George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair. He was a novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic. His memoir Homage to Catalonia recounts his participation in the forces of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) during th Spanish Civil War and his consequent disillusionment with Marxist politics. In 1945, Orwell wrote Animal Farm: … Continue reading George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Geoffrey Chaucer was the author of the Canterbury Tales, which is an anthology of 24 short stories that are supposedly being told by people who are traveling from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The Canterbury Tales were mostly in verse and were written in Middle English. … Continue reading Geoffrey Chaucer: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (April Showers)
The Metamorphoses was the most famous work of the Roman poet Ovid. The Metamorphoses is Ovid's attempt to tell the history of the world, from Creation to the deification of the murdered Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. The Metamorphoses retells 250 myths. In his retellings, Ovid often departs from traditional accounts. Yet his poem was the … Continue reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the Tale of Narcissus and Echo
The discipline of psychology emerged from the discipline of philosophy. In the late 19th century, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that the human mind could be studied scientifically. This idea gained credence when European neurologists began using the clinicopathological method. This meant comparing the problems that a person had had during his or … Continue reading William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
The Miller's Tale is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. These tales were supposedly stories that a group of pilgrims told each other as they were on their way from London to Canterbury Cathedral, to visit the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket (also known as Thomas à Becket). Nevertheless, some of the tales told by … Continue reading Geoffrey Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale and the Miller’s Tale
Here's an interlinear Greek/English translation: farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Elements.pdf Here's a series of videos: Euclid's elements: definitions, postulates, and axioms Euclid's Geometry was built on assumptions. But what if you altered one of those … Continue reading Euclid’s Elements
The Odyssey is an account of how Odysseus made his way home to his wife Penelope after the Trojan War. (The Trojan War itself was discussed in Homer's Iliad.) At … Continue reading Homer’s Odyssey: Scylla and Charybdis
Rene Descartes' Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences was published in French in 1637. It was later translated into Latin. … Continue reading Rene Descartes: Discourse on the Method
Cancer Ward is a semiautobiographical novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize in Litrature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian … Continue reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (the Brothers Grimm) were German academics who studied the history of the German language and collected and published folktales. They popularized these "Grimms' Fairy Tales" through … Continue reading Snow White, the Brothers Grimm, and Tolkien
