The Serious Student's Guide to Western Culture (c) is an extraordinary series of reference works designed for students and readers at any level who want to learn more about the basic concepts of literature and understand the cultural background that has influenced works of great literature during the past 2,000 years. The reference series is conveniently arranged in separate volumes so the student can focus on one particular area of study or purchase all three volumes at a discount to obtain comprehensive coverage of all areas. Please see separate listing for the combined set of three volumes to obtain the discount. The first three volumes focus on ideas in Western culture needed to understand literature. Volumes 4 and 5 focus on related areas of English composition and vocabulary building. These texts examine most of the important ideas in Western culture to allow the reader to develop a deeper understanding of the world's great literature. Each volume presents a clear, concise explanation of important concepts in Western culture and provides many examples from specific texts. Although these texts are designed primarily for the study of literature, they can be read as stand-alone texts for the enjoyment of learning new ideas. Volume 3 in this series presents several dictionaries of allusions to Western culture found in literature. The first section includes a comprehensive dictionary of literary terms that are useful to know in the study of literature. The next section includes common phrases in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish that readers often encounter in the study of literature. The next section includes a unique dictionary of numerical allusions that one encounters in literature and includes the meaning of common allusions. The next section presents 100 of the most famous quotations from Shakespeare's plays to provide readers with proper context and meaning in the study of these quotations from the world's greatest playwright. The final three sections comprise perhaps the most valuable portions of this reference text with comprehensive dictionaries to characters and allusions in literature, important figures and allusions to religion, and figures in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. These are unique dictionaries that are the result of the author's decades of reading and research and are designed to provide readers with a convenient source to look up the meaning and the significance of major figures and allusions in literature, religion, and classical mythology. The dictionary of allusions to literature includes important literary texts from the classical period through the end of the twentieth century. The author is currently working on the inclusion of allusions to important contemporary texts from the early twenty-first century.