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To speak of "Don Quixote" as if it were merely a humorous book would be a manifest misdescription. Cervantes at times makes it a kind of commonplace book for occasional essays and criticisms, or for the observations and reflections and gathered wisdom of a long and stirring life. It is a mine of shrewd observation on mankind and human nature.Among modern novels there may be, here and there, more elaborate studies of character, but there is no book richer in individualised character. What Coleridge said of Shakespeare in minimis is true of Cervantes; he never, even for the most temporary purpose, puts forward a lay figure.There is life and individuality in all his characters, however little they may have to do, or however short a time they may be before the reader. Samson Carrasco, the curate, Teresa Panza, Altisidora, even the two students met on the road to the cave of Montesinos, all live and move and have their being; and it is characteristic of the broad humanity of Cervantes that there is not a hateful one among them all. Even poor Maritornes, with her deplorable morals, has a kind heart of her own and "some faint and distant resemblance to a Christian about her;"

The Divine Comedy describes Dantes journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova. While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "allalta fantasia qui manco possa" "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).His glory, by whose might all things are movd,Pierces the universe, and in one partSheds more resplendence, elsewhere less.In heavn,That largeliest of his light partakes, was I,Witness of things, which to relate againSurpasseth power of him who comes from thence; For that, so near approaching its desire

THERE are various methods of introducing an artist to his public. One of the best is to describe how you saved his life in the Bush in 82; or he saved yours; and then you go on: "Little did either of us anticipate in those far-off days that Fougasse was destined to become. . ."Another way is to leave Fougasse out altogether, and concentrate, how happily, on your own theories of black-and-white drawing, or politics, or the decline of the churches; after all, an introduction doesnt last long, and he has the rest of the book to himself. Perhaps, however, it is kinder to keep the last paragraph for him:"Take these little sketches by Fougasse, for instance . . ." and the reader, if he cares to any longer, can then turn over and take them. Left to ourselves, that is the method we should adopt. But the publisher is at our elbow. "This is an introduction," he says. "For Heavens sake introduce the fellow."

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sisters marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouses family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dantes time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin, a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more until the waning years of the Enlightenment, and works written in any other language were assumed to be more trivial in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy" in the classical sense refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events tended toward not only a happy or amusing ending but one influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, as Dante himself wrote in a letter to Cangrande I della Scala, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy since the work begins with the pilgrims moral confusion and ends with the vision of God."IN the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and een to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death.."(Dante)

The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.They centre on Joyces idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyces novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyces tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse.

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Draculas attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. The novel touches on themes such as the role of women in Victorian culture, sexual conventions, immigration, colonialism, and post-colonialism. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, he defined its modern form, and the novel has spawned numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations.

This fourth novel of Boothbys Dr. Nikola series reveals that Nikola has discovered all of the facts necessary to extend a human beings life. He has studied science and magic secrets of Tibetan monks. He explains:"It has been a long and tedious search, but such labour only makes success the sweeter. The machinery is now prepared; all that remains is to fit the various parts together. In six months time, if all goes well, I will have a man walking upon this earth who, under certain conditions, shall live a thousand years."To assist him, he hires a destitute young physician, who explains his predicament:"As ill luck would have it, however, I had got into the wrong set, and before I had been two years in the hospital was over head and ears in such a quagmire of debt and difficulties that it looked as if nothing but an absolute miracle co-uld serve to extricate me."That miracle seems to have come to him in the person of Dr. Nikola. The nefarious and wealthy Nikola has purchased a remote castle in the north of England, where the seclusion will allow him and his new assistant and Nikolas deaf-mute malformed Chinese servant to conduct his grand experiment on a human

The Interpretation of Dreams (German: Die Traumdeutung) is a book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The book introduces Freuds theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and also first discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex.Freud revised the book at least eight times and, in the third edition, added an extensive section which treated dream symbolism very literally, following the influence of Wilhelm Stekel. Freud said of this work, "Insight such as this falls to ones lot but once in a lifetime."In what we may term "prescientific days" people were in no uncertainty about the interpretation of dreams. When they were recalled after awakening they were regarded as either the friendly or hostile manifestation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine.With the rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among educated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamers own psychical act.But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting.

So long a time had passed that Dorothy C. had grown to be what father John called "a bakers dozen of years old"; and upon another spring morning, as fair as that when she first came to them, the girl was out upon the marble steps, scrubbing away most vigorously. The task was known locally as "doing her front," and if one wishes to be considerable respectable, in Baltimore, ones "front" must be done every day. On Saturdays the entire marble facing of the basement must also be polished; but "pernickity" Mrs. Chester was known to her neighbors as such a forehanded housekeeper that she had her Saturdays work done on Friday, if this were possible.Then, when the postman came round the corner of the block, she paused in her singing to stare at him for one brief instant. The next she had pitched her voice a few notes higher still, and it was her song that greeted her fathers ears and set him smiling in his old familiar fashion.Unfortunately, he had not been smiling when she first perceived him and there had been a little catch in her tones as she resumed her song. Each was trying to deceive the other and each pretending that nothing of the sort was happening.

Emile, is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the "best and most important of all my writings". Due to a section of the book entitled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762, the year of its first publication.During the French Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education. The work tackles fundamental political and philosophical questions about the relationship between the individual and society how, in particular, the individual might retain what Rousseau saw as innate human goodness while remaining part of a corrupting collectivity. Its opening sentence:"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man." Rousseau seeks to describe a system of education that would enable the natural man he identifies in The Social Contract.

The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises.The Greeks, under Pericles, introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Csar, was as great an event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in 1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London.The first zoological garden of which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia. The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently chased.Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny that Alexander had given orders.

The present publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in our literaturea library edition of the Essays of Montaigne. This great French writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the land of his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures. His Essays, which are at once the most celebrated and the most permanent of his productions, form a magazine out of which such minds as those of Bacon and Shakespeare did not disdain to help themselves; and, indeed, as Hallam observes, the Frenchmans literary importance largely results from the share which his mind had in influencing other minds, coeval and subsequent.Chapter ITHAT MEN BY VARIOUS WAYS ARRIVE AT THE SAME END.The most usual way of appeasing the indignation of such as we have any way offended, when we see them in possession of the power of revenge, and find that we absolutely lie at their mercy, is by submission, to move them to commiseration and pity; and yet bravery, constancy, and resolution, however quite contrary means, have sometimes served to produce the same effect.[Florios version begins thus: "The most vsuall waie to appease those minds wee have offended.

Jane Eyre trotzt ihrer harten Kindheit und findet als Gouvernante auf einem mysteriosen Anwesen eine Liebe, die alle Konventionen sprengt. Doch dunkle Geheimnisse in den Dachstuben von Thornfield Hall bedrohen ihr muhsam erkampftes Gluck. Ein kraftvoller Roman uber weibliche Selbstbestimmung, Leidenschaft und die Starke der Seele.

Mommsen bietet eine monumentale Darstellung des Aufstiegs und der Verwaltung des romischen Weltreichs unter den Kaisern. Mit beispielloser Detailfulle und historischem Scharfsinn analysiert er die Strukturen der Macht und den kulturellen Einfluss Roms auf Europa. Dieses Werk ist ein Meilenstein der Geschichtsschreibung, der die Antike fur die Moderne greifbar macht.

Als kronender Abschluss eines Lebenswerks versammelt dieser Band noch einmal die ganze Bandbreite menschlicher Komik und tragikomischer Beobachtungen. Von kurzen Sinnspruchen bis hin zu pointierten Anekdoten beweist Busch seine unangefochtene Meisterschaft im Umgang mit Sprache und Rhythmus. Ein versohnlicher und zugleich scharfzungiger Abschiedsgru an eine Welt, die er bis in den letzten Winkel durchschaut hatte.

Ein ungluckseliger Rabe stolpert von einem Missgeschick ins nachste und hinterlasst dabei eine Spur der Verwustung in der menschlichen Ordnung. Buschs schwarzer Humor und seine treffsicheren Reime begleiten den schwarzen Vogel auf seinem fatalen Weg bis zum unvermeidlichen, satirischen Ende. Diese Bildergeschichte ist eine brillante Parabel auf die Tucken des Schicksals und die Schadenfreude, die tief in der menschlichen Natur verwurzelt ist.

Inmitten von Gebietsanspruchen und religiosen Machtkampfen versucht ein schwacher Konig, seinen Thron gegen innere Feinde und auere Bedrohungen zu verteidigen. Ein unschuldiger Erbe wird zum Spielball politischer Interessen, was eine Kette von moralischen Verfehlungen und bitterem Leid auslost. Shakespeare zeigt hier die hassliche Fratze der Realpolitik, in der Treue ein Fremdwort ist und der Preis fur die Krone mit Blut bezahlt wird.

Ein Maler kehrt nach Jahren in seine Heimat zuruck und stot auf die tragische Liebesgeschichte seiner Vorfahren, die durch Standesunterschiede und religiosen Fanatismus zerstort wurde. Storm verwebt Vergangenheit und Gegenwart zu einer dusteren Chronik uber verlorenes Gluck und die Unausweichlichkeit des Schicksals. Die atmospharische Dichte der norddeutschen Landschaft unterstreicht die Schwermut dieser klassischen Novelle.

Inmitten des Pulverdampfs und der verzweifelten Schreie dokumentiert dieser Augenzeugenbericht das Chaos eines unbarmherzigen Krieges. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe schildert die psychologische Belastung der Eingeschlossenen mit einer Prazision, die das Grauen der Belagerung fast physisch spurbar macht. Historische Fakten verschmelzen mit personlichen Beobachtungen zu einem erschutternden Dokument menschlicher Extremsituationen. Erleben Sie die packende Schilderung eines Wendepunkts der Geschichte, gesehen durch die Augen eines literarischen Genies.