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Oxford University Press
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This entirely new translation includes Petrarch's short autobiographical prose works, The Letter to Posterity and The Ascent of Mount Ventoux, and a selection of twenty-seven poems from the Canzoniere, Petrarch's best-known work in Italian. |
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This remarkable collection of stories, first published in 1872, includes Green Tea, The Familiar, Mr. Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. This new annotated edition includes an introduction, notes on the text, and explanatory notes. |
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The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him. Enjoying all the advantages of noble birth and intellectual ability, but haunted by a sense of the meaninglessness of life, Adolphe seeks distraction in the pursuit of the beautiful, but older and more vulnerable Ellenore. Unaware of the danger of appropriating the language of love, and of fostering in yourself or others emotions of the heart that are transitory, Adolphe unexpectedly falls in love, only to chafe under the burden of an illicit relationship that blocks his public career. Unable to commit himself fully to Ellenore, and yet unwilling to face the pain he would cause by leaving her, Adolphe finds himself caught up in a situation that cannot be remedied, and is resolved only with disastrous results. Written in a lucidly analytic yet discreetly emotional style, Adolphe (1816) distills the lessons of Constant's own experiences in love, but it also reflects his anxieties about the prospects for any kind of authentic commitment, political or religious as well as emotional, in a disenchanted world. |
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This new translation reproduces the original style and metrical effect of Juvenal's hexameters, while the Introduction and Notes provide literary and historical background to the sixteen satires. |
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KING Yes. I shall release you — SAKUNTALA When? KING When? When, like a bee, I kiss the bud of your unbruised lip And flood my thirsting mouth with nectar. Kalidasa's play about the love of King Dusyanta and Sakuntala, a hermitage girl, their separation by a curse, and eventual reunion, is the supreme work of Sanskrit drama by its greatest poet and playwright (c.4th century CE). Overwhelmingly erotic in tone, in peformance The Recognition of Sakuntala aimed to produce an experience of asethetic rapture in the audience, akin to certain types of mystical experience. The pioneering English translation of Sakuntala in 1789 caused a sensation among European composers and writers (including Goethe), and it continues to be performed around the world. This vibrant new verse translation includes the famous version of the story from the Mahabharata, a poetic and dramatic text in its own right and a likely source for Kalidasa. The introduction discusses the play in the aesthetic and cultural context of ancient India. |
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Cecilia is an heiress, but she can only keep her fortune if her husband will consent to take her surname. Fanny Burney's unusual love story and deft social satire was much admired on its first publication in 1782 for its subtle interweaving of comedy, humanity, and social analysis. Controversial in its time, this eighteenth-century novel seems entirely fresh in relation to late twentieth-century concerns. |
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Anthony Hope's swashbuckling romance transports his English gentleman hero, Rudolf Rassendyll, from a comfortable life in London to fast-moving adventures in Ruritania, a mythical land steeped in political intrigue. Rassendyll bears a striking resemblance to Rudolf Elphberg who is about to be crowned King of Ruritania. When the rival to throne, Black Michael of Strelsau, attempts to seize power by imprisoning Elphberg in the Castle of Zenda, Rassendyll is obliged to impersonate the King to uphold the rightful sovereignty and ensure political stability. Rassendyll endures a trial of strength in his encounters with the notorious Rupert of Hentzau, and a test of a different sort as he grows to love the Princess Flavia. Five times filmed, The Prisioner of Zenda has been deservedly popular as a classic of romance and adventure since its publication in 1894. |
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Plautus was the single greatest influence on Western comedy. Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Moliere's The Miser are two subsequent classics directly based on Plautine originals. Plautus himself borrowed from the Greeks, but his jokes, rapid dialogue, bawdy humour, and irreverent characterizations are the original work of an undisputed genius. The comedies printed here show him at his best, and professor Segal's translations keep their fast, rollicking pace intact, making these the most readable and actable versions available. His introduction considers Plautus' place in ancient comedy, examines his continuing influence, and celebrates his power to entertain. |
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This excellent and accessible work includes many major texts in translation: Aristotle's Poetics, Longinus' On Sublimity, Horace's Art of Poetry, Tacitus' Dialogues, and extracts from Plato and Plutarch. Based on the highly praised Ancient Literary Criticism (OUP, 1972), it contains a new introduction and explanatory notes, and will be of enormous value to students both of Latin and Greek and of literary criticism and theory. |
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Iphigenia among the Taurians Bacchae Iphigenia at Aulis Rhesus The four plays newly translated in this volume are among Euripides' most exciting works. Iphigenia among the Taurians is a story of escape and contrasting Greek and barbarian civilization, set on the Black Sea at the edge of the known world. Bacchae, a profound exploration of the human psyche, deals with the appalling consequences of resistance to Dionysus, god of wine and unfettered emotion. This tragedy, which above all others speaks to our post-Freudian era, is one of Euripides' two last surviving plays. The second, Iphigenia at Aulis, centres on the ultimate dysfunctional family as natural emotion is tested in the tragic crucible of the Greek expedition against Troy. Lastly, Rhesus, probably the work of another playwright, is a thrilling, action-packed Iliad in miniature, dealing with a grisly event in the Trojan War. |
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In 1843, after three years of voyaging in the South Seas, Melville signed up as an ordinary seaman on the man-of-war United States, and headed for home. What he observed on that trip formed the basis of White-Jacket, a success both as a story and as an expose of certain naval practices of which the public was only dimly aware. Melville's subtitle, The World in a Man-of-War, points to its broad theme: the autocratic, male regime aboard the Neversink is perhaps no more than a microcosm of pre-Civil War America. But under his scandalized liberalism, his desire to expose and to reform a barbaric system which reflects badly on the Declaration of Independence, runs an unspoken connection. The treatment meted out to the white men on the man-of-war is the same as that experienced by black slaves in every state. With hindsight, Melville's novel is double-edged. This is the only paperback edition currently available. |
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The Eclogues, ten short pastoral poems, were composed between approximately 42 and 39 BC, during the time of the 'Second' Triumvirate of Lepidus, Anthony, and Octavian. In them Virgil subtly blended an idealized Arcadia with contemporary history. To his Greek model — the Idylls of Theocritus — he added a strong element of Italian realism: places and people, real or disguised, and contemporary events are introduced. The Eclogues display all Virgil's art and charm and are among his most delightful achievements. Between approximately 39 and 29 BC, years of civil strife between Antony, and Octavian, Virgil was engaged upon the Georgics. Part agricultural manual, full of observations of animals and nature, they deal with the farmer's life and give it powerful allegorical meaning. These four books contain some of Virgil's finest descriptive writing and are generally held to be his greatest and most entertaining work, and C. Day Lewis's lyrical translations are classics in their own right. |
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A moving tale of a young woman caught between the attractions of two very different men, set in the time of Napoleon, against the tensions of wartime. As the author depicts Sylvia's fateful decision to marry one man while loving the other, she deftly interweaves the eternal themes of jealousy, unrequited love, and the consequences of individual choice. |
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First published in the turbulent decade following the French Revolution, Memoirs of Emma Courtney is based on Mary Hays' own passionate struggle with romance and Enlightenment philosophy. A feminist and ardent disciple of Mary Wollstonecraft, Hays reveals the lamentable gap between 'what women are' and 'what woment ought to be'. The novel is one of the most articulate and detailed expressions of the yearnings and frustrations of a woman living in late eighteenth-century English society. It questions marital arrangements and courtship rituals by depicting a woman who actively pursues the man she loves. The novel explores the links between sexuality, desire, and economic and social freedom, suggesting the need for improvement in the laws of society which have enslaved, enervated, and degraded woman. |
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Dickson McCunn, a respectable, newly retired grocer of romantic heart, plans a modest walking holiday in the hills of south-west Scotland. He meets a young English poet and, contrary to his better sense, finds himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, who is held prisoner in the rambling mansion, Huntingtower. This modern fairy-tale is also a gripping adventure story, and in it Buchan introduces some of his best-loved characters, including the Gorbals Die-Hards, who reappear in later novels. He also paints a remarkable picture of a man rejuvenated by joining much younger comrades in a challenging and often dangerous fight against tyranny and fear. |
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This new translation of The Princesse de Cleves also includes two shorter works also attributed to Mme de Lafayette, The Princesse de Montpensier and The Comtesse de Tende. |
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Roderick is combative, often violent, but capable of great affection and generosity. His father had been disinherited and has left Scotland leaving his son penniless. After a brief apprenticeship to a surgeon, the innocent Roderick travels to London where he encounters various rogues. |
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The Romance of the Forest (1791) heralded an enormous surge in the popularity of Gothic novels, in a decade that included Ann Radcliffe's later works, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian. Set in Roman Catholic Europe of violent passions and extreme oppression, the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt. They take refuge in a ruined abbey in south-eastern France, where sinister relics of the past — a skeleton, a manuscript, and a rusty dagger — are discovered in concealed rooms. Adeline finds herself at the mercy of the abbey's proprietor, a libidinous Marquis whose attentions finally force her to contemplate escape to distant regions. Rich in allusions to aesthetic theory and to travel literature, The Romance of the Forest is also concerned with current philosophical debate and examines systems of thought central to the intellectual life of late eighteenth-century Europe. |
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Wilkie Collin's intriguing story about a blind girl, Lucilla Finch, and the identical twins who both fall in love with her, has the exciting complications of his better known novels, but it also overturns conventional expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth century realist fiction, Collins not only takes a blind person as his central character but also explores the idea of blindness and its implications. His sensitive presentation of the difficulties, disappointments, and occasional delights which follow the recovery of sight by someone blind since infancy is still one of the best accounts in fiction of a problem which continues to intrigue philosophers, psychologists, and the general public, as it has done since it was first discussed by Locke and Berkeley in the eighteenth century. |
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