Columbia University Course in Literature

The Columbia University Course in Literature attempts to offers in reasonably brief compass a survey and interpretation of what is most characteristic in the literature of the world, the material chosen being arranged in chronological order according to the nations that have produced it. From these selections the reader should be able to gain a clear idea of the style and distinctive quality of those writers whose work endures. From the introductory essays the reader will be given a view point from which the selections that follow may best be understood and appreciated and may come to know something of the author and of he reasons that have led to the continuing repute of his work. The general introductions to the lager groups of literary work will present to the reader those fundamental conditions of life, of thought, and of religious and economic experience that have both shaped the literary expression of any given age and also made these literary expressions continuous from the time when literature began to the present day.