Jonathan Bate
Author
Language
English
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Description
"Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain's most important poets, his work infused with myth; a love of nature, conservation, and ecology; of fishing and beasts in brooding landscapes.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter-writer since John...
Author
Series
E. H. Gombrich lecture volume 3
Language
English
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Description
Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "small Latin and less Greek." But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book...
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English
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Description
The long-awaited literary biography of the supreme "poets' poet"
John Clare (1793-1864) is the greatest laboring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive literary biography.
Here at last is his full story told by the light of his voluminous work: his birth in poverty, his...
Author
Language
English
Description
From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives. 'The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.' How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind? Shakespeare's world is never too...
Author
Language
English
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Description
On the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth comes a highly imaginative and vivid portrait of a revolutionary poet who embodied the spirit of his age. Published in time for the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth, this is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution. He...
Author
Language
English
Description
Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry. Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory - remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling...
7) Bright star, green light: the beautiful works and damned lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author
Language
English
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Description
"In this radiant dual biography, Jonathan Bate explores the fascinating parallel lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald, writers who worked separately--on different continents, a century apart, in distinct genres--but whose lives uncannily echoed. Not only was Fitzgerald profoundly influenced by Keats, titling Tender is the Night and other works from the poet's lines, but the two shared similar fates: both died young, loved to drink, were plagued...
Author
Language
English
Description
How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind? Shakespeare's world is never too far different from our own 'permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life - losses and challenges - and asks...
Author
Publisher
Random House
Pub. Date
c2009
Language
English
Description
Bate's Soul of the Age tells the story of the great dramatist while deducing the crucial events of Shakespeare's life, connecting those events to his world and work as never before, and revealing how this unsurpassed artist came to be.
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 249
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
2010
Language
English
13) Richard III
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Series
Language
English
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Description
Believed to have been written in 1591, William Shakespeare's "Richard III" is one of the bards first plays, the first installment in a tetralogy of plays which includes "Henry IV, Part I," "Henry IV, Part II," and "Henry V." One of the longest of Shakespeare's plays and consequently rarely performed unabridged, "Richard III" is the story of the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. The play begins with...
14) Pericles
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Series
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English
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Description
Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...
17) Coriolanus
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Series
Language
English
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Description
Critical and historical notes accompany Shakespeare's play about the life of an ambitious military leader.
18) Richard II
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Series
Language
English
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Description
Written in 1595, "Richard II" occupies a significant place in the Shakespeare canon. It marks the transition from the earlier history plays dominated by civil war and stark power to a more nuanced representation of the political conflicts of England's past where character and politics are inextricably intertwined. Deftly combining history with tragedy, its tale of bad government and usurpation had great political immediacy for its first audiences...
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Series
Language
English
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Description
The third part of Shakespeare's impressive "Henriad", this play follows "Richard II" and "Henry IV, Part I", and precedes the final play of the tetralogy, "Henry V". Following the events of "Henry IV, Part I", Prince Hal is once again out of favor with his father, the king, who is in his last months of life. In contrast to their relationship in "Part I", Falstaff, the comical criminal, is rejected by Prince Hal. Falstaff and Prince Hal only share...
20) Henry IV, part I
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Series
Language
English
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Description
Memorable historical drama concerns rebellion against King Henry led by Harry Percy ("Hotspur") and other nobles, complicated by the king's difficulties with his wayward son, Prince Hal. Superb blend of courtly intrigue, battlefield action, and low comedy featuring Sir John Falstaff, all expressed in fine blank verse and stirring prose.