The Athenian Spy Discovering The Secret Letters Which Were Sent To The Athenian Society By The Most Ingenious Ladies Of The Three Kingdoms Relating To The Management Of Their Affections Being A Curious System Of Love Cases Platonic And Natural Etc

Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation? Mrs. Aldwinkle, an English aristocrat of a certain age, has purchased a mansion in the Italian countryside. She wishes to bring a salon of intellectual luminaries into her orbit, and to that end she invites a strange cast of characters to spend time with her in her palazzo: Irene, her young niece; Ms. Thriplow, a governess-turned-novelist; Mr. Calamy, a handsome young man of great privilege and even greater ennui; Mr. Cardan, a worldly gentleman whose main talent seems to be the enjoyment of life; Hovenden, a young motorcar-obsessed lord with a speech impediment; and Mr. Falx, a socialist leader. To this unlikely cast is soon added Mr. Chelifer, an author with an especially florid, overwrought style that is wasted on his day job as editor of The Rabbit Fancier’s Gazette, and the Elvers, a scheming brother who is the guardian of his mentally-challenged sister. As this unlikely group mingles, they discuss a great many grand topics: love, art, language, life, culture. Yet very early on the reader comes to realize that behind the pompousness of their elaborate discussions lies nothing but vacuity—these characters are a satire of the self-important intellectuals of Huxley’s era. His skewering of their intellectual barrenness continues as the group moves on to a trip around the surrounding country, in a satire of the Grand Tour tradition. The party brings their English snobbery out in full force as they traipse around Rome, sure of nothing else except in their belief that Italy is culturally superior simply because it’s Italy. As the vacation winds down, we’re left with a biting lampoon of the elites who suppose themselves to be at the height of art and culture—the kinds of personalities that arise in every generation, sure of their own greatness but unable to actually contribute anything to the world of art and culture that they feel is so important.

Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

I, Chariton of Aphrodisias, secretary of the rhetor Athenagorus, shall relate a love story that took place in Syracuse. Thus begins the earliest of the canonical Greek romances, the 1st century CE historical novel known as Callirhoe. Chariton's erotic tale is about the constancy of love in a world where virtue is always in danger of being corrupted. Chaereas and Callirhoe fall in love, but then are tragically separated after the heroine, believed dead, is buried alive. Each is eventually sold into slavery in the East, and Callirhoe herself contemplates the abortion of her unborn child when she is forced to marry a man she does not love. Hero and heroine are finally reunited in the foreign city of Babylon, only to be plunged into a war between Persia and Egypt.Classical Athenian historiography, philosophy, oratory, myth and drama were all integral in shaping this timely work of fiction set in the years following Athens' doomed Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BC). Chariton's novel is more, though, than just a romanticized representation of a famous episode from Greek history. The novel is clearly meant to be read for pleasure, but it also has a political edge. By imaginatively redeploying Athenian literature and political discourse in the construction of his fictional world, Chariton gives voice to contemporary concerns about freedom, tyranny, the ever-expanding meaning of Greek identity, and the role of Greek culture in a world dominated by Rome. This is a book that will be of value to anyone interested in Greek literature, the classical tradition, and the complex relationship between art and empire.