Showing posts with label Leo Tolstoy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leo Tolstoy. Show all posts
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace - classic fiction
Another super-long classic makes the "Best Books of All Time" list.
About this book:
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature. It is considered Tolstoy's finest literary achievement, along with his other major prose work Anna Karenina (1873–1877).
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of
War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem,
and still less a historical chronicle". Large sections of the
work, especially in the later chapters, are philosophical discussion
rather than narrative. He went on to elaborate that the best Russian
literature does not conform to standard norms and hence hesitated to
call War and Peace a novel. (Instead, Tolstoy regarded Anna Karenina
as his first true novel.)
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg,
at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and
confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main
characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as
they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov
is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is
dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled
in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's
expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially
kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open,
benevolent nature, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg
society. It is known to everyone at the soirée that Pierre is his
father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children.
Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the
intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky,
husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg
society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after
discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes
the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail
Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city
and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to
the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are
introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent
children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes
herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is
about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich
pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old
cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest
child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat
haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German
officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the
youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and
eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count
Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple
but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate,
Prince Andrei departs for war and leaves his terrified, pregnant wife
Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky
and devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna
Bolkonskaya...
(source: Wikipedia)
(source: Wikipedia)
About the author:
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical
teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him
in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and
anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in
such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a
profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
(source: Wikipedia)
(source: Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:
This was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
Art Talk with NEA Literature Translation Fellow George O'Connell ... - As long as I'm including by omission, let's also leave out the King James Bible, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and the treasure-house of Proust. Of course this is to say nothing of the great Chinese and Japanese classical poets, ...20 Great Russian Novels You Should Read Right Now | Qwiklit - Lev Tolstoy - War and Peace (1863-1869). The Great White Whale of Russian literature, War and Peace is a 1,300 page work that includes hundreds of subplots and characters all intertwining during the failed Napoleonic ...
A look at L3 from Tolstoy to trays. - jaltranslation - is that of Tolstoy's War and Peace - a literary buff's favourite - commenting upon the use of French in the Russian original. It is estimated that 2 percent of the entire book is in French, and it is used in order to reflect the ...
Winter Study: Reading for Life | Williams College - So when the opportunity presented itself to read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace-all 1,296 pages of it-during Winter Study in January, Yniguez jumped at the chance. She and 14 other students are taking part in the class "War and Peace," led ...
TTahko.net | Book Review: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace - Before I get started, I should note that book reviews - at least when it comes to fiction - have not featured and probably will not feature prominently on this blog. However, I've noticed that the blog's 'Literature' category ...
VIAF News | Metadata Discussion Group - IUB Libraries Blogs - OCLC colleagues Smith-Yoshimura and Janifer Gatenby collaborate to illustrate how uniform titles show the romanization of titles rather than the original script of the work and use Tolstoy's War and Peace as an example.
The Oresteia and Waterloo | CHS Research Bulletin - [5] This approach differs from novels such as Tolstoy's War and Peace and Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, both of which situate their main character in the midst of the fighting, as well novels such as George Eliot's Adam ...
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Charles Dickens' Great Expectations - Classic Fiction
The 13th success in his own life, this author has only two books in the Writers Club top 26.
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About
this book:
Great
Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is the second
novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first
person. Great Expectations is a coming-of-age novel, and it is a
classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and
personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first
published in serial form in Dickens' weekly periodical All the Year
Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.
On
Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is about six years
old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while
visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict
scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles,
from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind,
passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers
recapture the convict while he is engaged in a fight with another
convict; the two are returned to the prison ships from which they
escaped.
Miss
Havisham, a wealthy spinster who wears an old wedding dress and lives
in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's "Uncle Pumblechook"
(who is actually Joe's uncle) to find a boy to play with her adopted
daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with
whom he falls in love, with Miss Havisham's encouragement. Pip visits
Miss Havisham multiple times, and during one of these visits, he
brings Joe along. During their absence, Joe's wife is attacked by a
mysterious individual and lives out the rest of her life as a mute
invalid.
Later, when
Pip is a young apprentice at Joe's blacksmith shop, a lawyer, Mr.
Jaggers, approaches him and tells him he is to receive a large sum of
money from an anonymous benefactor and must immediately leave for
London, where he is to become a gentleman...
(source:
Wikipedia)
About
the author:
Charles
John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English
writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most
memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the
greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works
enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary
genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels
and short stories continue to be widely popular.
Dickens was
regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A
Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written,
and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every
artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow
writers—from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for
its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterizations, and
social criticism.
(source:
Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers'
Club: This was created by
popular request to enable any beginning or established author to
improve their skills by studying quality editions of classic
bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis-North is Now Open ... - As a major part of that initiative, JCAP therefore carries great expectations. “We want the 'J' in JCAP to stand for Juggernaut,” Rohlfing said. Also on hand for the JCAP-North opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony were ...From Great Expectations to Valuable Skills - From Great Expectations to Valuable Skills. by admin on July 26, 2011 · 1 comment. Intern Rebecca Georges. My name is Rebecca Georges. I am originally from Miami, FL. and attend the University of Florida where my major is Business ...
Your Top 10 influential books? Here are mine - 8 Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 9 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou 10 The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman. David Ammons says: April 6, 2010 at 3:35 PM. Sam was emailed this list by Jim DiPeso and ...
Which candidate would be better for Africa? | America.gov Blogs - ... was indicated when the clerics seized innocent Americans and massacred them decades back. [3] Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861).
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