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• Which stories have shaped their imaginations?
• What do they – and the people around them – think and believe?
• What do they love? What do they hate?
• What really matters to them?

Some of the most powerful influences on those who have created English literature through the centuries are:

• The Bible and Christianity
• The stories of the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome
• British history
• Key concepts of Western culture.

Because Christianity has been deeply rooted in Britain for over 1300 years, it has strongly affected the way many writers, past and present, look at the world. Belief in God, heaven and hell, sin, judgement and forgiveness, spirituality and eternity has created a vast imaginative landscape which needs to be understood if readers are to get the most out of the works they are studying. Even when writers react against Christian teaching, students need to understand what it is that they oppose.

• Characters, stories and ideas from the Bible were second nature to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Dickens, Hopkins, Charlotte Bronte and many other important writers. The Bible played a big role in shaping their imaginations, their values and their language.
• The Bible still affects our language today. Many common expressions come from the Bible such as ‘being a good Samaritan’, ‘turning the other cheek’ or ‘going the extra mile’.

Xref-it.info gives you an easy-to-use introduction to key people, events, and themes from the Bible to help you recognise them, understand their meaning and work out how they are being used in the texts you are studying.

Stories from ancient Greece and Rome

Stories from ancient Greece and Rome about pagan gods such as Jupiter, Venus and Mars, heroes like Hercules and Aeneas or events such as the siege of Troy or the journeys of Odysseus, have provided inspiration and material for poets and playwrights through the centuries.

Greek and Roman myths came to England as part of the great wealth of classical learning filtered through the church, so that Christian and classical references are often woven together by poets such as Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton.