Risultati letto da "Linda Barrans" in Tutte le categorie

When it was first published in 1847, Wuthering Heights was considered highly controversial for its blunt portrayal of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and the dismissal of Christian values by some of its characters. Today, this gothic novel is considered one of the greatest in English literature.

Shakespeare’s history plays fall into two categories: political dramas and propagandistic pageants. The second category is comprised of the two plays in this presentation, Henry V and Henry VIII.

Few of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime. Her posthumous fame is largely due to the efforts of her editors and supporters Thomas W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

The collection contains eight of Shakespeare’s best loved comedies. Each exhibits the vigour, humour, and optimism of the young master before he turned to the gloom and bitterness of the great tragedies.

Many of the stories in this book seem at the same time both familiar and strange. Their authors valued family, duty, patience and heroism. They longed for children in their old age, and rejoiced when they saw cruelty and envy punished, wrongs righted, and kindness and bravery rewarded.

When the tale begins, a strange and sudden malady is claiming the lives of the local peasants in Styria. Laura, an innocent girl of eighteen, lives a lonely life there with her loving father and two governesses. Then a dramatic coach crash on Laura’s doorstep brings a mysterious, beautiful, but languorous young woman to stay with them. This is Carmilla.

Sam the sheep is having a hard time. He is pining for Ava the fox, and his actor friends are away performing their play without him. What’s more, someone has decided to build a Community Center in the next field, and the noise is simply terrible. One of the builders has deeply offended Morag the Tabby Cat, and she is starting a Resistance movement – though why she thinks there are gorillas in the field is anybody’s guess.

In As You Like It, a wicked Duke expels his virtuous brother, the lawful ruler, from his domains. The banished Duke takes refuge with his followers in the Forest of Arden, where they live as free a life as did Robin Hood and his merry men.

Persuasion was the last novel completed by Jane Austen and was first published posthumously in December, 1817. The story represents an interesting configuration of Austen’s characteristic narrative patterns. The heroine, Anne Eliot, is something of an old maid—she is twenty-seven years old, still single and is considered by family and friends to have lost her youthful beauty. Several years earlier, her engagement to Captain Frederick Wentworth had been broken off, due to the insistence of her family that the Captain lacked the wealth and status needed for a suitable husband.

Sam the sheep lives in a field somewhere in England. It’s a quiet life, but he has his friends, his favorite tree, and still manages to have the occasional adventure. As well as curious and philosophical Sam, we meet Morag the grumpy tabby cat; Ava the tiny fox, brave and determined; Liam the beetle with a dream; Terry the house-proud Terrapin; Boris the bee; and Watt the scary dog (or is he?). In this story, Sam meets some actors, makes new friends, and even takes part in a play.

This play is a dramatization of Boccaccio’s story of Gillette of Narbonne. Only the comic parts were of Shakespeare’s invention; he added the characters of the pusillanimous Parolles, the lofty courtier Lafew, the Clown Lavatch, and the long suffering Countess. He gave new depth and vitality to the leading characters, who are mere outlines in Boccaccio’s tale.