Benson's edition of these important Middle English poems is here revised and updated by Professor Edward E. Foster, taking into account recent scholarship, to once again be available and accessible to students. The romances included here are two of the best, most significant Arthurian romances in Middle English, which complement each other in terms of style and content. While the Alliterative Morte Arthure belongs to the Alliterative Revival movement, replete with details of fourteenth century warfare, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur represents a briefer, quicker-paced, yet more sentimental English adaptation of the French Mort Artu. This edition-with contextualizing introductions, helpful glosses, plentiful notes, and useful glossary-comprises a great introduction to Middle English Arthuriana for students of the Middle Ages.

    The era was one of unprecedented authoritarianism: England, it seemed, had become a police state, fearful of threats from abroad and plotters at home. This age of terror was also the era of the greatest creative genius the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. How, then, could such a remarkable man born into such violently volatile times apparently make no comment about the state of England in his work? He did. But it was hidden. Revealing Shakespeare's sophisticated version of a forgotten code developed by 16th-century dissidents, Clare Asquith shows how he was both a genius for all time and utterly a creature of his own era: a writer who was supported by dissident Catholic aristocrats, who agonized about the fate of England's spiritual and political life and who used the stage to attack and expose a regime which he believed had seized illegal control of the country he loved.Shakespeare's plays offer an acute insight into the politics and personalities of his era. And Clare Asquith's decoding of them offers answers to several mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's own life, including most notably why he stopped writing while still at the height of his powers. An utterly compelling combination of literary detection and political revelation, Shadowplay is the definitive expose of how Shakespeare lived through and understood the agonies of his time, and what he had to say about them.

    Our language even has a word—Machiavellian—that encapsulates the images those responses conjure up: An indistinct figure quietly making his way through the darkest corridors of power, hatching plots to play one rival against another A cold-blooded political liar, ready to justify any duplicity undertaken in the name of a noble end that will ultimately justify the most malignant means A coolly practical leader—amoral at best—willing to do whatever is necessary in a world governed not by ideas of right or wrong, but by solutions dictated by realpolitik.But does the Machiavelli most of us think we know bear any resemblance to the Machiavelli who lived, pondered, and wrote?According to Professor William R. Cook, a reading of Machiavelli that considers only those qualities that we today call "Machiavellian" is incomplete, and Machiavelli himself "certainly would not recognize" such sinister interpretations or caricatures of his writings and beliefs. Indeed, The Prince—on the pages of which so much of this image was built—was not even published in his lifetime.In the 24 lectures that make up Machiavelli in Context, Professor Cook offers the opportunity to meet an extraordinarily thoughtful and sincere student of history and its lessons, and to learn that there is far more to him than can be gleaned from any reading of The Prince, no matter how thorough.Although The Prince is the work by which most of us think we know Machiavelli, and although some have indeed called it the first and most important book of political science ever written, it was not, according to Professor Cook, either Machiavelli's most important work or the one most representative of his beliefs. Those distinctions belong, instead, to his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, a longer work started at about the same time and which would, like The Prince, not be published until well after his death."Everyone who has seriously studied the works of Machiavelli agrees that he ... believed in the superiority of a republican form of government, defined as a mixed constitution with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy."Once we recover the context of the writing of The Prince, and analyze it along with the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, it will be clear how The Prince can be read as a book designed to guide leaders in the creation—for Machiavelli, restoration—of republican government in Italy."Ultimately, Machiavelli's goal wasn't much different from ours. It was to live in a free and equal participatory society, because he believed that was the greatest way in which human beings could live and flourish."In fact, says Professor Cook, "Machiavelli's republican thought influenced the development of institutions and values both in Europe and in America."To present a complete and well-rounded picture of Machiavelli's ideas on how human societies should be organized and governed, Professor Cook sets aside much of Machiavelli's written output—which included the political work The Art of War, a biography, many letters, and even some plays—to focus on The Prince, the Discourses, and, more briefly, his Florentine Histories.In doing so, Professor Cook draws on the same qualities so evident in his previous courses for The Teaching Company: Tocqueville and the American Experience, Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis of Assisi, and St. Augustine's Confessions.Teaching in the relaxed and informal style of those courses, Professor Cook moves easily among the different disciplines so pertinent to an understanding of Machiavelli's ideas, including history, philosophy, government, and the elements of leadership. He is unfailingly clear, always provides any definitions needed to understand the material at hand, and is always ready with a touch of wit whenever that is appropriate.Because so much of our contemporary misunderstanding of Machiavelli's ideas comes from a lack of context, Professor Cook carefully sets the stage for a complete perspective of Machiavelli's world.Long before he turns to the works themselves, you'll have learned about Florence and its political history, both before and during Machiavelli's lifetime; the developing Renaissance culture of Machiavelli's time, especially as it bears on the use of ancient political thought by writers and political leaders; and Machiavelli's own life story, including his education, service to the Florentine Republic, years spent in exile south of Florence, and the ways each period of his life affected his writings.The result is a thorough grounding in the information one needs to understand and appreciate this stunningly original thinker.You'll learn, for example, what Machiavelli means when he discusses the important ideas of virtù and Fortuna.Though these are today invariably translated as virtue and fortune, Machiavelli's meanings can involve much more. Though he sometimes uses virtù in the sense we would understand today, he often uses the word—which comes from the classical Latin word for Man—as a means of describing the way one practices successful statecraft: aggressively, with no reluctance to use lies, deceit, and cruelty that may be required to maintain power, and hence the stability the people deserve.In a similar way Machiavelli uses Fortuna in a different sense than might have been used by, say, Dante when he describes the vagaries of fate over which we have no control.Instead, Machiavelli uses the adage, "Fortune is like a river." Though we cannot control fortune, which may well choose to make the river flood, a good ruler, practicing virtù, can indeed prepare for it, and thus modify its effects.You'll see how Machiavelli first became exposed to history and one of its earliest great practitioners—the Roman historian, Livy—through his own experience of Fortuna.Though printed books such as Livy's Early History of Rome were too expensive for a family like the young Machiavelli's in the 15th century, his father did own a copy. He had written the index, and a copy of the book had been part of his payment. Thus Machiavelli grew up with the volumes about which he would one day write his own most important work, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.You'll be introduced to Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI and the man regarded as Machiavelli's model for The Prince, especially in the way his actions embodied the virtù so important to Machiavelli.Professor Cook brings this out in a shocking story of Borgia's use of a tough and merciless Spaniard—Ramiro d'Orco—to impose order and stability on the area of north central Italy known as the Romagna that had come under Borgia's rule and was beset by crime and violence.D'Orco's brutal methods had the desired effect. And when the job was completed, the local people emerged from their homes one morning to find the two halves of Ramiro d'Orco's body on opposite sides of the town square of Cesana, because d'Orco had been too tough, and Cesare Borgia needed a way to advertise further his concern for the people whose loyalty he wanted.The story also embodies, for Machiavelli, the idea that cruelty can be "well-used," just as being merciful—withholding such cruelty when a leader deems it needed—may be less than merciful in its long-term impact.Finally, you will get to see, throughout these lectures, the development of Machiavelli's reliance on history for its lessons, his role as a Renaissance Humanist thinker, and the emergence of his republican views, which still have tremendous influence today as we ask how republics start, grow, succeed, or fail.As Professor Cook notes, we are not going to agree with all of Machiavelli's answers. But his commitment to asking the right questions—to thinking, reflecting, and learning everything history has to teach us about the best ways to govern and safeguard the future—was total.

    The course as a whole is the evolution of story telling; it explores cross-cultural themes, techniques, and modes of representation over nearly 5000 years of history.Course Lecture Titles, 48 Lectures, 30 minutes / lecture1. Stories and Storytellers 2. The Epic of Gilgamesh3. The Hebrew Bible 4. Homer's Iliad 5. Homer's Odyssey 6. Chinese Classical Literature7. Greek Tragedy 8. Virgil's Aeneid 9. Bhagavad Gita 10. The New Testament11. Beowulf 12. Indian Stories 13. T'ang Poetry 14. Early Japanese Poetry15. The Tale of Genji 16. Inferno, from Dante's Divine Comedy17. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales18. 1001 Nights 19. Wu Ch'eng-en's Monkey20. The Heptameron 21. Shakespeare 22. Cervantes's Don Quixote23. Molière's Plays24. Voltaire's Candide 25. Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone 26. Goethe's Faust 27. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights 28. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin 29. Flaubert's Madame Bovary30. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground 31. Twain's Huckleberry Finn 32. Dickinson's Poetry 33. Ibsen and Chekhov—Realist Drama 34. Rabindranath Tagore's Stories and Poems 35. Higuchi Ichiyō's "Child's Play" 36. Proust's Remembrance of Things Past 37. Joyce's Dubliners 38. Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"39. Pirandello's Six Characters 40. Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan 41. Anna Akhmatova's Requiem 42. Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country 43. Faulkner—Two Stories and a Novel 44. Naguib Mahfouz's The Cairo Trilogy 45. Achebe's Things Fall Apart 46. Beckett's Plays 47. Borges's Labyrinths 48. Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories

    Drout is at his best when lecturing on the fascinating history, language, and societal adaptations of the Anglo-Saxons. He not only presents their storytelling abilities using their own words; he does so in their own voice - the incredibly melodious Old English. (Publisher's description) 7hrs. 50 mins.

    Fritze investigates in Invented Knowledge.            This incredible exploration of the murky world of pseudo-history reveals the proven fact, the informed speculation, and the pure fiction behind lost continents, ancient super-civilizations, and conspiratorial cover-ups—as well as the revisionist historical foundations behind religions such as the Nation of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. Drawing on the best scholarship available, Fritze shows that in spite of strong, mainstream historical evidence to the contrary, many of these ideas have proved durable and gained widespread acceptance. As the examples in Invented Knowledge reveal, pseudo-historians capitalize on and exploit anomalies in evidence to support their claims, rather than examining the preponderance of research as a whole.            From Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to 10,000 B.C., the sensationalist topics of pseudo-history captivate audiences and permeate popular culture. Invented Knowledge offers many entertaining and enthralling examples of spurious narratives, artificial chronologies, and ersatz theories in a book guaranteed to intrigue, open eyes, and spark conversation among readers—skeptics and believers alike.

    Its here, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira. Heaney's translation not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.

    Written as Claudius' autobiography, they follow his progress from a stammering figure of fun to the ruler of the Roman Empire. Here, in extracts from both books, he describes the glory and decadence of the mad Emperor Caligula's reign - an age of wild debauchery and whimsical cruelty.

    Lawrence and James Joyce.Distils the essentials of the theory of the novel.Follows the model of Eagleton's hugely popular Literary Theory: An Introduction (Second Edition, 1996).

    Selected by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, these novel excerpts, stories, and memoirs illuminate wonderful writing by authors often overlooked in the West. Chronologically arranged to reveal the development of Indian literature in English, this volume includes works by Jawaharlal Nehru, Nayantara Sahgal, Saadat Hasan Manto, G.V. Desani, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Kamala Markandaya, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Ved Mehta, Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Satyajit Ray, Salman Rushdie, Padma Perera, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Rohinton Mistry, Bapsi Sidhwa, I. Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Sara Suleri, Firdaus Kanga, Anjana Appachana, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Githa Hariharan, Gita Mehta, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Ardashir Vakil, Mukul Kesavan, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai.

    It depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library (housed in St James's Palace at the time of the writing), as ideas and authors struggle for supremacy. Because of the satire, "The Battle of the Books" has become a term for the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. It is one of his earliest well-known works.

    Schellenberg recounts with firsthand knowledge the motivations and machinations surrounding the Nazi Army's every move in Poland, Austria, and Russia. But this remarkable inside account is perhaps most memorable for its riveting portraits of Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Heinrich Mueller, Ernst Kaltenbrunner—men whom Schellenberg calls, with stunning lack of irony, ”Hitler's willing executioners.”

    From Modernist/Postmodernist perspective, leading critics Richard Ruland (American) and Malcolm Bradbury (British) address questions of literary and cultural nationalism. They demonstrate that since the seventeenth century, American writing has reflected the political and historical climate of its time and helped define America's cultural and social parameters. Above all, they argue that American literature has always been essentially "modern," illustrating this with a broad range of texts: from Poe and Melville to Fitzgerald and Pound, to Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Thomas Pynchon.From Puritanism to Postmodernism pays homage to the luxuriance of American writing by tracing the creation of a national literature that retained its deep roots in European culture while striving to achieve cultural independence.

    He believes that they deny the existence of truth and substitute radically chic theorizing for real knowledge about the past. The result is revolutionary and unprecedented: contemporary historians are increasingly obscuring the facts on which truth about the past is built. In The Killing of History, Windschuttle offers a devastating expose of these developments. This fascinating narrative leads us into a series of case histories that demonstrate how radical theory has attempted to replace the learning of traditional history with its own political agenda.

    Frank Baum from his dreamy privileged childhood in mid-19th-century upstate New York through the many detours on his road to Oz. A failure as an actor, a breeder of prize chickens, a merchant in a wild west town, among other occupations, he finally made a success doing exactly what he had always loved to do: tell stories for children. Along the way, we see the antecedents of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, green glasses, and other characters and attributes of the famous fantasy land. This is the first biography of L. Frank Baum that children can enjoy.With the same verve she brought to her biography of Dr. Seuss, Kathleen Krull's wry prose couples with Kevin Hawke's exuberant paintings and drawings to create a book not to be missed by Oz fans of all ages.