Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

The plot follows the usual trajectory of a young girl falling in love and the relationship becoming compromised by unforeseen circumstances. In this case, Austen’s heroine is a naïve country girl, Catherine Morland, who has an addiction to reading the Gothic horror novels which were so popular in the Regency period. When she is invited to stay at the family seat of her love interest and discovers it to be a vast and ancient castle, her romantic imagination runs riot. What secrets lie hidden in this vast pile over which the widowed head of the house exercises an iron control?

First published in 1872, The Martyrdom of Man has been described as the first synoptic history of mankind. It was one of the first surveys of history based on the then-controversial principle of organic evolution. The book received a very mixed reception: Cecil Rhodes lauded the work, stating that it had "made him the man he was", while William Ewart Gladstone stated that it was so dangerous that it should be banned.

Queen Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most powerful women of her age. Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor, and women's virtue.

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.

Thomas Troward was a divisional Judge in British-administered India, who had a particular interest in the study of comparative religion. The major influence on his thinking, as well as on his writing, was the Bible, although he also considered the elements of ancient Mesopotamian religions, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism in his deliberations. After his retirement from the judiciary in 1896, Troward applied himself to the study of cause and effect in the spiritual realms using the principles of judicial investigation.

First published in 1847, Jane Eyre was the last and most popular of the novels composed by the Brontë sisters. The narrative bristles with energy and passionate conviction, and is one of the first novels written from the perspective of a child.

After his soul-searing journey through the torments of hell, Dante is led by his guide, Virgil, to the frontier of Purgatory, depicted as a vast mountain that represents the sole piece of land in the Southern Hemisphere. The pair slowly make their way up the mountain, at the top of which is the fabled earthly paradise. As they climb they meet repentant sinners whose curative punishments are often no less severe than those inflicted in hell.

In this short treatise, New Thought author Christian Larson discusses the power of the subconscious mind and the importance of establishing a working relationship with it. In the words of the author: "What is produced in the within will invariably come forth into expression in the personality; therefore, by knowing how to impress the subconscious, man may give his personal self any quality desired, and in any quantity desired."

While he is most famous for his didactic fable, The Prophet, the works of Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) address a wide range of philosophical and social issues. The overriding theme of his narratives is not the religious universalism that he is supposed to represent, but rather the inevitable conflict between human aspirations and the remorseless machinations of fate.

In the Greek legend, a sculptor, Pygmalion, created a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it. Later the goddess Aphrodite responded to his earnest prayers and brought the statue, named Galatea, to life. Shaw's Pygmalion is a fussy unmarried professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, who claims that he could train an uneducated person off the street to speak so that he or she could pass as a member of the aristocracy. His Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, who sells flowers at Covent Garden and whose father is a dissipated but cunning vagrant.

This collection of bush ballads, published in 1895, contains some of the most iconic pieces of Australian poetry and has served as the source material for many paintings, films, and stage presentations.

This pacifist manifesto was published in 1917, as the First World War was dragging to a close. The resolution of this catastrophic conflict resulted in a reconstruction of Europe, the fallout from which led to an even more cataclysmic war. Russell delineates the problem as being due to the institutionalizing of national hostilities and the consequent apportioning of blame among the warring parties. In his exposition Russell considers the roles played by a number of institutions, social and political, reserving some his sharpest criticism for organized religion.

Troward delivered these lectures at the Doré Gallery, Bond Street, London, in 1909. They were published in book form in the same year. Troward's basic thesis is that while the laws of the universe can never be broken, they can be made to work under special conditions, which will produce unexpected and remarkable results. The achievement of these results require the activation of what Troward terms the "personal factor", that, namely, of an intelligence which sees beyond the present limited manifestation of the law and thus enables the exploration of its infinite possibilities.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, the English poet Francis Thompson (1859-1907) was a true mystic. While more celebrated poets, like Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Arnold, were content to express their religious leanings in traditional devotional formulae, Thompson strove to portray the divine directly, in all its terrifying majesty. In this way he is more akin to earlier masters, like Henry Vaughan and George Herbert, than to the poets of his own day.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is best known as the cofounder of theosophy, which is essentially a selective conflation of Hindu and Buddhist ideas combined with Blavatsky's idiosyncratic system of cosmology. The Voice of the Silence, first published in 1889, is described by the author as "chosen fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts, for the daily use of disciples".

Keats commenced writing his epic poem, Hyperion, in 1818 and ceased working on it in the spring of 1819. He said that he gave the project up for having "too many Miltonic inversions." The unfinished poem, which ceases in the middle of the third canto, was published in 1820. The narrative is based on the Titanomachia, or War of the Titans, and describes the aftermath of their fall to the Olympian Gods.

This collection arguably contains some of the most charming lyrics ever written in English. Blake’s poems can be enjoyed, not only for their historical importance in an age which was fiercely proud of its genius and its traditions, but also for their simple and beautiful expression of “two contrary states of the human soul.” Songs of Innocence was originally a complete collection of twenty-three poems, first printed in 1789. In 1794, a composite collection entitled Songs of Innocence and of Experience, containing forty-seven poems, was published.

As the Enlightenment movement was gathering strength in the early 18th century, various challenges to established religious faith were launched. In response, a number of celebrated commentators produced defences of religion and morality, and among these was Alexander Pope, who was inspired to write "some pieces on Human Life and Manners." The result was a collection of poems in rhyming couplets, designated "Epistles", which were published in instalments.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a poetic marvel, a work that has survived translation into many languages, while losing little of its force and its wry character. As a source of literary imagery and memorable quotations it ranks with the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. While Edward Fitzgerald was neither the first nor the most scholarly of the English translators of the Rubaiyat, his translation has been largely responsible for the world-wide popularity of this monument of classic Persian poetry.

Although he was well known as an authority on spiritual traditions, Paul Carus was unusual in that he refused to align himself with any particular form of organized religion. In any case, his universalist view of God would probably have put him outside the allowable boundaries of Christian belief. Carus was particularly active in raising awareness of Eastern spiritual traditions in the West.