It is said that Queen Elizabeth gave Shakespeare two weeks to write this play that showcases her favorite comedic character, Sir John Falstaff....

Here are the Socratic Dialogues presented as Plato designed them to be - living discussions between friends and protagonists....

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven....

Seeking to depose his brother Artaxerxes and take his place upon the Persian throne, Cyrus the Younger leads the 10,000 mercenaries on a dangerous campaign deep into the heart of Persia....

This collection contains more than 140 of Ryokan's poems, with selections of his art, and of the very funny anecdotes about him....

The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years....

Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey....

Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander's new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source....

Educated in Lebanon, United States, and France, Gibran was influenced by the European modernists of the late 19th century, but even more by Francis Marrash, who introduced poetic prose and prose poetry in the Arab world....

The great legacy of The Iliad is its shattering revelation of what it means to be human in the face of life's uncertainty and fleeting mortality....

Rumi's Spiritual Verses is the greatest mystical poem in Islamic culture - and of all time....

No novo audiolivro de Leandro Karnal, atores-ouvintes são convidados a dar um passeio pela própria consciência: a jornada de aprender com quem mais tem a ensinar no teatro do mundo - o criador de Hamlet....

Taliesin's is one of the most important names in all Welsh literature - and one of its greatest mysteries. He has fascinated and inspired some of our greatest poets, including Tennyson and Robert Graves. He is a poet, a shape-shifter, a seer, a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the fifth- and sixth-century British Isles, a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology and a figure whose literary legend culminated with the compilation in 13th-century North Wales of The Book of Taliesin.

As one of the supremely gifted poets of all time, one might expect great things from this collection of poetry by Horace. And these works do not disappoint. The 17 poems of the Epodes cover a variety of topics, including politics, magic, eroticism and food. A product of the turbulent final years of the Roman Republic, the collection is known for its striking depiction of Rome's sociopolitical ills in a time of great upheaval. In the Epistles, Horace reveals himself as a genuine moralist, a subtle observer of life, and a very good writer. 

"The Works and Days" is a didactic poem written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. It is in dactylic hexameter and contains 828 lines. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts. Scholars have seen this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of colonial expeditions in search of new land. In the poem Hesiod also offers his brother extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life.

The iconic love story of the Middle East, by a 12th-century Persian poet who has been compared to Shakespeare for his subtlety, inventiveness, and dramatic force, Layli and Majnun tells of star-crossed lovers whose union is tragically thwarted by their families and whose passion continues to ripple out across the centuries. Theirs is a love that lasts a lifetime, and in Nezami's immortal telling, erotic longing blends with spiritual self-denial in an allegory of Sufi aspiration, as the amenities of civilization give way to the elemental wilderness.