and heroism recounts the adventures of the warrior Roland, nephew to Charlemagne and prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
Call number: 808.813 M46
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron
This fourteenth-century Italian book, which inspired Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Balzac, consists of 100 stories, some bawdy, others pointing to a moral, told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women seeking to escape the plague.
Call number: Fiction Boccaccio
de Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote
The classic Spanish tale of humorous chivalry, depicting the exploits of a man who believes he's a knight bringing justice and truth to the world.
Call number: Fiction Cervantes
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales
One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society. The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves, encompassing comedy, pathos, tragedy, and cynicism. In these twenty-four tales, Chaucer displays a dazzling range of literary styles and conjures up a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life.
Call number: 821 C39ct 1981
de France, Marie. The Lais of Marie de France
A collection of Breton tales of courtly love from the 12th century, originally set in poetic form.
Call number: 841.1 M3378L 1999
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf
In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts with instant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death.
Call number: 829.3 B4501 2000
Homer. Iliad
The classic poem of the Trojan War tells how the anger of the Greek's chief warrior Achilles caused death and destruction to both his enemies and allies.
Call number: 883.01 H75i 1998
Homer. The Odyssey
The adventures of the hero Odysseus as he encounters many monsters and other obstacles on his journey home from the Trojan War.
Call number: 883.01 H75of 1996
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur
Malory's epic romance tells the many stories surrounding the legendary King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
Call number: 823.2 M2981m 1994
Milton, John. Paradise Lost
Milton's epic poem depicts the creation, fall, and redemption of humankind, and the moral and spiritual dilemmas of God's judgment.
Call number: 821.4 M642p 1969
Ovid. Metamorphoses
Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, the Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.
Call number: 873.01 Ov4m 1995
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene
Spenser's great allegorical poem tells of a series of adventures by knights who serve Gloriana, the queen of fairies, each adventure symbolizing the triumph of a particlar virtue over its opposite.
Call number: 821 SP35fsm
Virgil. The Aeneid
Virgil's long-renowned narrative follows the Trojan warrior Aeneas as he carries his family from his besieged, fallen home, stops in Carthage for a doomed love affair, visits the underworld and founds in Italy, through difficult combat, the settlements that will become, first the Roman republic, and then the empire Virgil knew.
Call number: 873.01 V8191a 2006

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