When Second World War Spitfire pilot John Gillespie Magee penned his poem 'High Flight', little did he know that his words would inspire legions of aspiring aviators who had a similar wish to fly their 'eager craft through footless halls of air'.
With delicacy and precision, the major Chinese poet Xiao Hai conjures shadows to explore philosophical questions of illusion and reality, history and time, art and language.
A revealing look at how the Orpheus myth helped Renaissance writers and thinkers understand the force of eloquenceIn ancient Greek mythology, the lyrical songs of Orpheus charmed the gods, and compelled animals, rocks, and trees to obey his commands.
This book is about an aspect of medieval Arabic culture and literature known in Arabic as mujun (roughly 'libertinism, licentiousness, frivolity, indecency, profligacy, shamelessness, impertinence', etc.
Soon after their successful revolution in 750 AD, the Abbasids supplanted the Umayyad dynasty, built the new city of Baghdad, Iraq which became the capital of the Islamic Empire.
Soon after their successful revolution in 750 AD, the Abbasids supplanted the Umayyad dynasty, built the new city of Baghdad, Iraq which became the capital of the Islamic Empire.
This book is about an aspect of medieval Arabic culture and literature known in Arabic as mujun (roughly 'libertinism, licentiousness, frivolity, indecency, profligacy, shamelessness, impertinence', etc.
This book offers an integrated study of the English princess and Castilian queen Catherine of Lancaster (1373-1418), drawing on available archival, architectural, and poetic sources in England and Spain.
Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyo captures the power of Saigyo's poetry and this previously overlooked poet's keen insight into the social and political world of medieval Japan.
This is the first new biography in English for nearly eighty years of Italy's foremost writer and thinker, and weaves into a single thread the whole of Dante's life and works.
KIPLING may be best known as a commentator on the British Empire, but he was also a vivid observer and chronicler of the sea - and of ships and all who sailed in them.
'Horace tells us in his poetry almost everything we need to know about his life; it is curiously entangled with the Italian earth, with the history of his times, and an exact moment in that brief early summer of Latin poetry which had no autumn.
Peter Levi teases a remarkably vivid life from Virgil's poems, a life-long study of poetry and the few facts that have come down to us through Suetonius.
The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran.
The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran.
Peter Levi teases a remarkably vivid life from Virgil's poems, a life-long study of poetry and the few facts that have come down to us through Suetonius.