Ancient Classics

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is the most famous contemporary Urdu poet of the 20th century who appeals both to the common man as well as the elite connoisseurs of poetry. Faiz's ghazals reflect a strong influence of the Persian style and diction, because of which he is often considered the inheritor of the tradition of Ghalib; and at the same time several of them are written in a simple conversational style dealing with the problems of the common man.

Marcus Aurelius was the Roman emperor from 161 to AD 180, and during that time, he kept several collections of journals that contained personal notes, militaristic strategy, and ideas on Stoic philosophy. While unlikely that he ever intended to publicly publish these journals, there is no real official title, so most often "Meditations" is used because of his in depth writings on philosophy. These journals give an introspective look at how and why Marcus Aurelius' operated as an emperor.

The Trojan War is over, and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. It proves a long, 10-year journey, fraught with dangers.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

This group of 19th-century American poets was the first to rival their British counterparts in popularity. Gathered around their New England roots, they were also known as the Schoolroom or Household poets and comprised of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and Olivier Wendell Holmes, Sr. Occasionally Ralph Waldo Emerson was included, although his poetic philosophy differed in some key aspects.

At the end of his life, William Blake (1757-1827) gave up hope of being widely understood, but the twentieth century brought to his work a new and intense interest and acclaim.

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.

Unlock the Secrets of an Ancient Thinker Who Shaped Modern Thought Are you ready to challenge your understanding of reality? Zeno of Elea, the brilliant philosopher whose paradoxes have baffled minds for centuries, offers you a journey into the heart of philosophical inquiry. This is not just a book; it’s an intellectual adventure that will change the way you see the world. Dive into the Mind of a Master: Zeno’s paradoxes are more than mere puzzles; they are profound explorations of the concepts of space, time, and infinity. This book breaks down his most famous paradoxes in a way that ...

Harpagón es un hombre rico pero avaro; tiene dos hijos: Elisa y Cleanto, quienes sufren privaciones económicas y afectivas debido a la tacañería de su padre. El viejo avaro desea casarse con la joven Mariana, pero descubre que su hijo Cleanto está enamorado de ella. Elisa ama a Valerio; sin embargo, su padre quiere casarla con un hombre mayor y rico.

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....

Antigone is a famous Greek tragedy attributed to the ancient playwright Sophocles at around 440 BCE. The play expands on the Theban legend of Oedipus that predates it, dealing with Antigone’s burial of her brother Polyneices in defiance of the law and the tragic results of her act. On another level, the play exposes the dangers of the absolute ruler or tyrant in the character of Creon. No one speaks freely to him, so he makes a series of mistakes, illustrating the folly of tyranny.

In the first century, under Domitian's reign, strange and brutal goings on are nothing new in Rome. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, has taken over her father's business as a private informer but she tries to shy away from the brutal, the complicated, and the political—because nothing good comes of any of them. Unfortunately, she's not very good at turning them down. This time a commission shows up on her doorstep—someone is staging brutal murders in some of the most beautiful buildings in Rome, each staging different.

The Oresteia is a tragedy in three parts written by Aeschylus in the fifth century BCE. After a decade of warfare, Troy had fallen and Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, returned home. His wife, Queen Clytemnestra, had him killed to avenge the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia, to obtain the crown and to marry her lover Aegisthus. This murder leads to further bloodshed when their son Orestes in turn kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The trilogy consists of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.

A splash of the sea and the salt in the ocean air signals the beginning of the greatest whaling adventure of all time. This is literature's great voyage. The challenge of a man against the wonders of nature's ocean, of a man against his own weakness and strengths, and of a man against a demon, or perhaps his God, as he searches for his nemesis, the great white whale.

Los viajes y aventuras de Ulises. La anecdota suele regodearse sobre la figura legendaria de Homero, supuesto juglar ciego que iba de pueblo en pueblo cantando sus grandes narraciones epicas. La Iliada, una narracion de la Guerra de Troya, originada en el rapto que hizo Paris de la mujer mas bella del mundo, Helena y La Odisea, la descripcion de las aventuras del sabio Ulises u Odiseo en su vuelta a Itaca, su patria, terminada la guerra...

Among the ancient artifacts concealed in a London Victorian mansion lies an ornate human-sized sarcophagus which houses the body of an ancient Egyptian sorceress dead for centuries...or is she?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in collaboration with his friend, William Wordsworth, revolutionized English poetry. In 1798 they produced their Lyrical Ballads, poems of imagination and reflection using "the language of men" - pointing the way forward for a generation of Romantic poets.

The classical civilisations of Greece and Rome dominated the world for centuries and continue to intrigue and enlighten us with their inventions, whether philosophy, politics, theatre, athletics, celebrity, science or the pleasures of horse racing. Robin Lane Fox's spellbinding history spans almost a thousand years of change from the foundation of the world's first democracy in Athens to the Roman Republic and the Empire under Hadrian.

Homer's Iliad can justly be called the world's greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns, the heroism and treachery of its combatants unmatched in song and story. Driven by fierce passions and loyalties, men and gods battle to a devastating conclusion.

En este bellísimo relato se narran las aventuras que vive Ulises navegando por el mar Mediterráneo. Enormes tempestades azotan su nave porque el dios del mar, Poseidón, no le quiere nada. Sin embargo, le protege la diosa de la sabiduría, Atenea. Mientras tanto, en su tierra, la isla Ítaca, le están esperando su fiel esposa, Penélope, y su hijo Telémaco, que irá en busca de noticias suyas.