This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror.
The works collected in this volume have profoundly shaped the history of criticism in the Western world: they created much of the terminology still in use today and formulated enduring questions about the nature and function of literature.
Volume two of Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory's powerful and elegaic version of the Arthurian legend, recounts the adventures of Sir Tristram de Liones and the treachery of Sir Mordred, and follows Sir Launcelot's quest for The Holy Grail, his fatally divided loyalties, and his great, forbidden love for the beautiful Queen Guenever.
A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary.
One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process.
Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chr tien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance.
From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare's imaginationBen Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "e;small Latin and less Greek.
Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter.
From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeTooEver since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readersfrom Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith.
A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination-poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious-displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens.
An illustrious scholar presents an elegant, concise, and generously illustrated exploration of Alexander the Great's representations in art and literature through the agesJohn Boardman is one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Greece, and his acclaimed books command a broad readership.
A sinner-saint who embraced then renounced sexual and worldly pleasures; a woman who, through her attachment to Jesus, embodied both erotic and sacred power; a symbol of penance and an exemplar of contemplative and passionate devotion: perhaps no figure stood closer to the center of late medieval debates about the sources of spiritual authority and women's contribution to salvation history than did Mary Magdalene, and perhaps nowhere in later medieval England was cultural preoccupation with the Magdalene stronger than in fifteenth-century East Anglia.
Given Christianity's valuation of celibacy and its persistent association of sexuality with the Fall and of women with sin, Western medieval attitudes toward the erotic could not help but be vexed.
With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe.
Timeless techniques of effective public speaking from ancient Rome's greatest oratorAll of us are faced countless times with the challenge of persuading others, whether we're trying to win a trivial argument with a friend or convince our coworkers about an important decision.
The study of Homeric imitations in Vergil has one of the longest traditions in Western culture, starting from the very moment the Aeneid was circulated.
Examining the figure of Aesop and the traditions surrounding him, Aesopic Conversations offers a portrait of what Greek popular culture might have looked like in the ancient world.
Unter Aufgabe der strikten Entgegensetzung von 'Personalität' und 'Transpersonalität' von Herrschaft und des Postulats einer vorwiegend personal geprägten vormodernen Herrschaft zeigen die hier vereinten Beiträge an zahlreichen Fallbeispielen aus Asien, Ägypten und Europa das Neben- und Miteinander personaler und transpersonaler Aspekte auf.
