Showing results for "Digital Inclusion" in Satire

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

Brought to you by Penguin. No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George...

A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.

Partisan de la position allongée, Oblomov ne trouve le bonheur que dans le sommeil. Ni son ami Stolz, incarnation de l'énergie et de l'esprit d'entreprise, ni la belle Olga avec qui se nouera l'embryon d'une idylle, ne parviendront à le tirer de sa léthargie. Entreprendre et aimer sont décidément choses trop fatigantes. Grand roman de mœurs, Oblomov offre une satire mordante des petits fonctionnaires et des barines russes.

This motley crew of “Pickwickians” is led by Samuel Pickwick, the philosopher without any great ideas. He is joined by Tracy Tupman, the romantic who cannot hold down a relationship; Augustus Snodgrass, the poet who has never written poetry; and Nathaniel Winkle, the sportsman without any skill. Together, they encounter a series of misadventures that will leave listeners laughing out loud.

Artie Kipps is destined at the tender age of fourteen for a life of drudgery in the drapery trade … until he unexpectedly inherits a fortune from a grandfather he never knew existed! Enter: A whisky-drinking actor and playwright who persuades Kipps to invest in his play! A down-on-their-luck mother and daughter who promptly see Kipps as a means to escape their (comparative) poverty! Plenty of patronizing, unthinking social snobs!

Gulliver’s Travels takes listeners on an adventure to fictional and real places in the world, with fantastical elements such as a society of tiny people, flying cities, and the ghosts of ancient world leaders. Gulliver’s adventure takes him all over, and each location is uniquely themed and satirizes themes from our real world.

Penguin Classics presents Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, adapted for audio and available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by Steven Pacey. 'I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous...

A Parody Outline of History is hilarious but scathing anti-war satire of The Outline of History (1920) by H. G. Wells, written by Donald Ogden Stewart, in the styles of popular authors of the day, and first published in 1921 only a year after World War I ended. This ear-popping audio dramatization was produced and voiced by Joe Bevilacqua (aka Joe Bev) - enhanced with music and sound effects - in the style of the popular performers of 1920s and 30s, including The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne.

One of the most popular novels released in the 1920s on the hedonistic Jazz Age, Gentlement Prefer Blondes was declared "the great American novel" by Edith Wharton. Told from the point of view of a blonde flapper named Lorelei in the form of her diary, this novel follows her adventures around the world in search of a gentleman companion who can elevate her position within society. As Lorelei cycles through multiple men, she discovers things about herself and the way that she lives her life in retrospection....

Ein englischer Geschäftsmann, Mr Wood, hat einen glorreichen Einfall, wie er den Iren ihr Geld auf ebenso geschickte wie schamlose Art und Weise legal aus deren Taschen ziehen kann. Jedoch hat er nicht damit gerechnet, dass Mr. Jonathan Swift seinen durch höchste britische Stellen abgesegneten Beutezug durchschauen würde.

The full title of Swift's pamphlet is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burtden to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick."The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed.

In one of the most well-known works of satire, Jonathan Swift puts forth a “modest proposal”. Swift begins by outlining the suffering that the starving beggars in Ireland experience daily. He paints a grim picture of the plight these people face to help the listener relate to the situation before turning the tables and suggesting that to alleviate the economic troubles of the poor, their children could be sold as food to the upper class. The shock from this sudden change is expounded by Swift’s continued explanation of the proposal.