A group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury Cathedral agree to pass the weary miles by taking turns at storytelling. The travelers noble, coarse, jolly, and pious offer a vibrant portrait of fourteenth-century English life. Their narratives form English literature's greatest collection of chivalric romances, bawdy tales, fables, legends, and other stories. The Canterbury Tales reflects a society in transition, as a middle class began to emerge from England's feudal system. Craftsmen and laborers ride side by side with the gentry on the road to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, and...
A group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury Cathedral agree to pass the weary miles by taking turns at storytelling. The travelers noble, coarse, jolly, ...
A masterpiece of storytelling, this epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and fantastical sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. In telling the tale of Ahab's passion for revenge and the fateful voyage that ensued, Melville produced far more than the narrative of a hair-raising journey; Moby-Dick is a tale for the ages that sounds the deepest depths of the human soul. Interspersed with graphic sketches of life aboard a whaling vessel, and a wealth of information on whales and 19th-century whaling, Melville's greatest work presents an imaginative and thrilling...
A masterpiece of storytelling, this epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and fantastical sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. I...
Completed only a few months before the author's death, The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky's largest, most expansive, most life-embracing work. Filled with human passions ― lust, greed, love, jealousy, sorrow, and humor ― the book is also infused with moral issues and the issue of collective guilt. As in many of Dostoyevsky's novels, the plot centers on a murder. Three brothers, different in character but bound by their ancestry, are drawn into the crime's vortex: Dmitri, a young officer utterly unrestrained in love, hatred, jealousy, and generosity; Ivan, an...
Completed only a few months before the author's death, The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky's largest, most expansive, most life-embracing wor...
Among the most studied, most read, and most admired works in world literature, the tragedies of Shakespeare constitute a body of work unrivaled in dramatic brilliance, beauty of language, and profundity of thought. This convenient and affordable volume--ideal for students and all lovers of literature--features four of the playwright's greatest works: Hamlet, the revenge drama centering on the introspective Prince of Denmark--one of literature's most discussed and contentious characters, and the role that every actor longs to play; Macbeth, otherwise known as "The Scottish...
Among the most studied, most read, and most admired works in world literature, the tragedies of Shakespeare constitute a body of work unrivaled in dra...
Milton's great 17th-century epic draws upon Bible stories and classical mythology to explore the meaning of existence, as understood by people of the Western world. Its roots lie in the Genesis account of the world's creation and the first humans; its focus is a poetic interpretation "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe / With loss of Eden." In sublime poetry of extraordinary beauty, Milton's poem references tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Iliad and Odyssey, and...
Milton's great 17th-century epic draws upon Bible stories and classical mythology to explore the meaning of existence, as understood by people of the ...
