Burton Raffel

An elaborate parody written by the French Renaissance humanist, writer, Greek scholar, and physician Francois Rabelais, "Gargantua and Pantagruel" is a comic blend of energetic realism and carnival fantasy. First published in1532, "Gargantua and Pantagruel" relates the fantastical tales of its titular characters, Gargantua, a giant who becomes a sophisticated and cultured Christian knight, and his son Pantagruel, also a giant, who grows into a learned...

"In this new translation of Voltaire's Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novel's irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that - had Voltaire been a twenty-first-century American - he might himself have employed. The translation is immediate and unencumbered, and for the first time makes Voltaire the satirist a wicked pleasure for...

"Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays and also one of his most romantic. A young noblewoman, Viola, shipwrecked in a foreign land and separated from her twin brother, dresses as a man in order to enter the service of Orsino, duke of Illyria. Complications ensue - deceptions, infatuations, misdirected overtures, malevolent pranks - as everyone is drawn into the hilarious confusion." "Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers...

A team of six eminent scholars who have, along with the general editors themselves, prepared new introductions and notes to all of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Redesigned in an easy-to-read format that preserves the favorite features of the original--and including an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, and introduction to the individual play, and a note on the text used--the new Pelican Shakespeare will be an excellent resource for students,...

"Lively, absorbing, often outrageously funny, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a work of genius, an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for each generation of readers. The Tales gathers twenty-nine of literature’s most enduring (and endearing) characters in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of medieval society, from the exalted Knight to the humble Plowman."--

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with discussion questions, role-playing scenarios, and other study activities.

"SIGNATURE SHAKESPEARE SERIES Featuring remarkable laser-cut paper designs throughout, this new series offers stunning presentations of Shakespeare's plays, complete with scholarship, commentary, notes, and illustrated essays about Shakespeare's language and performances of the play. It's a keepsake package worthy of the greatest, and most loved, playwright in the English language. Each volume in the Signature Shakespeare series includes: - Illustration:...