Search results for ""Author Russell Goulbourne""

'These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself' Reveries of the Solitary Walker is Rousseau's last great work, the product of his final years of exile from the society that condemned his political and religious views. Returning to Paris the philosopher determines to keep a faithful record of the thoughts and ideas that come to him on his perambulations. Part reminiscence, part reflection, enlivened by anecdote and encounters, the Reveries form a kind of sequel to his Confessions, but they are more introspective and less defensive: Rousseau finds happiness in solitude, walks in nature, botanizing, and meditation. Writing an account of his walks becomes a means of achieving self-knowledge and safeguarding for himself the pleasure that others, he is convinced, seek to deny him. The Reveries, shaped by the unmediated nature of Rousseau's thought processes, give powerfully lyrical expression to a painfully tortured soul in search of peace. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction and notes that explore the nature of the work and its historical, literary, and intellectual contexts. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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'You can leave a forest, but you can never leave a cloister; you are free in the forest, but you are a slave in the cloister.' Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance. This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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