The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Interdependence of Literature, by
Georgina Pell Curtis

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Title: The Interdependence of Literature

Author: Georgina Pell Curtis

Posting Date: May 15, 2009 [EBook #3778]
Release Date: February, 2003
First Posted: September 4, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE INTERDEPENDENCE of LITERATURE

By

GEORGINA PELL CURTIS

"There is first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly the
literature of power. The function of the first is to teach, the
function or the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an
oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding,
the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher
understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and
sympathy."

Thomas De Quincey "Essays on the Poets." (Alexander Pope.)

B. Herder,
17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo.
and 68 Great Russell St., London, W.C.

1917

PREFACE.

The author has endeavored in these pages to sketch, in outline, a
subject that has not, as far as she knows, been treated as an exclusive
work by the schoolmen.

Written more in the narrative style than as a textbook, it is intended
to awaken interest in the subject of the interdependence of the
literatures of all ages and peoples; and with the hope that a larger
and more exhaustive account of a very fascinating subject may some day
be published.

Chicago, Ill., June, 1916.

CONTENTS.

Ancient Babylonian and Early Hebrew
Sanskrit
Persian
Egyptian
Greek
Roman
Heroic Poetry
Scandinavian
Slavonic
Gothic
Chivalrous and Romantic
The Drama
Arabian
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Italian
Dutch
German
Latin Literature and the Reformation
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Philosophy
English

ANCIENT BABYLONIAN AND EARLY HEBREW.

From the misty ages of bygone centuries to the present day there has
been a gradual interlinking of the literatures of different countries.
F