The Divine Comedy (1320) is about the travels of the author through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The text is used also as a vehicle for explaining the soul's own ascent to God, culminating in the Beatific Vision. It is a "comedy" because of its style and overall plot structure, not because of any kind of humor in the contemporary sense of "comedy." Dante's work stands as testimony to the unified worldview of the Middle Ages, one that unabashedly draws upon ancient and medieval sources and likewise is quite ready to express judgments about various figures throughout history. Because it is a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, its three titles are Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Beowulf, an epic story of a hero who shares his name with the poem, was originally written in Anglo-Saxon, the ancient forebear of modern English. The poem, written by an unknown author, is one of the earliest extant examples of English literature that survives today.