More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment,...

"This play moves back and forth between 1809 and the present at the elegant estate owned by the Coverly family. The 1809 scenes reveal a household in transition. As the Arcadian landscape is being transformed into picturesque Gothic gardens, complete with a hermitage, thirteen-year-old Lady Thomasina and her tutor delve into intellectual and romantic issues. Present day scenes depict the Coverly descendants and two competing scholars who are researching...

Ambiguity involves "any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of langauge." The authors discusses seven classifications of differing complexity and depth of well-known literary works

Relatively unknown in his own lifetime, Gerard Manley Hopkins is the now accredited as the author of some of the finest and most complex poems in the English language. As a Victorian poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, Hopkins pioneered a revolutionary form of meter he termed "sprung rhythm" in his first major work, "The Wreck of the Deutschland." This poem, like most of Hopkins' work, reflects both his belief in the doctrine that human...

This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope and designed to give you greater insight into the written and spoken word. The lectures provide a thorough understanding of the history of the English language - from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples through the literary and cultural documents of its 1,500-year span to the state of American...

Provides useful words, numbers, greetings, and phrases in Russian. Additional features to aid comprehension include a table of contents, an introduction to the basic grammatical rules of the language, and an introduction to the author and illustrator. Learn fun and useful words and phrases in different languages! Each book in the Foreign Language Basics series includes words and phrases in a language other than English, as well as the English translations...

The complete horror, dark fantasy, and psychological suspense stories of Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, a major figure of English literature, used the full power and intensity of his imagination and writing ability in his excursions into fantasy. Kipling is considered one of England's greatest writers, but was born in Bombay. He was educated in England and returned to India in 1882, where he began writing fantasy and supernatural stories set

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In the sphere of poets like Swift, Meredith and Kipling, Thomas Hardy is today becoming recognized as one of the greatest English poets of this century. As a young man with interests in journalism, art, and architecture, Hardy achieved greatness in the fiction genre early on, writing novels for a living until his mid-fifties. He then abandoned fiction entirely in order to devote himself to his true passion-poetry. This ample selection of poems demonstrates...

This comic masterpiece mocked the simple morality of sentimental comedies. Subtitled The Mistakes of a Night, the play is a lighthearted farce that derives its charm from the misunderstandings which entangle the well-drawn characters. Mr. Hardcastle plans to marry his forthright daughter Kate to bashful Marlow, the son of his friend Sir Charles Marlow. Mrs. Hardcastle wants her recalcitrant son Tony Lumpkin to marry her ward Constance Neville, who...

Here is the riveting story of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a regional dialect to its current preeminence as the one global language, spoken by more than two billion people worldwide. In this groundbreaking book, Melvyn Bragg shows how English conquered the world. It is a magnificent adventure, full of jealousy, intrigue, and war-against a hoard of invaders, all armed with their own conquering languages, which bit by bit, the...