This was the England which influenced Shakespeare. How much more alive literature becomes when taken in a context like this, how much more significant it is when linked with other countries, and outside influences. We are not an island, and neither is good literature. Instead, those great men and women of our past, those literary writers with a new and clear vision, are indivisibly linked to history. Teaching literature from a historical perspective provides students with the subject relevance they crave.
New vistas open up the moment literary ideas are attached to their historical antecedent.
Opening the mind like this to order exposes the student to logic. Teaching World Literature was originally published by Basic Education in 1994 and reprinted in Education in Focus in 1995.