"Composed around 730 B.C., Homer's Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war. Carved close to the original...

The Aeneid, by Vergil, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.

Provides in-depth analysis of the literary work The Faerie Queene, as well as its importance and critical reception. Includes a chronology of the life and works of the author.

A continuation of the author's Autobiography of red (1998), following the characters in later life, but in a different style and with changed names.

Provides in-depth analysis of the epic poem Beowulf.

The first publication of a previously unknown narrative poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England's legendary hero, King Arthur.

Written a thousand years ago, this long poem is the very first surviving piece of English literature. Join Beowulf, a young warrior, as he achieves glory by fighting and killing three fantastic monsters. This new translation, by the Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney, offers modern readers an accessible, intensely dramatic text. It amply demonstrates why this epic has spread its influence over more than a millennium of literature.