Poetry

Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time....

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Christopher Nolan Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts...

Brought to you by Penguin The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Lesley Manville (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress and known for Phantom Thread and Mum), Derek Jacobi (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and known for Gladiator and Gosford Park), Michael...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the most extraordinary - and important - texts in Western philosophy. It was written by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883 and 1885. He cast it in the form of a novel in the hope that his urgent message of the 'death of God' and the rise of the superman...

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by award-winning voice actor Martin Jarvis OBE, as well as John Sackville, Maya Saroya and the translator of this edition, David Raeburn. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Denis Feeney. Ovid's sensuous and witty...

"Vivam" is the very last word of Ovid's masterpiece, the Metamorphoses: "I shall live". If we're still reading it two millennia after Ovid's death, this is by definition a remarkably accurate prophecy. Ovid was not the only ancient author with aspirations to be read for eternity, but no poet of...

Rome’s epic origin story, brilliantly rendered in a vivid, rhythmic idiom.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Steve John Shepherd, whose theatre credits include Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe, The Good Canary directed by John Malkovich, Bomber's Moon and Piaf. His TV and film credits range from the iconic This Life to Silent Witness...

The Song of Roland is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world’s greatest epic poems....

The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran—now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation...

"150 Most Famous Poems: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Many More" is a timeless anthology that brings together some of the most celebrated and influential poems in the English language.

Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid....

Before entering the monastery, Thomas Merton studied English at Columbia University and taught literature at St. Bonaventure University. Delivered to the community at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1965 and 1966, Merton’s talks examine one of his favorite poets: Rainer Maria Rilke....

Along with Virgil, Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was the greatest poet produced by Rome....

Though it is for the sparkling epic, Aeneid, that the Roman poet Virgil is best known, it was these two poems, The Eclogues and Georgics, which first established his reputation....

Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from Ancient Rome....

A selection of the very best of Chinese poetry over the course of a thousand years, from 100 years before Christ was born up of the middle ages.

After a century of civil strife in Rome and Italy, the poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid to honor the emperor Augustus by praising Aeneas, Augustus's legendary ancestor....

Tao Te Ching, attributed to the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu, is a foundational text of Taoist philosophy and one of the most translated works in world literature.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Shaheen Khan. This definitive recording includes an introduction by J. D. Smith, read by Sagar Arya. The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian...

You learn how drama makes visible the conflicts and wars of culture in ways other forms cannot manage....

A new version of The Epic of Gilgamesh by Sebastian Lockwood....

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles....