`Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave …
'Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns, who was driven far and wide after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy' Twenty years after setting out to fight in the Trojan War, …
'- What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen. - Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.' Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a …
Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle... Perhaps no figure better embodies the transition from the Gothic tradition …
Dark and violent, Macbeth is also the most theatrically spectacular of Shakespeare's tragedies. Indeed, for 250 years - until early this century - it was performed with grand …
The Tale of Sinuhe, from c.1875 BC, has been acclaimed as the supreme masterpiece of Ancient Egyptian poetry, a perfect fusion of monumental, dramatic, and lyrical styles, and a …
By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of …
The theme of the Metamorphoses is change and transformation, as illustrated in Graeco-Roman myth and legend. On this ostensibly unifying thread Ovid strings together a vast and …
'What is poetry, how many kinds of it are there, and what are their specific effects?' Aristotle's Poetics is the most influential book on poetry ever written. A founding text of …
'Our virtues are, most often, only vices in disguise.' Deceptively brief and insidiously easy to read, La Rochefoucauld's shrewd, unflattering analyses of human behaviour have …
