Download or read book Etruscan Vase and Other Stories written by Prosper Merimee and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the young and sensitive Auguste Saint-Clair notices an Etruscan vase on the mantelpiece of his beloved Mathilde, he becomes gradually consumed by jealousy at the thought that it could be the gift of another man, and the situation escalates dramatically as he demands proof from her that she loves only him.
Download or read book Carmen and Other Stories written by Prosper Mérimée and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carmen, M 'erim 'ee's classic tale of passion and power, provided the inspiration for one of the world's most enduringly popular operas, and numerous films. Like Carmen, the other stories in this book, including Mateo Falcone, The Etruscan Vase, and The Venus of Ille, explore the clash of primitive and civilized values. This is the only selection of M 'erim 'ee's short stories available
Download or read book The wild ass skin The chouans and other stories v 2 The country doctor The quest of the absolute and other stories written by Honoré de Balzac and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Etruscans in the Modern Imagination written by Sam Solecki and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-10-21 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Etruscans, a revenant and unusual people, had an Italian empire before the Greeks and Romans did. By the start of the Christian era their wooden temples and writings had vanished, the Romans and the early church had melted their bronze statues, and the people had assimilated. After the last Etruscan augur served the Romans as they fought back the Visigoths in 408 CE, the civilization disappeared but for ruins, tombs, art, and vases. No other lost culture disappeared as completely and then returned to the same extent as the Etruscans. Indeed, no other ancient Mediterranean people was as controversial both in its time and in posterity. Though the Greeks and Romans tarred them as superstitious and decadent, D.H. Lawrence praised their way of life as offering an alternative to modernity. In The Etruscans in the Modern Imagination Sam Solecki chronicles their unexpected return to intellectual and cultural history, beginning with eighteenth-century scholars, collectors, and archaeologists. The resurrection of this vanished kingdom occurred with remarkable vigour in philosophy, literature, music, history, mythology, and the plastic arts. From Wedgwood to Picasso, Proust to Lawrence, Emily Dickinson to Anne Carson, Solecki reads the disembodied traces of Etruscan culture for what they tell us about cultural knowledge and mindsets in different times and places, for the way that ideas about the Etruscans can serve as a reflection or foil to a particular cultural moment, and for the creative alchemy whereby artists turn to the past for the raw materials of contemporary creation. The Etruscans are a cultural curiosity because of their disputed origin, unique language, and distinctive religion and customs, but their destination is no less worthy of our curiosity. The Etruscans in the Modern Imagination provides a fascinating meditation on cultural transmission between ancient and modern civilizations.
Download or read book Sepulchres and Other Poems written by Ugo Foscolo and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expressing the author's political, civic and sentimental concerns, these poems will surprise the English reader with their immediacy and intimacy. "e;On Sepulchres"e;, Foscolo's masterpiece, as well as being one of the pinnacles of European neoclassical literature, is still one of the most widely studied poems in Italy. Foscolo's poetry reveals the inner recesses of a passionate, restless and surprisingly modern mind.
Download or read book Selected Poems written by W.B Yeats and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present selection traces the development of Yeats' fully annotated verse, encompassing the poet's interest in Irish folklore and national identity, his engagement with the political situation of his day and the rich symbolism that is the hallmark of his work and a reflection of his lifelong fascination with the occult. It contains some of his best-known pieces, including the elegiac 'Easter 1916', the apocalyptic "e;The Second Coming"e; and the reflective and spiritual "e;Sailing to Byzantium"e;. Often radical in content but always traditional in form, these poems are by turns startling and affecting, and never less than inspired. Taken together, they form an ideal introduction to the poetic career of one of Ireland's greatest literary figures. This edition contains a wealth of material about the author's life and works, extensive notes and a bibliographic section.
Download or read book One for All written by Russell Hardin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-29 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that challenges the most widely held ideas of why individuals engage in collective conflict, Russell Hardin offers a timely, crucial explanation of group action in its most destructive forms. Contrary to those observers who attribute group violence to irrationality, primordial instinct, or complex psychology, Hardin uncovers a systematic exploitation of self-interest in the underpinnings of group identification and collective violence. Using examples from Mafia vendettas to ethnic violence in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda, he describes the social and economic circumstances that set this violence into motion. Hardin explains why hatred alone does not necessarily start wars but how leaders cultivate it to mobilize their people. He also reveals the thinking behind the preemptive strikes that contribute to much of the violence between groups, identifies the dangers of "particularist" communitarianism, and argues for government structures to prevent any ethnic or other group from having too much sway. Exploring conflict between groups such as Serbs and Croats, Hutu and Tutsi, Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants, Hardin vividly illustrates the danger that arises when individual and group interests merge. In these examples, groups of people have been governed by movements that managed to reflect their members' personal interests--mainly by striving for political and economic advances at the expense of other groups and by closing themselves off from society at large. The author concludes that we make a better and safer world if we design our social institutions to facilitate individual efforts to achieve personal goals than if we concentrate on the ethnic political makeup of our respective societies.
Download or read book Death of Ivan Ilych written by Leo Tolstoy and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existence, realizing to his horror, as he grapples with the meaning of life and death, that he is totally alone.Included in this volume is another celebrated novella by Tolstoy, The Devil, which addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience, providing at the same time a further exploration of human fear and obsession.
Download or read book Testament written by Francois Villon and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most celebrated of French medieval poets, Francois Villon makes poetry out the basest material - the raw urban life of Paris with its petty officials, students, clergy, tradesmen, pimps, whores and thieves. Despite successful studies, the young Villon immersed himself in this world, embarking on a career of petty crime that brought him repeated imprisonment. Condemned to death, but then reprieved and banished from Paris, he disappears from history in 1463, leaving behind a legend of poete maudit that has never lost its fascination. Dual language edition.
Download or read book Black Spider written by Jeremias Gotthelf and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After one of their own people repeatedly fails to live up to a pact with the Devil, a petty and morally bankrupt village community is plagued by a swarm of deadly black spiders. Using a complex narrative structure, Gotthelf 's cautionary novella shrewdly dissects the iniquitous social dynamics of rural life.
Download or read book Last Day of a Condemned Man written by Victor Hugo and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man vilified by society and condemned to death for his crime wakes every morning knowing that this day might be his last. Graphically detailed, this first-person chronicle describes both the prisoner's wretched environment and his thoughts, reminiscences, and despair at his impending doom. This edition also includes the companion pieces "e;A Comedy about a Tragedy"e; and "e;Claude Gueux,"e; a real-life account of an executed criminal in France.
Download or read book Sandman written by E.T.A Hoffmann and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The young student Nathanael remains haunted by his childhood fears: he is convinced that Coppelius, a strange night-time visitor who used to come to his house to conduct alchemical experiments with his father - the latter dying as a consequence of one of these sessions - was none other than the Sandman, a mythical figure who was said to steal the eyes of children who refused to go to sleep. When a mysterious Italian salesman with a beautiful daughter moves into town, Nathanael's suspicions are reawakened, pushing him to the brink of madness as extraordinary event unfold. First published in 1816, this classic of German Gothic fiction has enthralled generations ever since, and has spawned countless interpretations by critics intrigued by its powerful symbolism. Sigmund Freud famously examined the novella in relation to his concept of the "e;Uncanny"e;, and an extract from this analysis is included in this volume.
Download or read book Gods Want Blood written by Anatole France and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in Paris during the years of the Reign of Terror, The Gods Want Blood centres on the rise to power of the Jacobin sympathizer Evariste Gamelin, a young painter who becomes a juror on a local Revolutionary tribunal. Caught up in the bloodthirsty madness surrounding him, he helps to dispense cruel justice in the name of his ideals, while at the same time succumbing to his own petty instincts of revenge when he jealously pursues a rival for the affections of his lover Elodie.
Download or read book Intelligent Woman s Guide written by Bernard Shaw and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of human life, perverting family affections and the relations between the sexes. According to him, all British institutions were "e;corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest"e; - and idealism, integrity and any piecemeal attempts at political reform were futile in the face of the gross injustice built into the Empire's economic system.Begun in 1924 - the year of the British Labour Party's first period of office under Ramsay MacDonald (who hailed it as "e;the world's most important book since the Bible"e;) - and first published in 1928, The Intelligent Woman's Guide draws on Shaw's decades of activism and remains a brilliant, thought-provoking classic of political propaganda.
Download or read book Sakhalin Island written by Anton Chekhov and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1890, the thirty-year-old Chekhov, already knowing that he was ill with tuberculosis, undertook an arduous eleven-week journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. Now collected here in one volume are the fully annotated translations of his impressions of his trip through Siberia and the account of his three-month sojourn on Sakhalin Island, together with his notes and extracts from his letters to relatives and associates.Highly valuable both as a detailed depiction of the Tsarist system of penal servitude and as an insight into Chekhov's motivations and objectives for visiting the colony and writing the expose, Sakhalin Island is a haunting work which had a huge impact both on Chekhov's career and on Russian society.
Download or read book Humiliated and Insulted written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcilA-able relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky's later fiction, but is a powerful and original presence in his own right.This new translation catches the verve and tumult of the original, which - in concept and execution - affords a refreshingly unfamiliar glimpse of the author.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Madman and November written by Gustave Flaubert and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Flaubert's earliest writings, but published only after his death, Memoirs of a Madman presents us with a young man as he reflects - alternating between musings on the present and memories of the past - on the years that have brought him to "e;madness"e;, recalling the innocence of his boyhood, the first stirrings of sexual awakening and his abrupt initiation into the adult world. Also included in this volume is another, similarly themed early work, the autobiographical novella November, which Nadine Gordimer called "e;an unsurpassed testament of adolescence"e;.
