A chrestomathy ( ; from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

(, “desire of learning”) = (, “useful”) + (, “learn”)) is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language assembled for studying the language; or a text in various languages, used especially as an aid in learning a subject. In

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

or in the study of

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, it is a type of reader which presents a sequence of example texts, selected to demonstrate the development of

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

or literary style. It is different from an

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

because of its didactic purpose.

Examples

Bernhard Dorn Johannes Albrecht Bernhard Dorn (29 April 1805 in Scheierfeld, Saxe-Coburg, Germany – 19 May 1881 in St. Petersburg, Russia), or Boris Andreevich Dorn, was a German orientalist. He specialized in the history and the languages of Iran, Russia ...

, ''A Chrestomathy of the

Pushtu Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

or Afghan language'', St. Petersburg: 1847 * Mencken, H. L., ''A Mencken Chrestomathy, His Own Selection of his Choicest Writing'', New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1949 * Zamenhof, L. L., ''Fundamenta Krestomatio de la Lingvo Esperanto'', Paris: Hachette, 1903 *

Edward Ullendorff Edward Ullendorff (1920–2011) was a British scholar and historian. He was a prominent figure in Ethiopian Studies and also contributed work on the Semitic languages. Biography Born on 25 January 1920 in Zurich, Switzerland, Ullendorff was e ...

, ''A

Tigrinya (; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. History and literatur ...

Chrestomathy'', Stuttgart: Steiner Werlag Wiesbaden GmbH, 1985. * ''Bilingual Greek-Latin Grammar'', by

Georgios Dimitriou Georgios Dimitriou ( el, Γεώργιος Δημητρίου) was a Greek 18th-century author and scholar. Dimitriou came from one of the notable and literate families of Gjirokaster, then Ottoman Empire. He was a native of that city, today locate ...

, 1785, that contained personal observations, Epistles and Maxims, as well as biographies of notable men. *

Rosetta Code Rosetta Code is a wiki-based programming website with implementations of common algorithms and solutions to various programming problems in many different programming languages. It is named for the Rosetta Stone, which has the same text inscribe ...

, "a programming chrestomathy site," which "present solutions to the same task in as many different omputerlanguages as possible." * ''The Ibis Chrestomathy'', dealing "solely with words that have a claim to naturalization within the English language." * Heather Christle, ''The Crying Book'', Catapult: 2019. Explores the subject of crying and tears in a numbered series of extremely short essays.

References

{{reflist Anthologies

Examples

See also

References