検索キーワード： ナレーター "Linda Barrans" すべてのカテゴリー

Despite its patina of humor, the work is a merciless exposé of the commercial middle class dishonesty, and the convenient immorality hiding behind social conventions, which are characteristic of a developing urban society. The most noble character, Serafima, is a compelling mixture of naïveté, whimsicality, sentimentality, and obstinate practicality - one of the finest character portraits in Russian drama.

The story concerns the young and vivacious Emma Watson, one of six children of a widowed clergyman. Emma has spent most of her life under the care of a wealthy aunt of liberal views, and has received a good education. However, when her aunt enters into a second marriage, Emma is forced to return to the family home, where she is affronted by the crass hunting for husbands undertaken her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

The unlikely heroine of this novel is the bashful and unadventurous Fanny Price, who occupies a Cinderella-like position in the residence of her wealthy cousins, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park. Fanny is the butt of ridicule for the young Bertram sisters (Maria and Julia), and is relentlessly bullied by her manipulative and penny-pinching aunt, the widowed Mrs Norris.

In As You Like It, a wicked Duke expels his virtuous brother, the lawful ruler, from his domains. The banished Duke takes refuge with his followers in the Forest of Arden, where they live as free a life as did Robin Hood and his merry men.

Many of the stories in this book seem at the same time both familiar and strange. Their authors valued family, duty, patience and heroism. They longed for children in their old age, and rejoiced when they saw cruelty and envy punished, wrongs righted, and kindness and bravery rewarded.

When the tale begins, a strange and sudden malady is claiming the lives of the local peasants in Styria. Laura, an innocent girl of eighteen, lives a lonely life there with her loving father and two governesses. Then a dramatic coach crash on Laura’s doorstep brings a mysterious, beautiful, but languorous young woman to stay with them. This is Carmilla.

Lady Susan Vernon, middle-aged and recently widowed, has retained her looks and appealing vivacity. She makes use of her bereavement and her loss of wealth by imposing herself on the hospitality of relatives, and by amusing herself in flirtation with the various men who fall under her spell. Lady Susan has a daughter, Frederica, who is bashful and innocent—in stark contrast to her unfeeling and manipulative mother. Her mother is anxious to marry Frederica off to a spouse of appropriate wealth and social standing, and also, perhaps, to capture a new mate for herself.

Sam the sheep is having a hard time. He is pining for Ava the fox, and his actor friends are away performing their play without him. What’s more, someone has decided to build a Community Center in the next field, and the noise is simply terrible. One of the builders has deeply offended Morag the Tabby Cat, and she is starting a Resistance movement – though why she thinks there are gorillas in the field is anybody’s guess.

Persuasion was the last novel completed by Jane Austen and was first published posthumously in December, 1817. The story represents an interesting configuration of Austen’s characteristic narrative patterns. The heroine, Anne Eliot, is something of an old maid—she is twenty-seven years old, still single and is considered by family and friends to have lost her youthful beauty. Several years earlier, her engagement to Captain Frederick Wentworth had been broken off, due to the insistence of her family that the Captain lacked the wealth and status needed for a suitable husband.

The novel opens with Mr. and Mrs. Parker’s visit to Sanditon, a village on the coast of Sussex. Sanditon is being developed into a bathing-place under the patronage of the two principal proprietors of the parish, Mr. Parker and Lady Denham. Mr. Parker suffers an injury and receives assistance from a local farmer, Mr. Heywood. The latter’s daughter, Charlotte, is of marriageable age and has three eligible suitors: Lady Denham’s foppish son, Sir Edward; Mr. Parker’s devil-may care brother, Sydney; and Arthur, who is an unemployed hypochondriac.

Shakespeare’s history plays fall into two categories: political dramas and propagandistic pageants. The second category is comprised of the two plays in this presentation, Henry V and Henry VIII.

Few of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime. Her posthumous fame is largely due to the efforts of her editors and supporters Thomas W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

Jane Austen commenced writing in her adolescence and continued right up to her untimely death in 1817. Her novels are reflections of the socially constricted world in which she lived, and the plots are built around the search of one or more young women for a suitable spouse. Austen’s works are noted for the perceptive elegance of her prose and for vigor and detail of characterization. Celebrated critic F. R. Leavis considered Austen as one of the four great English novelists, along with George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad.