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If the Iliad is the world’s greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature’s grandest evocation of an everyman’s journey through life. Odysseus’ reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends  retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer’s original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox’s superb introduction and textual commentary provide insightful background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles’s translation. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new generation of Homer’s students. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features French flaps and deckle-edged paper.

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The characters exceed the roles of villains and heroes. Prospero seems heroic, yet he enslaves Caliban and has an appetite for revenge. Caliban seems to be a monster for attacking Miranda, but appears heroic in resisting Prospero, evoking the period of colonialism during which the play was written. Miranda’s engagement to Ferdinand, the Prince of Naples and a member of the shipwrecked party, helps resolve the drama.

The authoritative edition of The Tempest from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Barbara A. Mowat

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

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Look Inside the Book

Edmund Spenser (1552-99) ranks just below Shakespeare, with Chaucer and Milton, in the pantheon of great writers. In The Faerie Queene , he spins a sub-created fantasy universe that would be the model for Tolkien and Lewis. This poet, whom Milton considered to be a better teacher than the medieval theologians, wrote an epic tale of adventure, love, noble deeds, and faith.

Despite all his acknowledged greatness, almost no one reads Spenser anymore. Roy Maynard takes the first book of The Faerie Queene , exploring the concept of Holiness with the character of the Redcross Knight, and makes Spenser accessible again. He does this not by dumbing it down, but by deftly modernizing the spelling, and including notes in the margins explaining the obscurities in clever asides, and cuing the reader towards the right response.

“It is best to have made one’s first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large edition of The Faerie Queene , on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen… To read him is to grow in mental health.” -C.S. Lewis

The post Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves: Book I of Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ appeared first on Classical Education Books.

Features

• Full accessible notes ideal for students
• Additional information and reading lists
• A range of illustrations, both decorative and explanatory
• A school edition that is both accessible and academically rigorous

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In this short collection of incisive yet playful essays, Mayo invites readers into a long-neglected tradition of literary meditation: the art of “thinking with Shakespeare.” He returns to classics like Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Henry V and mines Shakespeare for joy. He models an accessible approach to reading the plays not only as academic subjects or scholarly artifacts, but as quarries of wisdom. Along the way, readers will discover insights into subjects close to the heart of classical education—poetic knowledge, imagination, and the cultivation of virtue.

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Ballads are narratives that are composed and sung orally. In more primitive societies, before the development of writing, they were an essential means of remembering and celebrating the past.

There are, however, no existing ballads from the ancient Romans. Macaulay thought these ballads must have existed and probably served as a primary source for Roman historians, such as Livy. And so Macaulay wrote The Lays of Ancient Rome, ballads that celebrate famous events in Roman history, written in a style and meter that would be appropriate for the ancient Romans.

The Lays carry messages about values, patriotism, courage, and sacrifice that Macaulay considered relevant to his own time. Horatius at the Bridge is the ballad that “might have been,” had it not been lost in time. Macaulay published his Lays in 1842, and considered them a trifle. His trifle was a publishing phenomenon and since its first release, has never been out of print.

Companion Products:

Horatius at the Bridge – Set (Second Edition)
Horatius at the Bridge – Text (Second Edition)
Horatius at the Bridge – Student Guide (Second Edition)
Horatius at the Bridge – Teacher Guide (Second Edition)

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The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry 
The World-Ending Fire
What Are People For? 
Home Economics
Remembering
Jayber Crow
Andy Catlett 
A World Lost 
A Place on Earth 
Nathan Coulter
Hannah Coulter
That Distant Land

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