Book picks similar to
The Shepherd's Calendar: Twelve Aeglogues Proportionable To The Twelve Months (1898) by Edmund Spenser
poetry
classics
renaissance
literature
The Romance of Tristan
Béroul
Alan S. Fredrick summarizes missing episodes and includes a translation of 'The Tale of Tristan's Madness.'One of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul's French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king's Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king's barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul's work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people strug1150gling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend.
Shakespearean Tragedy
A.C. Bradley - 1904
Bradley put Shakespeare on the map for generations of readers and students for whom the plays might not otherwise have become 'real' at all" writes John Bayley in his foreword to this edition of Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.Approaching the tragedies as drama, wondering about their characters as he might have wondered about people in novels or in life, Bradley is one of the most liberating in the line of distinguished Shakespeare critics. His acute yet undogmatic and almost conversational critical method has—despite fluctuations in fashion—remained enduringly popular and influential. For, as John Bayley observes, these lectures give us a true and exhilarating sense of "the tragedies joining up with life, with all our lives; leading us into a perspective of possibilities that stretch forward and back in time, and in our total awareness of things."
A Woman Killed with Kindness
Thomas Heywood - 1607
Each volume includes: The playtext, in modern spelling, edited to the highest bibliographical and textual standards Textual notes recording significant changes to the copytext and variant readings Glossing notes explaining obscure words and word-play Critical, contextual and staging notes Photographs of productions where applicable A full introduction which provides a critical account of the play, the staging conventions of the time and recent stage history; discusses authorship, date, sources and the text; and gives guidance for further reading.Edited and updated by leading scholars and printed in a clear, easy-to-use format, New Mermaids offer invaluable guidance for actor, student, and theatre-goer alike.
Winter Dreams
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1922
It was during those three days that, for the first time, he had asked her to marry him. She said "maybe some day," she said "kiss me," she said "I'd like to marry you," she said "I love you"--she said-- nothing.
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen - 1879
The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life".
The Student Edition contains these exclusive features:
· A chronology of the playwright's life and work
· An introduction giving the background of the play
· Commentary on themes, characters. language and style
· Notes on individual words and phrases in the text
· Questions for further study
· Bibliography for further reading.
The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets
Helen Vendler - 1997
Helen Vendler, widely regarded as an accomplished interpreter of poetry, here serves as a guide to some of the best-known poems in the English language.In detailed commentaries on Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, Vendler interprets imaginative and stylistic features of the poems, pointing out new levels of import in particular lines, and the ways in which the four parts of each sonnet work together to enact emotion and create dynamic effect.
The Malcontent
John Marston - 1605
New RSC Classics series highlights rarely performed Tudor and Jacobean plays.
Odour of Chrysanthemums
D.H. Lawrence - 1911
H. Lawrence's short stories portray complex, flawed interior lives, showing individuals facing momentous emotional events. In these two stories of fragile happiness and failed dreams, a tragedy forces a woman to acknowledge that she has never known her husband, and a man blinded in the First World War discovers an unexpected peace. This book includes "Odour of Chrysanthemums" and "The Blind Man".
A White Heron
Sarah Orne Jewett - 1886
A friend to birds and animals, it is only when she is befriended by a young male ornithologist that Sylvia comes head on with conflicts over value systems and loyalties. The resolution of this dilemma is skillfully wrought, revealing the complexity of the decision making-process and the ethical conundrum that will save, or destroy, the earth.
Sartor Resartus
Thomas Carlyle - 1834
This is the first edition to present the novel as it originally appeared, with indications of the changes Carlyle made to later editions.
The Playboy of the Western World
J.M. Synge - 1907
Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories
Robert Louis Stevenson - 1886
Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate - and eliminate - human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the work has literary roots in Dostoevsky's "The Double" and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson's novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller.This collection also includes some of the author's grimmest short fiction: "Lodging for the Night," "The Suicide Club," "Thrawn Janet," "The Body Snatcher," and "Markheim."
Dover Beach and Other Poems
Matthew Arnold - 1867
In addition to the title poem, it includes such masterpieces as "The Scholar Gipsy," "Thyrsis," "The Forsaken Merman," "Memorial Verses," and "Rugby Chapel."Although as a literary critic, Arnold championed the serene poise and impersonal grandeur of the classics, his own poems were often more romantic than classical in nature — intimate, personal, sentimental, even nostalgic. Yet it is these engaging qualities, together with his poems' lyrical inspiration and lofty meditative character, that continue to endear Matthew Arnold to lovers of poetry.
Loitering with Intent
Muriel Spark - 1981
Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with intent to gather material for her writing, Fleur finds a job "on the grubby edge of the literary world," as secretary to the peculiar Autobiographical Association. Mad egomaniacs, hilariously writing their memoirs in advance—or poor fools ensnared by a blackmailer? Rich material, in any case. But when its pompous director, Sir Quentin Oliver, steals the manuscript of Fleur's new novel, fiction begins to appropriate life. The association's members begin to act out scenes exactly as Fleur herself has already written them in her missing manuscript. And as they meet darkly funny, pre-visioned fates, where does art start or reality end? "A delicious conundrum," The New Statesman called Loitering with Intent.
The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
Peter Ackroyd - 2009
A retelling of The Canterbury Tales