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Table of Contents
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Epic of Gilgamesh
1800 BCE - 900 BCE
Five Sumerian poems about "Bilgamesh" have been recovered from remains of the third dynasty of Ur (2100 BCE).
The Epic of Gilgamesh is known in two versions. The Old Babylonian version (c 1800 BCE) starts with the phrase Shūtur eli sharrī ("Surpassing All Other Kings").
The Standard Version (1300 BCE - 900 BCE) starts with the phrase Sha naqba īmuru ("He who Saw the Deep"). About two-thirds of the standard version have been preserved.
A few stories from the Epic of Gilgamesh re-appear in the Old Testament. In particular, the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve correspond to Enkidu and Shamhat, and the flood, where Noah corresponds with Utnapishtim. Also the advice in Ecclesiastes resembles the advice given by Siduri.
Book of the Dead
1550 BCE
Rig Veda
1200 BCE - 900 BCE
Gathas
900 BCE - 600 BCE
Pentateuch
900 BCE - 400 BCE
The first five books of the Old Testament are known as the Torah ("teaching") in Jewish tradition. The name Pentateuch derives from the Greek phrase "five scrolls".
The names of the five books are
- Genesis
- Exodus
- Leviticus
- Numbers
- Deuteronomy
The books are traditionally ascribed to Moses. The book of Deuteronomy describes the death of Moses, however.
The documentary hypothesis, which was first proposed in the 19th century, identifies five different authors of the work, the Jahwist (J), Elohimist (E), Priest (P), Deuteronomist (D), and the Redactor (R).
Iliad
800 BCE - 700 BCE
Odyssey
800 BCE - 700 BCE
Theogony
725 BCE
Works and Days
725 BCE
Aesop's Fables
600 BCE - 564 BCE
Aeschylus
472 BCE - 458 BCE
Sophocles
470 BCE - 405 BCE
Euripides
455 BCE - 408 BCE
Aeneid
29 BCE - 19 BCe
Odes
23 BCE - 13 BCE
Metamorphoses
8 CE
Gospels
65 CE - 110 CE
Beowulf
700-1000
Thousand and One Nights
700-1300
The Táin
c. 1000
Song of Roland
1040 - 1115
Mabinogion
1100-1300
The Poem of the Cid
1140 - 1207
Nibelungunlied
1180 - 1210
Tristan and Iseult
1210
Tristan and Iseult, and influence on Arthurian cycle.
Parzival
1210
After Historia Regum Britanniae (1136), the "Matter of Britain" was expanded upon by Chétien de Troyes, who developed the story of Lancelot in "Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart" (1177-1181) and the unfinished "Perceval, the Story of the Grail" (1181-1190).
Prose Edda
1220
Roman de la Rose
1230, 1275
Inferno
c. 1300
Decameron
1353
Canterbury Tales
1386-1400
Morte D'Arthur
1460-1470, 1485
The Arthurian cycle got a boost from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (1136), which recounts a list of kings of Britain from Brutus "a grandson or great grandson of Aeneas", through Leir (i.e. Shakespeare's King Lear), to kings which pay tribute to Rome, to Vortigern, who invites the Saxons to island as mercenaries and is betrayed, to Uther Pendragon and Arthur, and the last Briton king Cadwallader.
Even in medieval times, there were those who disregarded the HRB as invention, but the book was popular up to around 1600.
GM was born in Wales, but it is not clear that he knew Welsh. Some of his material was drawn from Historia Brittonum (829)
Orlando Furioso
1516, 1536
Gargantua and Pantagruel
1532-1564
Os Lusíades
1572
Jerusalem Delivered
1581
Faerie Queene
1590, 1596
Shakespeare
1589-1613
Don Quixote
1605, 1615
Paradise Lost
1667, 1674
Fables of Fontaine
1668-1694
Robinson Crusoe
1719
Gulliver's Travels
1726, 1735
Julie, or the New Heloise
1761
Tristram Shandy
1767
Baron Munchausen
1785
Grimm's Fairy Tales
1812
Faust
1806, 1831
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
1816
Frankenstein
1818
Fairy Tales Told for Children
1835, 1837
Journey to the Center of the Earth
1864
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1886
The Time Machine
1895
Dracula
1897
The Wind in the Willows
1908
Die Verwandlung
1912
