Among the oddest descriptions in John Milton’s blank-verse religious epic is the following passage, which is essentially about angels farting: ‘Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, / And corporeal to incorporeal turn.’ This is a long narrative poem, published in 1667, about the fall of Satan (from heaven Satan is the great antihero and fallen angel of Milton’s poem) and the Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve go against God’s orders and eat the forbidden fruit.

We recommend this edition: The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics)

The poem also extols a number of Christian virtues. Spenser completely only just over half of his projected plan for his vast epic poem, written in praise of Queen Elizabeth I and to offer a sort of mythology for England, with its use of Arthurian legend and Red-Cross Knights. We recommend this edition: The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (Penguin Classics) Among the more surprising details are farting demons and a lake of excrement – making Dante’s conception of hell all the more vivid and repulsive. We recommend this edition: Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Norton Critical Editions)Ĭomposed in the early fourteenth century, Dante’s Divine Comedy is a trilogy of poems charting the poet’s journey from hell (Inferno) through Purgatory (Purgatorio) to heaven (Paradiso), guided by his fellow poet and author of the Aeneid, Virgil.įeaturing lakes of filth and farting demons, it’s much more fun than its theological subject might suggest, and it influenced a whole raft of later poets, especially T. Perfect fireside reading, and an archetypal work of English literature, composed when the notion of ‘England’ itself was only just beginning to emerge.

We recommend this edition: Aeneid (Oxford World’s Classics)Īs we’ve discussed in our detailed summary of Beowulf, this poem chronicles the hero’s exploits, notably his slaying of the monster Grendel – actually only the first of three monsters Beowulf has to vanquish.

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