a clear and dignified (p.38) prose. Burgess highlights an intriguingaspect of this literature that emerges in Modern Age: the fact that the firstgreat book printed looks back to the past, to mythology, rather than to thefuture. This constant mentioning to past, present and future shows that Burgessregards literature as a universal and atemporal phenomenon and this conceptionenriches his survey and our understanding about English literature. The author makes a brief stop to talk about the importance of the Bible toEnglish literature. He shows how it was difficult to translate the Bible duringMiddle Age, as the Catholic Church prohibited it. The Protestantism arose thisidea that the Bible should be read by every man and in their vernaculartongues. After many translations (which frequently resulted in the death of thetranslators), King James I reunited forty-seven illustrated translators toproduce an official translation of the Bible: King James Version(1611). Burgess explains that through all this process, English was influencedby Old Hebrew poetry. Turning to English drama, we learn that the first plays werent actually plays,but a kind of religious ritual based on mimetic faculty, sympathetic magic,beliefs in gods and fear of starvation. These rituals represented the fourseasons and the results people believed the changes between them (representedas fights between seasons) brought to their lives: what happened in dramaticrepresentation must happen in reality, through sympathetic magic. Theserepresentations had a plot, action, a climax and a happy ending: it was drama. Burgessreminds us that Greek drama was close to religion also. It aimed to show themoral relation between gods and men. Through tragedies we see men facingdestruction as a payment for their sins or for the faults in their character. Thisdramatized punishment purges the spectators feelings, teaching men how to dealwith their instincts. In Shakespearean drama we can see a huge difference: Shakespearean heroes dohave a choice and if they fall, their fall is not a result of a gods act or apunishment, but an offspring of the heros own faults of character. They areable to correct themselves. These differences illustrate the differencesbetween fate and free will: as Burgess highlights, free will suggestsactivity, submitting to fate implies passivity (p. 50). But during MiddleAge, English drama at least in its beginnings, was closely linked to religion. Dramawas used to teach those people who couldnt read or fully understand thesermons. Its important to notice that religious drama was introduced to England by the Normans and as the plays become moresophisticated, a process of secularization began. The plays started to beperformed in the streets by non-religious actors and these Miracles Plays, asBurgess defines them, came to be regarded as a kind of entertainment. These anonymousplays were performed during the feast of Corpus Christi, since 1311, organized by trade-guilds. Some plays began to explore the comic potentialities of Biblical incidents and,this way, drama separated, even more, from its original religious nature. Afterthese guild dramas, a tradition of professional plays dealing with secularsubjects started. The morality plays represented a moral lesson by means ofallegory: abstract ideas were personified. Some examples of morality playsmentioned by Burgess are Everyman, The World and theChild andYouth, the later