Книги издательства Oxford University Press
Название: Les Liaisons dangereuses
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make «Les Liaisons dangereuses» (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game — a game which they must win. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able a judge whether the novel is as `diabolical' and `infamous' as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward's introduction explodes myths about Laclos's own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context.
Название: Lives of the Caesars
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2010
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The «Lives of the Caesars» include the biographies of Julius Caesar and the eleven subsequent emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitelius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. Suetonius composed his material from a variety of sources, without much concern for their reliability. His biographies consist the ancestry and career of each emperor in turn; however, his interest is not so much analytical or historical, but anecdotal and salacious which gives rise to a lively and provocative succession of portraits. The account of Julius Caesar does not simply mention his crossing of the Rubicon and his assassination, but draws attention to his dark piercing eyes and attempts to conceal his baldness. The Live of Caligula presents a vivid picture of the emperor's grotesque appearance, his waywardness, and his insane cruelties. The format and style of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars was to set the tone for biography throughout western literature — his work remains thoroughly readable and full of interest.
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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'I doubt whether it would be possible to mention any author of note, whose personal obscurity was so complete.' James Edward Austen-Leigh's «Memoir» of his aunt Jane Austen was published in 1870, over fifty years after her death. Together with the shorter recollections of James Edward's two sisters, Anna Lefroy and Caroline Austen, the «Memoir» remains the prime authority for her life and continues to inform all subsequent accounts. These are family memories, the record of Jane Austen's life shaped and limited by the loyalties, reserve, and affection of nieces and nephews recovering in old age the outlines of the young aunt they had each known. They still remembered the shape of her bonnet and the tone of her voice, and their first-hand accounts bring her vividly before us. Their declared partiality also raises fascinating issues concerning biographical truth, and the terms in which all biography functions. This edition brings together for the first time these three memoirs, and also includes Jane's brother Henry Austen's 'Biographical Notice' of 1818 and his lesser known 'Memoir' of 1833, making a unique biographical record.
Название: Memoirs from the House of the Dead
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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In this almost documentary account of his own experiences of penal servitude in Serbia, Dostoevsky describes the physical and mental suffering of the convicts, the squalor and the degradation, in relentless detail. The inticate procedure whereby the men strip for the bath without removing their ten-pound leg-fetters is an extraordinary tour de force, compared by Turgenev to passages from Dante's Inferno. Terror and resignation — the rampages of a pyschopath, the brief serence interlude of Christmas Day — are evoked by Dostoevsky, writing several years after his release, with a strikingly uncharacteristic detachment. For this reason, House of the Dead is certainly the least Dostoevskian of his works, yet, paradoxically, it ranks among his great masterpieces.
Название: The Merry Wives of Windsor
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2009
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The Merry Wives of Windsor was almost certainly required at short notice for a court occasion in 1597: Shakespeare threw into it all the creative energy that went into his Henry IV plays. Falstaff is here, with Pistol, Mistress Quickly, and Justice Shallow, in a spirited and warm-hearted 'citizen comedy'. Boisterous action is combined with situational irony and rich characterization. In his introduction T. W. Craik discusses the play's probable occasion (the Garter Feast of 1597 at court), its relationship to Shakespeare's English history plays and to other sources, its textual history (with particular reference to the widely diverging 1623 Folio and 1602 Quarto), and its original quality as drama. He assesses various interpretations of the play, topical, critical, and theatrical. In the commentary he pays particular attention to expounding the literal sense (he proposes some new readings) and evoking the stage business.
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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The name of the Marquis de Sade is synonymous with the blackest corners of the human soul, a byword for all that is foulest in human conduct. In his bleak, claustrophobic universe, there is no God, no morality, no human affection, and no hope. Power is given to the strong, and the strong are murderers, torturers, and tyrants. No quarter is given; compassion is the virtue of the weak. Yet Sade was a man of savage intelligence who carried the philosophy of the French Enlightenment to its logical extreme. His writings effectively release the individual from all social and moral constraint: for many, Sade is the Great Libertarian. The Victorians considered him `Divine' and Apollinaire called him `the freest spirit'; the Surrealists recognised him as a founding father, and he is a key figure in the history of modernism and post-modernism. With Freud and Marx, Sade has been one of the crucial shaping influences on this century, and reactions to him continue to be extreme. But he has always been more talked about than read. This selection of his early writings, some making their first appearance in this new translation, reveals the full range of Sade's sobering moods and considerable talents.
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2009
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»The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym» is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But it also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, at last leaving the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution. Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author's own role of posing as ghost-writer of the narrative; «Pym» — his only novel — has become the key text for our understanding of Poe. This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to «Pym» by their treatment of persistent themes — fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials — or by their ironic commentary on Poe's mystification of his readers.
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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»Notes from the Underground» (1864) is one of the most profound works of nineteenth-century literature. A probing, speculative book, often regarded as a forerunner of the Existentialist movement, it examines the important political and philosophical questions that were current in Russia and Europe at the time. «The Gambler» (1866), set in the fictional town of Roulettenberg, explores the compulsive nature of gambling, one of the author's own vices and a subject he describes with extraordinary acumen and drama. Specially commissioned for the World's Classics, this new translation includes a full editorial apparatus.
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, is one of the immortals of children's literature. J. M. Barrie first created Peter Pan as a baby, living in secret with the birds and fairies in the middle of London, but as the children for whom he invented the stories grew older, so too did Peter, reappearing in Neverland, where he was aided in his epic battles with Red Indians and pirates by the motherly and resourceful Wendy Darling. With their contrary lures of home and escape, childhood and maturity, safety and high adventure, these unforgettable tales are equally popular with children and adults.
Название: The Poetic Edda
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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The collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry known as the «Poetic Edda» contains the great narratives of the creation of the world and the coming of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods. The mythological poems explore the wisdom of the gods and giants, narrating the adventures of the god Thor against the hostile giants and the gods' rivalries amongst themselves. The heroic poems trace the exploits of the hero Helgi and his valkyrie bride, the tragic tale of Sigurd and Brynhild's doomed love, and the terrible drama of Sigurd's widow Gudrun and her children. Many of the poems predate the conversion of Scandinavia to Christianity, allowing us to glimpse the pagan beliefs of the North. Since the rediscovery of the «Poetic Edda» in the seventeenth century, its poetry has fascinated artists as diverse as Thomas Gray, Richard Wagner, and Jorge Luis Borges. This is the first complete translation to be published in Britain for fifty years, and it includes a scholarly introduction, notes, a genealogy of the gods and giants, and an index of names.
Название: Selected Poetry
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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William Blake (1757-1827) was a poet of striking originality, whose poetic world of myth and mysticism continues to fascinate. By turns a haunting lyricist, an apocalyptic visionary, and an unorthodox thinker, Blake was for years ignored or derided. Sustained by his belief in the artistic imagination, he drafted poetry, prose visions, and epigrams, and manufactured beautiful illustrated volumes of his lyrics and verse narratives. Towards the end of his life, Blake's unique and irreducible talent was recognized by a group of younger artists, who rescued much of his achievement from oblivion. This selection represents the full range of Blake's accomplishment as a poet, ranging from early «Poetical Sketches» to late lyrics, and including such major works as «The Book of Thel», «Songs of Innocence», «The Marriage of Heaven and Hell», «Visions of the Daughters of Albion», «America», «Songs of Experience», and «Europe». The collection is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, with Michael Mason's introduction and notes providing the ideal guide to a remarkable oeuvre.
Название: Selected Poetry
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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Byron was a legend in his own lifetime and the dominant influence on the Romantic movement. The most European of the English writers in an age of revolution, Byron was deeply involved in contemporary events, and a passionate supporter of the struggle for Greek independence. Describing himself as `born for opposition', his work was largely directed against what he called the `cant political, cant poetical, and cant moral' of the English and European worlds. He was rocketed to fame by the publication of «Childe Harold» in 1812, and lionized by society until his departure from England amid a whirlpool of private gossip and newspaper scandal in 1816. His is, in every sense, a poetry of experience, and a Romantic emphasis on the personality of the poet is the hallmark of all his verse. Relishing humour and irony, daring and flamboyant, sardonic yet idealistic, his work encompasses a sweeping range of topics, subjects, and models, embracing the most traditional and the most experimental poetic forms. This selection of the poetical works, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes such masterpieces as «The Corsair», «Manfred», «Bebbo», and «Don Juan». There are many other less familiar works and shorter lyrics, and Jerome J. McGann's introduction and notes give fascinating insight into Byron's world.
Название: Selected Poetry
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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John Donne (1572-1631) is perhaps the most important poet of the seventeenth century. In his day it seemed to his admirers that Donne had changed the literary universe, and he is now widely regarded as the founder of the metaphysical `school'. Donne's poetry is highly distinctive and individual, adopting a multitude of rhythms, images, forms, and personae, from irresistible seducer to devout believer. His greatness stems from the subtleties and ambivalences of tone that convey his remarkably modern awareness of the instability of the self. This collection of Donne's verse is chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition of his major works. It includes a wide selection from his secular and divine poems, such as the rebellious and libertine satires and love elegies, the virtuoso «Songs and Sonnets», and the desperate, passionate «Holy Sonnets». John Carey's introduction and extensive notes provide valuable insights into Donne's poetic genius.
Название: A Sentimental Journey and Other Writings
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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'Love is nothing without feeling. And feeling is still less without love.' Celebrated in its own day as the progenitor of 'a school of sentimental writers', «A Sentimental Journey» (1768) has outlasted its many imitators because of the humour and mischievous eroticism that inform Mr Yorick's travels. Setting out to journey to France and Italy he gets little further than Lyons but finds much to appreciate, in contrast to contemporary travel writers whom Sterne satirizes in the figures of Smelfungus and Mundungus. A master of ambiguity and double entendre, Sterne is nevertheless as concerned as his peers with exploring the nature of virtue; unlike other writers of sentimental fiction Sterne insists on the inseparability of desire and feeling. This new edition includes a selection from «The Sermons of Mr Yorick», which shed light on the concerns of the «Journey», «The Journal to Eliza», which records Sterne's feelings as he languishes for the company of Eliza Draper, and «A Political Romance», the satire on a local ecclesiastical squabble that was the catalyst for Sterne's literary career.
Название: Sherlock Holmes, Selected Stories
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2010
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No characters in English literature since those in the Great Dickens gallery have taken so firm a hold upon the British and American imagination as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. This selection draws the best stories from the several Sherlock Holmes volumes, and shows how the famous detective and his assistant are elevated above the level of fiction and into the realm of mythology, where the learned and the simple meet on equal footing.
Название: Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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»Sir Gawain and The Green Knight», with its intricate plot of enchantment and betrayal is probably the most skilfully told story in the whole of the English Arthurian cycle. Originating from the north-west midlands of England, it is based on two separate and very ancient Celtic motifs of the Beheading and the Exchange of Winnings, brought together by the anonymous 14th century poet. His telling comprehends a great variety of moods and modes — from the stark realism of the hunt-scenes to the delicious and dangerous bedroom encounters between Lady Bercilak and Gawain, from moments of pure lyric beauty when he evokes the English countryside in all its seasons, to authorial asides that are full of irony and puckish humour. This new verse translation uses a modern alliterative pattern which subtly echoes the music of the original at the same time as it strives for fidelity.
Название: South Sea Tales
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of `The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of `The Bottle Imp' and `The Isle of Voices', and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in «The Ebb-Tide». But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection — the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume — Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross-cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.
Название: Twenty Years After
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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»Twenty Years After» (1845), the sequel to «The Three Musketeers», is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure. Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil. In his Introduction to this edition David Coward sets both the author and his exciting tale in their historical and cultural contexts.
Название: Typhoon and Other Tales
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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»Typhoon», «Falk», «Amy Foster», «The Secret Sharer» The four tales in this volume share autobiographical origins in Conrad's experience at sea and his exile from Poland, the country of his birth. 'Typhoon' is the story of a steamship and her crew beset by tempest, and of the stolid captain whose dogged courage is tested to the limit. In 'Falk' a taciturn young woman is bizarrely courted by a tug-boat master who is haunted by a terrible secret. 'Amy Foster' tells of an emigrant Pole struggling to overcome isolation and prejudice in England. The final tale, 'The Secret Sharer', is Conrad's most famous short story, a masterpiece of suspense and ambiguity. Giving sanctuary to a fugitive sailor, a young sea-captain risks his ship and his command in order to save him. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography.
Название: War and Peace
Жанр: Oxford University Press
Год: 2008
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In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, «War and Peace» is an affirmation of life itself, `a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, `of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation'. Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace '.
