British & Irish Books - Page 9

Dream Visions and Other Poems (Norton Critical Edition)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Superb edition--new standard ed. for Chaucer's dream visions 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Besides the excellent, scrupulously edited texts and Lynch's thorough notes and rich-though-brief introductions, this new edition contains a concise and incredibly useful guide to Chaucer's pronunciation that is alone worth the price of the book. The best edition for the undergraduate or professional scholar.

Drean Visions and Other Poems (Norton Critical Edition) 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Though it says 'A lightly modernized system of spellings has been adopted.', it is a bit too much modernization in spelling, it seems to me.
Criticism is very useful. After all, this is for the novice.

Editorial Review:

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer, Geraldine McCaughrean

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Just say "no!" to translations 1 out of 5 stars.
18 of 41 people found this review helpful.

If you're going to read the Canterbury Tales, read them in the original Middle English (which is alot more understandable than Old English and much closer to our own Modern English). You will surely miss out on the rhythm, poetry, and humor of these fabulous stories were you to read them in translation. I would recommend the Riverside Chaucer instead.

Fun to read 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful.

If you want a modern english version that's funny and easy to read, this is the book for you. If you are looking for something scholarly and/or more difficult to read, get a different version.

Teacher's Delight 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Finally, help in getting children to comprehending and enjoy the art of Old English Ballads and the historical value of the storyteller.

This is not the Canterbury Tales! 1 out of 5 stars.
8 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This is a retelling of the Canterbury Tales, very simplified...in some cases leaving out the best parts! I believe it may have been originally intended safe for children.

If you're looking for a translation into modern English, keep looking. I am.

Editorial Review:

Here are tales told by members from all parts of English society of the 14th century, reflecting on life as they travel the road from Southwark to Canterbury.

Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the 'Tristan of Thomas' (Penguin Classics)

Gottfried von Strassburg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Tristan 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 22 people found this review helpful.

Tristan is the perfect hero: intelligent, courageous, and incredibly handsome. But only one women, Isolde, is equally strong enough for him. The way that their lives amazingly fold to one another keeps the pace of the novel. I can't honestly say it is the greatest love story, but you will find a variety of excitement, including love. Plus, add in kings, queens, dragons, pirates, thieves, potions, jeously, passion, loyalty, revenge, and deception, you have an action-packed book. I couldn't stop reading the adventures.

Editorial Review:

One of the great romances of the Middle Ages, "Tristan", written in the early thirteenth century, is based on a medieval love story of grand passion and deceit. By slaying a dragon, the young prince Tristan wins the beautiful Isolde's hand in marriage for his uncle, King Mark. On their journey back to Mark's court, however, the pair mistakenly drink a love-potion intended for the king and his young bride, and are instantly possessed with an all-consuming love for each another - a love they are compelled to conceal by a series of subterfuges that culminates in tragedy. Von Strassburg's work is acknowledged as the greatest rendering of this legend of medieval lovers, and went on to influence generations of writers and artists and inspire Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sophocles' play, first staged in the fifth century B.C., stands as a timely exploration of the conflict between those who affirm the individual's human rights and those who must protect the state's security. During the War of the Seven Against Thebes, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, learns that her brothers have killed each other, having been forced onto opposing sides of the battle. When Creon, king of Thebes, grants burial of one but not the "treacherous" other, Antigone defies his order, believing it her duty to bury all of her close kin. Enraged, Creon condemns her to death, and his soldiers wall her up in a tomb. While Creon eventually agrees to Antigone's release, it is too late: She takes her own life, initiating a tragic repetition of events in her family's history.In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and masterly touch.

Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)

William Butler Yeats

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Another fine edition of the works of a great poet 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

There are by this time many collections of the works of Yeats, and this is one of the good ones. Aside from containing the major plays and poems it has critical essays by contemporaries of Yeats and important critical voices of our own time, such as Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, and the poet Seamus Heaney.
As for the work itself, however historically important the plays, and however of curiosity value 'The Autobiography' and other prose writings the Yeats that lives is in the poetry.
It is that lyrical greatness the power of song manifested early on which later was deepened into even greater poetry. From 'Innisfee' and "Song of the Wandering Aengus ' to the poetry of 'Byzantium' and 'Among the Schoolchildren'.
The great lines, a small sample of which follows"

And we will wander hand in hand / through hollow lands and hily lands/
And pluck till time and times are done/ The silver apples of the moon/ The golden apples of the sun/


"We must lie down where all the ladders start/ in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

" The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity"

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you/ and loved the sorrows of your changing face."

Editorial Review:

No other series of classic texts achieves the editorial standard of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with contextual and critical materials that bring the work to life for students. Careful editing, first-rate translation, thorough explanatory annotations, chronologies, and selected bibliographies make each text accessible to students while encouraging in-depth study. Each volume in the series is printed on acid-free paper, and every text remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice of excellence for scholarship for students at more than 2,500 colleges and universities worldwide.

The Spider and the Fly

Mary Howitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A+ book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

wonderful story with a twist at the end. Wonderful illustrations. Don't in an old spooky way.

a GREAT book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This style of the book reminds me of Edward Gorey. The illustrations are fabulous, if the matter is a bit dark. I have bought this for numerous friends after finding it at a unique bookstore in Portland, OR. Everyone who reads it ends up loving it.

great story for your daughter 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is great! The illustrations are so impressive that even though they only black and white your children will love them. We spend time on each page just looking over the illustration each time we find something we didn't see before. And the story, WOW! This story is a must for every little girl. The story teaches young girls not to be niave and believe every little flattering word someone is telling you. In the end all that sweet talk may just be fooling you so someone else can get what they want, like the spider getting the fly. I will be reading this book more often to my daughters as they get older!

Editorial Review:

An illustrated version of the well-known poem about the wily spider and the luckless fly. Includes an addendum with a modern-day example of why it is best not to trust strangers who offer treats.

Conamara Blues: Poems

John O'Donohue

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Translating the beauty and splendor of his native Conamara into a language exquisitely attuned to the wonder of the everyday, John O'Donohue takes us on a moving journey through real and imagined worlds. Divided into three parts -- Approachings, Encounters, and Distances -- Conamara Blues at once reawakens a sense of intimacy with the natural world and a feeling of wonder at the mystery of our relationship to this world. Whether exploring the silent, eternal memory of Conamara or focusing on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, O'Donohue tenderly reveals the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship. The result is a musical, transcendent, and deeply moving series of poems that exemplifies O'Donohue at his finest.

Written with penetrating insight and distilled transparence, Conamara Blues offers a singular and lasting imaginative vision of a landscape of hope and possibility -- powerfully exhibiting the mastery of a poet at the height of his lyric powers.

The Cambridge Companion to Milton (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A rich buffet! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Among the books in the great Cambridge Companion series, this work offers eighteen enlightening essays on John Milton: his prose, poetry, social life, etc. A rich buffet for the Milton scholar or student!

Remarkably clear and helpful 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I never understood what all the fuss about Milton was about until I read this book. His times, his politics, his personality and his work are all illuminated in these essays.

New to Milton 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As a relative newcomer to the world of John Milton, I found this book incredibly useful in providing a comprehensive overview of the many facets of the man, his life, his work, his politics and his poetry. I would read it in conjunction with a good biography. The essays vary in their degree of complexity and the opinions of the essayists are thoughtful and informative and several of them exhibit a real passion for their subject. I'm not a Milton specialist but I would imagine there is enough substance here to keep even the most rigorous scholar stimulated and for students and people like myself who are interested in the man and world behind Paradise Lost, I can highly recommend it.

Editorial Review:

The Cambridge Companion to Milton provides an accessible, helpful guide for any student of Milton, whether undergraduate or graduate, introducing readers to the scope of Milton's work, the richness of its historical relations, and the range of current approaches to it. This second edition contains new and revised essays, reflecting increasing emphasis on Milton's politics, the social conditions and climate in which his works were published and received, the importance of his early poems and Samson Agonistes, and the changes wrought by gender studies on the criticism of previous decades.

Selected Poems

W.H. Auden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

For lovers of Auden's poetry 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 15 people found this review helpful.

W.H. Auden was a twentieth century English poet. He emphasized the individual, past and present, in their frail condition.

Auden's writing varied as to subject, style, and type as he aged. Love poems, politics, culture, morals, individuals; what a wealth of poetry the public has from Auden because of the number of years he lived and wrote. Twenty poems have been added to this expanded edition including some of Auden's lighter poems. This aids the reader, student, or lover of Auden to see a more complex, complete, fuller and well-rounded poet.

A nice touch within the volume was the inclusion of brief notes explaining references that might be unclear. Other positive features consisted of chronological arrangement of material, and an index of titles and first lines.

Armchair Interviews says: A must for all Auden students, whether a casual reader or lover of his poetry.

Editorial Review:

This significantly expanded edition of W. H. Auden’s Selected Poems adds twenty poems to the hundred in the original edition, broadening its focus to better reflect the enormous wealth of form, rhetoric, tone, and content in Auden’s work. Newly included are such favorites as “Funeral Blues” and other works that represent Auden’s lighter, comic side, giving a fuller picture of the range of his genius. Also new are brief notes explaining references that may have become obscure to younger generations of readers and a revised introduction that draws on recent additions to knowledge about Auden.

As in the original edition, the new Selected Poems makes available the preferred original versions of some thirty poems that Auden revised later in life, making it the best source for enjoying the many facets of Auden’s art in one volume.

A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

Arthur Rimbaud

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Classic translation 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 17 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the better translations of a Season in Hell. It's very faithful to the original French without compromising its poetry; many of the passages are nothing short of brilliant. Also, it's a bilingual edition for those who are either able or willing.

However, Varese struggles a bit under the poetic demands of the Drunken Boat. For example:

(Varese):
I can no longer, bathed in your languors, O waves,
Obliterate the cotton carriers' wake,
Nor cross the pride of pennants and of flags,
Nor swim past prison hulk's hateful eyes!

>> But trust me, for the superb quality of translation in A Season in Hell, this book's well worth the price.

Essential Rimbaud 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book is an essential portrayal of Rimbaud's most celebrated works. It includes a brief biography of Rimbaud. It is a great introduction to works by poets of that genre. People who enjoy this will also like Baudelaire and Verlaine. I recommend it highly.

Passionate, Painful, Agonizing and Surreal 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 13 people found this review helpful.

.
What an amazing passionate book of prose and poetry! It's alive with pain, chaos and joy, screaming in anguish in streaming movement that is pouring out of the pages in utter agonizing derision and pain, flowing in surreal release of tension and expression.

The beginning of the book has a short bio and although short and concise, it vaguely talks about how scandalous Rimbaud and his companion Verlaine were in descriptive sexual analogy, refusing to use the word "sexual" and "lover."

Here was a young man who found a gay lover 20 years his senior and traveled in complete uncertainty and insecurity, a "Faustian Man," such as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road.' Rimbaud was a man who lived in the present moment of risk, spontaneity and the faith to walk in uncertainly and courageously. And this of course brings true living over the comfort zone of existing, which accompanies such an artist with intense pain, guilt, creativity, joy, hurt, anguish and exploding passions. The pages reek with chaotic artistic surrealism.

This man was a rare creator. An outcast of society, a vagabond in decadence and carousing avenging scandal, however a living man of flowing movement, unlike our dead, civilized and rational society. And for this, the man and his poetry snubbed and forgotten, only to be noticed at a later time and recognized for its aesthetic, passionate value. This is typical with almost all true creators of autonomous ability and dangerous living.

From page 23:

"Boredom is no longer my love. Rages, debauchery, madness, - I have known all their soarings and their disasters, - My whole burden is laid down. Let us contemplate undazed the extent of my innocence. I would no longer be capable of begging the solace of a bastinado. I don't fancy myself embarked on a wedding with Jesus Christ as father-in-law. I am not a prisoner of my reason. I said: God, I want freedom in salvation: how am I to seek it? Frivolous tastes have left me. No more need of devotion or of divine love. No more regrets for the age of render hearts. Each of us has his reason, scorn and charity; I reserve my place at the top of that angelic ladder of common sense. As for established happiness, domestic or not . . . no, I cannot. I am too dissipated, too weak. Life flourishing through toil, old platitude! As for me, my life is not heavy enough, it flies and floats far above action, that precious focus of the world. What an old maid I am getting to be, lacking the courage to be in love with death! If only God would grant me celestial, aerial calm, prayer, - like the ancient Saints, - Saints, giants! anchorites, artists such as are not wanted any more! Farce without end? My innocence would make me weep. Life is the farce we all have to lead."

Editorial Review:

New translation of Rimbaud's great, visionary poems.