Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance. Summary by Wikipedia Cast list: Narrator: Mary J Lucy Snowe: Elizabeth Barr Graham/Dr. John: Robert Dixon Monsieur Paul: Herman Roskams Madame Beck: Elizabeth Klett Polly/Paulina: Amanda Friday Mrs. Bretton: Michele Eaton Ginevra Fanshawe: Libby Gohn Mr. Home/Bassompierre: tovarisch Rosine [the portress]: Leanne Mademoiselle St. Pierre [a teacher]: Kristin Gjerløw Isabelle [a student]: Arie Pere ...

Shakespeare's sequence of 154 sonnets deals with such themes as love, time, death, immortality, lust, and sex. The poems follow but also depart from the Petrarchan tradition of sonnets written by a frustrated male lover to an unattainable idealized female beloved. Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to both male and female lovers: the androgynous "young man" and the alluring yet dangerously sexual "dark lady." (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

Northanger Abbey is a hilarious parody of 18th century gothic novels. The heroine, 17-year old Catherine, has been reading far too many “horrid” gothic novels and would love to encounter some gothic-style terror — but the superficial world of Bath proves hazardous enough. (Summary by Kara)

Sigmund Freud war ein österreichischer Neurologe, der als der Begründer der Psychoanalyse gilt. "Über Psychoanalyse" ist eine Serie von fünf Vorlesungen die Freud zum 20jährigen Jubiläum der Clark University in Worchester, Massachussetts gehalten hat. In den Vorlesungen bespricht er Themen wie z. B. die Entstehung und das Ziel der Psychoanalyse; Traumdeutung und Hypnose; Verdrängung und Neurose sowie Sexualität. Sigmund Freud was an Austrian Neurologist, who is revered as the father of Psychoanalysis. "Über Psychoanalyse" is a series of five lectures Freud gave at the occasion of the ...

The wild and raw adventures of Catherine Hayes, who was burned for murder at Tyburn in 1742 - Summary by Mark Leder

“Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh ... [Van Gogh's] art was appreciated during his life only by a very few and it is but within recent years that it has found admirers who in many cases have been most ardently enthusiastic. Of the following letters, some were addressed to his brother and the remainder to his friend E. Bernard. (Summary from Preface)

The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity - he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, accomplished horseman and gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Obsessed with honour and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady. (Introduction from Wikipedia)

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. A text like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number ...

A lesser known novel by the sensational English novelist, Charlotte's Inheritance opens in Paris in a dilapidated boarding house let to students by a scarcely adequate landlady. Enter Gustave, a young provincial, arriving in Paris supposedly to study law, but in reality as the proposed husband of the dour and unattractive daughter of his sponsor. Unable to tolerate the life arranged for him, Gustave quits the boarding house but recommends it to a mysterious young English widow who approaches him for assistance. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696) was a French aristocrat famous for the precision, clarity, wit and vividness of her letters, which deal with personal issues and also with public events in the France of Louis XIV - Summary by Wikipedia

Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James first appearing in Cornhill Magazine in June–July 1879, and in book form the following year. It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Frederick Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. (Summary by Wikipedia)CastFrederick Winterbourne: Brett W. DowneyDaisy Miller: Amanda FridayRandolph Miller: Arielle LipshawMrs. Miller: Libby GohnMrs. Costello: Elizabeth ...

Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since, and is used in university studies of 19th century English literature. The story's plot follows four characters rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love triangle between beautiful but thoughtless Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, ...

This is another story written by Walter Stewart under the pseudonym of J.J. Connington. His character of Sir Clinton Driffield, the chief constable, is challenged with solving crimes committed in the maze of the Shandon family estate. The Shandons are a successful if flawed set of brothers but all is not well beneath the surface of the privileged lives of their extended family. Jealousies and ambitions cause trouble as they often do. Sir Clinton and his faithful associate Wendover endeavour to unravel a mystery as complex as the maze itself. - Summary by Howard Skyman

The Moberly–Jourdain incident was an event that occurred on 10 August 1901 in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, involving two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. The women were both from educated backgrounds. During a trip to Versailles, they visited the Petit Trianon, a small château in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, where they allegedly experienced a time slip, and saw Marie Antoinette as well as other people of the same period. After researching the history of the palace, and comparing notes of their experience, they published their work in a book ...

Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumviri and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterized by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers,...

"Alice au Pays des Merveilles," publié originellement par Lewis Carroll en 1865 comme "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," fut traduit en 1869 par Henri Bué. Histoire de fantaisie, il s'agit d'une jeune fille, Alice, qui tombe dans un trou de lapin, et se trouve tout d'un coup dans un monde de merveilles. Là, elle rencontre plusieurs personnages curieux, comme le chat du Cheshire, le Chapelier, le Lièvre de Mars, Humpty Dumpty, la Fausse-tortue, la Reine de Coeurs, parmi d'autres. Pas destiné d'origine à se faire livre d'enfants, Alice s'embrouille dans un monde cauchemardesque, peuplé ...

A humorous tale about a poor Irish charwoman living in the slums of Dublin, and her innocent teenage daughter, Mary Makebelieve, whose first forays into courtship and romance, and their desire to escape from drudgery -- provide us with a charming picture of youth's enthusiasm and a mother's devotion, amidst Dublin's many parks and shops. The chapters are filled with James Stephens' witty Irish observations on life, love, ignorance, the frustrations of the poor and the wishful thinking that sustains them . . . . told as jauntily as only a few authors can equal. ( ~ Michele Fry, Soloist)

A group of Dubliners gather together for a Christmas celebration in James Joyce's transcendent tale of the mundanity and magic in life and death. "The Dead" is taken from Joyce's collection of short stories Dubliners. (summary by Iremonger)

Los Episodios Nacionales de Benito Pérez Galdós son una gran obra cuya colección completa consta de mas 40 títulos. La primera de las series que consta de sólo diez, ha sido extractada por el propio autor en este libro, con un lenguaje bastante ameno para la lectura infantil. De este modo esta lectura pone al alcance de los mas pequeños toda la primera serie de novelas históricas de Pérez Galdós, que en este caso, narran la guerra de la Independencia de España. (Summary by KendalRigans)

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet whose work is described as combining an exoticism inherited from the Romantics with the Realism of other French writers of his time. The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) is a book of lyric poetry and his most famous work. In it he expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris caused by Haussmann's renovation of the city during the mid-19th century. He coined the term modernity to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.Les ...