A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Edmund Burke - 1757
However, Burke's analysis of the relationship between emotion, beauty, and art form is now recognized as not only an important and influential work of aesthetic theory, but also one of the first major works in European literature on the Sublime, a subject that has fascinated thinkers from Kant and Coleridge to the philosophers and critics of today.
Essays and Aphorisms
Arthur Schopenhauer - 1851
This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. He depicts humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, each individual absolutely free within a Godless world in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative and pessimistic view proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, affecting the work of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein among others.
Glass, Irony and God
Anne Carson - 1995
This collection includes: "The Glass Essay," a powerful poem about the end of a love affair, told in the context of Carson's reading of the Brontë sisters; "Book of Isaiah," a poem evoking the deeply primitive feel of ancient Judaism; and "The Fall of Rome," about her trip to "find" Rome and her struggle to overcome feelings of a terrible alienation there.
Equus
Peter Shaffer - 1973
Through a psychiatrist's analysis of the events, Shaffer creates a chilling portrait of how materialism and convenience have killed our capacity for worship and passion and, consequently, our capacity for pain. Rarely has a playwrite created an atmosphere and situation that so harshly pinpoint the spiritual and mental decay of modern man.
The Enlightened Heart
Stephen Mitchell - 1989
B. Yeats • Antonio Machado • Rainer Maria Rilke • Wallace Stevens • D.H. Lawrence • Robinson Jeffers •
The New Negro
Alain LeRoy LockeEric Walrond - 1925
DuBois, Locke has constructed a vivid look at the new negro, the changing African American finding his place in the ever shifting sociocultural landscape that was 1920s America. With poetry, prose, and nonfiction essays, this collection is widely praised for its literary strength as well as its historical coverage of a monumental and fascinating time in the history of America.
Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation
Daisy Hay - 2010
They included Lord Byron, John Keats, and Mary Shelley, as well as a host of fascinating lesser-known figures: Mary Shelley’s stepsister and Byron’s mistress, Claire Clairmont; Hunt’s botanist sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent; the musician Vincent Novello; the painters Benjamin Haydon and Joseph Severn; and writers such as Charles and Mary Lamb, Thomas Love Peacock, and William Hazlitt. They were characterized by talent, idealism, and youthful ardor, and these qualities shaped and informed their politically oppositional stances—as did their chaotic family arrangements, which often left the young women, despite their talents, facing the consequences of the men’s philosophies.In Young Romantics, Daisy Hay follows the group’s exploits, from its inception in Hunt’s prison cell in 1813 to its disintegration after Shelley’s premature death in 1822. It is an enthralling tale of love, betrayal, sacrifice, and friendship, all of which were played out against a background of political turbulence and intense literary creativity.
101 Great American Poems
The American Poetry and Literacy ProjectCarl Sandburg - 1998
S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.
Tales from Shakespeare
Charles Lamb - 1807
Presents an introduction to Shakespeare's greatest plays including Hamlet Othello, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and Pericles.
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
John Milton - 1667
It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, motivated by all too human temptations, but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years it has held generation upon generation of scholars, students and readers in rapt attention and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.
Basho: The Complete Haiku
Matsuo Bashō - 1972
Wherever Japanese literature, poetry or Zen are studied, his oeuvre carries weight. Every new student of haiku quickly learns that Basho was the greatest of the Old Japanese Masters.Yet despite his stature, Bashos complete haiku have not been collected into a single volume. Until now.To render the writers full body of work into English, Jane Reichhold, an American haiku poet and translator, dedicated over ten years of work. In Basho: The Complete Haiku, she accomplishes the feat with distinction. Dividing his creative output into seven periods of development, Reichhold frames each period with a decisive biographical sketch of the poets travels, creative influences and personal triumphs and defeats. Scrupulously annotated notes accompany each poem; and a glossary and two indexes fill out the volume.Reichhold notes that, Basho was a genius with words. He obsessively sought out the right word for each phrase of the succinct seventeen-syllable haiku, seeking the very essence of experience and expression. With equal dedication, Reichhold sought the ideal translations. As a result, Basho: The Complete Haiku is likely to become the essential work on this brilliant poet and will stand as the most authoritative book on the subject for many years to come. Original sumi-e ink drawings by artist Shiro Tsujimura complement the haiku throughout the book.
Amphigorey
Edward Gorey - 1972
As always, Gorey's painstakingly cross-hatched pen and ink drawings are perfectly suited to his oddball verse and prose. The first book of 15, "The Unstrung Harp," describes the writing process of novelist Mr. Clavius Frederick Earbrass: "He must be mad to go on enduring the unexquisite agony of writing when it all turns out drivel." In "The Listing Attic," you'll find a set of quirky limericks such as "A certain young man, it was noted, / Went about in the heat thickly coated; / He said, 'You may scoff, / But I shan't take it off; / Underneath I am horribly bloated.' "Many of Gorey's tales involve untimely deaths and dreadful mishaps, but much like tragic Irish ballads with their perky rhythms and melodies, they come off as strangely lighthearted. "The Gashlycrumb Tinies," for example, begins like this: "A is for AMY who fell down the stairs, B is for BASIL assaulted by bears," and so on. An eccentric, funny book for either the uninitiated or diehard Gorey fans.Contains: The Unstrung Harp, The Listing Attic, The Doubtful Guest, The Object Lesson, The Bug Book, The Fatal Lozenge, The Hapless Child, The Curious Sofa, The Willowdale Handcar, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Insect God, The West Wing, The Wuggly Ump, The Sinking Spell, and The Remembered Visit.
Edmund Spenser's Poetry
Edmund Spenser
The Shepheardes Calender is represented by six eclogues, including the much-discussed "Februarie." Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, increasingly a focus of critical attention, is an important addition, and Amoretti is offered in its entirety.Seventeen critical essays, judiciously chosen from the many published since 1982, have been added to supplement eleven earlier commentaries. New to the Third Edition are the perspectives of Spenser's contemporary William Camden, Virginia Woolf, William Nelson, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Donald Cheney, Judith Anderson, Richard Helgerson, Louis Adrian Montrose, and David Lee Miller. The critical essays on the House of Busyrane, Spenser's pastoral, Muiopotmos, and Amoretti are grouped to "speak" to each other in ways sure to stimulate classroom discussion. This class-tested feature is back by popular demand along with essays by D. C. Allen, Robert A. Brinkley, Ronald P. Bond, Anne Lake Prescott, Andrew D. Weiner, Susanne Lindgren Wofford, Harry Berger, Jr., and Paul Alpers.A Chronology of Spenser's life and an extensive Bibliography are also included.
The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker - 1944
At the center of the famed Round Table at New York's Algonquin Hotel, Parker distinguished herself among a circle of urbane literati with her excoriating quips and wonderfully realized epigrammatic poems. By the time her first collection of poems, Enough Rope, was published in 1926, she had been dubbed the "wittiest woman in America".Confronting the hard facts of existence facing a woman of talent and boldness in the 1920s and '30s, Parker's poems depict a world haunted by unrequited love, alcohol, razor blades, and men of overbearing will. Her poetry earned much admiration from critics such as Odgen Nash, Somerset Maugham, and Edmund Wilson, who hailed it as "flatly brutal as the wit of the age of Pope". Complete Poems collects Parker's three volumes of poetry, Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes, as well as a hundred other previously uncollected works -- such as the "hate songs", compact satiric descriptions of husbands and wives, actors and politicians, bores and ne'er-do-wells, and others who attracted her barbed pen.