ABSTRACT
The subsequent history of European literature is in many ways that of the contamination between classical, Biblical, and finally Germanic and/or Slavonic models. The Greek language survived, and classical culture was theoretically available in libraries. The Commedia itself contains at least four such canons: one of classical poets, one of ancient philosophers, one of modern poets, and one of theologians. Enthusiasm for the classics of antiquity was only tempered by the quarrels of the Ancients and the Moderns which erupted at various times and in different countries between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries. History simply has to come to terms with geography and recognise that the European exploration of the world–a distinctive feature, because of its extent and duration, of European civilisation–turned not only into material conquest, but also into a new learning. Literature in Greek and later in the various Slavonic languages sprang from the Byzantine Empire and eventually from the countries converted to Christianity by Byzantine missionaries.
