Founders of Western Literature

Illustrated portraits of Homer, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and John Milton in a classical library setting

Foundational works of Homer, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, and John Milton.

 

This collection brings together works that form the structural foundations of Western literature. Spanning antiquity to the early modern period, these texts establish the narrative forms, moral questions, and intellectual traditions that continue to shape literary thought.

From epic and allegory to drama and prose fiction, each work marks a point at which literary expression expanded — in scope, ambition, or depth — influencing not only what was written afterwards, but how literature itself was understood.

Read individually, these are demanding texts. Read together, they reveal a continuous conversation across centuries about power, faith, language, human suffering, and the limits of reason.