Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

Othello is one of the most powerful of Shakespeare's tragedies. It is a thrilling drama about love and hate, trust and betrayal, jealousy and revenge. With its complex themes, and compelling language, it speaks directly to today's audiences and sparks vigorous debate. This new edition includes the complete text with explanatory notes and a full introduction that describes the setting, summarises the plot and profiles the main characters. It discusses Shakespeare's language and the play's themes,...

In this new edition of Shakespeare's most controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice, the merchant Antonio - on behalf of his friend Bassano - seeks a loan from Shylock. The loan is required to impress an heiress. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender whom Antonio has always treated with the utmost contempt, and Antonio is to honour the debt with a pound of the merchant's own flesh. When Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock prepares to take his gruesome revenge - only to find that the law is a knife...

William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a comedy. In medieval and Tudor times, the 'Twelfth Night' was the end of a winter festival that started on 31 October (All Hallows Eve, or as we know it today, Halloween). Mulled cider was drunk, and special pastries baked, and a king and queen (who could have been servants in charge for the night) ruled the festival until the clock struck midnight. People expected a topsy-turvy evening, with singing and clowning about, when the normal order of things was ...

The drama of Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous of all tragedies. It tells the story of two 'star-crossed' lovers whose young lives are cruelly cut short because of a bitter feud between their families. Since it was published in 1597, Romeo and Juliet has been performed all round the world, made into box office recordbreaking films, ballets and adapted by Leonard Bernstein for his world-famous musical, West Side Story. Shakespeare was young when he wrote the play, and the exquisite langu...

Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's capabilities. When the wife of a prominent surgeon dies suddenly in the hospital emergency room of Mercy Hospital in Milwaukee, USA, Dr Maxine Cassidy suspects murder. Maxine is determined to find the killer and starts an investigation of her own. However, when someone tries to kill her, she begins to ...

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suici...

Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie.Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection f...

Dubliners, about Joyce's native city, is faithful to his country, seeing it unflinchingly and challenging every precedent and piety in Irish literature. The stories in Dubliners show us truants, seducers, hostesses, corrupt politicians, failing priests, struggling musicians, poets, patriots, and many more simply striving to get by.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man falls between the realism of Dubliners and the symbolism of Ulysses. The novel is a highly autobiographical account of the yout...

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a classic representation of the impoverished and politically powerless underclass of British society in Edwardian England, ruthlessly exploited by the institutionalized corruption of their employers and the civic and religious authorities. Epic in scale, the novel charts the ruinous effects of the laissez-faire mercantilist ethics on the men, women, and children of the working classes, and through its emblematic characters, argues for a socialist politics ...

In the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a huge cyclone transports the orphan Dorothy and her little dog Toto from Kansas to the Land of Oz, and she fears that she will never see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry ever again. But she meets the Munchkins, and they tell her to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City where the Wonderful Wizard of Oz will grant any wish. On the way, she meets the brainless Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. The four friends set off to seek their heart's desir...

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury.Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women.Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune,...

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.Variously melancholy, lyrical, joyous and farcical, Twelfth Night has long been a popular comedy with Shakespearian audiences. The main plot revolves around mistaken identities and un...

Introduction and Notes by Jane Thomas, University of Hull.The Well-Beloved completes the cycle of Hardy's great novels, reiterating his favourite themes of man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art, and the suffering that ensues. Jocelyn Pierston, celebrated sculptor, tries to create an image of his ideal woman - his imaginary Well-Beloved - in stone, just as he tries to find her in the flesh.Powerful symbolism marks this romantic fantasy that Hardy has grounded firmly in reality w...

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leo...

This award-winning graded readers series is full of original fiction, adapted fiction and factbooks especially written for teenagers. Twins, Andy and Mary, are in Dublin on a school trip. When Mary discovers that she has been given a forged EURO20 note, she thinks she knows the identity of the forger. The twins start to investigate, but it soon becomes clear that the forgers know who Andy and Mary are too. This paperback is in British English. Download the complete audio recording of this title ...

The Queen of a small Country! Those who are accustomed to see rulers of greater lands can little understand what it means. It means work and anxiety and hope, and great toiling for small results. But the field is large, and, if the heart be willing, great is the work. When young I thought it all work, uphill work; but the passing years brought another knowledge, a blessed knowledge, and now I know. This is a small country, a new country, but it is a country I love. I want others to love it a...

Why another study on American influence? The current research study focuses on identifying the main Romanian perceptions of the United States of America, as well as the various ways in which elements belonging to American culture are integrated in the culture of Romania, a country that belonged to the former South-East European Communist Bloc. The research efforts will concentrate on the period after 1989, but references will also be made to previous years, in an attempt to emphasize the connect...

Starting from the theories of the grotesque, femininity, mother-daughter, mother-son relationship, the present study attempts at analyzing how stereotyping in the patriarchal society can gender identity construction. The study relies on the analysis of a series of works by the British postmodern writers Jeanette Winterson and Angela Carter stretching between the 1970s and 1980s. It is a period of great turmoil for the British society, mostly influenced by the plethora of feminist movements, wave...

The plot:Poirot is supposed to be on a relaxing holiday in Egypt, but soon finds himself caught in the middle of a confusing murder.The obvious suspect has an alibi, and not a single other person seems to have any reason to want to murder the beautiful young victim.Can Poirot find out the truth before the murderer strikes again?

Volumul de fata pledeaza pentru redescoperirea bucuriei intelectuale a lecturii personale si se adreseaza in primul rand studentilor Facultatii de Limbi si Literaturi Straine din cadrul Universitatii Bucuresti dar si, in aceeasi masura, tuturor studentilor si cititorilor interesati de literatura americana clasica. Aceasta lucrare didactica este alcatuita din analize literare noi, care pot fi utile, de asemenea, atat profesorilor, cat si elevilor de liceu, interesati in egala masura, de literatu...