This book can be read on its own or as an adjunct to a survey course. The focus on different genres in the opening chapters can dovetail with a genre-based course plan, though the issues raised in each chapter can equally be applied to works in any genre. There is also a movement over the course of the book from early periods to modern times, reflecting the progression typical of many courses, but I often counterpoint early and later materials; a chronological presentation is only one way to set up a course or a plan of reading. In the interest of keeping this book to a manageable length, I have discussed most works fairly briefly, and usually with only tacit relation to the large bodies of scholarship that have grown up around many of them. The discussions here are by no means intended as full-scale readings, but are given as examples of general issues and as portals into extended reading of these and comparable works.