The Virgin and the Nightingale PDF Download

Author: Fleur Adcock
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Wonderful verse translations of medieval Latin lyrics.

Author: A. S. Byatt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307483878
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The magnificent title story of this collection of fairy tales for adults describes the strange and uncanny relationship between its extravagantly intelligent heroine--a world renowned scholar of the art of story-telling--and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious bottle, found in a dusty shop in an Istanbul bazaar. As A.S. Byatt renders this relationship with a powerful combination of erudition and passion, she makes the interaction of the natural and the supernatural seem not only convincing, but inevitable. The companion stories in this collection each display different facets of Byatt's remarkable gift for enchantment. They range from fables of sexual obsession to allegories of political tragedy; they draw us into narratives that are as mesmerizing as dreams and as bracing as philosophical meditations; and they all us to inhabit an imaginative universe astonishing in the precision of its detail, its intellectual consistency, and its splendor. "A dreamy treat.... It is not merely strange, it is wondrous." --Boston Globe "Alternatingly erudite and earthy, direct and playful.... If Scheherazade ever needs a break, Byatt can step in, indefinitely." --Chicago Tribune "Byatt's writing is crystalline and splendidly imaginative.... These [are] perfectly formed tales." --Washington Post Book World

Author: Emmeline Garnett
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1586172972
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Describes the English Catholic nuns trained by Florence Nightingale to tend to the wounded during the Crimean War, including their struggles to work in poor military hospitals and their dedication to their faith.

Author: Jeni Williams
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847141854
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
The poetic nightingale is so familiar it seems hardly to merit serious attention. Yet its ubiquity is significant, suggesting associations with erotic love, pathos and art that cross culture and history. This book examines the different nightingales of European literature, starting with the Greek myth of Philomela, the raped girl, silenced by having her tongue cut out, and then transformed into the bird whose name means poet, poetry and nightingale simultaneously. Moving from the classical to the Christian worlds, Jeni Williams discusses nightingales and nature in the early church and sees the emergence of the figure as an emotive emblem of the aristocracy in mediaeval vernacular debate poetry. Her final chapters use the nightingale and the myth to examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning's struggle for an active female voice in Victorian poetry.

Author: Laura Andersen
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0804179379
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A captivating historical novel that poses the thrilling question: What if Elizabeth I, the celebrated Virgin Queen, gave birth a legitimate heir?—the first installation of the Tudor Legacy trilogy “[Laura] Andersen brilliantly blends the history and historical characters we know into her wondrous new world.”—RT Book Reviews Since the death of her brother, William, Elizabeth I has ruled England. She’s made the necessary alliances, married Philip of Spain, and produced a successor: her only daughter, Anne Isabella, Princess of Wales. Elizabeth knows that her beloved Anabel will be a political pawn across Europe unless she can convince Philip to grant her a divorce, freeing him to remarry and give Spain its own heir. But the enemies of England have even greater plans for the princess, a plot that will put Anabel’s very life and the security of the nation in peril. Only those closest to Elizabeth—her longtime confidante Minuette, her advisor and friend Dominic, and the couple’s grown children—can be trusted to carry forth a most delicate and dangerous mission. Yet, all of the queen’s maneuverings may ultimately prove her undoing. Don’t miss any of Laura Andersen’s captivating Tudor Legacy trilogy: THE VIRGIN’S DAUGHTER • THE VIRGIN’S SPY • THE VIRGIN’S WAR

Author: Laura Andersen
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0804179409
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The gripping conclusion to the Tudor Legacy trilogy that brings to life the drama and intrigue of Queen Elizabeth I; her daughter, Anabel, the Princess of Wales; and two countries locked in a battle for the ages. “If you can’t manage with HBO’s Game of Thrones, [then] this Shakespearean-era fantasy may be your cup of tea.”—New York Post As the Spanish Armada approaches Irish shores, Elizabeth I feels the full burden of her royal office. She must not let England fall to her former husband, King Philip of Spain. And Princess Anabel, their daughter, has yet to declare with whom her allegiance—and her support—lie. Exiled Stephen Courtenay is in France with his brother, Kit, who has his own reasons for avoiding England. But rumblings of war, a sinister plot, and their loyalty to the crown call them home. Yet not even Pippa Courtenay, their sister, gifted with divine sight, can foresee the grave danger that awaits them all. As Queen Elizabeth commits her riches, her honor, and her people to the approaching conflict, she will risk everything—even her life—to preserve England’s freedom. Don’t miss any of Laura Andersen’s captivating Tudor Legacy trilogy: THE VIRGIN’S DAUGHTER • THE VIRGIN’S SPY • THE VIRGIN’S WAR

Author: Lynn McDonald
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889207062
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is widely known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the founder of the modern profession of nursing. She was also a scholar and political activist who wrote and worked assiduously on many reform causes for more than forty years. This series will confirm Nightingale as an important and significant nineteenth-century scholar and illustrate how she integrated her scholarship with political activism. Indispensable to scholars, and accessible and revealing to the general reader, it will show there is much more to know about Florence Nightingale than the “lady with the lamp.” Although a life-long member of the Church of England, Nightingale has been described as both a Unitarian and a significan nineteenth-century mystic. Volume 2 begins with an introduction to the beliefs, influences and practices of this complex person. The second and largest part of this volume consists of Nightingale’s biblical annotations, made at various stages of her life (some dated, some not). The third part of volume 2 contains her journal notes, including her diary for 1877, which is published here for the first time. Much of this material is highly personal, even confessional in nature. Some of it is profoundly moving and will serve to show the complexity and power of Nightingale’s faith. Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.

Author: Paisley Rekdal
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 1619322013
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
Nightingale is a book about change. This collection radically rewrites and contemporizes many of the myths central to Ovid’s epic, The Metamorphoses, Rekdal’s characters changed not by divine intervention but by both ordinary and extraordinary human events. In Nightingale, a mother undergoes cancer treatments at the same time her daughter transitions into a son; a woman comes to painful terms with her new sexual life after becoming quadriplegic; a photographer wonders whether her art is to blame for her son’s sudden illness; and a widow falls in love with her dead husband’s dog. At the same time, however, the book includes more intimate lyrics that explore personal transformation, culminating in a series of connected poems that trace the continuing effects of sexual violence and rape on survivors. Nightingale updates many of Ovid’s subjects while remaining true to the Roman epic’s tropes of violence, dismemberment, silence, and fragmentation. Is change a physical or a spiritual act? Is transformation punishment or reward, reversible or permanent? Does metamorphosis literalize our essential traits, or change us into something utterly new? Nightingale investigates these themes, while considering the roles that pain, violence, art, and voicelessness all play in the changeable selves we present to the world.

Author: Rebecca Butler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000381625
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
With the rise of mass tourism, Italy became increasingly accessible to Victorian women travellers not only as a locus of artistic culture but also as a site of political enquiry. Despite being outwardly denied a political voice in Britain, many female tourists were conspicuous in their commitment to the Italian campaign for national independence, or Risorgimento (1815–61). Revisiting Italy brings several previously unexamined travel accounts by women to light during a decisive period in this political campaign. Revealing the wider currency of the Risorgimento in British literature, Butler situates once-popular but now-marginalized writers: Clotilda Stisted, Janet Robertson, Mary Pasqualino, Selina Bunbury, Margaret Dunbar and Frances Minto Elliot alongside more prominent figures: the Shelley-Byron circle, the Brownings, Florence Nightingale and the Kemble sisters. Going beyond the travel book, she analyses a variety of forms of travel writing including unpublished letters, privately printed accounts and periodical serials. Revisiting Italy focuses on the convergence of political advocacy, gender ideologies, national identity and literary authority in women’s travel writing. Whether promoting nationalism through a maternal lens, politicizing the pilgrimage motif or reviving gothic representations of a revolutionary Italy, it identifies shared touristic discourses as temporally contingent, shaped by commercial pressures and the volatile political climate at home and abroad.

Author: William Dunbar
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN: 1580443966
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Scottish poet William Dunbar is usually considered one of the most important figures of fifteenth-century British literature, and may lay claim to being the finest lyric poet writing in English in the century and half between the death of Chaucer in 1400 and the appearance of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557. Dunbar's poems offer vivid depictions of late medieval Scottish society and serve up a striking pageant of colorful figures at the court of James IV (r. 1488-1513), with which he was associated for much of his adult life. The poems are remarkable both for their diversity and variability and for their multiplicity of voices, styles, and tones. The great variety of poems within Dunbar's canon includes religious hymns of exaltation, moral poems on a wide range of serious themes, comic and parodic poems of extreme salaciousness and scatological coarseness, general satires against the times, and satires with much more specific targets, often a single individual. This edition of eighty-four poems attributed to Dunbar includes extensive background material and explanatory notes that are sure to be of interest to students and Dunbar enthusiasts alike. The edition is rounded out with textual notes, an index of first lines, and a glossary.