Literary History & Criticism

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic....

Take a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Origins of The Wheel of Time will provide exciting knowledge and insights to both new and longtime fans....

An intellectual detective story, this history audiobook directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain....

In The Kingdom of Cain, crime novelist, screenwriter, and cultural critic Andrew Klavan explores how artists' imaginative engagement with the evil of murder in film and literature can point us to ways of living honestly, beautifully, and even joyfully in a dark world.

From the acclaimed novelist and Oxford professor Nicola Gardini, a personal and passionate look at the Latin language: its history, its authors, its essential role in education, and its enduring impact on modern life - whether we call it “dead” or not....

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town....

Discover the powerful and universal lessons from the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, the genius behind such musical theater masterworks as Company, West Side Story, and Into the Woods.

Comedian, activist, and hugely popular culture blogger at AwesomelyLuvvie.com Luvvie Ajayi serves up necessary advice for the masses in this hilarious book of essays....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making....

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars comes an enthralling literary adventure that introduces listeners to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium....

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition....

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

All Souls fans have been captivated from the start by the many sources of inspiration Harkness draws on in her novels. Here, with her signature historian's touch, she offers an encyclopedic look at the series, complete with synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and more....

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment....

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour....

The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters....

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read....

Read by the author, this bold, provocative collection of essays asks one of the most urgent questions of our time: What is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything?

Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin....

Sir Ian McKellen, fresh from his performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, is Prospero, and heads a strong cast in Shakespeare’s last great play....

In the six lectures of The Great Gatsby at 100, you will join Sheila Liming of Champlain College to revisit the context and culture of the Roaring ‘20s, which inspired the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his disastrous pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. As you’ll discover, while Gatsby is framed as a love story, it’s also a story of the American experience, revealing the unspoken rules of wealth and class and the false promises of self-made success in a world of Old Money privilege.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul's Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies, and the graves of the 'queerly departed' along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between, and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC-Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans. The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing?

Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers. Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1.

What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters.

Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth is an experiment in interiority written in the pandemic studio. Something of a companion piece to 2009’s Bluets, Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life.

Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it trace its emergence to a group of intellectuals dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism that features women who were central to the development of the movement. Bright Circle is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller.

When Heather Christle realizes that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories, in search of a more hopeful narrative and a future she can live with. Wide-ranging and prismatic, the fruit of an insatiably curious, delightfully brilliant mind, In the Rhododendrons is part memoir, part biography of Virginia Woolf, part reckoning with the things we cannot change and the ways we can completely transform, if we dare.

Las ideas son las protagonistas de este audio libro, pero no las ideas en abstracto sino las ideas encarnadas en personas con vidas tocadas por la pasión del poder, la historia y la revolución; y también por el amor, la amistad, la familia. Vidas reales, no ideas andantes. Por este audiolibro desfilan profetas de la redención como el heroico Martí, el idealista Rodó, el educador Vasconcelos o el indigenista Mariátegui.

This Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian. Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features—tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis is followed by an account of how and why Sophoclean dramas have survived to be read and widely performed into the twenty-first century.

In The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball, author Christian Sheppard interweaves Homer’s epics with glorious stories from the green fields of America’s pastime, celebrating Achilles’ courage and Odysseus’ cunning along with the virtues of Hall of Fame players such as Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth and of great teams such as the 2004 Red Sox and the 2016 Cubs.

100 years after Proust's death, In Search of Lost Time remains one of the greatest works in World Literature. At 3,000 pages, it can be intimidating to some. This short volume invites first-time listeners and veterans alike to view the novel in a new way. Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was arguably France's best-known literary writer. He was the author of stories, essays, translations, and a 3,000-page novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-27). This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus.

Na ponta da língua não busca ser um mero guia de etimologia. Mais do que ensinar ao leitor a origem das palavras, Caetano W. Galindo—autor de Latim em pó, êxito de crítica e público—nos dá as ferramentas para que possamos, também, ser investigadores do nosso português.

DEL SUEÑO AL MANUSCRITO: TU CAMINO GARANTIZADO AL ÉXITO EN LA ESCRITURA ¿Siempre has querido escribir un libro pero no sabes por dónde empezar? ¿O quizás lo has intentado varias veces solo para abandonar tu proyecto a mitad de camino? "Cómo escribir una historia" es más que un simple manual: es tu hoja de ruta detallada para convertir tu sueño en realidad. POR FIN, UN MÉTODO QUE REALMENTE FUNCIONA Este no es otro libro teórico sobre escritura. Es un sistema probado y práctico que te guía paso a paso, desde tu primera idea hasta un manuscrito completo listo para su publicación....

"I Know My Classics" is here to help you discover and appreciate the literary treasures that have shaped our culture for centuries. In this comprehensive guide, Pierre Marshesso delves into the essence of the 100 greatest books ever written, providing insightful summaries and author profiles to make you feel like an expert in classic literature. From the epics of Homer to the groundbreaking works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and beyond, this book offers a journey through the world of timeless stories. In "I Know My Classics!

Afterlives of Endor offers an analysis of the way early modern English literature addressed the period's anxieties about witchcraft and theatricality. What determined whether or not a demonologist imagined a trial as a spectacle? What underlying epistemological constraints governed such choices and what conceptions of witchcraft did these choices reveal? Pairing readings of demonological texts with canonical plays and poetry, Laura Levine examines such questions.

In this Very Short Introduction, Anthony Welch places the Western epic canon alongside traditional heroic poetry from Asia, Africa, and the Near East. Tracing shared themes and practices that unite the world's epic literature, Welch examines the roles that epic poets serve in society and how epic storytelling differs from other narrative forms. Ranging widely from Gilgamesh to Derek Walcott's Omeros, the author acquaints listeners with some of the world's greatest literary works and asks why the epic holds such power over our imaginations.

Karl Kraus gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Aphoristiker deutscher Sprache. Ob berühmte Schriftsteller oder die Presse - nichts und niemand wurde von der gnadenlosen Kritik seiner Feder verschont. Bekannte Künstler wie Stefan Zweig, Georg Trakl, Thomas Mann und andere zollten ihm Respekt, aber die Zahl seiner Feinde in Kunst und Gesellschaft war enorm. Als Vorleser hinterließ er aufgrund seiner Sprachgewalt und Persönlichkeit angeblich einen äußerst außergewöhnlichen Eindruck.

Nesta coletânea de ensaios, Afonso Cruz revela sua faceta de leitor. Estão aqui relatos históricos, curiosidades literárias, reflexões e memórias pessoais, sempre com a leitura como centro. Kafka, os gregos, Mario Quintana, um leitor presidiário, poetas árabes, o próprio avô — através do diálogo com diversas obras, diferentes escritores e também com leitores, eis aqui uma celebração, uma homenagem ao viciante ato de ler.

Das Lob der Torheit ist in Form einer Rede der personifizierten Torheit geschrieben, die ihre eigene Bedeutung und die Vorteile ihrer Existenz preist. Die Torheit spricht direkt zu den Lesern und argumentiert, dass sie in allen Bereichen des menschlichen Lebens präsent und notwendig ist. Sie lobt die Torheit in verschiedenen sozialen, politischen und religiösen Kontexten und kritisiert dabei indirekt die Missstände und Heuchelei der Gesellschaft.

Join us for a delightful journey into the culinary world of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel Little Women. In this special episode, host Niina is joined by writer Jenne Bergstrom, author of The Little Women Cookbook, as they explore the heartwarming and relatable chapter, “Domestic Experiences.” Perfect for fans of Little Women, history enthusiasts, and food lovers alike, this episode offers a delicious blend of literature and gastronomy. Tune in and let your imagination feast on the tastes and textures of a cherished classic!

My guest Star is here to talk to us about Heroine's Journey and we are discussing the heroine's journey in Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Jo's heroine's journey in Little Women. I was told that Gilbert's proposal to Anne in the 80s AOGG is almost exactly the same as Laurie's proposal to Jo in 1933 Little Women. Of course, I had to check if this was true and I have recorded these two proposals and mine and Star's reactions.

John is the underrated love interest in the Little Women canon, but he is actually really great. He is a gentleman and a wonderful father and he adores Meg. I am joined by Little Women expert, the author of March Sisters Sweet Romance Book series, Jen Brady. In Jen's book "Falling for the tutor" we get John's point of view on things. What does he think about the March family and how did he fall in love with Meg? Join us in this wonderful discussion. We shall be discussing about Meg's character.

Plongez au cœur de l’ambition monumentale d’Honoré de Balzac avec cet Avant-propos, véritable clé de lecture de La Comédie Humaine. Dans ce texte fondateur, l’auteur expose sa vision grandiose : dresser le portrait fidèle de la société du XIXe siècle, en saisir les mécanismes cachés, les passions dévorantes et les luttes sociales impitoyables.

For the fan of good poetry interested in the diversity of American expression. The anthology provides an understanding of the history and contemporary vitality of the poetry and poetics of the non-normative body. Three sections—"Foremothers and Forefathers," "The Disability Poetics Movement," and "A Language of New Embodiment"—gather the poems and statements on poetics together in a meaningful whole.