Showing titles in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

The Knight's Tale of medieval wars and chivalry is the first tale told to the pilgrims as they set out to Canterbury. It concerns Theseus, returning from fighting at Thebes, and two brother knights Palamon and Arcite, imprisoned but yearning for their loves. But the real hero of this recording is Richard Bebb who, with the help of Professor Derek Brewer, the leading expert on Chaucerian pronunciation, make the original Middle English not only comprehensible to the modern ear, but exciting.

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 to allow any student to fully understand and appreciate the play. Meet literature's greatest villain in this tragedy, fuelled by jealous rage. Journey into the twisted mind of Iago, who freely admits, "I am not what I am", and truly get under the skin of this wondrous play.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by the renowned playwright and author, Oscar Wilde. It premiered in London on Valentines Day, 1895, and was an instant success. With The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde accomplished what he'd set out to do, which was to make light of the humorous behavior of British high society.

Poet and essayist Robert Pinsky's translation captures the intensity and passion of the literary masterpiece, and world-renowned actor John Cleese contributes a profound and electrifying performance.

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...

It’s 1929 as The Jazz Singer hits the silver screen and the talkies promise to change movies forever. Enter three down-and-out vaudevillians who hatch a hare-brained scheme to “make it big” in Tinsel Town. Their plan? To open a voice academy for the witless stars of silent movies. The only things standing in their way are ditzy starlets and power-hungry movie moguls.

This widely studied play is one of the "best sellers" of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the sixth Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

Esta obra de García Lorca narra la historia de una boda entre dos familias llenas de desdichas. Todo transcurría según lo planificado hasta que el día de la boda reaparece Leonardo Félix, un joven que nunca pudo olvidar el amor a la novia.Luego de casarse, la novia y Leonardo escapan juntos al bosque siendo perseguidos por el novio y desatando una secuencia de desgracias inesperadas.

The fabulously rich Timon believes all his friends to be as open-hearted and generous as himself. When his wealth suddenly evaporates, however, he discovers the truth and his altruism turns to a bitter hatred of mankind. Stirred up by the cynical Apemantus, Timon retreats to the woods where he plots the destruction of Athens, the city that had formerly seemed to embody everything pleasurable and civilized. The cosmic scope of his hatred is communicated in a series of powerful and disturbing dramatic tableaux.

The story of the adventures of the mythical hero Gilgamesh is the most considerable literary production that has come down to us from ancient Babylonia. Unfortunately, it was not preserved in complete form. This recording is of the fullest translation which had yet been issued in English when it was first published in 1917.

Paradise Lost is a well-known part of the English literary canon. Told as an epic poem in blank verse, Paradise Lost is John Milton’s retelling of the biblical story of Satan’s fall from grace and the beginning of humanity. In the beginning of Paradise Lost, Satan has been banished to Hell and is working to organize the angels who fell with him and create his new kingdom. While a constant angelic war rages, Satan begins to wield his influence on the first humans created on Earth, and soon tempts them into defying God by using wit and logic to tempt Eve.

Lady Susan is an epistolary novel by Jane Austen about a beautiful and manipulative widow scheming to arrange wealthy marriages for herself and her daughter. This book is the basis for the film Love & Friendship, written and directed by Whit Stillman, and starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny. This dramatized production is presented by the Online Stage.

Among the oldest stories of human civilization, Aesop's fables are a collection of extended proverbs with moral messages attributed to the Greek slave Aesop, who lived in the fifth century BC. Children will delight in these basic human truths represented by talking animals and plants, and adults will marvel at the plainspoken language of these ancient tales.

Agamemnon is the first of the three linked tragedies which make up The Oresteia trilogy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. Trilogy as a whole, originally performed at the annual Dionysia festival in Athens in 458 BCE, where it won first prize, is considered to be Aeschylus' last authenticated, and also his greatest, work. Agamemnon describes the homecoming of Agamemnon, king of Argos, from the Trojan War, and his return to his wife, Clytemnestra, who had been planning his murder (in concert with her lover, Aegisthus) as revenge for Agamemnon's earlier sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia.

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.

Enheduanna, also known as En-hedu-ana or Enheduana, is widely regarded as the world's first known author and poet, as well as one of the earliest recorded female figures in history. She lived in ancient Mesopotamia during the 23rd century BCE, and held the esteemed position of high priestess in the city of Ur, which was a thriving center of Sumerian civilization.

Blood, gore, thrills, chills, and romance abound in these plays by three of the great Greek authors. Included are "Medea" by Euripides; "Antigone" by Sophocles; and "Agamemnon" by Aeschylus.

Vis and Ramin is one of the world's great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis.

Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later.

The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest literary works in Middle English, is a lively anonymous comic poem about two birds who embark on a war of words in a wood, with a nearby poet reporting their argument in rhyming couplets, line by line and blow by blow. In this engaging and energetic verse translation, Simon Armitage captures the verve and humor of this dramatic tale with all the cut and thrust of the original.

Sumérgete en un épico y misterioso viaje a través de los abismos del cosmos y las profundidades del tiempo, mientras exploras la maravilla literaria conocida como la "Teogonía" de Hesíodo. Esta obra maestra de la antigua Grecia despierta los sentidos y enciende la imaginación con su relato fascinante y trascendental sobre el origen de los dioses y el universo mismo.