Robert J. Morgan

The stories aren’t ordered, so feel free to skip around. Keep in mind that many of the best stories are at the beginning. In most stories, the heroes prevail and the villains are punished. It sounds stale until you consider who’s excellent and why.

Mark Twain’s 1906 novel “What Is Man?” is a conversation between a young man and an elderly man who has seen too much of the world. It incorporates notions of fate and free choice, as well as psychological egoism.

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poetry written between 1308 and 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is largely regarded as the most important work of Italian literature, as well as one of the greatest works of global literature.

Omar Khayyam’s Rubiyat is a poem with deep heavenly and spiritual meaning. This poem’s beauty and simplicity are so perfect that people of all religions, as well as those who have no faith at all, may find heavenly peace in it.

Hesiod and Homer. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Ed. Douglas B. Killings and David Widger. 1914. Gutenberg.org. 4 Feb 2013. Kindle E-book.

This timeless devotional classic is comprised of the letters and recorded conversations of a modest lay brother who lived in the seventeenth century. He was able to reach a great relationship with God via the most basic of activities, such as praying and reading the Bible.

Troilus and Criseyde, Geoffrey Chaucer’s tragic poetry romance written in the 1380s and regarded by some experts to be his best work. The narrative of this 8,239-line poem was heavily influenced by Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il filostrato.V

The poem describes the narrative of an Ancient Mariner who uses his crossbow to kill an albatross. After the bird is killed, a strong gale sweeps the ship farther and deeper into the Pacific Ocean.