検索キーワード： ナレーター "Denis Daly" 文学・フィクション

Unlike most of Peacock's novels, The Misfortunes of Elphin has a distinct plot, built around the adventures of prominent figures of Arthurian legend, like Taliesin, the bard, the princes Elphin, and Seithenyn and King Arthur himself. The drama comes to a satisfactory resolution when Arthur's wife, Gwenyvar, who has been kidnapped by the ambitious King Melvas, is restored to her husband, after some skilful negotiation by Seithenyn and a cunning abbot.

Unlike Peacock's other novels, Maid Marian has a substantial plot, based on the romantic legend of Robin Hood. As is usual with Peacock, the violence is presented in a rather humorous fashion and the characters indulge lavishly in eating and drinking. Beneath the veneer of this well-known and innocuous narrative, Peacock finds ample opportunity to satirize the foibles of church and secular government.

The melodramatic romance by Goethe The Sorrows of the Young Werther, the story of a troubled aesthete who kills himself for love, was first published in 1774 and has since become one of the staples of German literature. Such extravagant productions lend themselves readily to parody and naturally attracted the attention of skilled satirists like Thomas Love Peacock.

Headlong Hall was the first of his seven novels, all of which display the same structure. There is a faint semblance of a plot, which is merely a device to bring together a bunch of voluble eccentrics, who converse on a wide range of topical issues. Headlong Hall is the rural seat of the ebullient Squire Headlong, who invites a number of philosophers, a clergyman, a musician, a novelist, and a phrenologist, to dine with him and share their views.

These four poems, which deal with ethical issues, were collated and published in 1751 by William Warburton, seven years after Pope's death.

Horses and horse racing have been staple themes in classic Australian fiction, and feature prominently in the works of iconic authors like Henry Lawson and “Banjo” Paterson. In this collection of six stories, Rolf Boldrewood provides vivid pictures of the days when horses and horse-drawn transport were intimately involved in daily life in both city and country.

Pope's mastery of the heroic couplet and his perceptive wit are apparent in the many epigrams and epitaphs that he composed. The subjects of these snippets of verse are widely varied, ranging from encomiums to great celebrities like Sir Isaac Newton to witty soupçons, like that attached to the collar of a dog that the poet gave to Prince George (later King George II).

This is a collection of short stories by well-known Australian author, Mary Grant Bruce (1878-1958). It combines the stories previously published as “Australian Christmas Yarns Volumes I & II”, with the addition of three previously unreleased stories.

The Martians, finding the resources on their own planet dwindling dramatically, decided to invade and colonize Earth. They land in England and quickly establish control through their vastly superior military technology. The narrative focuses on the wanderings and deliberations of the narrator as he wanders around the country seeking refuge from the remorseless invaders. Two of the most significant characters he encounters are a curate and an artilleryman, neither of whom has an effective approach to dealing with the crisis.

The Invisible Man was the fourth sci-fi novel written by Wells in the 1890s. The main character, Griffin, is one of the intimidating villains in all popular literature. The archetypal "mad scientist," Griffin devotes himself to an obsessive study of optics and realizes his ambition to render livings things permanently invisible. After making a cat invisible, he successfully applies the procedure to himself. After causing chaos in London, he travels to the village of Iping in Sussex and takes up residence in a local hotel.

This collection was published posthumously in 1869 under the title of Petits Poèmes En Prose, but is also known as Le Spleen de Paris. A prime influence was Gaspard de la Nuit, the prose poem collection by Aloysius Bertrand. Baudelaire described these short pieces as experiments, and also "confessions." The poet was seeking to create "the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of the soul, the wavering outlines of meditation, the sudden starts of the conscience."

Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French naval officer, traveler, and novelist. Many of his novels deal with exotic themes, drawn from the author's experiences in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. Lives of Two Cats, first published in 1900, is an affectionate memoir about two cats who were cared for by the author's mother and aunt during his extended periods of travel.

Thomas Love Peacock was a linguist, scholar and East India Company official. He had a wide circle of literary friends, including Coleridge and Shelley, and his early works were poems, some of a considerable length. In 1815 his first novel, Headlong Hall, was published, and between that year and 1831, he published a further five novels. His final completed novel, Gryll Grange, was written in 1860 and published the following year. Peacock also produced a number of articles on literary and historical subjects, and some other long poems, which have faded into obscurity.

This poetic exploration of the subject of love was composed in Italy 1821, and published anonymously, as the poet wished its circulation to be restricted to the "esoteric few." The title means "concerning or about a little soul", the subject, in this case, being Shelley's inamorata of the time, Countess Teresa (designated "Emily" in the poem) Viviani, a young woman who was immured in the Convent of Saint Anna by her father. Shelley had had a number of contacts with her by letter and in person.

Despite living a short life, and having a relatively small output, John Keats (1795-1821) has become one of the most celebrated English poets. This brief biography covers the important events of his life and provides a charming portrait of one of the most appealing and tragic figures of English literature.

The Eve of St. Agnes was first published in 1820 in a collection containing many of Keat's best-known poems. Several of these were retellings of stories that were popular in the Middle Ages and earlier times.

In 1896, H.G Wells was stimulated to compose this dystopian fantasy about an obsessed scientist and his efforts to artificially accelerate the intellectual development of animals using bizarre medical procedures involving vivisection. Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818) is a poetic retelling of a story from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The poem relates the sad fate of two victims of youthful love. The aristocratic and nubile Isabella is intended for marriage to an eligible suitor but falls in love with the plebeian Lorenzo. Isabella's brothers murder Lorenzo and bury his body, the location of which is revealed to Isabella by a ghost. She exhumes the body and re-inters the head in a pot of basil.

Lamia is a narrative poem that reflects Keat's intensive exploration of Greek mythology. It first appeared in 1820 in a collection entitled Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems. The poem describes the search of the god Hermes for a beautiful nymph, during which he encounters Lamia, who is trapped in the form of a serpent. At her fervent request, Hermes transforms Lamia into a human form and she departs to pursue a liaison with her lover, the glamorous Corinthian youth, Lycias.

The focus in Melincourt is the operation of the "rotten borough" which corrupted the English electoral system until the reform bill of 1832. A rotten borough was a constituency that had been established by royal prerogative but had subsequently lost most of its population. Nevertheless, it still retained the right to have two representatives in the House of Commons. On the other hand, many population centers which had expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution were not entitled to any electoral representation.