'The present volume will long serve both interested amateurs and professional scholars of Georgian...furnishing them with both hours of pleasurable reading and many thought-provoking in-sights' - George Hewitt, Bulletin of SOAS

• Part I The Making of the Classical Age; Chapter 1 Laying the foundations; Chapter 2 Lyrical poetry: hymnography; Chapter 3 Original prose: from homilies to hagiography; Chapter 4 The Lives of the Fathers: Serapion Zarzmeli, Grigol Khandzteli; Chapter 5 Chronicles: The ‘Conversion’ & ‘Life’ of Georgia; Chapter 6 The dawn of secular literature: ‘Balahvar & Iodasap’; Part II The Golden Age, The Fall, and The Resurrection; Chapter 7 Prose romance: Rustaveli’s precursors; Chapter 8 Rustaveli & ‘The Knight in the Panther Skin’; Chapter 9 Religious literature of the Golden Age; Chapter 10 The later chronicles; Chapter 11 Rebuilding on a ‘tabula rasa’; Chapter 12 The authorial persona: King Teimuraz I; Chapter 13 Kings & enlightenment; Chapter 14 Three great poets: Guramishvili, Sayat-Nova & Besiki; Chapter 15 The last gasps of the eighteenth century; Part III Romantic & Civic Literature; Chapter 16 Exiled royalty: the Bagration writers; Chapter 17 Romantic poets: Chavchavadze, the Orbelianis, Baratashvili; Chapter 18 The birth of modem prose & drama; Chapter 19 The luminaries: Ilia Chavchavadze & Akaki Tsereteli; Chapter 20 Lesser luminaries: populists & pedagogues; Chapter 21 Melodrama, revolt & commercial literature; Part IV The Rediscovery of Roots; Chapter 22 Vazha-Pshavela; Chapter 23 Folk poetry & its relevance to literature; partV The Age of Internationalism; Chapter 24 Two theatres: the political arena & drama; Chapter 25 Narrative prose & Mikheil Javakhishvili; Chapter 26 Dreaming poets: Grishashvili, Robakidze & the Blue Horns; Chapter 27 Mythmakers under Socialism: Shanshiashvili, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia; Chapter 28 The poetry of Galaktion Tabidze, Giorgi Leonidze & Simon Chikovani; Chapter 29 Beria’s Holocaust; Chapter 30 Literature after the Great Terror; Chapter 31 From thaw to deluge;