=Italian Literature.= Emotional and imaginative rather than reflective, and therefore at its best in the brilliant and exuberant era of the Renaissance, which first came into full bloom in Italy. POETRY Dante Jacopone Michelangelo Petrarch Tasso FICTION Boccaccio Manzoni HISTORY Ferrero TRAVEL & BIOG. Cellini Pellico Polo Villari PHILOSOPHY Machiavelli RELIGION Jacopone Mazzini Thomas of Celano =Spanish Literature.= Marked by the dignity that is the predominating characteristic of the nation. Just as Spain has had but one brief period when she was supreme among the European nations, so she has produced but one supreme author, Cervantes. Her literature, for the most part, and notably at the present day, is imitative, behind rather than ahead of the times. POETRY Spanish Lit. FICTION Cervantes DRAMA Calderon =Scandinavian Literature.= Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are nations of the same race; their history, literature, and civilization are inseparably associated. Climate, racial character, historical developments, and other causes have combined to retard the growth of their literature. Apart from the sagas little of universal interest appeared until the nineteenth century, in which Ibsen created a sensation with his dramas of relentless criticism of the vanity and pettiness of life in the prosperous, democratic society of Norway. POETRY Ewald Norse Lit. FICTION Andersen Björnson HISTORY Norse Lit. DRAMA Ibsen =Russian Literature.= In some respects more closely related to the East than to the West, and hampered by despotism until the twentieth century, Russia produced nothing of value until a century ago. The novelists mentioned below then began a series of vivid pictures of the struggle for freedom, knowledge, and civilization as opposed to tyranny, universal ignorance, and barbarism. Their work has a strong national flavor, coupled with a youthful energy and an enthusiasm for the mission of enlightenment that recalls the spirit of the Renaissance and its zeal for discovery and progress. POETRY Derzhavin FICTION Russian Lit. Sienkiewicz Tolstoi Turgenieff =Oriental Literature.= Arabia, Persia, India, China, and Japan live and think along lines utterly at variance with our mode of life. Their points of difference from each other are by no means as distinct as the radical contrast between their customs and ours. As we all know, Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left, so that a book's first page corresponds to the last page with us; in China and Japan people write down the page in vertical columns. Again, with us energy and activity, wisely used, form the basis of our life and our religion, whereas in the Orient it is held best to abstain from all action, to lead a life of absolute quiet and inactivity, if possible.