connell publishing ltd jun 2012 (8 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Pride and Prejudice is the most satisfying and enjoyable of Jane Austen's six books - and has become probably the most successful novel in the English language. This brilliant guide tells you why.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Few works of literature are loved more than Great Expectations. This guide shows it is not only an exciting story, but one that raises questions about the nature of Victorian society.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Simon Palfrey shows us the passion and the cruelty which lie beneath the surface of Shakespeare's famous play and how everything is driven and dominated by the character of Juliet.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Macbeth may well be the most terrifying play in the English language, but it hasn't always been seen that way. It has divided critics more deeply than any other Shakespearian tragedy and the argument, in essence, has been about just how terrifying the play really is and about how we should react, or do react, to Macbeth himself. No Shakespearian tragedy gives as much attention to its hero as Macbeth. With the exception of Lady Macbeth, there is much less emphasis on the figures round the hero than there is in Hamlet or Othello. Unlike King Lear, with its parallel story of Gloucester and his sons, Macbeth has no sub-plot. And its imagery of sharp contrasts of day and night, light and dark, innocent life and murder adds to the almost claustrophobic intensity of this most intense of plays. So why are critics so divided about Macbeth Why is it so disturbing Why do we feel compelled to admire its hero even as we condemn him How reassuring is the last scene, when Macbeth is killed and Malcolm becomes king Do we see this as the intervention of a divine providence, a restoration of goodness after all the evil Or do we see instead signs that the whole cycle of violence and murder could be about to begin all over again And what does the play really tell us about good and evil In this book Graham Bradshaw answers these questions, and shows how it is only in recent years that the extent of Shakespeare's achievement in Macbeth, and the nature of his vision in the play, has really been grasped.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A book which, drawing on the best critics of Hardy, explains and analyses his most controversial novel and the one which made him rich and famous.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In this short guide, Graham Bradshaw explains the secrets in and behind one of the greatest short novels of all time.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Dr Johnson sums up the case against Milton: "the want of human interest is always felt." It is the apparent distance of Paradise Lost from ordinary humanity that has thrilled or repelled critics throughout the ages. While many readers are carried away by Milton's sublimity, others are daunted by his grandeur, scope and learning. Milton himself declared that he would not begin to write until he had "completed the full circle of my private studies". The Greek word for a circle of learning is the root of "encyclopaedia"; and Milton's erudition is encyclopaedic. Paradise Lost draws on both ancient learning and the scholarship of his day, displaying not only his deep knowledge of the Bible and Biblical scholarship, and his passionate assimilation of the classics, but also his absorption in astronomy, cosmology, geography, numerology and science. Yet many critics of Paradise Lost argue that all this circling lacks a human centre. Who, after all, is the hero Adam and Eve in their unfallen state are too remote from us; Christ is not yet incarnate; God cannot be a character. Which leaves us with the magnificently problematic figure of Satan. In this fascinating study of Milton's great poem, Caroline Moore suggests that, contrary to what these critics argue, the core of Paradise Lost is extraordinarily human. Milton himself believed that poetry excelled at describing "the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within". This is precisely what Paradise Lost does. If, to a generation raised on the novel, Milton's methods of psychological exploration seem strange, this only intensifies the effect: Paradise Lost is a poem that explores the dark byways and infinite strangeness of the human heart.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - When The Great Gatsby was first published, in 1925, reviews were mixed. H.L. Mencken called it "no more than a glorified anecdote". L.P. Hartley, author of The Go-Between, thought Fitzgerald deserved "a good shaking": "The Great Gatsby is evidently not a satire; but one would like to think that Mr Fitzgerald's heart is not in it, that it is a piece of mere naughtiness." Yet, gradually the book came to be seen as one of the greatest if not the greatest of American novels. Why What is it that makes this story of a petty hoodlum so compelling Why has a novel so intimately rooted in its own time "lasted" into ours What is it that posterity, eight decades later, finds so fascinating in this chronicle of the long-gone "Jazz Age", flappers, speakeasies and wild parties It is, after all, scarcely a novel at all, more a long short story. But it has a power out of all proportion to its length. It is beautifully written, making it feel even shorter than it is, and is full of haunting imagery. It is also, perhaps, the most vivid literary evocation of the "Great American Dream", about which it is profoundly sceptical, as it is about dreams generally. In the end, however, as D.H. Lawrence would put it, it is "on the side of life". Gatsby's dream may be impossible, so much so that the book can end in no other way than with his death, but up to a point he is redeemed by it and by the tenacity with which he clings to it. It is this that makes the novel so moving and so haunting.