A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

A collection of essays from the acclaimed author of Mrs. Dalloway on such subjects as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her own literary philosophy. A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. Not written for scholars or critics, these essays are a collection of Virginia Woolf's everyday thoughts about literature and the world-and the art of reading...

"Sparky Sweets, Ph. D. and Wisecrack present Thug Notes, the outrageously funny, ultra-sharp guide to sixteen of literature's most beloved classics - including The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride & Prejudice and Things Fall Apart. Having already taught millions around the world, Dr. Sweets makes it easy to love and understand these important literary works. With hilarious character breakdowns, masterful analyses, witty observations,...

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, insurgencies erupted in imperial states and colonies around the world, including Britain's. As Nicole Rizzuto shows, the writings of Ukrainian-born Joseph Conrad, Anglo-Irish Rebecca West, Jamaicans H. G. de Lisser and V. S. Reid, and Kenyan Ng gi wa Thiong'o testify to contested events in colonial modernity in ways that question premises underlying approaches in...

In English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, C. S. Lewis delivers a comprehensive and insightful analysis of one of the most dynamic periods in English literary history. This scholarly yet accessible work explores the prose, poetry, and intellectual movements of the sixteenth century, offering readers a thorough understanding of the literary developments that shaped the era. Focusing on major writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir...

Essays on the remarkably diverse British writers referred to as "Renaissance authors" during the "Age of the Tudors." Writers who produced both prose and verse on virtually every subject in a variety of nondramatic genres.