Book picks similar to
Tian Wen: A Chinese Book of Origins by Qu Yuan
china
poetry
mythology
1-classic-literature
The Good for Nothing Seventh Young Lady Book #1
North Night
Not only that, she had to bend her will according to her relatives’ mood. Idiot? Trash? Very well, sooner or later, she will show these group of silly earthlings what it means to be too late for regrets!Battle-qi? Magic? Her talent on both magic and martial arts will mortify every genius in existence. The position of the clan chief? The mythological Vermilion Bird? Want them? So sorry~ She already took them!But who will tell her, that the cute boy who gets carsick easily was really the mythological Vermilion Bird? Then, what about the elder that’s residing in her body, just which deity does that mysterious soul belong to? Furthermore……Why was it that other people’s companion were those kind of domineering, and incomparably mighty type. Why was it the one around her were either an evil merchant or a sly fox, a useless nerd or a playboy, the worst is this sick pretty boy! What happened to ruling the world, and standing above all else? Please don’t f*ck with me!
The Aeneid
Virgil
As Aeneas journeys closer to his goal, he must first prove his worth and attain the maturity necessary for such an illustrious task. He battles raging storms in the Mediterranean, encounters the fearsome Cyclopes, falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage, travels into the Underworld and wages war in Italy.
Pareekshit
B.R. Bhagwat
It was said to be the beginning of kali Yuga. This Amar Chitra Katha tells the story of the curse which dooms Pareekshit to die at the hands of the Serpent King, Takshaka, and how his son, Janamejaya, avenges his death.
Daphnis and Chloe
Longus
Taken in by a goatherd and a shepherd respectively, and raised near the town of Mytilene, they grow to maturity unaware of one another's existence - until the mischievous god of love, Eros, creates in them a sudden overpowering desire for one another. A masterpiece among early Greek romances, attracting both high praise and moral disapproval, this work has proved an enduringly fertile source of inspiration for musicians, writers and artists from Henry Fielding to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Maurice Ravel. Longus transforms familiar themes from the romance genre - including pirates, dreams, and the supernatural - into a virtuoso love story that is rich in insight, humorous and ironical in its treatment of human sexual experience.
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes
Seamus Heaney - 1990
Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy. Abandoned because of a wounded foot, Philoctetes nevertheless possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War. They are forced to return to Lemnos and seek out Philoctetes' support in a drama that explores the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency.Heaney's version of Philoctetes is a fast-paced, brilliant work ideally suited to the stage. Heaney holds on to the majesty of the Greek original, but manages to give his verse the flavor of Irish speech and context.
Dawn of Ra
M. Sasinowski - 2020
When the fragile peace between them is shattered, a young boy, exiled to a distant land, rises to become worshipped as the falcon-headed god. This is his prophecy. This is his story.This is how it all began.
God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
Jonathan D. Spence - 1996
At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.
The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War
Caroline Alexander - 2009
The story’s focus is not on drama but on a bitter truth: both armies want nothing more than to stop fighting and go home. Achilles—the electrifying hero who is Homer’s brilliant creation—quarrels with his commander, Agamemnon, but eventually returns to the field to avenge a comrade’s death. Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer’s Achilles.Homer’s Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age. Is a warrior ever justified in challenging his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? Can death ever be compensated by glory? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start—and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander has taken apart a story we think we know and put it back together in a way that reveals what Homer really meant us to glean from his masterpiece. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.
The Voice of the Poet: Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath - 1999
A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings on cassette and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and a commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of The Yale Review.
Jason and the Golden Fleece (The Argonautica)
Apollonius of Rhodes
The only surviving Greek epic to bridge the gap between Homer and late antiquity, this epic poem is the crowning literary achievement of the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, written by Appolonius of Rhodes in the third century BC. Appollonius explores many of the fundamental aspects of life in a highly original way: love, deceit, heroism, human ignorance of the divine, and the limits of science, and offers a gripping and sometimes disturbing tale in the process. This major new prose translation combines readability with accuracy and an attention to detail that will appeal to general readers and classicists alike.
Bulfinch's Mythology
Thomas Bulfinch - 1855
The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood. The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."Thomas Bulfinch, in his day job, was a clerk in the Merchant's Bank of Boston, an undemanding position that afforded him ample leisure time in which to pursue his other interests. In addition to serving as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural History, he thoroughly researched the myths and legends and copiously cross-referenced them with literature and art. As such, the myths are an indispensable guide to the cultural values of the nineteenth century; however, it is the vigor of the stories themselves that returns generation after generation to Bulfinch.
野火集
Lung Ying-tai - 1985
Re-publication of the essays by the author whose criticism of Taiwan¡'s political culture became the seed of an essay wild fire for motivating the people of Taiwan.