Ancient Classics

In Stephen Mitchell's The Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector, and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful. Mitchell's The Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West.

Listening to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times? Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social commentary could easily have been written today about any number of metropolitan areas we are all familiar with.

Frederick Lazarus Light's resolve to write a greater Iliad in English than Homer composed in Greek is manifest. This translation impersonates Homeric Greek. It runs with Achilleus and like man-shattering Hector in the shock of arms is resolutely sharp. As unrelenting as sublimity, not yielding lyrically, unprosaically vindicating Homer's vision, the brightest labor has been attempted and is brought over as a consummate attempt.

The Lower Depths, also titled At the Bottom, is a 1902 play by the Russian author and playwright Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). This work portrays a group of wretched, impoverished outcasts living in a shelter near the Volga River. They play cards and tell stories, and are briefly uplifted by a new resident called Luca who gives them hope. When he goes off, the illusion of hope collapses, and the result is murder and suicide.

Twelfth Night, nowadays one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most-admired comedies, was not always so regarded: Samuel Pepys saw the play three times in the 1660s and judged it 'silly'. Modern audiences, critics, and directors seem better attuned to its delicate counter pointing of romance and realism....

Un invierno terrible, Cenicienta pierde a su madre por una enfermedad. Antes de morir, su madre le promete siempre estar con ella y le pide bondad y valor para los años por venir. Su padre toma una nueva esposa después de unos años, una mujer cruel y vana que desprecia a Cenicienta, obligándola a trabajar en labores del hogar desde el alba hasta el anochecer.

Gibbon's masterpiece on Rome is a monument of literature and a model of modern historical research. There has never been anything quite like it since its publication between 1776 and 1788. Although some of Gibbon's views are considered controversial today, there is no doubt that his research and patient devotion to scholarship produced one of the most valuable and renowned histories of all time.

Versión en prosa de uno de los clásicos absolutos de la literatura universal: "La Ilíada" de Homero, que narra el rapto de Helena de Troya a manos de Paris y la posterior guerra entre aqueos y troyanos por recuperarla, con la intervención de las diferentes fuerzas de la naturaleza encarnadas por dioses y semidioses. Una lectura capital para todos aquellos aficionados a la Grecia clásica y a la buena literatura.

The imaginative talents of Caroline Lawrence (author of the Roman Mysteries series) and Laura Jenkinson Brown (illustrator of Greek Myth comics) combined with the expertise of Dr Sophie Hay, Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Dr Olivia Elder, with just a dash of the CSCP magic that made the Cambridge Latin Course so well-loved, bring the ancient town of Pompeii to life in a truly unique way.

Horror and the supernatural are the background of Bierce's short stories. His style is marked by vivid description, grim situations, and sardonic twists of fate. In terms of technique, he was far ahead of his time and his short stories are among the very best in American literature.

The focus of the book is on Shakespeare's London, how it influenced his drama, and how he represents it on stage. Taking listeners on an imaginative journey through the city, the book moves both chronologically, from beginning to end of Shakespeare's dramatic career, and geographically, traversing London from west to east.

Matthew Arnold praised the Iliad for its "nobility", as has everyone ever since - but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its "bright unbearable reality" (the word used when gods come to earth, not in disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance.

Christopher Marlowe's play about a man who sells his soul to the devil is not only one of the first of many works to explore this theme but also one of the most startling. Eschewing the usual division of the drama into acts, it presents the story of Faustus' fall in a series of apparently disconnected scenes. However, the integrity of the drama is maintained by the remorseless unraveling of Faustus' fortunes as he approaches his inevitable damnation.

Three tales from The Canterbury Tales, read in the original Middle English by Richard Bebb under the direction of Britain's foremost Chaucer scholar, Derek Brewer.

La Ilíada (en griego homérico Ἰλιάς: Iliás; en griego moderno Ιλιάδα: Iliáda; en latín: Ilias) es una epopeya griega, atribuida tradicionalmente a Homero. Compuesta en hexámetros dactílicos, consta de 15,693 versos divididos en 24 cantos o rapsodias. La trama se centra en la cólera de Aquiles y narra los acontecimientos ocurridos durante 51 días en el décimo y último año de la guerra de Troya. El título de la obra deriva del nombre griego de Troya, Ιlión.

La odisea es un poema épico escrito por Homero del Siglo XV. Esta versión es fiel al texto original. El narrador habla claramente y el audio es de la mejor calidad. No hay una manera mejor para disfrutar esta obra clásica.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of 45 poems by English poet William Blake. "Songs of Innocence" is the first part of the collection and appeared in 1789 with engraved illustrations by Blake. The second part, "Songs of Experience", also illustrated, was added in 1794 when Blake published the whole under the full title of Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

The story of Cyrano, his famous nose, and his undying love for the beautiful Roxanne evokes the spirit and panache of 17th century France.

Here is the multi award-winning SmartPass study guide with and without commentary options. This is a full-cast, unabridged performance, with comprehensive commentary and analysis, enabling students to fully understand and appreciate the play. Judge for yourself whether Lear is "a man more sinned against than sinning" in this moral tale that pits wisdom and age against ambition and youth. Experience and examine the power of Shakespeare's most cruel and violent tragedy.

Richard Burton and Ralph Richardson join together in this unqiue musical production of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The superb delivery of both these actors is augmented by an original soundtrack composed by David Moore.