The study of the Humanities is the study of what makes us human, which is a seemingly infinite and infinitely difficult subject. Most definitions of what make us human seem to break down or melt into definitions of other living beings. One thing that does seem to distinguish humans from other species is our attempt both to discuss the human condition and to record that discussion for future generations. The best of these recordings, which take various forms in arts and letters, help us to understand the world around us and to give it meaning. For this reason, people seeking answers to difficult questions tend to return century after century to these same readings. Selections from the Old Testament, Homer, Pericles, Plato, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, the New Testament, Medieval Song Tradition, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, Pico, Montaigne, Luther, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Cervantes, Donne, Marvell, Milton, Behn, Barker, Pope, Jefferson, Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Darwin, Tennyson, Marx and Engels, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Maupassant, Freud, Gilman, Eliot, Owen, Stein, and Rogers.

The Essential Humanities Reader

Literature & Fiction

NeCastro, Gerard P.

Literary

Primavera Press, The

Geoffrey Chaucer, known as “the father of English poetry,” wrote some of the most memorable stories in the English language. Timeless in the issues and ideas that they touch upon, filled with the joy, despair, kindness, and wickedness of the human soul, his works speak clearly to generation after generation. Gathered together here in a new modern prose translation are Chaucer’s early works, The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls, selections from The Legend of Good Women and The House of Fame, the favorite works from The Canterbury Tales, and more.

The Essential Chaucer Reader: Selected Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer

CHAUCER, GEOFFREY

Classics

Troilus and Criseyde

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, the first novel in the English language, is a powerful work of the imagination that chronicles the affair of two lovers, Troilus and Criseyde, as their lonely lives shift to ones of passion and commitment for three years amidst the backdrop of the Trojan War. In this unforgettable tale, which, as the opening lines tell us, is a story of the “double sorrow” of Troilus and how “his lot passed from woe to joy and afterwards to woe again,” we discover the complex nature of love, filled with its passion, obstacles, hopes, insecurities, joys, and heartbreaks. Chaucer is honest with his readers, giving us nothing simplified, nothing idealized, and nothing false in his depiction of love. Known as “the father of English poetry,” Chaucer wrote some of the most memorable stories in the English language. Timeless in the issues and ideas that they touch upon, filled with the joy, despair, kindness, and wickedness of the human soul, his works speak clearly to generation after generation.

Through the door of the stately Porter Memorial Library on the last Friday of every month, the Porter Poets, as we call ourselves, have trooped. We sit down around a couple of aging tables near the old fireplace to read our poems, hear poems from others, and offer both criticism and encouragement. We come from Machias, the Washington County “shire town” where the library is located, but also from Addison, East Machias, Cutler, Beals Island, Jonesboro, Milbridge, Northfield, Roque Bluffs, and other towns on Washington County’s coast. You wouldn’t expect much poetry from so remote a location. Yet poetry’s power is evident even here where there are mostly trees. A poet seems scribbling behind every third fir and fourth maple. We’re not creating cleverness, however. We have things to say. From the Introduction by Gerald George

From a Far Corner: An Anthology of Poetry from the Easternmost Reaches of Maine

George, Gerald

Hill, Andrea Suarez

Cadot, Andrew A.

Leaver, Anne

Johnson, Dianna Ammons

Crane, Donald

Sheridan, Grace

Jacob, Joanne

Larson, Kris

Poetry

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