Fall of the House of Usher, The: Pit and the Pendulum, The: And Other Tales... (Short Story)

Fall of the House of Usher, The: Pit and the Pendulum, The: And Other Tales...

The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares - premature burial, ghostly transformation and words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1830s and 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

Publisher: NAXOS
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Narrator: William Roberts
ISBN: 9 62634 283 8

Ballet Stories

The magic of ballet is evoked in these enchanting stories presented with many musical excerpts from the works themselves. The stories of two French ballets - Giselle and Coppelia - and the three great ballets by Tchaikovsky are presented in engaging style by Jenny Agutter, who was herself a dancer before turning to acting.

These are tales of princes and princesses, of good fairies and bad witches, and, in Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, the brave soldier and Clara - but does it happen, or is it a dream?

And there is the music - the lovely melody from Swan Lake, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the waltzes and the richly atmospheric passages painting, in sound, castles, forests, mists and lakes.

Publisher: NAXOS
Author: David Angus
Narrator: Jenny Agutter
ISBN: 9 62634 231 5

Canterbury Tales - Volume I, The

The Prologue
The Knight's Tale
The Miller's Tale
The Pardoner's Tale
The Merchant's Tale
The Franklin's Tale

Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of The Knight's Tale to the joyous bawdy of The Miller's; all are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.

The Canterbury Tales, written near the end of Chaucer's life and hence towards the close of the fourteenth century, Is perhaps the greatest English literary work of the Middle Ages: yet it speaks to us today with almost undimmed clarity and relevance.

Chaucer imagines a group of twenty-nine pilgrims who meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark, intent on making the traditional journey to the martyr's shrine of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. Harry Bailly landlord of the Tabard, proposes that the company should entertain themselves on the road with a storytelling competition. The teller of the best tale will be rewarded with a supper at the others' expense when the travellers return to London. Chaucer never completed this elaborate scheme - each pilgrim was supposed to tell four tales, but in fact we only have twenty-four altogether - yet, with the pieces of linking narrative and the prologues to each tale, the work as a whole constitutes a marvellously varied evocation of the medieval world which also goes beyond its period to penetrate (humorously, gravely tolerantly) human nature itself.

Chaucer, as a member of this company of pilgrims, presents himself with mock innocence as the admiring observer of his fellows, depicted in the General Prologue. Many of these are clearly rogues - the coarse, cheating Miller, the repulsive yet compelling Pardoner - yet in each of them Chaucer finds something human, often a sheer vitality or love of life which is irresistible: the Monk may prefer hunting to prayer, but he is after all a manly man, to be an abbot able. Perhaps only the unassuming, devoted Parson and his humbly labouring brother the Ploughman rise entirely above Chaucer's teasing irony; certainly the Parson's fellow clergy and religious officers belong to a Church riddled with gross corruption. Everyone, it seems, is on the make, in a world still recovering from the ravages of the Black Death.

Publisher: NAXOS
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Narrator: Full Cast Production
ISBN: 9 62634 044 4