Poetry

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings....

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven....

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

When the mysterious Green Knight arrives unbidden at the Round Table one Christmas, only Gawain is brave enough to take up his challenge....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce....

Sappho was a female poet who was well known in ancient Greece and Rome for her lyrical poetry....

The Song of Roland is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world’s greatest epic poems....

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles....

One of the great icons of mysticism, by the Persian poet who has captured today’s spiritual audience - now in a first-ever English translation by his premier interpreter....

While there is much debate about Omar Khayyam’s philosophical outlook (is his message Sufi-oriented or existentially hedonistic?), there is no doubting its beauty and its profundity of thought....

Taliesin's is one of the most important names in all Welsh literature - and one of its greatest mysteries....

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War....

Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid....

The epic grandeur of Dante's masterpiece has inspired readers and listeners for 700 years and has entered the human imagination....

Odysseus has been away from Ithaca, the Greek city-state under his rule, for ten years while fighting in the Trojan War. After the fall of...

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung....

Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey....

 Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope....

This book is an exploration of the wisdom in the Viking Age poem "Havamal", specifically as it relates to the average person who isn't a scholar of Old Norse, or even an enthusiast of Viking culture....

In a 20-year journey, fabulous fantasy mixes with extraordinary reality as Odysseus encounters enchantresses, nymphs, monsters, prophets, and ghosts....

This beautiful collection of 196 of his poems, previously unavailable in English and now translated by native Persian speakers Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, will appeal to Rumi lovers everywhere who want a guidebook for their inner journey....

Jenny Lewis relocates Gilgamesh to its earlier, oral roots in a Sumerian society where men and women were more equal, the reigning deity of Gilgamesh’s city, Uruk, was female (Inanna), only women were allowed to brew beer and keep taverns and women had their own language....

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology.Beginning with the traditional Finnish creation myth, the Kalevala branches out into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky....

The Iliad, set 9 years into the Trojan War, tells the story of the wrath of Achilles. The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus as he wearily travels home from the war. The two epics provide the basis of Greek education and culture in the classical age....

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism....