The book "The Story of Literature" is actually a popular history of European literature, and the author of this book, John Massey, lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was an American scholar and literary critic.
In the book, the author presents ancient literature, medieval literature, literature before the 19th century, 19th century, and contemporary literature in chronological order. Since this book was published in the early 20th century, the author of the book is actually referring to the era of the early 20th century, which should actually be considered modern for today's readers.
Due to the lack of understanding of the Oriental world among Europeans at that time, the book mainly introduces the history of European literature, and only a small part of the first chapter "Ancient Literature" is devoted to Oriental literature. Because of the author's identity and the readership he set, he wrote this book to introduce literary history to English-speaking readers, so the introduction of the book focuses more on British and American literature.
There are so many books in the world that no single person can read them all, so the advantage of reading The Story of Literature is that we can follow the author's perspective and get a rough idea of the books that the author has selected from a wide variety of classics and that the author thinks is necessary to introduce to you.
When selecting works, the author does not specifically select those famous works according to the criteria recognized by the general public, but mainly selects those works that can resonate with him and his favorite works according to his own preferences.
In the book, the author says: "If I were to make room for Alice in Wonderland and The Ballad of the Báb, I would gladly throw a bunch of high-ranking literary works out of the boat." ”
As mentioned above, due to the limitations of Europeans' understanding of the Orient at that time and the limited group of authors and readers of this book, only a small part of the introduction to Oriental literature is included in the book, and even less is introduced to Chinese literature. However, it is still interesting to read this part carefully to understand the views of Europeans on Oriental literature and Chinese literature at that time.
For ancient Oriental literature, the author calls it "mystical".
In a short space, the author introduces the literature of ancient China, ancient Japan, ancient India, and the Islamic world.
Undoubtedly, in the author's mind, ancient Chinese literature occupies the most important place in ancient Eastern literature, but this does not make a Western scholar of the early 20th century know more about ancient Chinese literature. At that time, the only ancient Chinese scholars that Westerners could know about seemed to be Confucius and Li Bai. The reason why Li Bai's poems were able to spread to the West was that they were translated into English by a Japanese named Obata and annotated by Arthur Wiley, and the book was called "Temple", which is a thin booklet.
The author's understanding of Li Bai is: "He seems to be a combination of François Villon, Omar Khayyam and Heine, a happy and arrogant rebel." ”
Japan approached the Western world earlier than China, and the author lived in an era in which he knew more about Japan than he did about China at that time, but he still seemed to be confused about ancient Japanese literature. Some European scholars who study Japanese culture say that Japanese lyric poetry is short and full of metaphors, but the author believes that most of the Japanese poetry he has seen expresses trivial and ordinary content, and it is difficult to see any deep meaning in it.
Ravkadio Hearn, a Greek-born and later Japanese citizen, said, "Japanese poetry is just the text version of Japanese color prints, nothing more." This sentence seems to convey the European view of Japanese literature at the time.
Compared with ancient Chinese literature and ancient Japanese literature, ancient Indian literature had more influence on Europe, mainly because of the dissemination of Hindu texts.
The ideas that the early Greek philosophers learned from the Indian philosophers that "wisdom is the fruit of contemplation" and "behind matter there is a substance" became the basis of Plato's philosophy and thus permeated all modern philosophies.
Of the great peoples of ancient Asia, only those who lived in West Asia had a profound influence on the minds of Europeans, mainly because of their geographical proximity to Europe, and they could almost be considered Europeans.
In this section, the author focuses on the Qur'an, the classic of Islam, and the One Thousand and One Nights, which is popular with almost all Western readers.
There is an interesting phenomenon that in the literature of the entire East, although the author and the Europeans of the time knew the least about Chinese literature, they generally believed that Chinese literature was the most worthy of study and study.
In the book, the author says: "For a highly developed civilization like China, which has been established for at least 3,000 years, it is absurd to spend only three minutes hastily browsing it. However, in the context of the times at that time, it seems that the author could only introduce so much to Chinese literature.
This section is quite interesting for Chinese readers, because it represents what the Western world knew about us at the time, in stark contrast to today's blend of things and things.
The rest of the book is an introduction to European literature in the Middle Ages and around the 19th century, and this part gives you a general idea of the famous writers of the time, who were basically the authors of the "World Classics" that were popular in bookstores.
After reading this book, if you have a good memory, you will be able to count the authors and main content of the rows of world famous books on the shelves. The main thing is that you know which books are necessary to read carefully, and which books are sufficient for only a cursory understanding.