Translated by Tony Barnstone, Richard B. Clark, James M. Cryer, Sam Hamill, Paul Hansen, Chris Laughrun, Joseph Lisowski, Chou Ping, James H. Sanford, Jerome P. Seaton, Arthur Tobias, and Jan W. Walls

The Argonautica (Greek: Ἀργοναυτικά) is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BCE. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the mythical land of Colchis.

The Song of Roland (French: La Chanson de Roland) is the oldest major work of French literature. It exists in various different manuscript versions, which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries.

In Paradise Lost Milton tells the story of the fall of man, which encompasses a battle that rages across Heaven between God and Satan. Here are passion and innocence, victory and defeat, hope and despair. This is without a doubt the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language.

Publius Vergilius Maro was commisioned by Caesar Augustus to author a national epic for Rome. The work which Virgil composed for this purpose was the Aeneid. It is an epic poem that tells the story of a minor character from Homer's Iliad who leads a rag-tag band from the smouldering ruins of Troy in order to found a "New Troy" to the west: Rome.

Latin Epics of the New Testament is about the growth of Christianity, and in particular the challenge of engaging with the Roman intellectual elite and its highly sophisticated Graeco-Roman tradition. In this culture epics like those of Vergil and Lucan were highly valued for their language, their 'heroic' themes, and their Rome-centred ideologies.

Prose rendering of Dante's epic poem by Arthur John Butler (1844-1910), Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Feminist efforts have recovered the works of early women poets, and much of this rediscovered work now appears in anthologies. As a result, women poets writing today must not only struggle against a largely male tradition, but must also confront existing feminist expectations.

Islamic mysticism, or sufism, has found its finest expression in the classical poetry of Persia, in particular during its most creative period up to the late 15th century. Focusing on the poems themselves rather than on their authors, this very readable introduction surveys the development of Persian mystical poetry, dealing first with the relation between Sufism and literature and then with the four main genres of the tradition: the epigram, the homiletic poem, love poetry, and symbolic narrative.