The influences behind A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

33 works across 27 centuries, back to The Odyssey and The Iliad.

1869

A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)

Gustave Flaubert

Second Empire. France. Written in French.

Flaubert's 1869 novel follows Frédéric Moreau from 1840 through the 1848 Revolution and the coup of 1851, as his lifelong unconsummated love for Madame Arnoux and his drifting ambitions come to nothing. It turns the novel of a young man's education into a study of illusion, inertia and failure.
Where it came from
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert 1857 follow this thread
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes 1605–1615 follow this thread
- Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues), Honoré de Balzac 1837–1843 follow this thread
- Volupté, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve 1834 follow this thread
- René, François-René de Chateaubriand 1802 follow this thread
Find “A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale)” on Amazon
1857

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Second Empire. France. Written in French.

Flaubert's first published novel, about a provincial doctor's wife whose romantic reading leads her into adultery, debt and suicide.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Flaubert carried over the method he forged in Madame Bovary: free indirect style, impersonal narration, and a protagonist whose desires are shaped by romantic clichés. Frédéric is in many ways a male counterpart to Emma, and the Fontainebleau and ballroom scenes reuse the earlier novel's technique of setting private reverie against indifferent reality.
Where it came from
- Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie), Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 1788 follow this thread
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes 1605–1615 follow this thread
Find “Madame Bovary” on Amazon
1837–1843

Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues)

Honoré de Balzac

July Monarchy. France. Written in French.

Balzac's novel of Lucien de Rubempré, a provincial poet who comes to Paris and is corrupted by journalism and literary commerce.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Balzac's story of a provincial youth who comes to Paris to make his name among journalists, actresses and financiers is the template Flaubert rewrote in a deflated key. Deslauriers even urges Frédéric to remember Rastignac of the Comédie humaine, naming the Balzacian ambition the novel then lets fizzle out.
Where it came from
- Waverley, Walter Scott 1814 follow this thread
- Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1795–1796 follow this thread
Find “Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues)” on Amazon
1834

Volupté

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

July Monarchy. France. Written in French.

Sainte-Beuve's only novel, the confession of Amaury, who loves the married Madame de Couaën and ends as a priest.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Flaubert read Volupté in his youth, and scholars of the 1845 and 1869 Éducations point to its chaste, lifelong passion of a young man for a virtuous married woman. Amaury's devotion to Madame de Couaën prefigures Frédéric's idealised, never-consummated love for Madame Arnoux.
Where it came from
- Confessions, Augustine of Hippo c. 397–400 follow this thread
- René, François-René de Chateaubriand 1802 follow this thread
Find “Volupté” on Amazon
1814

Waverley

Walter Scott

Romantic. Scotland. Written in English.

Scott's first novel, in which a romance-reading young Englishman is drawn into the Jacobite rising of 1745.

What it handed down

To Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) (1837–1843)

Direct source, well documented.

Lucien arrives in Paris with a historical novel, 'The Archer of Charles IX', written in imitation of Walter Scott, and d'Arthez advises him on how to surpass Scott. Balzac's own preface to the Comédie humaine names Scott as the model for his ambition.
Where it came from
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes 1605–1615 follow this thread
Find “Waverley” on Amazon
1802

René

François-René de Chateaubriand

Consulate. France. Written in French.

Short narrative in which a melancholy young Frenchman tells his life of restless, aimless longing; a founding text of the 'mal du siècle'.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Frédéric's vague yearnings, idleness and sense of a life without purpose descend from the 'vague des passions' that Chateaubriand's René made fashionable. Flaubert absorbed Chateaubriand as an adolescent and treats this Romantic malaise ironically, as a generation's habit of mind.

To Volupté (1834)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Amaury belongs to the generation of melancholy, irresolute heroes that René created. Sainte-Beuve, a close reader and later historian of Chateaubriand, gives him the same mix of introspection, religious longing and paralysis of will.
Where it came from
- The Works of Ossian, James Macpherson 1765 follow this thread
- The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 follow this thread
Find “René” on Amazon
1795–1796

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Weimar Classicism. Germany. Written in German.

The model Bildungsroman: a merchant's son joins a troupe of actors and gradually learns his place in the world.

What it handed down

To Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) (1837–1843)

Thematic kinship, conjectural.

Goethe's novel established the story of a young man educated by the theatre, love affairs and failed artistic hopes. Lucien's entanglement with the actress Coralie and the Paris stage follows this apprenticeship pattern, though Balzac's documented debt to Goethe here is general rather than specific.
Where it came from
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare c. 1600 follow this thread
Find “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship” on Amazon
1788

Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie)

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Ancien Régime. France. Written in French.

Sentimental pastoral of two children raised in innocence on Mauritius whose love ends in Virginia's drowning.

What it handed down

To Madame Bovary (1857)

Direct source, well documented.

In Part One, chapter six, Emma's convent reading begins with Paul and Virginia, and she dreams of its bamboo hut and faithful dog. Flaubert uses the book as a named source of the sentimental images that will mislead her.
Where it came from
- Daphnis and Chloe, Longus c. 2nd–3rd century CE follow this thread
- Julie, or the New Heloise, Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1761 follow this thread
Find “Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie)” on Amazon
1774

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sturm und Drang. Germany. Written in German.

Epistolary novel of a young man's hopeless love for Lotte, who is engaged to another, ending in his suicide.

What it handed down

To René (1802)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Chateaubriand discussed Werther in the Genius of Christianity, the work in which René first appeared, as a case of passions without object. René takes up Werther's solitary, self-consuming sensibility while recasting it in Christian terms.
Where it came from
- The Works of Ossian, James Macpherson 1765 follow this thread
- The Odyssey, Homer c. 700 BCE follow this thread
- Julie, or the New Heloise, Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1761 follow this thread
Find “The Sorrows of Young Werther” on Amazon
1765

The Works of Ossian

James Macpherson

Scottish Enlightenment. Scotland. Written in English.

Prose poems presented as translations of an ancient Gaelic bard, widely read across Europe as primitive epic.

What it handed down

To René (1802)

Direct source, well documented.

René tells of travelling to Scotland and hearing a bard sing in the hills where Ossian's heroes once fought. The misty landscapes and elegiac tone of Macpherson's poems colour the whole narrative.

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Direct source, well documented.

In the climactic scene Werther reads to Lotte his own translation of the 'Songs of Selma' from Ossian, and the passage is quoted at length. Werther's turn from Homer to Ossian marks his descent into despair.

Where it came from

The line stops here: macpherson's sources are Scottish Gaelic ballads and oral tradition, largely unrecorded in published form.

Find “The Works of Ossian” on Amazon
1761

Julie, or the New Heloise

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Enlightenment. France and Switzerland. Written in French.

Epistolary novel of the love between the tutor Saint-Preux and his pupil Julie, who marries another man.

What it handed down

To Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie) (1788)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Bernardin was a friend and disciple of Rousseau in the 1770s. Paul and Virginia takes up Julie's ideals of virtuous love, natural feeling and a simple life set against corrupt society.

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Structural model, well documented.

Goethe adopted Rousseau's epistolary form and his subject of a sensitive young man in love with a woman bound to another. Werther's raptures over nature and simple life echo Saint-Preux's letters from the Swiss mountains.
Where it came from
- The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta), Francesco Petrarca 1374 follow this thread
- The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Peter Abelard and Heloise c. 1132–1135 follow this thread
Find “Julie, or the New Heloise” on Amazon
1605–1615

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

Spanish Golden Age. Spain. Written in Spanish.

Novel of a country gentleman driven mad by chivalric romances who sets out as a knight errant with his squire Sancho Panza.

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

In a letter to Louise Colet of 1852 Flaubert said he found all his origins in Don Quixote, a book he knew by heart before he could read. Frédéric, like Quixote, lives through borrowed literary images and sees them repeatedly fail against the world; the novel is a quixotic story stripped of adventure.

To Madame Bovary (1857)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Emma Bovary's ruin by novel-reading is a feminine, provincial reworking of Quixote's madness from chivalric romances. Critics have long called Emma a 'female Quixote', and Flaubert's stated debt to Cervantes dates from these years of composition.

To Waverley (1814)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Edward Waverley's head is filled with romances from undisciplined reading, and his entry into the Jacobite rising is partly a romantic delusion. Scott frames this as a gentler version of Quixote's mistaking of fiction for life.
Where it came from
Find “Don Quixote” on Amazon
c. 1600

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

Tragedy of a Danish prince charged by his father's ghost with avenging his murder.

What it handed down

To Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–1796)

Direct source, well documented.

In Books Four and Five Wilhelm analyses Hamlet at length and stages it with Serlo's company, playing the prince himself. The play becomes the vehicle of his artistic education and self-understanding.
Where it came from
- Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus c. 1200 follow this thread
Find “Hamlet” on Amazon
1554

Lazarillo de Tormes

Anonymous

Spanish Golden Age. Spain. Written in Spanish.

Short first-person narrative of a poor boy serving a series of masters; the first picaresque novel.

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Stylistic influence, probable.

The galley slave Ginés de Pasamonte boasts that his autobiography will surpass Lazarillo de Tormes. Cervantes absorbed the picaresque's low-life realism and episodic road structure into his parody of romance.
Where it came from
- The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses), Apuleius c. 170 CE follow this thread
Find “Lazarillo de Tormes” on Amazon
1516

Orlando Furioso

Ludovico Ariosto

Italian Renaissance. Ferrara, Italy. Written in Italian.

Romance epic in ottava rima of Charlemagne's paladins, centred on Orlando's madness for love of Angelica.

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Direct source, well documented.

Quixote debates whether to imitate the mad rage of Ariosto's Orlando or the melancholy of Amadis, and the Furioso is discussed during the library scrutiny. Cervantes took both the madness-from-love motif and Ariosto's ironic narrative voice.
Where it came from
- Orlando Innamorato, Matteo Maria Boiardo 1483 follow this thread
- The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE follow this thread
Find “Orlando Furioso” on Amazon
1508

Amadis of Gaul (Amadís de Gaula)

Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo

Spanish Renaissance. Spain. Written in Spanish.

Montalvo's reworking of an older Iberian chivalric romance about the perfect knight Amadis and his love Oriana.

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Direct source, well documented.

Amadis is Don Quixote's chief model; in Part One he imitates Amadis's penance on the Peña Pobre during his own penance in the Sierra Morena. In the scrutiny of the library the priest spares Amadis as the best of its kind.
Where it came from
- The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle), Anonymous c. 1215–1230 follow this thread
Find “Amadis of Gaul (Amadís de Gaula)” on Amazon
1483

Orlando Innamorato

Matteo Maria Boiardo

Italian Renaissance. Ferrara, Italy. Written in Italian.

Unfinished romance epic of Orlando's love for Angelica, fusing Carolingian heroes with Arthurian love and enchantment.

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

Direct source, well documented.

Ariosto wrote the Furioso as a continuation of Boiardo's unfinished poem, picking up its characters, plot threads and ottava rima. Orlando's love for Angelica, begun by Boiardo, becomes his madness.
Where it came from
- The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle), Anonymous c. 1215–1230 follow this thread
- The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland), Anonymous c. 1100 follow this thread
Find “Orlando Innamorato” on Amazon
1374

The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)

Francesco Petrarca

Trecento. Italy. Written in Italian.

Petrarch's collection of 366 poems on his love for Laura, in life and after her death.

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Direct source, well documented.

The title page of Julie carries an epigraph from Petrarch's sonnet on Laura's death: 'The world did not know her while it had her.' Saint-Preux's idealising, lifelong love is cast in Petrarchan terms, and Petrarch is quoted repeatedly in the letters.
Where it came from
- Metamorphoses, Ovid c. 8 CE follow this thread
- Confessions, Augustine of Hippo c. 397–400 follow this thread
Find “The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)” on Amazon
The Prose LancelotAnonymous

c. 1215–1230

The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle)

Anonymous

High Middle Ages. France. Written in Old French.

Vast prose romance of Lancelot's chivalry and his adulterous love for Queen Guinevere.

What it handed down

To Amadis of Gaul (Amadís de Gaula) (1508)

Structural model, probable.

The Amadis draws on Arthurian prose romance for its devoted knight, his love for a princess, and its interlaced adventures. Lancelot and Tristan stories circulated widely in Iberian versions and served as the evident pattern.

To Orlando Innamorato (1483)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Boiardo's innovation was to make the Carolingian Orlando a lover in the Arthurian mould. He imported the enchantments, wandering quests and devotion to a lady from the Lancelot and Tristan romances.
Where it came from
- Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Chrétien de Troyes c. 1177–1181 follow this thread
Find “The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle)” on Amazon
Gesta DanorumSaxo Grammaticus

c. 1200

Gesta Danorum

Saxo Grammaticus

High Middle Ages. Denmark. Written in Latin.

Latin history of the Danes, including the legend of Amleth, who feigns madness to avenge his father.

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Direct source, well documented.

Saxo's tale of Amleth, who feigns madness to avenge his father's murder by his uncle, reached Shakespeare through Belleforest's French retelling and a lost earlier Hamlet play. The core plot, characters and feigned madness derive from it.

Where it came from

The line stops here: the Amleth story comes from Scandinavian oral legend not preserved in earlier texts.

Find “Gesta Danorum” on Amazon
c. 1177–1181

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart

Chrétien de Troyes

High Middle Ages. Champagne, France. Written in Old French.

Verse romance in which Lancelot, devoted to Guinevere, humiliates himself and risks death to rescue her.

What it handed down

To The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle) (c. 1215–1230)

Direct source, well documented.

The Prose Lancelot expands Chrétien's Knight of the Cart, retaining the episode of Lancelot riding in the cart and rescuing Guinevere from Meleagant. The love of knight and queen becomes the axis of the whole cycle.
Where it came from
- The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), Geoffrey of Monmouth c. 1136 follow this thread
- Metamorphoses, Ovid c. 8 CE follow this thread
Find “Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart” on Amazon
c. 1136

The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Anglo-Norman. England. Written in Latin.

Legendary chronicle of Britain from its founding by Brutus to the reign of Arthur and beyond.

What it handed down

To Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177–1181)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Chrétien's court of Arthur, Guinevere and the knights descends from Geoffrey's History, which reached French audiences in Wace's verse adaptation. Geoffrey supplied the setting that Chrétien turned into romance.
Where it came from
- The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE follow this thread
Find “The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)” on Amazon
c. 1132–1135

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

Peter Abelard and Heloise

Twelfth-century Renaissance. France. Written in Latin.

Abelard's autobiographical 'History of My Calamities' and the letters exchanged with Heloise, his former pupil, lover and wife.

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Direct source, well documented.

Rousseau's subtitle, 'the New Heloise', announces the model: a tutor who falls in love with his gifted pupil. Like Heloise, Julie is a woman of intellect whose passion is later disciplined by duty and religion.
Where it came from
- Confessions, Augustine of Hippo c. 397–400 follow this thread
Find “The Letters of Abelard and Heloise” on Amazon
c. 1100

The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland)

Anonymous

High Middle Ages. France. Written in Old French.

Chanson de geste of Charlemagne's rearguard and the death of Roland at Roncevaux.

What it handed down

To Orlando Innamorato (1483)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Boiardo's paladins, Orlando, Rinaldo and Charlemagne, descend from the Old French chansons de geste, of which the Song of Roland is the earliest surviving. The material reached him through Franco-Italian and Tuscan cantari.

Where it came from

The line stops here: grows from oral chanson de geste tradition with no surviving written sources.

Find “The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland)” on Amazon
c. 397–400

Confessions

Augustine of Hippo

Late Antiquity. Roman North Africa. Written in Latin.

Augustine's autobiography addressed to God, recounting his youthful sins, sensuality and conversion.

What it handed down

To Volupté (1834)

Structural model, well documented.

Sainte-Beuve framed Volupté as a first-person confession of sensual weakness and eventual conversion, written by a man who has become a priest. The pattern of retrospective self-examination addressed toward spiritual reform is taken directly from Augustine.

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta) (1374)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Petrarch carried a copy of the Confessions and opened it on Mont Ventoux, as his famous letter recounts. The Canzoniere's struggle between earthly love for Laura and spiritual conversion follows the Augustinian pattern he also dramatised in his dialogue the Secretum.

To The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (c. 1132–1135)

Structural model, probable.

Abelard's 'History of My Calamities' is a first-person account of pride and sensual sin followed by punishment and religious life. Scholars read it as shaped by the Confessions, the main model for Latin spiritual autobiography that Abelard knew well.
Where it came from
- The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE follow this thread
- The Book of Psalms, Anonymous c. 1000–300 BCE follow this thread
Find “Confessions” on Amazon
c. 2nd–3rd century CE

Daphnis and Chloe

Longus

Roman Imperial Greek. Lesbos, Roman Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Pastoral prose romance of two foundlings raised by herdsmen who slowly discover love.

What it handed down

To Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie) (1788)

Structural model, probable.

Longus's romance of two children raised in the countryside who grow into love, widely read in France in Amyot's translation, supplies the pastoral frame. Bernardin transposes it to a tropical island and ends it in tragedy.
Where it came from
- Idylls, Theocritus c. 270 BCE follow this thread
Find “Daphnis and Chloe” on Amazon
c. 170 CE

The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)

Apuleius

Roman Imperial. Roman North Africa. Written in Latin.

Comic first-person novel of Lucius, turned into an ass, who passes through a series of masters before restoration by Isis.

What it handed down

To Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Several scholars argue that Lazarillo's first-person account of a servant passing from master to master draws on Apuleius, available in Spanish translation from about 1513. Others see the resemblance as generic.

Where it came from

The line stops here: adapts a lost Greek 'Metamorphoses' of Lucius, known only through a later epitome.

Find “The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)” on Amazon
c. 8 CE

Metamorphoses

Ovid

Augustan Rome. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

Fifteen-book poem of mythological transformations from the creation to the deification of Julius Caesar.

What it handed down

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta) (1374)

Direct source, well documented.

Petrarch built his love poetry on Ovid's tale of Apollo and Daphne, playing on Laura and the laurel. Canzone 23 narrates the lover's own successive transformations in Ovidian fashion.

To Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177–1181)

Thematic kinship, probable.

In the prologue to Cligès Chrétien says he translated Ovid's Art of Love and the tale of Philomela from the Metamorphoses. His portrayal of love as a sickness that transforms and humbles the lover is Ovidian.
Where it came from
- The Aeneid, Virgil c. 29–19 BCE follow this thread
Find “Metamorphoses” on Amazon
c. 29–19 BCE

The Aeneid

Virgil

Augustan Rome. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

Epic of the Trojan Aeneas's wanderings and his war to found the Roman people in Italy.

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

Direct source, well documented.

The night raid of Cloridano and Medoro reworks Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus, and the closing duel of Ruggiero and Rodomonte mirrors Aeneas and Turnus. Ariosto's dynastic praise of the Este also follows the Aeneid's celebration of Augustus.

To The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae) (c. 1136)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey makes Britain's founder Brutus a great-grandson of Aeneas, grafting British history onto the Aeneid. The exile, prophecy and founding-of-a-nation pattern follows Virgil.

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

Direct source, well documented.

In Book One Augustine recalls weeping as a schoolboy over the death of Dido while indifferent to his own spiritual death. Virgil's poem is the main literary text he quotes and against which he defines his conversion.

To Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

Books Thirteen and Fourteen of the Metamorphoses retell Aeneas's journey in a compressed, sidelong way, often called Ovid's 'little Aeneid'. Ovid writes consciously in Virgil's wake while subverting his epic seriousness.
Where it came from
- The Odyssey, Homer c. 700 BCE follow this thread
- The Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread
Find “The Aeneid” on Amazon
c. 270 BCE

Idylls

Theocritus

Hellenistic. Hellenistic Sicily and Alexandria. Written in Ancient Greek.

Short poems, many of them songs of herdsmen, that founded the pastoral genre.

What it handed down

To Daphnis and Chloe (c. 2nd–3rd century CE)

Direct source, well documented.

Longus took his hero's name and his bucolic world of goatherds, piping and rustic love from Theocritus's pastoral poems. The novel translates Theocritean pastoral into prose narrative.
Where it came from
- The Odyssey, Homer c. 700 BCE follow this thread
Find “Idylls” on Amazon
c. 1000–300 BCE

The Book of Psalms

Anonymous

Ancient Israel. Ancient Israel and Judah. Written in Hebrew.

Collection of 150 Hebrew hymns, laments and prayers forming a book of the Hebrew Bible.

What it handed down

To Confessions (c. 397–400)

Structural model, well documented.

The Confessions open with a verse from the Psalms and are saturated with their language; Book Nine describes Augustine reading Psalm 4 after his conversion. The work's form as a prayer addressed to God comes from the Psalter.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

Find “The Book of Psalms” on Amazon
c. 700 BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Odysseus's ten-year journey home from Troy to Ithaca.

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Direct source, well documented.

In his early letters Werther calls Homer his cradle-song and reads the Odyssey in the village, comparing his simple life to the scenes with the swineherd Eumaeus. The Homeric idyll is the measure against which his later Ossianic gloom is set.

To The Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books follow the Odyssey: a hero's wanderings by sea, a retrospective tale told at a royal banquet, and a descent to the underworld. Virgil also revisits Odyssean episodes such as the Cyclops.

To Idylls (c. 270 BCE)

Direct source, well documented.

Idyll 11 presents the Cyclops Polyphemus of Odyssey Book Nine as a lovesick young herdsman singing to the nymph Galatea. Theocritus regularly reworks Homeric figures into the pastoral mode.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

Find “The Odyssey” on Amazon
c. 750 BCE

The Iliad

Homer

Archaic Greece. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of the wrath of Achilles during the Trojan War.

What it handed down

To The Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The second half of the Aeneid, the war in Latium, is modelled on the Iliad, down to the catalogue of forces, the funeral games and the final duel of Aeneas and Turnus echoing Achilles and Hector.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

Find “The Iliad” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) (1837–1843)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

To Volupté (1834)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) (1837–1843)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Madame Bovary (1857)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To René (1802)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To René (1802)

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Paul and Virginia (Paul et Virginie) (1788)

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale) (1869)

To Madame Bovary (1857)

To Waverley (1814)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795–1796)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Don Quixote (1605–1615)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Orlando Furioso (1516)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Amadis of Gaul (Amadís de Gaula) (1508)

To Orlando Innamorato (1483)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Cycle) (c. 1215–1230)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177–1181)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Orlando Innamorato (1483)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Volupté (1834)

To The Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta) (1374)

To The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (c. 1132–1135)