books tagged “anthologies”

On a spring day in April--sometime in the waning years of the 14th century--29 travelers set out for Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. Among them is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. Travel is arduous and wearing; to maintain their spirits, this band of pilgrims entertains each other with a series of tall tales that span the spectrum of literary genres. Five hundred years later, people are still reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If you haven't yet made the acquaintance of the Franklin, the Pardoner, or the Squire because you never learned Middle English, take heart: this edition of the Tales has been translated into modern idiom.

From the heroic romance of "The Knight's Tale" to the low farce embodied in the stories of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant, Chaucer treated such universal subjects as love, sex, and death in poetry that is simultaneously witty, insightful, and poignant. The Canterbury Tales is a grand tour of 14th-century English mores and morals--one that modern-day readers will enjoy. [via]

First translated in 1867, Turgenev portays the new generation of nihilists, with their reliance on the material and on science, and their lack of respect for tradition. However, the novel's hero, Bazarov, pleased neither the revolutionaries, who thought the portrait libellous, nor the reactionaries, who thought it a glorification of iconoclasm. [via]

An immortal story of love, adventure, chivalry, treachery and death.

Edited and first published by William Caxton in 1485, Le Morte D'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's unique and splendid version of the Arthurian legend. Mordred's treason, the knightly exploits of Tristan, Lancelot's fatally divided loyalties and his love for Guenever, the quest for the Holy Grail; all the elements are there woven into a wonderful completeness by the magic of his prose style.

The result is not only one of the most readable accounts of the knights of the Round Table but also one of the most moving. As the story advances towards the inevitable tragedy of Arthur's death the effect is cumulative, rising with an impending sense of doom and tragedy towards its shattering finale. [via]

Howard Gardner's brilliant conception of individual competence is changing the face of education today. In the ten years since the publication of his seminal Frames of Mind , thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory-the powerful notion that there are separate human capacities, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in understanding oneself. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice brings together previously published and original work by Gardner and his colleagues at Project Zero to provide a coherent picture of what we have learned about the educational applications of MI theory from projects in schools and formal research over the last decade. [via]

More than 1000 outrageously irreverent quotations, anecdotes, and interviews on a vast array of subjects, from an illustrious list of world-class curmudgeons [via]

Babysnatching is one thing but Babyswapping? Inspector Wexford had not previously encountered the phenomenon of one ginger haired baby in its pram being swapped for another of the opposite sex. But novelty was only one aspect of a crime which came eventually to reveal a far more sinister range of characteristics.Darkly imagined and beautifully observed,Ruth Rendells stories reveal her startling insights into the criminal mind. [via]

Born in Bombay, India, but raised in England from the age of five, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is today best known as the author of such classics of literature as The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1902) and Just So Stories (1902). He returned to India in 1882 to become a journalist and local newspaper editor and began writing supernatural stories set in his native continent. Kipling was the first British writer to be award the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1907. [via]

Part of the "Everyman" series which has been re-set with wide margins for notes and easy-to-read type. Each title includes a themed introduction by leading authorities on the subject, life-and-times chronology of the author, text summaries, annotated reading lists and selected criticism and notes. [via]

Part of the "Everyman" series which has been re-set with wide margins for notes and easy-to-read type. Each title includes a themed introduction by leading authorities on the subject, life-and-times chronology of the author, text summaries, annotated reading lists and selected criticism and notes. [via]

Among the most important and influential philosophical works in Western thought: Euthyphro, exploring the concepts and aims of piety and religion; Apology, a defense of the integrity of Socrates' teachings; Crito, exploring Socrates' refusal to flee his death sentence; and Phaedo, in which Socrates embraces death and discusses the immortality of the soul. [via]

One man's dream of a better society...PIERS PLOWMAN stands at the centre of medieval English literature along with Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES, which in many ways it complements. A weary wanderer falls asleep and dreams of a tower and a deep dungeon, and in between the whold of humanity pursuing its business and pleasure...but his dream becomes a profound vision of redemption, in which the corruptions and injustices that occur daily are laid open with passionate truthfulness in poetry that combines vigorous realism and probing argument with moments of epic sublimity and lyrical beauty. Edited by AVC Schmidt of Balliol College, Oxford, this is the B-Text. 'A marvel of comprehension' Derek Pearsall [via]

A few narrative poems and many sonnets that have shaped the language of love from the body of Shakespeare's verse. It is some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. [via]