Continental European category: 7816 books

Rainer Maria Rilke, the most famous (and important) German language poet of the twentieth century - a master to be ranked with Goethe and Heine - wrote the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 in transition from his late-nineteenth-century style. They mark his appearance as a lyrical, metaphysical poet of the...

Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His major works include Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler,...

The first comprehensive study of the women in Ibsen’s life and work, this landmark book provides a close reading of actual and fictional women as it re-examines the biographical and critical record. In clear, much praised writing, Templeton traces patterns of gender throughout Ibsen’s plays, from...

Often compared to Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Poe, called Lautreamont's "elder brother" by the Czech Surrealists, Karel Hynek Mácha (1810-36) was the greatest Czech Romantic poet, and arguably the most influential of any poet in the language. May, his epic masterpiece, was published in April...

The Polish national epic, one of the great works of European Romanticism, by Adam Mickiewicz. Its bucolic, patriotic, and folkloristic descriptions of life and war in early nineteenth century Poland have served as a focus of national literary identification since its first publication. I

Ana Blandiana is one of Romania’s foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now her country’s strongest candidate for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceausescu regime, Blandiana became known for her daring, outspoken poems as well as for her courageous...

Inger Christensen (1935-2009) was both a virtuoso and a paradox. Her fiction, drama, essays and children’s books won her wide acclaim in Denmark and other European countries, but it is her poetry – spanning a forty-year period – that best reveals her versatility and depth. Her poetry reflects...

Bienvenue dans la collection Les Fiches de lecture d’Universalis Après le succès remporté par La Jeune Parque (1917), Paul Valéry, plébiscité en 1921 comme le plus grand poète contemporain, publie Charmes le 25 juin 1922 ; le titre du recueil est un hommage aux poèmes de l’Antiquité...

Here are three French plays from the Enlightenment Period dealing with the subject of slavery. ISLE OF SLAVES, by Pierre de Marivaux, is the longest and most challenging of the three. It postulates an island in the ancient Greek world where the slaves have revolted and seized power, killing all of their...

Robert Durling's spirited new prose translation of the Paradiso completes his masterful rendering of the Divine Comedy. Durling's earlier translations of the Inferno and the Purgatorio garnered high praise, and with this superb version of the Paradiso readers can now traverse the entirety of Dante's...

The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–90) was one of the most important literary figures of the second half of the twentieth century. During the years of the cold war, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre, and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. Yet outside Europe, this...

Dante's Divine Comedy played a dual role in its relation to Italian Renaissance culture, actively shaping the fabric of that culture and, at the same time, being shaped by it. This productive relationship is examined in Commentary and Ideology, Deborah Parker's thorough compendium on the reception...

C. P. Cavafy is one of the most singular and poignant voices of twentieth-century European poetry, conjuring a magical interior world through lyrical evocations of remembered passions, imagined monologues and dramatic retellings of his native Alexandria’s ancient past. Figures from antiquity speak...

Described by Robert Hass as "unquestionably one of the great living European poets" and by Charles Simic as "one of the finest poets living today," Szymborska mesmerizes her readers with poetry that captivates their minds and captures their hearts. This is the book that her many...