Showing results by narrator "Charlton Griffin" in All Categories

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is one of the most beautiful and celebrated of all English poems. It is also the precursor of what would become the artistic movement known as Romanticism. In addition to this masterpiece, this recording includes some of Coleridge's finest poems, including the haunting "Kubla Kahn" and "Christabel."

If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.

One of the most remarkable historical works of the 19th century came from the pen of French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a native of Paris. This amazing analysis of family and religious life among the ancient Greeks and Romans is the key to understanding ancient Mediterranean civilizations. The story begins in the misty period of the Bronze Age as the Indo-Europeans began to filter down into the Italian and Greek peninsulas. They brought with them a patriarchy that was based on ancestor worship and the veneration of hearth gods.

Ancient Greece was the most fascinating and influential civilization of all time, and this concise history tells you why. From the Myceneans and Minoans to the Spartans and Athenians, the full panoply of Greek civilization is represented in this short work. And there is hardly any aspect of importance in our own civilization today which cannot point to its origin in that great Aegean society of city states and warrior tribes.

Volume two in this series consists of one novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and two collections of short stories, which include "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (a total of 23 stories). These creations by Doyle represent the finest work of his Holmes series, and certainly the most famous.

A history of the Crusades. Out of the chaos of Muslim tribal warfare and regional animosity arose a military genius such as Islam had never known: Saladin. Uniting the sultanates of Cairo and Damascus, Saladin created a single powerful state. Luring the crusaders into an ill-considered confrontation, he destroyed their army at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, leaving the few remaining crusaders clinging perilously to a series of towns and forts along the Levantine coast. Into this desperate situation stepped the most formidable warrior of the age, Richard the Lion-Hearted.

Virgil's Georgics ranks as one of the most precious pastoral poems ever written, and it has served as a model for its type ever since. Georgics means "of or relating to agriculture or rural life" and it comes from the Greek word, "georgicus". Virgil's main theme in this, his second great work after The Eclogues, was the importance of peace both in the spiritual and physical sense.

German short stories began in the late 18th century as brief, beautifully written moral fables. In the following century, style evolved toward realism in parallel with that of other European literature. From the lofty idealism of Goethe to the searing verisimilitude of Mann, German writers of all styles have left us some of the most arresting profiles of the human condition ever conceived.

The exemplary life of a noble soldier/statesman, a description of ancient Germany, and a discussion of oratory are the subjects of three short masterpieces by the brilliant Roman historian, Tacitus.

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 1975), a native of Guildford, England, was probably the greatest writer of comedy in the 20th century. With each passing year, his work continues to grow in popularity. Jeeves, the omniscient, highly competent valet, and Bertie Wooster, the upper-class, feather-brained gadabout, are his two most famous creations. His stories are generally characterized by intricate plots dealing with human foibles and complex, romantic entanglements.

Somerset Maugham set out on an extraordinary trip in September of 1922. He would remain abroad for nine months and end up traveling by canoe, riverboat, rickshaw and mule from Rangoon to Mandalay in Upper Burma, down through Thailand to Bangkok, then to Phnom Penh and across the jungle by river to Angkor Wat. From there he went down river to Saigon, then by ship to Hue and Haiphong. He ends the audiobook with an anecdotal story of his fellow passengers while on shipboard to Haiphong.

By the end of Diocletian's reign in the opening years of the fourth century, the pagan world had collapsed into the arms of a multicultural religious movement which had spread from the eastern Mediterranean. These were the "mystery religions" which had been in competition with one another for a century. By the time of Constantine, they had spread everywhere within the empire. But one of these religions, Christianity, was chosen by the young emperor.

19th century Europe produced some of the greatest soldiers, statesmen, scientists, artists, and thinkers of any period in recorded history. And by the middle of that century nationalism had emerged triumphant from Ireland to Greece, and many new nations, including Germany and Italy, had appeared. But nationalism was accompanied by a chauvinistic impulse toward militarism.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the greatest lyric poets of the English language. But his early work as a writer went unrecognized, and he was forced to earn his living in the newspaper business, working as an editor in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. Although he was respected as a literary critic, his poetry and short stories were neglected until the publication of The Raven and Other Poems in 1845, which propelled him to instant fame.

Volume Five begins on an optimistic note. The French recognition of the United States on February 6, 1778, along with the promise of military assistance, renewed Washington’s confidence in eventual success. But before that day arrived in 1781, three years of hardship, privation, and suspense would intervene. Throughout this ordeal George Washington’s towering presence was the catalyst that kept everything together.

Beginning in Ionia in 498 BC with the burning of the Lydian capital, Sardis, the story of Lars Turms sweeps across the Mediterranean to Delphi, Athens, then Sicily, before finally ending in Rome and ancient Etruria. Along the way, we encounter Greek warriors and pirates, Carthaginian merchants and princes, strange priests and priestesses, and trading centers, great and small. It is a fascinating glimpse of a world on the verge of wrenching change. Few cultures will survive unscathed.

Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, was one of the most remarkable men of the 18th century. Born the son of strict disciplinarian Frederick William I in 1712, he was a most precocious and obstinate young man, and until he actually became king, he never exhibited any signs of becoming a military genius. But the young king displayed an amazing aptitude for military life and plunged into war with Austria over the long-disputed province of Silesia.

It is an undoubted fact that the message of Vivekananda has influenced, inspired, and transformed thousands of lives. Here are some quotations from the great spiritual leader for the benefit of those who do not have time to go through his voluminous writings and speeches so that they may get at least a partial glimpse of the strength and sublimity of his teachings. Listeners should be aware that Vivekananda spoke to a wide variety of students and followers, whose religions, cultures, and national origins differed widely.

The sonnets are a collection numbering 154 poems dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. They were probably written over a long period of Shakespeare's life up until 1609, when they were first printed. The first 17 poems, traditionally referred to as the "procreation sonnets", are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it on to his descendants.

Animal Farm is an allegorical satire of the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell described the book as a satirical tale against Stalin and went on to say that it was the first book in which he tried “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”. All of the leading figures involved in this period are parodied as various animals.