本书由三个文本组成。 *个文本是D（狄亚努斯）的日志，它构成了被称为 鼠的故事 的*部分。这部分以D的视角展开，记述了他与B的情乱，同时，在这场混乱的激情中，A（阿尔法主教）作为一个衔接D与B之关系的人物在场。 *部分也涉及了D与E的情乱，而这构成了第二个文本的记述核心。第二部分被称为 狄亚努斯 ，是A的笔记。这部分以A的视角展开。 这两个文本共同结构了本书的故事。被称为 俄瑞斯忒斯 的第三部分则更像是一个总的视角，或者说，一则诗性概述。它由诗歌和诗论组成。巴塔耶写道： 为了在一片明显的不可能中抓住一丝可能，我必须首先想象相反的情境。
Of the three late masterpieces that crown the extraordinaryliterary achievement of Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902) is at once the most personal and the most elemental. Jamesdrew on the memory of a beloved cousin who died young to create oneof the three central characters, Milly Theale, an heiress with ashort time to live and a passion for experiencing life to itsfullest. To the creation of the other two, Merton Densher and themagnificent, predatory Kate Croy, who conspire in an act of deceitand betrayal, he brought a lifetime's distilled wisdom about thefrailty of the human soul when it is trapped in the depths of needand desire. And he brought to the drama that unites these threecharacters, in the drawing rooms of London and on the storm-litpiazzas of Venice, a starkness and classical purity almostunprecedented in his work. Under its brilliant, coruscatingsurfaces, beyond the scrim of its marvelous rhetorical andpsychological devices, The Wings of the Dove offers anunfettered vision of our civi
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) "Mrs. Dalloway "chronicles aJune day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken upwith running minor errands in preparation for a party and that ispunctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she hasnever met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immenseresonance and significance-infusing it with the elemental conflictbetween death and life-Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers herdistinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925,"Mrs. Dalloway "is Woolf's first complete rendering of what shedescribed as the "luminous envelope" of consciousness: a dazzlingdisplay of the mind's inside as it plays over the brilliant surfaceand darker depths of reality. This edition uses the text of theoriginal British publication of "Mrs. Dalloway," which includeschanges Woolf made that never appeared in the first or subsequentAmerican editions.
Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has beentransported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-centuryEngland and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the RoundTable. Morgan brings to King Arthur's utopian court the ingenuityof the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at oncesatiric, anarchic, and darkly comic. Critically deemed one ofTwain's finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and adisturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits ofprogress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains aspowerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its firstpublication in 1889.
The Portrait of a Lady is the most stunning achievement ofHenry James's early period--in the 1860s and '70s when he wastransforming himself from a talented young American into a residentof Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatestnovelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of thistransformation informs every page of this masterpiece. IsabelArcher, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girlnewly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherousjourney to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence thatis at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characterswith whom she is entangled--the good man and the evil one, betweenwhom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom shemust do battle--are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggestsdazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting--in England andItaly--provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remainingcrucial to the larger drama.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Though its fame as an icon oftwentieth-century literature rests primarily on the brilliance ofits narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of itsprose, "To the Lighthouse "is above all the story of a quest, andas such it possesses a brave and magical universality. Observedacross the years at their vacation house facing the gales of theNorth Atlantic, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapturemeaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. Though itis the death of Mrs. Ramsay on which the novel turns, her presencepervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory thatis also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimatedetails. Virginia Woolf's great book enacts a powerful allegory ofthe creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleetingmaterial life.
The epic tale of Don Quixote and his faithful squire, SanchoPanza, and their picaresque adventures in the world of seventeenthcentury Spain, form the basis of one of the great treasures ofWestern literature - a book that is both a hilarious satire of thechivalric code and a biting portrayal of an age in which nobilitycan be a form of madness. This brand-new, thoroughly moderntranslation, and the extensive introduction and footnotes, makeCervantes' masterpiece more delightful and accessible to Englishreaders than ever before.
Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is a tale ofpersonal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils ofcolonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, ittells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of richesfor his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of hisown greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in herIntroduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . Whatwas ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? Hisobsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whoseprogenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conradestablished in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation,and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of hislife and work.
In 1895 Hardy's final novel, the great tale of JudetheObscure, sent shock waves of indignationrolling across VictorianEngland. Hardy haddared to write frankly about sexuality andtoindict the institutions of marriage, education,and religion. Buthe had, in fact, created a deeplymoral work. The stonemason JudeFawley is adreamer; his is a tragedy of unfulfilled aims.With histantalizing cousin Sue Bridehead, thelast and most extraordinary ofHardy's heroines,Jude takes on the world--and discovers,tragically,its brutal indifference.The most powerful expression ofHardy's philosophy,and a profound exploration of man'sessentialloneliness, Jude the Obscure is a great and beautifulbook."His style touches sublimity." --T. S. Eliot
In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacherGeorge Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone withhis teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his songrow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life.Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and hisown relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur one of John Updike'smost brilliant and unusual novels.
Newlyweds Jennifer and Matt really love each other. They never lived together before they were married-and so both were shocked to learn all the little things that go with living with one's spouse. Who knew that in his family, Saturdays were for tackling chores, while in her family Saturdays were for sleeping late? Now, two nice people from nice families are finding out that they do everything differently-and suddenly, they're in the ring with gloves on! Week by week, the fights take both of them by surprise-they never meant to be the kind of couple that acts this way. Simultaneously, though, Jennifer and Matt are building something strong, knocking down old walls of habit and finding the strong foundation of a love that will see them through.This is one year in a marriage-the beginning of a lifetime.
From the inexhaustible imagination of Ian McEwan--a master ofcontemporary fiction and author of the Booker Prize-winningnational bestseller Amsterdam --an enchanting work of fictionthat appeals equally to children and adults. First published in England as a children's book, TheDaydreamer marks a delightful foray by one of our greatestnovelists into a new fictional domain. In these seven exquisitelyinterlinked episodes, the grown-up protagonist Peter Fortunereveals the secret journeys, metamorphoses, and adventures of hischildhood. Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peterexperiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with thewise old family cat; exchanges existences with a cranky infant;encounters a very bad doll who has come to life and is out forrevenge; and rummages through a kitchen drawer filled with uselessobjects to discover some not-so-useless cream that actually makespeople vanish. Finally, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside agrown-up body and embarks on the truly fantast
Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickenscompleted and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basicplot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, arocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host ofunforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing theauthor's heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, andthe story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The moodis set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, andhis daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned menwhose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to theauthorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that islater identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning fromabroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered andthrown into the river. Harmon's death is the catalyst for everything else that happensin the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on thecondition that he marry a girl he'd
The "Guermantes Way," in this the third volume of "In Searchof Lost Time," refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchessde Guermantes's chateau near Combray. It also represents thenarrator's passage into the rarefied "social kaleidoscope" of theGuermantes's Paris salon, an important intellectual playground forParisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and mannersof the Guermantes's drawing room. Here he encounters nobles,officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert deSaint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron deCharlus, and the Prince de Borodino. For this authoritativeEnglish-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the lateTerence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff'stranslation to take into account the new definitive French editionsof "A la recherche du temps perdu" (the final volume of these neweditions was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in1989).
The dramatic concluding months of The Wars of the Rosesprovide the setting for Shakespeare’s incomparable saga of powerand intrigue. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: CompleteWorks. Each play includes an Introduction as well as anoverview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past andcurrent productions based on interviews with leading directors,actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about thework; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; andblack-and-white illustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions set a new standard inShakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.
Booker Prize Finalist "Wickedly funny." --"The New York Times"Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint, where theWindsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover areactually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really aremerry. This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman,seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a "destination" wheretourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di'sgrave, and even Harrod's (conveniently located inside the tower ofLondon). Martha Cochrane, hired as one of Sir Jack's resident"no-people," ably assists him in realizing his dream. But when thisland of make-believe gradually gets horribly and hilariously out ofhand, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England. JulianBarnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophicalinquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticityand nationality.
Joseph Epstein demonstrates time and again his talent fortaking nearly any subject and polishing it into a gem of sparklingwit and fascination. In Narcissus Leaves the Pool, he displays hissignature verve and charm in sixteen agile, entertaining pieces.Among his targets in this collection are name-dropping, talentversus genius, the cult of youthfulness, and the informationrevolution.
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by E. S.Shaffer
Gentle linen weaver Silas Marner is wrongly accused of aheinous theft, and he exiles himself from the world-until he findsredemption and spiritual rebirth through his unselfish love for anabandoned child who mysteriously appears one day at his isolatedcottage. Somber, yet hopeful, Eliot's realistic depiction of anirretrievable past, tempered with the magical elements of myth andfairy tale, remains timeless in its understanding of human natureand is beloved by every generation.
Generally believed to be the last play written solely byShakespeare, The Tempest centers on a banished noble who usessorcery to confront his foes. In this play, Shakespeare offers someof his most insightful meditations on themes ranging from vengeanceand forgiveness to nature and nurture. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction, as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions set a new standard in
The blind energies and defiant acts that bring an ambitiousmanto power can also destroy him. This is the theme thatThomas Hardyexplores through his greatest and mosttragic hero: MichaelHenchard, the driven grain merchant of Casterbridge. From hisdrunken sale of his wife and baby at a county fair to hissubjugation of a farming village, Henchard's life is an epicattempt to bring the world to heel as he hides, even from himself,all vestiges of emotionalvulnerability. Combining the suspense of amystery with the poetry of the most powerful English novels, TheMavyor of Casterbridge is a masterpiece of psychological insightand profound tragedy.
Hailed as one of Joseph Conrad's finest literary achievements,this is the story of a young man unwittingly caught in thepolitical turmoil of pre-Revolutionary czarist Russia. A grippingnovel that ultimately questions our capacity for moral strength andthe depths of human integrity. This new edition includes commentaryand a reading group guide.
As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself " a rakeamong scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize howprophetic this motto will be-- or how damning. For as Philip Rothfollows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vastwilderness of erotic possibility, from a me nage a trois in Londonto the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremelyintelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemmaof pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggleto make a truce between dignity and desire.
