A Chaucer Glossary
This Glossary, designed as a practical aid to the reading of Chaucer, is intended to be serviceable with any of the widely read editions. Its primary aim is to explain the meanings of words and phrases used by Chaucer in ways which are unfamiliar in modern English. Words used as they are today are not included, but many now in common use do appear, as they had different connotations in Chaucer's time. This concise working tool will be valuable to all Middle English scholars.
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A Doll's House
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A Preface to Milton, Revised Edition
A highly readable and illustrated introduction to the work of Milton, which provides both a biographical account of the poet and his influences, and a critical survey of his poetry.
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A Short Guide to Writing About Film 7ed.
Both an introduction to film study and a practical writing guide, this brief text introduces you to major film theories as well as film terminology, enabling you to write more thoughtfully and critically. With numerous student and professional examples, this engaging and practical guide progresses from taking notes and writing first drafts to creating polished essays and comprehensive research projects. Moving from movie reviews to theoretical and critical essays, the text demonstrates how an analysis of a film can become more subtle and rigorous as part of a compositional process.
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Bluebeard's Egg
From the author of The Handmaid's Tale comes this collection of stories which explores varieties and degrees of love and the way men and women conduct a continuous war with one another.
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Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.
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Candide
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's "philosophical tales," in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection--Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull--do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. The most extensive one-volume selection currently available, this new edition includes a new verse translation of the story Voltaire based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: What Pleases the Ladies and opens with a revised introduction that reflects recent critical debates, including a new section on Candide.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Daphnis and Chole
Longus's romance tells the story of two teenagers, Daphnis and Chloe, who love each other but do not know how to make love. Around their predicament Longus weaves a fantasy which entertains and instructs, but never errs in taste. The hard toil and precariousness of peasant life are here, but so are its compensations--revelry, music, dance, and storytelling. Above the action brood divinities--Eros, Dionysus, Pan, the Nymphs--who collaborate to guide the adolescents into the mystery of Love, at once a sensual and a religious initiation. Daphnis and Chloe is the best known, and the best, of the early Greek romances, precursors to the modern novel. Admired by Goethe, it has been reinterpreted in music and art by Ravel and Chagall. This new translation is immensely readable, and does full justice to the humor and humanity of the story.
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Dubliners
James Joyce's Dubliners is an enthralling collection of modernist short stories which create a vivid picture of the day-to-day experience of Dublin life. This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by Terence Brown.
James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter's mental illness.
If you enjoyed Dubliners, you might like Joyce's Ulysses, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'Joyce redeems his Dubliners, assures their identity, and makes their social existence appear permanent and immortal, like the streets they walk'
Tom Paulin
'Joyce's early short stories remain undimmed in their brilliance'
Sunday Times
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Electra
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Emma (Penguin Classics)
The definitive text of Jane Austen's penetrating and sparkling satire, Emma, this Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Fiona Stafford. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, rich - and fiercely independent - is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the advice of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her pretty, naïve Harriet Smith, her well-laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine, and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work. Edited with an introduction by Fiona Stafford, this edition includes a chronology, additional suggestions for further reading, and the original Penguin Classics introduction by Tony Tanner. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was extremely modest about her own genius but has become one of English literature's most famous women writers. Austen began writing at a young age, embarking on what is possibly her best-known work, Pride and Prejudice, at the age of 22. She was also the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. If you enjoyed Emma, you may like Charlotte Brontë's Villette, also available in Penguin Classics. 'These modern editions are to be strongly recommended for their scrupulous texts, informative notes and helpful introductions' Brian Southam, the Jane Austen Society 'The author of Emma ... has produced sketches of such spirit and originality that ... in this class she stands almost alone' Sir Walter Scott
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Heart of Darkness
Marlow voyages into the wildness and jungle of the Belgian Congo to meet Kurtz, a company agent, and having found him, realizes that Kurtz has won supremacy over the natives through unrestrained violence. The story explores the workings of the subconscious, and addresses political imperialism.
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How to study Modern Poetry
In this book Tony Curtis, himself an award-winning poet, offers clear and positive help to students who are faced by a modern poem which puzzles and frightens them. How do we proceed to construct a critical response to a poem which may not rhyme, may not have metrical regularity, may not be written in verses or even have conventional punctuation? This book deals imaginatively and originally with such problems. It also provides helpful critical readings of many of the major poems of the post-war years, by poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, R S Thomas, Dannie Abse and William Carlos Williams.
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If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary, and a quest.
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Jacques the Fatalist
Jacques the Fatalist is a provocative exploration of the problems of human existence, destiny, and free will. In the introduction to this brilliant translation, David Coward explains the philosophical basis of Diderot's fascination with fate and examines the experimental and influential literary techniques that make Jacques the Fatalist a classic of the Enlightenment.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Julius Caesar
These popular Shakespeare editions attractively presented and designed to make Shakespeare relevant to students. The plays are initially summarised in lively line illustrations that present the story in pictures to assist students to recognise the plot and major issues. This is followed by an introduction to Shakespeare's life, historical background and settings, and the attitudes of the period. The full text of the play is included with copious notes on language, historical significance and cross-references to other scenes. All are near A4 in size.
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King Henry V
Like every other play in the Cambridge School Shakespeare series, King Henry V has been specially prepared to help all students in schools and colleges. This version of Henry V aims to be different from other editions of the play. It invites you to bring the play to life in your classroom through enjoyable activities that will help increase your understanding. You are encourage to make up your own mind about the play, rather than have someone else's interpretation handed down to you. Whatever you do, remember that Shakespeare wrote his plays to be acted, watched and enjoyed.
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King Lear
This new edition of King Lear takes into account the work of the Shakespeare and Schools Project, the national curriculum for English, developments at GCSE and A-level, and the probable development of English and Drama throughout the 1990s. Cambridge School Shakespeare considers King Lear as theatre and the text as script, enabling students to inhabit the imaginative world of the play in an accessible, meaningful and creative way. It approaches the play in a new way, encouraging students to participate actively in examining it, to work in groups as well as individually, to treat the play as a script to be re-created, and to explore the theatrical/dramatic qualities of the text. The editorial comments cater for students of all ages and abilities, providing clear, helpful guidelines for school study. The format of the plays is also designed to help both experienced and inexperienced teachers.
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Les Liaisons dangereuses (Oxford World's Classics)
The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil--gifted, wealthy, and bored--form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game. And they play this game with such wit and style that it is impossible not to admire them, until they discover mysterious rules that they cannot understand. In the ensuing battle there can be no winners, and the innocent suffer with the guilty. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able to judge whether the novel is as diabolical and infamous as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about a world we still inhabit.
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Manon Lescaut
The sweetness of her glance, or rather my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin, did not allow me to hesitate for a moment.
So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris--with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses-via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a thief and a whore, the image of love itself, or a thoroughly modern woman? Prévost is careful to leave the ambiguities unresolved, and to lay bare the disorders of passion.
This new translation includes the vignette and eight illustrations that were approved by Prévost and first published in the edition of 1753.
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Manon Lescaut
In "Manon Lescaut" the young Chevalier des Grieux recounts the tragic story of his passion for Manon and betrayal at her hands. Capricious, mercenary, alert to virtue but alive to pleasure, Manon is one of literauture's great "femmes fatales." With her des Grieux lives in torment; without her, life seems meaningless.
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Measure for Measure
The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Measure for Measure Angela Stock has written a new introductory section that takes account of recent scholarly criticism and important contemporary productions on stage and film. The edition retains the text prepared by Brian Gibbons together with his comprehensive introduction, in which he shows how the play's critical reception and stage history varies from one period to the next according to the prevailing social, moral and religious issues of the day. Gibbons explores the thrilling experience of watching the play in performance, with its shocking reversals and surprises, great tragic poetry and exuberant comic prose. An updated reading list completes the edition.
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