Book picks similar to
Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours, a Bilingual Edition by Robert Kehew
poetry
medieval
music
troubadours
Locus Solus
Raymond Roussel - 1913
One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture representing a naked child; a road-mender's tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which humans can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel's exhibition there hangs a tale - a tale such as only that esteemed genius Roussel could tell. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author's stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity.
Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove
Marcel Proust - 1919
Scott Moncrieff from an early and unreliable French edition, Proust’s masterpiece has now been flawlessly translated by Terence Kilmartin in this acclaimed version.
Tea in the Harem
Mehdi Charef - 1985
Madjid is growing up caught between two cultures. At home, he listens to his mother's constant invective in Arabic as she attempts to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings; at school, he tries to be part of French culture, a culture that rejects and insults Arabs. In a direct language, punctuated by moments of poetic beauty, Mehdi Charef portrays a reality only too rarely the subject of fiction. An immediate success upon publication in France in 1983, Tea in the Harem became the rallying-point for second-generation Algerians and Moroccans, who gave themselves the name 'beur': slang for 'Arab'.
In the Ravine & Other Short Stories
Anton Chekhov - 1970
This may be a surprise at the first encounter with even his most famous stories, because they are rarely driven by plot or anticipation. They are often gentle in character, elusive in purpose; but they create a resonance in the imagination that rings long. Here are 12 stories, from the brightly comic to the overtly tragic, each full of the sharpest observations of personality and situation, and with implications beyond their brief form; the dying actor, the children playing a game, the cabman with his tragedy, the orator's mistake and, perhaps most richly of all, the family laid bare in 'In The Ravine'. With music by Tchaikovsky and Balakirev.
Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I
Thomas Malory
Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (e.g., the Gareth story). Le Morte d'Arthur was first published in 1485 by William Caxton, and is today one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Lady of Shallot, the Lady of the Fountain, and Other Classic Poems and Tales of Camelot
Alfred Tennyson - 2011
The Arthurian tales of chivalry, romance, and tragedy have left a lasting impact on English literature. This collection contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (trans. 1898), The Lady of Shallot (1833), The Founding of the Round Table (trans. 1914), The Passing of Arthur (trans. 1914), The Morte D'arthur (1914), The Lady of the Fountain (trans. 1877), Arthurian Songs: 1. Avalon (1894), and Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery (1858).
Ubu Roi
Alfred Jarry - 1896
The audience was scandalized by this revolutionary satire, developed from a schoolboy farce, which began with a four-letter word, defied all the traditions of the stage, and ridiculed the established values of bourgeois society.Barbara Wright’s witty translation of this riotous work is accompanied with drawings by Franciszka Themerson. Two previously untranslated essays in which Jarry explains his theories of the drama have also been included.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. D: The Romantic Period
M.H. AbramsJahan Ramazani - 2005
Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.
Ourika
Claire de Duras - 1823
Brought up in a household of learning and privilege, she is unaware of her difference until she overhears a conversation that makes her suddenly conscious of her race - and of the prejudice it arouses. From this point on, Ourika lives her life not as a French woman but as a black woman "cut off from the entire human race." As the Reign of Terror threatens her and her adoptive family, Ourika struggles with her unusual position as an educated African woman in eighteenth-century Europe. A best-seller in the 1820s, Ourika captured the attention of Duras's peers, including Stendhal, and became the subject of four contemporary plays. The work represents a number of firsts: the first novel set in Europe to have a black heroine, the first French literary work narrated by a black female protagonist, and, as John Fowles points out in the foreword to his translation, "the first serious attempt by a white novelist to enter a black mind." An inspiration for Fowles's acclaimed novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, Ourika will astonish and haunt modern readers.
Poetics
Aristotle
Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, The Poetics introduces into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis (‘imitation’), hamartia (‘error’), and katharsis (‘purification’). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals, centring on characters of heroic stature, idealized yet true to life. One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history, the Poetics has informed serious thinking about drama ever since.Malcolm Heath’s lucid English translation makes the Poetics fully accessible to the modern reader. It is accompanied by an extended introduction, which discusses the key concepts in detail and includes suggestions for further reading.
Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales
Jack D. Zipes - 1989
Readers experience the unique charm of this story in its original form--as a 17th century French fairy tale! This Signet Classic edition also contains other beloved tales, such as "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood", and "Puss in Boots", conveying all the excitement and timeless appeal to forever keep and cherish.
The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount
Italo Calvino - 1959
“Bravura pieces... executed with brilliance and brio”(Chicago Tribune). Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. A Helen and Kurt Wolff BookOriginally published as two distinct volumes: 'Il visconte dimezzato' (1952) and 'Il cavaliere inesistente' (1959). Also published in a single volume with 'The baron in the trees' (Il barone rampante, 1957) as 'Our Ancestors' (I nostri antenati, 1960).
New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond
Robert Shapard - 2007
In the process they discovered both new talents and a wealth of celebrated writers, such as Jorge Luis Arzola, Aimee Bender, Teolinda Gersão, Romulus Linney, Yann Martel, Sam Shepard, and Tobias Wolff. Zdravka Evitmova conjures blood drops that cure any disease. Ian Frazier writes public relations for crows. Juan José Milás leads an amnesiac husband to an affair in the candlelit darkness of a cathedral with his wife. These tales told quickly offer pleasures long past their telling.
Blue Self-Portrait
Noémi Lefebvre - 2009
Obsessive, darkly comic, and full of angst, Blue Self-Portrait unfolds among Berlin's cultural institutions, but is located in the mid-air flux between contrary impulses, with repetitions and variations that explore the possibilities and limitations of art, history, and connection.