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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Excellent source for an introduction to the beginnings of Western Literature. Not only is the author well researched, but he is able to keep the reader interested. Follows the Greek and Roman authors who survived, barely, through the ages and their effects on Western tradition and the humanities. Good background for Medieval work.
Rating:
Summary: Superb guide to European literature, among other things
Review: In writing reviews I adhere to the policy that five stars should be given only to books that profoundly alter your perspective. In that sense, this book deserves to be spangled liberally with a good sized constellation. Ever wanted an approachable and informative guide to Western Literature? Have you ever tackled some purported classic that left you wondering why those damn nymphs and fauns keep proliferating? Your quest has ended: this book is the Baedeker of Western European Literature that all you literature addicts have been looking for. First of all, the author is dazzlingly erudite; he is apparently at home in Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian at least. Its primary purpose is to show the hidden scaffolding of Greco-Roman classics in Western literature, age by country, by selecting a choice group of writers with his personal preferences attached. The result is remarkably readable, never ostentatious, and his thesis rarely imposes strain on belief because the proof is always at hand. Thus the reader learns the overtones of classics in Shakespeare, or is made to see the hidden Doric column in Byron's passions fairly concretely. But in my opinion, this book is truly excellent (1) for the list of influential writers in all ages that he had himself hand selected (I've never heard of Abraham a Santa Clara and now I'm itching for a translation), and most importantly, (2) because it gives the necessary cultural backdrop that anchors a given author to an era with all its advantages and limitations. For example, the book gives a reason why the Augustan poets (Dryden, Pope and friends) were driven to mincing affectations (partly a reaction to the Renaissance, partly a particularly Baroque censorship of vulgar words that comes from a misunderstanding of the classics. Highet provides some choice sample of Juvenal's trenchant and vulgar satires as a counterexample). Of course, all books must have some faults. First, this book is very anglophillic; when works of two nations are compared, the British are crowned with the laurel with somewhat suspicious frequency. Whether this represents the truth is far beyond my capacity, only I submit that if I were a Frenchman, I would contest some of the outcomes. Second, his preference is certainly open to criticism. I may be alone in this, but I never found a single page of Gibbon's magnum opus soporific. I don't agree with his encomiastic treatment of Byron, either. I thought Coleridge was ushered off the stage too speedily. And sometimes you do get the feeling that an author with extensive classical training is definitely favored in the eye of a very classicist author. The nettlesome issue of a hierarchy in writers is bound to cause some clashes with readers' opinions. But no matter: I am very certain that this book will still provide an addictively informative read to anyone with an interest in reading a sweeping survey of European literature. This book is a MUST READ for amateur/professional literati, world literature bookworms (me), and ... ... especially the classicists. Because the book's final and most salutary influence is that it reintroduces the Greco-Roman classics to our age where the classics field is increasingly untilled. If the very fact that a millenium of writers have turned - whether coerced by social convention or not - continuously to the Greco-Roman classics does not convince us, after rading this book one can't help but wonder whether, beyond the frigid marmoreal busts that say nothing and the wild raging toga party orgies, the ancients really have something very urgent to say to the present, or that they say it better than any of us alive.
Rating:
Summary: Superb guide to European literature, among other things
Review: In writing reviews I adhere to the policy that five stars should be given only to books that profoundly alter your perspective. In that sense, this book deserves to be spangled liberally with a good sized constellation. Ever wanted an approachable and informative guide to Western Literature? Have you ever tackled some purported classic that left you wondering why those damn nymphs and fauns keep proliferating? Your quest has ended: this book is the Baedeker of Western European Literature that all you literature addicts have been looking for. First of all, the author is dazzlingly erudite; he is apparently at home in Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian at least. Its primary purpose is to show the hidden scaffolding of Greco-Roman classics in Western literature, age by country, by selecting a choice group of writers with his personal preferences attached. The result is remarkably readable, never ostentatious, and his thesis rarely imposes strain on belief because the proof is always at hand. Thus the reader learns the overtones of classics in Shakespeare, or is made to see the hidden Doric column in Byron's passions fairly concretely. But in my opinion, this book is truly excellent (1) for the list of influential writers in all ages that he had himself hand selected (I've never heard of Abraham a Santa Clara and now I'm itching for a translation), and most importantly, (2) because it gives the necessary cultural backdrop that anchors a given author to an era with all its advantages and limitations. For example, the book gives a reason why the Augustan poets (Dryden, Pope and friends) were driven to mincing affectations (partly a reaction to the Renaissance, partly a particularly Baroque censorship of vulgar words that comes from a misunderstanding of the classics. Highet provides some choice sample of Juvenal's trenchant and vulgar satires as a counterexample). Of course, all books must have some faults. First, this book is very anglophillic; when works of two nations are compared, the British are crowned with the laurel with somewhat suspicious frequency. Whether this represents the truth is far beyond my capacity, only I submit that if I were a Frenchman, I would contest some of the outcomes. Second, his preference is certainly open to criticism. I may be alone in this, but I never found a single page of Gibbon's magnum opus soporific. I don't agree with his encomiastic treatment of Byron, either. I thought Coleridge was ushered off the stage too speedily. And sometimes you do get the feeling that an author with extensive classical training is definitely favored in the eye of a very classicist author. The nettlesome issue of a hierarchy in writers is bound to cause some clashes with readers' opinions. But no matter: I am very certain that this book will still provide an addictively informative read to anyone with an interest in reading a sweeping survey of European literature. This book is a MUST READ for amateur/professional literati, world literature bookworms (me), and ... ... especially the classicists. Because the book's final and most salutary influence is that it reintroduces the Greco-Roman classics to our age where the classics field is increasingly untilled. If the very fact that a millenium of writers have turned - whether coerced by social convention or not - continuously to the Greco-Roman classics does not convince us, after rading this book one can't help but wonder whether, beyond the frigid marmoreal busts that say nothing and the wild raging toga party orgies, the ancients really have something very urgent to say to the present, or that they say it better than any of us alive.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping, erudite and scholarly
Review: It is difficult to believe that one person can so eloquently present the influences of Greek and Roman literature on Western European literature with such care and enthusiasm, given that the scope of the work covers almost 2,000 years. Gilbert Highet is a true scholar and this volume is an inspiration to any reader who wishes to understand what Greek and Roman literature has meant to civilization.
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