Curated playlist
History of literature
- Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller's tomb is now empty. On the 3rd of May 2008, DNA tests showed the skull in it was not his.
- Matter of RomeIn medieval poems, Achilles and Alexander the Great became knights of chivalry. The anachronism was deliberate.
- Elizabethan literatureElizabethan literature borrowed the sonnet from Italy and built a new kind of stage verse.
- Matter of BritainBy the 12th century, King Arthur's legends were so common they needed a category, the Matter of Britain.
- Latin literatureLatin literature began with a Greek prisoner of war. Livius Andronicus wrote Rome's first Latin stage play in 240 BC.
- EpigramThe epigram began as words carved on stone, not written in books. Ancient Greeks carved them onto graves and offerings.
- Neo-Latin studiesMany Neo-Latin texts have never been translated or even transcribed from manuscript.
- Renaissance LatinWhy did Renaissance scholars tear apart a working language and rebuild it? Their cry was ad fontes, "to the sources."
- History of literatureWriting was first used for accounting, not for stories. Literature only came later, after people began recording tales.
- Greek literatureGreek poems were being made before most Greeks used writing. The earliest ones were sung or recited, not read.
- Neo-LatinNeo-Latin was the Latin that Renaissance writers polished to match ancient Rome.