Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

The focus in Melincourt is the operation of the "rotten borough" which corrupted the English electoral system until the reform bill of 1832. A rotten borough was a constituency that had been established by royal prerogative but had subsequently lost most of its population. Nevertheless, it still retained the right to have two representatives in the House of Commons. On the other hand, many population centers which had expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution were not entitled to any electoral representation.

The Wonderful Visit tells the story of an angel who finds himself unexpectedly marooned on Earth. Wells used John Ruskin's remark that an angel appearing on earth in Victorian England would be shot on sight as the inspiration for this tale of a celestial being who is completely out of place in human society. Ironically, the angel's first confidant and protector is a clergyman, who never recovers from the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the angel. Wells dwells in detail on the contrast between the idealism of the celestial visitor and the discourtesy of his hosts.

The selection of eighteen poems is taken from Tennyson's first collection, published in 1830. The most famous poem in the collection is Mariana, a dramatic narrative, which, like The Lady of Shalott, describes the tragic fate of an abandoned woman. All the poems feature the elegant euphony for which Tennyson's verse has become famous.

Many of the short poems for which Keats has become famous were written in a burst of inspiration early in 1819, including these four odes: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, and Ode on Melancholy. The generally melancholy and sometimes elegiac quality of these poems is reflective of Keats' inevitable preoccupation with his declining health. Another significant factor was his infatuation with Fanny Brawne, who returned his affection in an unfortunately non-exclusive manner.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), known in the English-speaking world simply as Petrarch, was a 14th-century Italian scholar and poet who was one of the first to use Italian as a literary language. One of his close friends was Boccaccio, who was also a pioneer in literary composition in Italian. Although Petrarch was a notable Latin scholar, and most of his works were written in that language, today he is most famous for his many sonnets in Italian, which frequently feature the superior charms of his innamorata, Laura.

Asoka, who reigned from 268 to 232 BC, was the most famous emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, which was the ruling clan of the Indian subcontinent from 321 BC to 185 BC. He was one of the most famous early converts to Buddhism and became one of its greatest evangelists. Today Asoka has a twofold interest for us: political and religious. The illustrious member of the great dynasty, of which he was the most celebrated representative, has left indelible traces of its achievements in Indian history. Moreover, he was the leader of a spiritual movement that spread rapidly throughout the East.

This brief and lively pamphlet on the history of the medieval church is a concise and entertaining introduction to an extremely complex subject. Covering the period between the seventh century and 1500, the author provides succinct summaries of major developments like the Crusades, the growth of scholastic and mystical theology, the removal of the Papacy to Avignon, and the great councils convened to resolve the papal schism.

Calidore is a fragment of an unfinished romance and may be considered unique among Peacock's work. Composition probably commenced after the publication of Peacock's largest novel, Melincourt, in 1817. The action concerns the adventures of a young man, Calidore, who finds himself in Wales, en route to London in search of "a wife and a philosopher".

The Witch of Atlas is a poetic narrative, written in 1820 and published posthumously in 1824. The witch is the daughter of the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The plot is built around her adventures, during which she creates an androgynous creature, Hermaphroditus, who is both the companion of and the servant to the witch. She plays a series of pranks upon mankind, with the ultimate aim of revealing the essential foolishness of oppression and conflict and enabling the realization of a final Utopia.

Thomas Love Peacock is today remembered as the author of seven satirical novels which many regard merely as literary curiosities. However, he was also a man of considerable learning, a skilled poet, and an astute literary critic. This collection includes Recollections of Thomas Love Peacock, an affectionate reminiscence by Sir Edward Strachey; Some Recollections of Childhood, a window into Peacock's early youth; "Four Ages of Poetry", in which he pokes fun at his contemporaries; and "The Last Day of Windsor Forest", an old man's recollection of a memorable episode.

The Bridge of Fire, which appeared in 1907, was Flecker's first published collection of poetry. It contains 35 poems, a number of which were revised and republished in later collections. As with Flecker's other collections, two persistent themes emerge: the poet's fascination with the glories of Grecian antiquity and his premonitions of an early demise. Flecker seemed to be acutely aware that not only would he pass away himself, but also the fading world of British imperialism of which he was a characteristic representative.

Between 1915 and 1921, C. J. Dennis published seven verse novels and two collections of poetry. The first of these was The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, which features Dennis' characteristic use of a distinctive Australian argot and which became an immediate bestseller.

A prominent focus of the works of New Thought author Christian Larson (1874-1954) was the cultivation of positive mental states for the attainment of success and happiness. In this short treatise, he analyzes some common mental maladies and gives suggestions for their treatment.

James Elroy Flecker, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, and diplomat, like his illustrious poetic peers, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, did not survive the First World War. All three died young: Owen and Brooke in the line of battle, and Flecker, who never fought due to a long-standing respiratory illness, in a sanatorium in Switzerland in 1915. Flecker's poems are generally short: none of his original verse works exceeds 1200 words in length. Flecker revised his poems regularly, refining their spare but telling verbiage and achieving simplicity and directness.

Among his many other attributes, James Elroy Flecker was a skilled linguist and an expert translator of Latin poetry. In 1913, he planned to write a book to be entitled An interpretation in blank verse of Virgil, Aeneid VI, based on the poetic value of the sounds, together with Latin text and ten prefaces. The surviving translation consists of lines 1-19 and 264-547 from book six, which describe Aeneas' encounter with Sibyl and his visit to the underworld.

A resourceful miner devises an ingenious scheme to expedite his fishing, but it does not quite go as planned.

Much of Tennyson's poetry is elegiac in nature, featuring characters who have been disempowered by isolation, age, or lack of opportunity. One of the most famous examples of this is the dramatic soliloquy, "Ulysses". "Columbus", written many years later, is also a dramatic narrative. In both cases, the narrators are elderly mariners, who have a long history of daring forays into remote regions, and who are eager to venture forth again but are hampered by lack of opportunity and the effects of aging.

In this short treatise, New Thought author Christian Larson discusses the power of the subconscious mind and the importance of establishing a working relationship with it. In the words of the author: "What is produced in the within will invariably come forth into expression in the personality; therefore, by knowing how to impress the subconscious, man may give his personal self any quality desired, and in any quantity desired."

This is the first of Tennyson's poems to be based on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The first draft was composed in 1834, and the finished work was published in Poems (1842). Later Tennyson incorporated the poem into the Idylls of the King (1870) under the title of "The Passing of Arthur". The narrative of this poem was drawn from the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of the 21st book of Thomas Malory's romance.

In this rambling essay, Bertrand Russell reflects on the future of the world while the memory of the First World War was still strong in the public imagination. Russell notes the concomitant development of technology and the rise of political autocracies and explores whether man can be considered fit to handle the vast new powers at his disposal.