Showing titles in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

The epic story of this hero’s battle against dragons, monsters, and their mothers is particularly suited to being recorded as an audiobook given that for the first 300 years of its existence it was only ever spoken. The first known (and indeed the only surviving manuscript) of the poem was written in AD 1,000. It survived Henry VIII’s attempts to destroy it (as a religious artifact) and a catastrophic fire that destroyed many other historical British documents.

Der Fall Trojas, die Irrfahrten des Aeneas, der Schmerz Didos, als Aeneas sie verlässt, Aeneas Gang in den Hades und vieles mehr: Vergil erschuf in der Aeneis Bilder und Geschichten, die bis zum heutigen Tag die Welt begeistern, faszinieren und, ja, auch amüsieren.

The multi-award winning SmartPass full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the play.

In dieser griechischen Sage wird Apollon, der Gott des Lichts, von Göttervater Zeus gezwungen, einem sterblichen Menschen zu dienen. Er wählt den gütigen Admetos aus. Als der Tag dessen Todes naht, belohnt Apollon ihn für seine Großherzigkeit indem er einen Stellvertreter in den Tod schickt. Nachdem Admetos' Vater Pheres abgelehnt hat, für seinen Sohn zu sterben, erklärt sich seine Frau Alkestis bereit, diesen Schritt zu gehen. Bald bereut Admetos es, seine Frau gehen zu lassen.

Discover the genius of William Shakespeare in this entertaining and educational full-cast drama, designed to whet the appetite and introduce you to the man, the life, the legacy. Includes key scenes from the major plays.

The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. It is a masterpiece whose story was well known to the audiences of the time. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it. Its author, Apollonius, was a well-known third century BC scholar living in Alexandria during the great age of Ptolomaic scholarship, and his bold attempt at writing a Homeric epic about Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece faced a daunting audience of knowledgeable contemporaries.

The Legends of King Arthur & His Knights is an enthralling audio book read in an easily digestible format. Bringing together the many tales of the legend of King Arthur into one audio book, Sir James Knowles' descriptive narrative will transport you to times gone by.

In Oedipus at Colonus, the banished king, after years of wandering, accompanied by his faithful daughter Antigone, finds himself in Athens. Receiving a warm if guarded welcome from Theseus, King of Athens, he prepares to settle himself to spend his last days in peace. However, unwelcome visitors from his tortured past continue to haunt him until the very end.

Here are the most exciting and essential parts of two historic, epic poems: the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". The ancient words of Homer find a new home in today's world - spoken aloud, just as Homer intended. Translated by Stanley Lombardo.

Six phenomenally sophisticated Noël Coward comedies: Fallen Angels, Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter.

Blackstone Audio presents a new recording of this classic masterpiece, originally published in 1320, read by award-winning narrator Ralph Cosham. No words can describe the greatness of this work, a greatness both of theme and of artistry. Dante’s theme is universal; it involves the greatest...

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of 45 poems by English poet William Blake. "Songs of Innocence" is the first part of the collection and appeared in 1789 with engraved illustrations by Blake. The second part, "Songs of Experience", also illustrated, was added in 1794 when Blake published the whole under the full title of Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. 

A modern adaptation of The Oresteia of Aeschylus, the only surviving ancient Athenian trilogy. Across three plays, Greece's first major playwright tells the story of the cursed House of Atreus, where the bloody sins of the family's ancestors are visited upon four succeeding generations. After a series of horrific past crimes by his ancestors, Orestes is driven to matricide and for that is relentlessly pursued by the Furies, underworld demons intent on revenging the spirit of his mother.

According to George Bernard Shaw, Joan of Arc was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was one of the first apostles of nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare. She also refused to accept the specific woman's lot, and dressed and fought and lived as men did. Shaw's exploration of the story of this ingenuous and eponymous heroine is set in six scenes and an epilogue, which takes place in 1456, when the church cleared Joan of the charge of heresy and condemned her accusers of corruption.

The Nature of Things was written in the 1st century BC by Roman polymath Lucretius. It is written as a didactic poem, and explains Epicurean physics.

In 17th-century Sicily, a clever valet named Mascarille tries to help his boss, Lélie, win the girl of his dreams – only to find that Lélie is a monumental dunce who ruins every one of his intricate schemes. Undaunted, Mascarille invents progressively wilder plots, only to see his best-laid plans go very awry in Molière’s The Bungler, translated by Richard Wilbur.

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was the most controversial dramatist of his age. Most of his work focuses on the ubiquity and inevitably corrupting influence of sexual attraction. His most famous plays are the two that depict the rise, fall, and eventual gruesome death of the vampish Lulu, who, in Wedekind’s presentation, became a ghastly parody of Goethe’s “Eternal Feminine”. The first of the plays is Earth Spirit, in which Lulu marries and survives three husbands, only to face prosecution for the shooting of the third.

This BBC Radio production stars much-loved actor and comedian Lenny Henry, who won the Evening Standard’s Best Newcomer Award for his stunning performance as the tortured Moor. First performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, it subsequently toured the country before arriving in London’s West End where Henry received rave reviews.

This famous work by Lucretius is a masterpiece of didactic poetry, and it still stands today as the finest exposition of Epicurean philosophy ever written. The poem was produced in the middle of first century B.C., a period that was to witness a flowering of Latin literature unequaled for beauty and intellectual power in subsequent ages. The Latin title, De Rerum Natura, translates literally to On the Nature of Things and is meant to impress the reader with the breadth and depth of Epicurean philosophy.

The Online Stage presents Shakespeare’s most famous and most quoted play, a revenge drama which explores the inevitable conflict between conscience and justice, between morality and obligation. The tragedy arises, not from an obvious weakness in the character of Hamlet, but rather from his inability to deal with an apparently insoluble moral dilemma.