Roy Norton – författare

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in EnglishPedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain's dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age's ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón's comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright's comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

The first comprehensive study of Calderón in EnglishPedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) is one of the most important dramatists - many would say the single most important dramatist - of the Spanish Golden Age. Spain's dominant and most prestigious playwright for much of the seventeenth century, his work is still regularly staged and translated, influential in more recent times on writers as diverse as Schiller, Shelley and Lorca. The author of around 120 plays (not counting his numerous Corpus Christi autos) in a variety of styles, Calderón is most famous for his stirring dramas, characterized by rhetorically powerful poetry, dramatic structures carefully calibrated to produce poignant echoes, and the fizzing intellectual energy they apply to the age's ontological, eschatological and political preoccupations. His plays succeed in combining these perennial concerns with compelling plots subtle enough to defy definitive interpretation. As this volume seeks to show, however, Calderón's comedies deserve equal recognition. Too long stereotyped as a dour, cerebral conservative, this playwright's comic works are as amusing as they are clever. This Companion is the first comprehensive study of Calderón in English. It provides a rigorous but readable introduction to the man, his work and its legacy. Its chapters - written by leading international comedia specialists - provide an overview of his life, explain his intellectual, social, moral, and literary contexts, and examine his stagecraft, his corpus, and his reception both within and without the Hispanic world up to the twenty-first century. Specific chapters are devoted to La vida es sueño, his most famous work, which appears on many a university syllabus, and to his infamous wife-murder plays.

Excerpt: "Captain Joshua Fairley was pulling on the thick woolen stockings that would protect his ordinary socks and his trousers-legs from the harshness and oiliness of his great sea-boots. He sat on the edge of his bed in his cottage on Brixham hillside and stared out of the window thoughtfully at the sea whose surface was nearly two hundred feet below. He felt all of his seventy-five years, as if each had hammered him and battered him, and contemplated the hard truth that after a bitter venture that had failed, he was about to start life over again. He pulled on his short “jack boots” absent-mindedly, and then disgusted with his own mistake, jerked them off, stood them in the corner and picked up and drew on the huge and hulking ones. He crossed one leg over the other and inspected a new half-sole and muttered: “Old Gamble be the best cobbler in Brixham yet! Still doing his work. And he bean’t growlin’ at it, or at Providence, or anything else. When I went to get the boot, he was whistlin’ like one of them skylarks. So—I’ll whistle too.” He puckered his lips beneath the white beard and mustache and tried, “Abide with Me,” which to his mind was second only to “Rock of Ages,” and reached for his faded blue jersey and pulled it over his head, still bravely trying to be melodious and cheerful."

Excerpt: "When Pearl Brown bought the Alamo Amusement Hall from the sheriff, the purchase included a small row of flimsy, one-story buildings that had the distinction of being appreciably removed from any nearby neighbors. Pearl Brown did not buy the tenants, but she sniffed when they were mentioned in the columns of Mr. Ring’s Weekly Star. He considered the tenants undesirable. As long as the Reformer bestowed printing ink on the row of shacks, Pearl Brown appeared unconcerned; but when Mr. Ring turned his reformatory abilities in other directions, Pearl Brown, as usual, did the unexpected. She sallied forth to the row shortly after dusk on one calm summer’s evening and notified her alarmed tenants that they had just one hour in which to pack their small belongings and vacate. Enlightened by previous experience, they bandied no words. They merely got industrious, some of them for the first time in their lives, and packed. Promptly with the turn of the hands of a clock, precisely on time, Pearl Brown set a match to a wad of cotton and kerosene in the first house, did the same to the next, and calmly burned out the whole flimsy row.”

Mixed Faces is a collection of short stories by Roy Norton. The stories focus on characters from various walks of life, including a doctor, a professor, a social worker, and a detective. The stories are all connected by the theme of identity, and each story explores how characters navigate and negotiate their sense of self in different contexts. Some of the stories involve the characters struggling with their own identity, while others deal with issues of perception and misperception. Overall, "Mixed Faces" offers a thought-provoking examination of the complexities of human identity.

The Plunderer by Roy Norton is a Western novel about a young cowboy named Frank Lawler, who is framed for a crime he didn''t commit. He manages to escape from jail and sets out to clear his name and bring the real culprit to justice. Along the way, he meets a woman named Belle who is also seeking revenge against the same man. Together, they embark on a dangerous journey filled with gunfights, horse chases, and unexpected twists and turns. As they get closer to their target, they realize that there are powerful forces working against them and that their lives are in grave danger. Will they be able to uncover the truth and survive the perilous journey, or will their quest for justice end in tragedy?

Excerpt: "The Westbound Overland on the Santa Fe Railway, although doing its splendid fifty miles an hour, seemed to two of its passengers to be moving at a snail’s pace; for the journey ahead of them was long, and their destination, which was far northward from San Francisco, the only spot on earth worth reaching. To increase boredom they had for so long been partners and fellow adventurers that all ordinary topics of conversation between them had long been exhausted, and the barren scenery through which they passed was too familiar to be worthy of interest. Furthermore, they had, but a few days previously, escaped from a certain district in Mexico where for a brief time they had gambled their lives, and were still too glad of escape to indulge in foolish conversation. The veriest fool could not have mistaken them for other than what they were; miners, prospectors, men of still places where life is crude and hard. There was nothing to distinguish them or attract a second glance, other than their incongruity of size; for one was a magnificent giant, and the other a blocky, stocky runt, with shoulders much too large for his stature and a flaming red head that seemed to have defied even the bleaching of the sun. That these two were known to frontiersmen and men of their ilk, over many thousands of miles, as “David and Goliath,” meant nothing to them, nor to any of their fellow passengers; but that they had casually reversed a seat in the smoking car and thus sprawled over two seats instead of one did, as a magnet, attract the attention of a man who wandered inward with a very large and very new alligator-skin suit case that he dropped in the aisle beside them."

The Lost Charm is a spellbinding tale that weaves mystery, adventure, and the magic of self-discovery. Written by the acclaimed author Roy Norton, this novel takes readers on a captivating journey into a world where the past and the present collide, and a long-forgotten charm holds the key to unlocking a family''s deepest secrets.