We added to our database Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools). It was first published in 1494 in Basel. Many of its woodcut illustrations are attributed to Albrecht Dürer. Das Narrenschiff rose to fame instantly after the publication. Imitations,…
Category: Library
Sidney Psalms
by Philip Sidney&Mary Sidney Herbert now in our Library. At the time of his death, Sidney was in the midst of his most ambitious project—a complete translation of the Psalms across a multitude of poetic style, an attempt to lyrically…
June in the poetry of Madison Cawein – Excerpts
Herein the dearness of her is: The thirty perfect days of June Made one, in beauty and in bliss Were not more white to have to kiss, To love not more in tune. ONE DAY AND ANOTHER. PART I. He…
October
Far off a wind blew, and I heard Wild echoes of the woods reply– The herald of some royal word, With bannered trumpet, blown on high, Meseemed then passed me by: Who summoned marvels there to meet, With pomp, upon…
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593)
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Orwell and Milton: By the known rules of ancient liberty; Jesuit Relations and The Dawn of Everything
Orwell ends his introduction to Animal Farm, his 1945 novel, with: In our country … it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that…
Transparent: “Paradise has many gates”
Surely we fear from our Lord a stern, distressful day. Therefore Allah win guard them from the evil of that day and cause them to meet with ease and happiness; And reward them, because they were patient, with garden and…
Acker, Acre, Aker, Akyr… A land, a river, a swamp…
The OED lists two meanings for Acker: Acker, n. 1 Etymology: Origin uncertain; perhaps a variant of eagre n. (although this is first attested later; compare the form agar at that entry). In later use English regional (Yorkshire). †1. A strong or turbulent current in the sea; a flood…
Orwell’s Animal Farm: “a statement about human society everywhere and at all times”?
Orwell’s Animal Farm is commonly read as a critique of Stalinism. However, is it a cautionary tale of how quickly and easily any power structure might turn totalitarian? Does any power structure contain seeds of totalitarianism? Did the animals of…
John Clare: Love, Old, Day, See, Green, Summer, Flowers, Heart
Find John Clare’s POEMS CHIEFLY FROM MANUSCRIPT in our library. Edmund Blunden, who edited the volume, writes: For the present volume over two thousand poems by Clare have been considered and compared; of which over two-thirds have not been published.…