One of the lesser known plays of the Greek tragedian Sophocles, "Electra" tells the tale of a young daughter's revenge for her father's death. Electra is one of the daughters of "Agamemnon," the leader of the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was killed by his wife's lover, and Electra wishes to avenge Agamemnon with the help of her twin brother Orestes. When she receives word that he is dead, Electra laments and fears she will not be able to avenge...

La opinión de Baudelaire sobre Madame Bovary es, sin duda, la que sigue manteniéndose hoy. Para él, como para nosotros ahora, Madame Bovary es una obra de arte. El artículo, que publica en la revista L'Artiste, en aquel, año de 1857, es un modelo de inteligencia crítica: "Una novela, ¡y qué novela! La más imparcial, la más leal". Él es el primero, y durante bastante tiempo el único, en afirmar que la dimensión moral del texto es secundaria,...

"The Electra of Euripides has the distinction of being, perhaps, the best abused, and, one might add, not the best understood, of ancient tragedies. "A singular monument of poetical, or rather unpoetical perversity;" "the very worst of all his pieces;" are, for instance, the phrases applied to it by Schlegel. Considering that he judged it by the standards of conventional classicism, he could scarcely have arrived at any different conclusion. For it...

Sophocles' Philoctetes begins with their arrival on the island. Odysseus explains to Neoptolemus that he must perform a shameful action in order to garner future glory - to take Philoctetes by tricking him with a false story while Odysseus hides. Neoptolemus is portrayed as an honorable boy, and so it takes some persuading to get him to play this part. To gain Philoctetes's trust, Neoptolemus tricks Philoctetes into thinking he hates Odysseus as well....

First published in English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 from its original Farsi, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a collection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. Omar Khayyam's poetry, which received very little international notoriety in its own day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald over seven...

Durante el otoño de 1912, en Praga, escribió Franz Kafka (1883-1924) La metamorfosis, la peripecia subterránea y literal de Gregor Samsa, un viajante de comercio que al despertarse una mañana "de un sueño lleno de pesadillas se encontró en su cama convertido en un bicho enorme". En pocos libros de Kafka queda tan explícito y tan nítido su mundo como en La metamorfosis, en la que el protagonista, convertido en bestia, sumido en la más absoluta...

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him; of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances....

"Measure for Measure," while listed among William Shakespeare's comedies, is doubtless among the darkest of his lighter works and remains one of the Bard's most popular plays. When the Duke of Vienna decides to go undercover in his own city, he leaves Angelo, his deputy, in charge and disguises himself as a monk to see how things progress in his absence. Angelo, who purports to be a man of honor and a stickler for the rules, arrests young Claudio...

Often recognized as the father of tragedy, this collection of plays by the ancient Greek soldier and playwright Aeschylus is a testament to his skill and enduring legacy in the history of theatre. In "Suppliant Maidens," the fifty daughters of Danaus flee from marriages to the fifty sons of their uncle, showing an obedience to their father that has tragic consequences. "The Persians", thought to be the oldest surviving play in the history of drama,...

Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. "The Frogs and Other Plays" includes the titular play along "The Wasps" and "The Thesmophoriazusae." Produced the year after the death of Euripides, "The Frogs" laments the decay of Greek tragedy which Aristophanes attributed to that writer. It is an admirable example...