Showing results by publisher "Naxos AudioBooks" in Themes & Styles

The greatest of all the medieval romances about the Holy Grail, Parzival was written in the early 13th century. The narrative describes the quest of the Arthurian knight Parzival for the Holy Grail. His journey is filled with incident, from tournaments and sieges to chivalrous deeds and displays of true love.

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. 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.

Rumi's Spiritual Verses is the greatest mystical poem in Islamic culture - and of all time. Rumi examines our human separation from reality, love, and truth. He shows how love - neither erotic nor sentimental but divine, by which the universe is held together - enlightens ignorance and dissolves suffering. The first book of the Masnavi is the key to the whole work: It takes off from simple, amusing tales into realms unimaginable, but wholly familiar to the human heart.

This remarkable poem, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, was Spenser's finest achievement. The first epic poem in modern English, The Faerie Queene combines dramatic narratives of chivalrous adventure with exquisite and picturesque episodes of pageantry. At the same time, Spenser is expounding a deeply-felt allegory of the eternal struggle between Truth and Error....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘novel in verse’ is an epic poem that voices with enchanting beauty and literary courage the perspective of Victorian women. Aurora Leigh forges her own path to become a poet, successfully proving her worth, defying the ideals of her era, and rescuing her spirit from the suppression of a routine domestic life. Infusing the work with her own experience and passion, Browning produced a true masterpiece.

It is the year 778. The mighty French army, led by Emperor Charlemagne, confronts Saracen forces in the bloody Battle of Roncevaux Pass. In the course of this thrilling epic poem we follow the emperor’s hot-headed nephew Roland into battle. We are privy to the deal struck between the Saracen king Marsilie and Roland’s conniving stepfather Guene.

Sensual, macabre, joyous and liberating, The Flowers of Evil, or Les Fleurs du Mal, is a beautifully debauched reflection on dreams, sin, life, and death. With subjects ranging from travel to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation, Baudelaire finds new beauty in the most sinister and corrupt of situations. His morbid and nightmarish Romanticism was completely unique: cynical and bleak, but also inspiring. The book was highly controversial upon its release and Napoleon III’s government prosecuted Baudelaire for "an insult to public decency".

The oldest long poem in Old English, written about AD 1,000, Beowulf tells the story of a great warrior of southern Scandinavia, in both youth and maturity. The monster Grendel terrorizes the Scyldings of Hrothgar's Danish Kingdom until Beowulf defeats him. As a result, he has to face her enraged mother. Beowulf dies after a battle against a fierce dragon.

Kahlil Gibran was Lebanese by birth but spent a major part of his life in America in the early part of the 20th century. He wrote many collections of stories with a wise or whimsical tone, but none more popular than The Prophet, his first collection, or The Wanderer, his final anthology.

Some of the greatest poets and lovers in the English language speak of their love in this seductive and romantic collection. Here are the voices of Romeo, Robert Burns, Lord Byron and many others.

First published in 1855, when Whitman was 37, Leaves of Grass announced a new voice and style in American letters. It attempted to reach out to the common person with an optimistic epic that took the nation as its subject and encouraged readers to connect with nature and unite in a harmonious society where race and class are transcended.

A witty, bawdy, erotic but classic collection of poetry designed to celebrate the most sensual of human pleasures. Over the ages, many poets have put pen to paper in celebration of that most raw and yet most beautiful of human instincts - erotic love. This anthology includes verse by Herrick, Marlowe, Jonson, Byron, Verlaine, Whitman, Yeats, Cummings and, from our own time, John Betjeman. All aspects of erotic love are to be found in these poems - from the bawdy to the sensuous and tender.

Here are some of the finest poems by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), a unique voice in American poetry. She is known for her short poems, full of acute observations, and deft use of language. This careful but imaginative selection shows the remarkable variety she produced, despite the miniature nature of her medium.

This is a story from the Chilling Ghost Stories collection. The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere.

Achilles has quarrelled with Agamemnon and sulks in his tent while Hector brings his Trojans to the brink of victory; but fate will have the last word. While the heroes fight before the walls of Troy the gods have also drawn up battle lines, and it is their disagreements as much as the heroes' efforts which will decide the conflict. Despite the poem's antiquity, the very real, human qualities of the protagonists and their dilemmas make The Iliad immediately accessible.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales II: Modern Verse Translation collection.

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narratives written between 1387 and 1400, tells of a group of 30 people from all layers of society who pass the time along their pilgrimage to Canterbury by telling stories to one another, their interaction mediated (at times) by the affable host - Chaucer himself. Naxos AudioBooks’ third volume presents the tales of six people, here in an unabridged modern verse translation (by Frank Ernest Hill, 1935).

The eloquence of lovers is celebrated in this rich and sensuous collection - the love of women for men. Héloïse, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Katherine Mansfield, George Sand, and others express their very real passion intensely - as, in fiction, does Juliet for her Romeo, Jane Eyre for her Rochester and Catherine for her Heathcliffe. With the music of Mendelssohn, Tchaikovksy, Puccini, Legar and more, here is some of the most tender and love prose and poetry in literature.

Four more delightful tales from one of the most entertaining storytellers of all time. Though writing in the thirteenth century, Chaucer’s wit and observation comes down undiminished through the ages, especially in this accessible modern verse translation. The stories vary considerably from the uproarious Wife of Bath’s Tale, promoting the power of women to the sober account of patient Griselda in the Clerk’s Tale.