Oxford World's Classics - Böcker

'Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one who taught by the pen, who taught man what he did not know.'The Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the word of God, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago. It is the supreme authority in Islam and the living source of all Islamic teaching; it is a sacred text and a book of guidance, that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of the Islamic religion. It has been one of the most influential books in the history of literature. Recognized as the greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, it has nevertheless remained difficult to understand in its English translations. This new translation is written in a contemporary idiom that remains faithful to the original, making it easy to read while retaining its powers of eloquence. Archaisms and cryptic language are avoided, and the Arabic meaning preserved by respecting the context of the discourse. The message of the Qur'an was directly addressed to all people regardless of class, gender, or age, and this translation is equally accessible to everyone. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'You said I killed you - haunt me, then!'Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous love stories in the English language. It is also one of the most potent revenge narratives. The intense and unbreakable bond between the fiery Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff has startled and fascinated readers since its first publication in 1847. Of uncertain parentage and ethnicity, Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as a child when Catherine's father finds him wandering alone through the slave-trading port of Liverpool. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff and Catherine find refuge in each other when the household falls into the hands of Catherine's dissolute older brother. Their bond deepens as they escape together from the violence and stern religion of their home to the Yorkshire moors. But the story of Catherine and Heathcliff's attachment transforms from intimacy to strife when Catherine marries the refined Edgar Linton. The ensuing story of violence and thwarted passion is one of the most powerful tales of the gothic tradition, a literary mode from which Emily Brontë wrings all of its terrifying potential. A regional novel with a global reach, a work of sensational effects with a startling ethical core, Wuthering Heights is both a romantic melodrama and wrenching study of the difficulty of escaping from the legacies of violence.This edition reproduces the authoritative Clarendon text, with revised and expanded notes and a selection from the poems of Emily Brontë.

Discourses on Livy (1531) is as essential to an understanding of Machiavelli as his famous treatise, The Prince. Equally controversial, it reveals his fundamental preference for a republican state. Comparing the practice of the ancient Romans with that of his contemporaries provided Machiavelli with a consistent point of view in all his works. Machiavelli's close analysis of Livy's history of Rome led him to advance his most original and outspoken view of politics - the belief that a healthy body politic was characterized by social friction and conflict rather than by rigid stability. His discussion of conspiracies in Discourses on Livy is one of the most sophisticated treatments of archetypal political upheaval every written. In an age of increasing political absolutism, Machiavelli's theories became a dangerous ideology.This new translation is richly annotated, providing the contemporary reader with sufficient historical, linguistic, and political information to understand and interpret the revolutionary affirmations Machiavelli made, based on the historical evidence he found in Livy.The complete Livy in English, available in five volumes from Oxford World's Classics. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Forget the years, forget norms, let yourself be stirred by the boundless.'The Zhuangzi -- an anthology of anonymous writings produced in China between the fourth and second centuries BC -- is one of the world's great literary treasures and the single most important source for early Daoist philosophy. It has exerted a profound influence on Chinese thought, literature, and culture, inspiring philosophy, poetry, idioms, proverbs, and even visual art. This volume provides a complete, annotated English translation of the Zhuangzi with a philosophical focus that guides readers in understanding and appreciating the text's world of thought. Informed by traditional and recent scholarship, the translation presents the ideas, reasoning, and worldview of the Zhuangzi in smooth, idiomatic English carefully formulated to reflect the phrasing and philosophical nuances of the original Chinese. Providing a lucid, lively translation, this edition is a guidebook into the philosophy of the Zhuangzi. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'he thought it expedient and necessary that he should commence knight-errant, and wander through the world, with his horse and arms, in quest of adventures'Don Quixote, first published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, is one of the world's greatest comic novels. Inspired by tales of chivalry, Don Quixote of La Mancha embarks on a series of adventures with his faithful servant Sancho Panza by his side. The novel has acquired mythic status and its influence on modern fiction is profound. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.' Thus ends David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the 'sophistry and illusion' of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash.The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded scepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the 'superstition' of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and this edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commerical upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Soames Forsyte is the brilliantly portrayed central figure, a Victorian who outlives the age, and whose baffled passion for his beautiful but unresponsive wife Irene reverberates throughout the saga. Written with both compassion and ironic detachment, Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only the family's fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women in an intensely competitive male world. Above all, Galsworthy is concerned with the conflict at the heart of English culture between the soulless materialism of wealth and property and the humane instincts of love, beauty, and art. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less on his literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding an ideal biographer in James Boswell. As Johnson's constant and admiring companion, Boswell was able to record not only the outward events of his life, but also the humour, wit, and sturdy common sense of his conversation. His brilliant portrait of a major literary figure of the eighteenth century, enriched by historical and social detail, remains a monument to the art of biography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The Golden Bough has a unique status in modern anthropology and literature. First published in 1890, The Golden Bough was eventually issued in a twelve-volume edition (1906-15) which was abridged in 1922 by the author and his wife. That abridgement has never been reconsidered for a modern audience. In it some of the more controversial passages were dropped, including Frazer's daring speculations on the Crucifixion of Christ. For the first time this one-volume edition restores Frazer's bolder theories and sets them within the framework of a valuable introduction and notes. A seminal work of modern anthropolgy, The Golden Bough also influenced many twentieth-century writers, including D H Lawrence, T S Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. Its discussion of magical types, the sacrificial killing of kings, the dying god, and the scapegoat is given fresh pertinence in this new edition. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'- What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen.- Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.'Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text.Today critical interest centres on the authority of the text, and this edition, complete with an invaluable introduction, notes, and appendices, republishes without interference, the original 1922 text. Jeri Johnson's commentary guides the reader through this highly allusive novel in an edition acclaimed by scholars and general readers alike. This updated edition includes new explanatory notes, a revised introduction, and expanded bibliography.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'The greatest historian that ever lived'Such was Macaulay's verdict on Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) and his history of the Peloponnesian War, the momentous struggle between Athens and Sparta as rival powers and political systems that lasted for twenty-seven years from 431 to 404 BC, involved virtually the whole of the Greek world, and ended in the fall of Athens. Thucydides himself was a participant in the war; to his history he brings an awesome intellect, brilliant narrative, and penetrating analysis of the nature of power, as it affects both states and individuals.Of his own work Thucydides wrote: 'I shall be content if [my history] is judged useful by those who will want to have a clear understanding of what happened - and, such is the human condition, will happen again ... It was composed as a permanent legacy, not a showpiece for a single hearing.' So it has proved. Of the prose writers of Greece and Rome Thucydides has had more lasting influence on western thought than all but Plato and Aristotle. This new edition combines a masterly translation with comprehensive supporting material. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Politics is one of the most influential texts in the history of political thought, and it raises issues which still confront anyone who wants to think seriously about the ways in which human societies are organized and governed. The work of one of the world's greatest philosophers, it draws on Aristotle's own great knowledge of the political and constitutional affairs of the Greek cities. By examining the way societies are run - from households to city states - Aristotle establishes how successful constitutions can best be initiated and upheld. For this edition Sir Ernest Barker's fine translation, which has been widely used for nearly half a century, has been extensively revised to meet the needs of the modern reader. The accessible introduction and clear notes by R F Stalley examine the historical and philosophical background of the work and discuss its significance for modern political thought. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'If religion generated everything that is essential in society, this is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.'In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Émile Durkheim set himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigated what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. Aboriginal religion was an avenue 'to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity'. The need and capacity of men and women to relate socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe. The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'To find citizens ruled by good and wholesome laws, that is an exceeding rare, and hard thing.'Thomas More's Utopia presents an account of an idealised fictional society that has fascinated readers since its first publication in Latin in 1516. It is a scathing critique of More's contemporaries and a hopeful portrait of a better world; a ridiculous satire of the rich and powerful, and a personal exploration of what constitutes a good life.This edition is based on the first English translation of Utopia, produced in the mid-sixteenth century, allowing readers to understand how More was read on publication and the effects of the translator's changes upon the book's legacy. The introduction by Joanne Paul provides insights into More's context and intentions, exploring why this work has been so influential in modern utopian literature and in political theory through the ages.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'The last man! I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.' Mary Shelley, Journal (May 1824). Best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man eight years later, on returning to England from Italy after her husband's death. It is the twenty-first century, and England is a republic governed by a ruling elite, one of whom, Adrian, Earl of Windsor, has introduced a Cumbrian boy to the circle. This outsider, Lionel Verney, narrates the story, a tale of complicated, tragic love, and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague. The Last Man also functions as an intriguing roman à clef, for the saintly Adrian is a monument to Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his friend Lord Raymond is a portrait of Byron. The novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, as Shelley demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem her doomed characters. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In Elective Affinities Goethe conducts an experiment with the lives of people who are living badly. Charlotte and Eduard, aristocracts with little to occupy them, invite Ottilie and the Captain into their lives; against morality, good sense, and conscious volition all four are drawn into relationships as inexorably as if they were substances in a chemical equation. The novel asks whether we have free will or not; more disturbingly, it confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of their repression of any real life in themselves. Goethe wrote Elective Affinities when he was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. He remained an uneasy and scandalous figure, none the less, and readers of Elective Affinities were profoundly disturbed by its penetrating study of marriage and passion. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.Hegel's Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is one of the greatest works of moral, social, and political philosophy. It contains significant ideas on justice, moral responsibility, family life, economic activity, and the political structure of the state - all matters of profound interest to us today. Hegel's aim is to lay out the various forms that human freedom must take on, if it is to be true freedom. He seeks to show that genuine human freedom does not consist in doing whatever we please, but involves living with others in accordance with publicly recognized rights and laws. Hegel demonstrates that institutions such as the family and the state provide the context in which individuals can flourish and enjoy full freedom. He also demonstrates that misunderstanding the true nature of freedom can lead to crime, evil, and poverty. His penetrating analysis of the causes of poverty in modern civil society was to be a great influence on Karl Marx. Hegel's study remains one of the most subtle and perceptive accounts of freedom that we possess. This new edition combines a revised translation with a cogent introduction to his work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

[T]he present groundwork is nothing more than the identification and vindication of the supreme principle of morality.' In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Immanuel Kant makes clear his two central intentions: first, to uncover the principle that underpins morality, and secondly to defend its applicability to human beings. The result is one of the most significant texts in the history of ethics, and a masterpiece of Enlightenment thinking. Kant argues that moral law tells us to act only in ways that others could also act, thereby treating them as ends in themselves and not merely as means. Kant contends that despite apparent threats to our freedom from science, and to ethics from our self-interest, we can nonetheless take ourselves to be free rational agents, who as such have a motivation to act on this moral law, and thus the ability to act as moral beings.One of the most studied works of moral philosophy, this new translation by Robert Stern, Joe Saunders, and Christopher Bennett illuminates this famous text for modern readers.

'the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts' The greatest 'state of the nation' novel in English, Middlemarch addresses ordinary life at a moment of great social change, in the years leading to the Reform Act of 1832. Through her portrait of a Midlands town, George Eliot addresses gender relations and class, self-knowledge and self-delusion, community and individualism. Eliot follows the fortunes of the town's central characters as they find, lose, and rediscover ideals and vocations in the world. Through its psychologically rich portraits, the novel contains some of the great characters of literature, including the idealistic but naïve Dorothea Brooke, beautiful and egotistical Rosamund Vincy, the dry scholar Edward Casaubon, the wise and grounded Mary Garth, and the brilliant but proud Dr Lydgate. In its whole view of a society, the novel offers enduring insight into the pains and pleasures of life with others, and explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life:. art, religion, science, politics, self, society, and, above all, human relationships. This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text.

Marcus CatoSullaAemilius PaullusPompeyThe GracchiMariusJulius CaesarAnthony'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.'In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is also implicitly to educate and warn those in his own day who wielded power. In prose that is rich, elegant and sprinkled with learned references, he explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. While drawing chiefly on historical sources, he brings to biography a natural story-teller's ear for a good anecdote. Throughout the ages Plutarch's Lives have been valued for their historical value and their charm. This new translation will introduce new generations to his urbane erudition. The most comprehensive selection available, it is accompanied by a lucid introduction, explanatory notes, bibliographies, maps and indexes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy his desires at any price.'The Monk (1796) is a sensational story of temptation and depravity, a masterpiece of Gothic fiction and the first horror novel in English literature. The respected monk Ambrosio, the Abbot of a Capuchin monastery in Madrid, is overwhelmed with desire for a young girl; once having abandoned his monastic vows he begins a terrible descent into immorality and violence. His appalling fall from grace embraces blasphemy, black magic, torture, rape, and murder, and places his very soul in jeopardy.Lewis's extraordinary tale drew on folklore, legendary ghost stories, and contemporary dread inspired by the terrors of the French Revolution. Its excesses shocked the reading public and it was condemned as obscene. The novel continues to beguile and shock readers today with its gruesome catalogue of iniquities, while at the same time giving a profound insight into the deep anxieties experienced by British citizens during one of the most turbulent periods in the nation's history.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'In recent decades, interest in hunger artists has greatly diminished.'Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and A Hunger Artist: Four Stories (1924). Both collections are included in their entirety in this edition, which also contains other, uncollected stories and a selection of posthumously published works that have become part of the Kafka canon.Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, these stories approach human experience at a tangent: a singing mouse, an ape, an inquisitive dog, and a paranoid burrowing creature are among the protagonists, as well as the professional starvation artist. A patient seems to be dying from a metaphysical wound; the war-horse of Alexander the Great steps aside from history and adopts a quiet profession as a lawyer. Fictional meditations on art and artists, and a series of aphorisms that come close to expressing Kafka's philosophy of life, further explore themes that recur in his major novels. Newly translated, and with an invaluable introduction and notes, Kafka's short stories are haunting and unforgettable. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Keats's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by a generous selection of Keats's letters - to give the essence of his work and thinking.In his tragically short life Keats wrote an astonishing number of superb poems; his stature as one of the foremost poets of the Romantic movement remains unassailable. This volume contains all the poetry published during his lifetime, including Endymion in its entirety, the Odes, 'Lamia', and both versions of 'Hyperion'. The poetry is presented in chronological sequence, illustrating the staggering speed with which Keats's work matured. Further insight into his creative process is given by reproducing, in their original form, a number of poems that were published posthumously.Keats's letters are admired almost as much as his poetry and were described by T. S. Eliot as 'certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet'. They provide the best biographical detail available and shed invaluable light on Keats's poems. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Vast in its scope, incomparably dense in its imagery, Parzival ranks alongside Dante's Divine Comedy as one of the foremost narrative works to emerge from medieval Europe.Written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, Parzival is the greatest of the medieval Grail romances. It tells of Parzival's growth from youthful folly to knighthood at the court of King Arthur, and of his quest for the Holy Grail. Full of incident and excitement, the story involves deeds of chivalry, tournaments and sieges, courtly love and other erotic adventures. Parzival's quest becomes a moral and spiritual journey of self-discovery, as he learns that he must repent of his past misdeeds if he is to succeed. Exuberant and Gothic in its telling, as well as profoundly moving, Parzival has inspired and influenced works as diverse as Wagner's Parsifal and Lohengrin, Terry Gilliam's film The Fisher King, and Umberto Eco's Baudolino.Cyril Edwards's fine translation also includes the fragments of Titurel, an elegiac offshoot of Parzival. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This authoritative edition was originally published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Coleridge's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by important criticism, letters, and marginalia - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and radical thinker, exerted an enormous influence over contemporaries as different as Wordsworth, Southey and Lamb. He was also a dedicated reformer, and set out to use his reputation as a public speaker and literary philosopher to change the course of English thought. This collection represents the best of Coleridge's poetry from every period of his life, particularly his prolific early years, which produced The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan. The central section of the book is devoted to his most significant critical work, Biographia Literaria, and reproduces it in full. It provides a vital background for both the poetry section which precedes it and for the shorter prose works which follow. There is also a generous sample of his letters, notebooks, and marginalia, some recently discovered, which show a different, more spontaneous side to his fascinating and complex personality. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Kalevala is the great Finnish epic, which like the Iliad and the Odyssey, grew out of a rich oral tradition with prehistoric roots.During the first millenium of our era, speakers of Uralic languages (those outside the Indo-European group) who had settled in the Baltic region of Karelia, that straddles the border of eastern Finland and north-west Russia, developed an oral poetry that was to last into the nineteenth century.This poetry provided the basis of the Kalevala. It was assembled in the 1840s by the Finnish scholar Elias Lönnrot, who took `dictation' from the performance of a folk singer, in much the same way as our great collections from the past, from Homeric poems to medieval songs and epics, have probably been set down.Published in 1849, it played a central role in the march towards Finnish independence and inspired some of Sibelius's greatest works. This new and exciting translation by poet Keith Bosley, prize-winning translator of the anthology Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic, is the first truly to combine liveliness with accuracy in a way which reflects the richness of the original. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!"Throughout the hardships of her childhood - spent with a severe aunt and abusive cousin, and later at the austere Lowood charity school - Jane Eyre clings to a sense of self-worth, despite of her treatment from those close to her. At the age of eighteen, sick of her narrow existence, she seeks work as a governess. The monotony of Jane's new life at Thornfield Hall is broken up by the arrival of her peculiar and changeful employer, Mr Rochester. Routine at the mansion is further disrupted by mysterious incidents that draw the pair closer together but which, once explained, threaten Jane's happiness and integrity. A flagship of Victorian fiction, Jane Eyre draws the reader in by the vigour of Jane's voice and the novel's forceful depiction of childhood injustice, of the restraints placed upon women, and the complexities of both faith and passion. The emotional charge of Jane's story is as strong today as it was more than 150 years ago, as she seeks dignity and freedom on her own terms. In this new edition, Juliette Atkinson explores the power of narrative voice and looks at the striking physicality of the novel, which is both shocking and romantic.

"He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention." Pride and Prejudice , one of the most famous love stories of all time, has also proven itself as a treasured mainstay of the English literary canon. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down. Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity. Misconceptions and hasty judgements bring heartache and scandal, but eventually lead to true understanding, self-knowledge, and love.It's almost impossible to open Pride and Prejudice without feeling the pressure of so many readers having known and loved this novel already. Will you fail the test - or will you love it too? As a story that celebrates more unflinchingly than any of Austen's other novels the happy meeting-of-true-minds, and one that has attracted the most fans over the centuries, Pride and Prejudice sets up an echo chamber of good feelings in which romantic love and the love of reading amplify each other.

This major new edition, originally commissioned for the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode, brings together a unique combination of Shelley's poetry and prose - the lyric poems, plays, longer poems, criticism, and essays - to give the essence of his work and thinking.Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a Romantic poet of radical imaginings, living in an age of change. His tempestuous life and friendship with Byron, and his tragically early death, at times threatened to overwhelm his legacy as a poet, but today his standing as one of the foremost English authors is assured. This freshly edited anthology - the fullest one-volume selection in English - includes all but one of the longer poems, from Queen Mab onwards, in their entirety. Only Laon and Cythna is excerpted, in a generous selection. As well as works such asPrometheus Unbound, The Mask of Anarchy, and Adonais, the volume includes a wide range of Shelley's shorter poems and much of his major prose, including A Defence of Poetry and almost all of A Philosophical View of Reform. Shelley emerges from these pages as a passionate and eloquent opponent of tyranny and a champion of human possibility. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.