The Portable Dante (93 page)

Giovanni Verga

Translated with an Introduction by G. H. McWilliam

Giovanni Verga’s brilliant stories of love, adultery, and honor are set against the scorched landscapes of the slopes of Mount Etna and the Plain of Catalan. This edition contains the first major English translations since those of D. H. Lawrence in the 1920s

ISBN 0-14-044741-5

Epic of G1ilgamesh

Translated with an Introduction by N. K. Sandars

Fifteen centuries before Homer, this Mesopotamian cycle of poems tells of Gilgamesh, the great King, Uruk, and his long and arduous journey to the spring of youth in search of immortality

ISBN 0-14-044919-1

The Odyssey

Homer

Translated by E. V. Rieu with a Revised Translation by D. C. H. Rieu and a New Introduction by Peter Jones

Odysseus’s perilous ten-year voyage from Troy to his home in Ithaca is recounted in a revised translation that captures the swiftness, drama, and worldview of the Greek original

ISBN 0-14-044556-0

Confessions

Saint Augustine

Translated with an Introduction by R. S. Pine-Coffin

This autobiography is both an explanation of Augustine’s own conver sion to Christianity and an attempt to convince the reader that it is the one true faith

ISBN 0-14-044114-X

The Ramayana
R. K. Narayan

This shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic—parts of which date from 500 B.C. —was composed by one of today’s supreme storytellers.

ISBN 0-14-018700-6

Beowulf

Anonymous

Edited with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Michael Alexander

This edition presents Anglo-Saxon verse text on the left-hand page, faced by a page on which almost every word is glossed. Succinct footnotes clar ify historical and cultural matters

ISBN 0-14-043377-5

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Edited by J. A. Burrow

Dating from the latter part of the fourteenth century, this subtle and accomplished poem is roughly contemporary with
The Canterbury Tales,
though written in a more provincial dialect. This edition is accessible to modern readers while retaining the integrity of the original.

ISBN 0-14-042295-1