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Chaucer
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
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Chaucer
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Publisher's summary
Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy. Yet he was also indicted for rape, sued for debt, and captured in battle.
He began to write in the 1360s, and is now known as the father of English poetry. His Troilus and Criseyde is one of the finest examples of Middle English literature, and his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, is a forerunner of the English novel.
In his lively style, Peter Ackroyd, one of the most acclaimed biographers and novelists writing today, brings us an eye-opening portrait, rich in drama, color, and historical detail, of a prolific, multifaceted genius.
Critic reviews
"Simon Vance delivers his account with crispness, clarity, and flair. Chaucer's English was markedly different from ours, but Vance delivers both the lines in the original Middle English and in contemporary translation dramatically. Listeners can feel the rhythm pulsing in Chaucer's words." (AudioFile)
"Ackroyd has set the bar very high." (Booklist)
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- 1599
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: James Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 141
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 88
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Note!--Abridged version
- By Scott on 01-05-16
By: James Shapiro
-
Shakespeare and the Resistance
- By: Clare Asquith
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent scholarship unveiling hidden history
- By Anonymous User on 07-03-23
By: Clare Asquith
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God’s Secretaries
- The Making of the King James Bible
- By: Adam Nicolson
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 293
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 258
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 257
It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment “Englishness” and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous, and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not what I was expecting
- By Greg on 12-29-13
By: Adam Nicolson
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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The Year of Lear
- Shakespeare in 1606
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 184
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 155
In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age 42, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn - King Lear - then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Detailed and satisfying
- By Tad Davis on 02-24-16
By: James Shapiro
-
The Ugly Renaissance
- Sex, Greed, Violence, and Depravity in an Age of Beauty
- By: Alexander Lee
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 118
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 99
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 98
Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cloaked in a unique aura of beauty and brilliance. Its very name conjures up awe-inspiring images of an age of lofty ideals in which life imitated the fantastic artworks for which it has become famous. But behind the vast explosion of new art and culture lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity, and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Author falls into the pit he digs for others
- By Sean on 01-23-16
By: Alexander Lee
-
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 334
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 151
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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King Richard III
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh, Geraldine McEwan, Nicholas Farrell, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 193
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 130
Written in 1593, King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. This play differs from its predecessors, being amore structured piece, examining the development and motivations of a single character, Richard Duke of Gloucester, who will stop at nothing to gain control of the throne occupied by his brother Edward IV.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end
- By Darwin8u on 03-16-17
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The Florentines
- From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of Western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born - or emerge in an entirely new guise.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruins the narrative
- By amavita on 03-24-22
By: Paul Strathern
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The Swerve
- How the World Became Modern
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,395
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,936
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 2,927
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic by Lucretius—a beautiful poem containing the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very compelling history, a less compelling thesis
- By A reader on 05-01-12
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Natasha's Dance
- A Cultural History of Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 29 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 134
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 116
Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidescopic panorama of an enigmatic culture.
- By Tarquin on 02-13-19
By: Orlando Figes
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The Medici
- Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,471
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,281
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,275
Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence as well as the Italian Renaissance, which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Interwoven into the narrative are the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Donatello as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Fun Story Bad History
- By Elizabeth Barrett on 05-09-16
By: Paul Strathern
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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 259
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 222
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 217
Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A learned, well-balanced postmodern history
- By Jacobus on 11-21-12
By: Peter Brown
-
Venice
- Pure City
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 70
The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its listeners to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers.
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2 out of 5 stars
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An endless droning list.....
- By jack on 03-15-11
By: Peter Ackroyd
-
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
- How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
- By: Elizabeth Winkler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 37
The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.” In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By Virgil Tracy on 06-03-23
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What listeners say about Chaucer
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- P. Burns
- 11-18-23
Well done!
An interesting overview of Chaucer’s life giving much context to his writings. I enjoyed the short readings in the original followed by translation to modern English. Well written and well performed.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- hh
- 09-16-07
first rate
Ackroyd has given us a hearty antidote for those drunk on nostalgia for the "good ol' days." Life hasn't really changed that much through the ages and there were no "good ol' days." Writers have always had to struggle with financial, personal and political matters. The works they hand down to us are as much indebted to windows of opportunity, fickle muses and cosmic whimsy as anything else . . . but perhaps that's not so bad. Or perhaps such forces are necessary for brilliance to emerge. Certainly, this bio makes one appreciate everything that is required for good lit to be born from the bog of daily life. I dare you to listen to this book and not go squirreling into your library to re-read the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida.
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5 people found this helpful