Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Victorian Hellenism - The Literary Influence

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THE LITERARY INFLUENCE

T. G. Tucker (essay date 1907)

SOURCE: "Greek Literature and English," in The Foreign Debt of English Literature, George Bell and Sons, 1907, pp. 5-69.

[In the essay below, Tucker gives the first place of influence on all European literatures to classical Greek. He ascribes to Greek literature values highly cherished in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English letters: clarity, appreciation for "pure beauty, " and originality.]

Of all the literatures which have contributed to that of England, the Greek is by far the first and most important. The study of Greek literature is the indispensable introduction to the study of European literary history. Whether we review the literature of England, of Italy, of France, or of Germany, it is at Greece that we shall ultimately arrive. Take our English epic, Paradise Lost. It is a commonplace that it derives much inspiration from Dante's Divine Comedy....

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overviews
4. The Meanings Of Hellenism
5. The Literary Influence
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Victorian Literature