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When Mark Doty's My Alexandria was published in 1993, the response was one of unanimous celebration. Writing with unmatched technical virtuosity and stunning honesty Doty never flinches from his subject - how we live when what we live for is about to be taken from us - and the poems collected in My Alexandria revealed powerfully the inextricable connection between communion and loss. In Atlantis, Doty claims the mythical lost island as his own: a paradise whose memory he must keep alive at the s...

The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio is one of the most discussed sources for the Norman Conquest of England. Its authorship and date cannot be established entirely beyond dispute, but the weight of scholarly opinion supports a date of composition of 1068 or earlier, by Guy, bishop of Amiens, thus making it the earliest surviving account. Whatever its date, the Carmen remains a source of intrinsic interest and importance, and one used by some of the great chroniclers of the period, such as Orderic Vi...

Incorporating advances in historical linguistics but aimed at teachers and students of poetry, Chaucer's Verse Art in its European Context argues that between 1378 and 1400 Geoffrey Chaucer used his knowledge of how poets versified in other languages to devise a meter that would be a perfect fit for the newly respectable English. While Chaucer and Gower are largely responsible for the last stage of this evolution in Middle English and Anglo-Norman, Chaucer's risk in composing in English paid off...

This rich and lively anthology offers a broad selection of Middle English poetry from about 1200 to 1500 C.E., including more than 150 secular and religious lyrics and nine complete or extracted longer works, all translated into Modern English verse that closely resembles the original forms. Five complete satires and narratives illustrate important conventions of the period: Athelston, a historical romance; The Cock and the Fox, a beast fable by Robert Henryson; Sir Orfeo, a Breton lai ; Saint E...

The concept of the goddess Natura-one of the most significant allegorical figures of medieval Latin and vernacular poetry-drew upon many strands of classical and Christian thought, from Plato's Timaeus to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. In what is perhaps the best history of the goddess Natura, George Economou provides a full-length study of her philosophical background and the literary traditions that contributed to her image.Economou's work focuses on the renaissance of the twelfth centu...

William Blake's volume of poetry entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience is the embodiment of his belief that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul," and that true innocence was impossible without experience. Songs of Innocence contains poems either written from the perspective of children or written about them. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, with quite a different perspective of the world.

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem by Dante Alighieri, written between 1308 and 1321, and it's considered one of the greatest works of world literature. It contains the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise: the three levels which Dante must undergo on his way to meet God. Purgatory is the second part, and it tells of Dante's climb up the Mount of Purgatory, again guided by the Virgil. The mountain is in the Southern Hemisphere, and it's divided into two: (Ante-Purgatory), which contains seven levels...

This vital collection of stories about work will be a lasting chronicle of how Americans are employed, how they find work and leave it, refuse it or scorn it, how it defines, fascinates, frustrates and ennobles us. Richard Ford's anthology is not only compelling, but extremely timely. During this harrowing and protracted economic crisis, unprecedented in the lifetimes of America's current workforce, our jobs have taken on increased significance as a means not only to carve out progress through t...

Rachel Owen’s hauntingly beautiful illustrations for Dante’s Inferno take a radically new approach to representing the world of Dante’s famous poem. The images combine the artist’s deep cultural and historical understanding of 'The Divine Comedy' and its artistic legacy with her unique talent for collage and printmaking. These illustrations, casting the viewer as a first-person pilgrim through the underworld, prompt us to rethink Dante’s poem through their novel perspective and visual language....

Cecco Angiolieri, the enfant terrible of Italian literature, loved women, gambling, food and wine. It is said that he found comfort for his bad luck at the dice and with Becchina, his unreciprocating lover, only by pouring venomous scorn upon his miserly parents. Cecco’s outbursts of rage against his fate and his earthly view of the world – poles apart from the Stil Novo of Cavalcanti and Dante, the target of some of his fiercest sonnets – are perfectly encapsulated in his poetry, which is pres...

Three masterpieces of medieval poetry, translated by the author of The Lord of the Rings—including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the poem that inspired the major motion picture The Green Knight Comparable to the works of Chaucer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo weave a bright tapestry of stories from a remote age of chivalry and wizards, knights and holy quests—but unlike The Canterbury Tales, the name of the poet who wrote them is lost to time. Masterfully translated...

Still little known in the West, Persian poetry offers extraordinary riches. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine and poetry itself, or telling anecdotes of everyday life, Persian poetry set these themes in the wider religious and philosophical context of Islam. Omar, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafez and Jami - the great lyric and didactic poets of medieval Persia - are all represented in this selection of translations spanning almost two hundred and fifty years.

Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, Beowulf is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings 'So the company of men led a careless life, All was well with them: until One began To encompass evil, an enemy from hell. Grendel they called this cruel spirit...' J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He wa...