Poetry

The Iliad is one of two ancient Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer. The poem is commonly dated to the 8th or 7th century BC, and many scholars believe it is the oldest extant work of literature in the ancient Greek language, making it the first work of European literature. The existence of a single author for the poems is disputed as the poems themselves show evidence of a long oral tradition and hence, possible multiple authors. The poem concerns events during the tenth and final year in the siege of the city of Ilion , or Troy, by the Greeks. The word Iliad means "pertaining to Ilion ", the city proper, as opposed to Troy , the state centered around Ilium, over which the names Ilium and Troy are often used interchangeably. [Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad under the terms of the GNU-FDL] more...

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Designed as both a contribution to original research and as a stimulating and accessible text, this volume is a helpful, reliable, responsive and adaptable resource for students of Chaucer at all levels. more...

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This concise companion provides a succinct introduction to Chaucer’s major works, the contexts in which he wrote, and to medieval thought more generally.:.; Opens with a general introductory section discussing London life and politics, books and authority, manuscripts and readers.; Subsequent sections focus on Chaucer’s major works – the dream visions, Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales .; Essays highlight the key religious, political and intellectual contexts for each major work.; Also covers important general topics, including: medieval literary genres; dream theory; the Church; gender and sexuality; and reading Chaucer aloud.; Designed so that each contextual essay can be read alongside one of Chaucer’s major works. more...

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Through the staccato energy and musical temperance of rhyming verse and iambic articulation, A Lover's Anthem speaks the inimitable language of unrequited love and romantic indestructibility. It is a collection of aesthetically sensitive and moral insights drawn from some seventy years of a life seldom in retreat but ever striving prophetically for the concept of love made perfect through honesty and truth. more...

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A surprising and scandalous story of how the interaction within a group of exceptional and uniquely talented characters shaped and changed American thought. At the close of the Civil War, the United States took a deep breath to lick wounds and consider the damage done. A Summer of Hummingbirds reveals how, at that tender moment, the lives of some of our most noted writers, poets, and artists-including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade-intersected to make sense of it all. Renowned critic Christopher Benfey maps the intricate web of friendship, family, and romance that connects these larger than life personalities to one another, and in doing so discovers a unique moment in the development of American character. In this meticulously researched and creatively imagined work, Benfey takes the seemingly arbitrary image of the hummingbird and traces its "route of evanescence" as it travels in circles to and from the creative wellsprings of the age: from the naturalist writings of abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson to the poems of his wayward pupil Emily Dickinson; into the mind of Henry Ward Beecher and within the writings and paintings of his famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. A Summer of Hummingbirds unveils how, through the art of these great thinkers, the hummingbird became the symbol of an era, an image through which they could explore their controversial (and often contradictory) ideas of nature, religion, sexuality, family, time, exoticism, and beauty. Benfey's complex tale of interconnection comes to an apex in Amherst, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1882, a time when loyalties were betrayed and thoughts exchanged with the speed of a hummingbird's wings. Here in the wake of the very public Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton sex scandal, Mabel Loomis Todd-the young and beautiful protŽgŽe to the hummingbird painter Martin Johnson Heade-begins an affair with Austin Dickinson and l more...

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