Burton Raffel

It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this 'optimism' concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the 'all for the best' approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters - such as the recent earthquakes in Lima and Lisbon - not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging...

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (French: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua (/ɡɑːrˈɡæntʃuːə/; French: [ɡaʁ.ɡɑ̃.ty.a]) and his son Pantagruel (/pænˈtæɡruːˌɛl, -əl, ˌpæntəˈɡruːəl/; French: [pɑ̃.ta.ɡʁy.ɛl]). The text is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and...

Presents the complete text to William Shakespeare's play "King Lear" with an easy-to-understand translation on facing pages, helping students better understand the work and its meaning.

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...

Presents Shakespeare's drama about a man who kills the king of Scotland in order to claim the throne for himself, and includes explanatory notes, plot summaries, a key to notable lines and phrases, and other reference information.

The Merchant of Venice is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition includes new and revised activities throughout, new black and white photos from the widest selection of stage and film interpretations of the plays, and a larger glossary providing extra support with the language of Shakespeare. In addition, expanded sections on characters, language,...