The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces 1-2 [antikvár]

m h fm Ir^ m Pref ace In 1956, the first edition of this anthology brought to college and university courses in literature the option of a more spacious experience. More spacious in content because it was not confined to English or American literature but embraced the entire literature of the West and ranged in time from the Old Testament and Homer to Joyce, Brecht, Faulkner, Lorca, and Camus. More spacious likewise in purpose because its aim was not simply, as in older books, to place the individual work in its historical and authorial contexts but to penetrate and display as far as possible the inward complexity of structure and the outward reach into the realities of our common life that empower such works to inform and please through so many generations, even centuries. Today, guided by our own broader classroom experience, much generous counsel from our readers, and the expertise and hard work of several added editorial associates, we place before you this Expanded Edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. With very few exceptions it contains all that the Sixth Edition (1992) contains; it adds, however, to the masterpieces of the Western tradition some two thousand pages of major works by major artists of Africa, the Arab countries of the Middle East, Israel, the Caribbean, China, Egypt, India, Japan, native America, and the Persia that became Iran. In its scope and presentation, the Expanded Edition is very much a new book. It goes without saying that no anthology, however vast, can do full justice to the diversity and depth of the literatures of all places and all times. The basic principle of this anthology from its beginnings has been to offer works having recognized authority in their own languages and cultures, but also in the judgment of a larger world. We have sought to maintain that principle here, in the conviction that students of all dispositions and capacities retain more of value from an acquaintance of some depth with a few literatures than from a shrapnel burst of many. Though there is no perfect resolution of this dilemma, we believe from much trial and error that our choice is the wiser of the two. It also goes without saying that no course in literature enrolling live students can expect them to consume without severe intellectual convulsions more than a reasonable fraction of what is now available between the covers of the original Sixth Edition, or of this its somewhat chubbier sibling. Yet those teachers seeking a wider choice among non-Western works than the regular Sixth Edition provides will meet, we think, with all or much of what they seek in this Expanded Edition: a fascinating assembly of "wodd masterpieces," presented not in bits and pieces but, as is