Details the evolution of literature and explores the writers, works, and events that have shaped literature.

Introduces the elements considered essential to English literature, in which writing became more personal and had a new sense of humanity.

Describes the basic doctrines, history, and religious practices of Christianity, including Christian concepts of human nature, and profiles famous Christian figures throughout history.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

Details the evolution of literature during a period representing a staggering amount of change, moving from one-dimensional action stories and religious lessons to stories with subtleties of plot and character development.

There was a time when people assumed that the world was flat. Once an alternate theory was proposed, however, that conceit was challenged and, eventually, disproved. In short, theories and ideas can be potent agents of change—none more so than those that are extensively detailed in this book.

The advent of the written word and the attendant transformation of language and literature sparked the development of new forms of expression and copious literary devices. Such instruments of poetry and prose can finesse turns of phrase, render the foreign familiar, or simply texture plot lines. The literary terms surveyed in these fascinating volumes describe the content, structure, and characteristics of some of the worlds most celebrated bodies of verse and drama, fiction and nonfiction. Sidebars spotlight some of the modern and traditional writers and works that have enriched discourse and communication.