As the Elizabethan era gave way to the reign of James I, England grappled with corruption within the royal court and widespread religious anxiety. Dramatists responded with morally complex plays of dark wit and violent spectacle, exploring the nature of death, the abuse of power and vigilante justice. In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy a father failed by the Spanish court seeks his own bloody retribution for his son's murder. Shakespeare's 1603 version of Hamlet creates an aven...

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Decameron: The Popular Translation of J.M. Rigg" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.J.M. Rigg 's translation of The Decameron was originally published in London in 1903.It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic. Boccaccio begins with a description of the Black Death and leads a group of seven women and ...

Giovanni Boccaccio's 'The Decameron: Collector's Edition' showcases three different translations by John Payne, John Florio, and J.M. Rigg, presenting readers with a comprehensive view of this classic masterpiece. Set against the backdrop of the Black Death, the book is a collection of 100 stories told by ten young people who flee to the countryside to escape the plague. Boccaccio's literary style is characterized by its witty dialogues, clever use of irony, and vivid descriptions of medie...

Little is known about the life of Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), but we do know that in the early 1580s he was associated with a London theatre company. By 1594 he had completed one of the most famous plays of the 16th century: "The Spanish Tragedy." At that time, the majority of English drama was stiff, and Kyd's new use of blank verse to present emotions on stage was revolutionary. He took foundations of Roman tragedy—a ghost, revenge and violence—and created a spectacular melodrama that greatl...

To run o'er better waters hoists its sai

The Decameron is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions.

"The Divine Comedy" is an epic poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Ita...

The Divine Comedy is widely considered to be the preeminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The narrative describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven, while allegorically the poem represents the soul's journey towards God. Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy where the poet Virgil is presented as human reason and Beatrice is presented as divine knowledge. Thus, this edition brings to you the an...

Journey into Dante's nine circles of hell in the epic poem, Inferno.The Divine Comedy, written in the early fourteenth century by Dante Alighieri, continues to be essential reading for lovers of literature.Dante's The Inferno is the first part of his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. In this epic poem, Dante is led by the poet Virgil into the nine circles of Hell--limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud...

The Inferno is the first part of The Divine Comedy, Dante’s epic poem describing man's progress from hell to paradise. In it, the author is lost in a dark wood, threatened by wild beasts and unable to find the right path to salvation. Notable for its nine circles of hell, the poem vividly illustrates the poetic justice of punishments faced by earthly sinners. The Inferno is perhaps the most popular of the three books of The Divine Comedy, which is widely considered the preeminent work in I...

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian la...

The Songs of Bilitisby Pierre Louÿs"First published in Paris in 1894, this purports to be translations of poems by a woman named Bilitis, a contemporary and acquaintance of Sappho. This caused a sensation, not only because finding an intact cache of poems from a completely unknown Greek poet circa 600 B.C. would be a miracle, but because of its open and sensitive exploration of lesbian eroticism. Actually Bilitis never existed. The poems were a clever forgery by Pierre ...