The “formalist” approach to literature says, among other things, that the author's opinion of what a piece of writing means is no more or...

First of all, the title. Jean-Phillippe Rameau (1683-1764) was one of the dominant composers of 18th-century France, and one of the most...

For a story so crowded with incident, “Castle Rackrent” is surprisingly short. This works largely because the first-person narrator,...

Denis Diderot was a critical thinker and writer immediately before the French Revolution, though not as well-known as Voltaire and...

Reading very long books normally doesn't cause me any problems. “The Adventures Of Caleb Williams” isn't exceptionally long – the edition...

I expected a lot of sexual content from “Justine” - after all it's by the Marquis de Sade. Surprise surprise, its sexual content has...

“ "Anton Reiser" doesn't read like a novel, a memoir, an autobiography, or a philosophical treatise. At times, it reads like all those...

Okay, I read “The 120 Days Of Sodom” because it's on the list, but I can't imagine why it's there. Now you know what you're in for if you...

Fanny Burney is only the sixth woman, out of 56 books so far, whose work appears on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list,...

The most obvious difference between “The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker” and Tobias George Smollett's other work is undoubtedly that, in...

When it comes to the older literature on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list, I've at least heard of most of the titles....

We're told that of all his works, and there were a lot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered “Emile, Or On Education” to be the “best and...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been called a great many thing, both during his life and after his death – a philosopher, a political theorist,...

Wikipedia shows a good many works by Samuel Johnson just prior to the American Revolution = plays, poems, essays on a multitude of...

In many cases (though certainly not all), the most influential works of art took the shortest amount of time to produce. Take “Candide”....

I confess that I'm not sure what I can say about “The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle” that will distinguish it from other English novels...

When reviewing a book from a previous age, like this one, I generally try to judge it according to the standards of the time in which it...

Here's the last novel by Daniel Defoe, author of one of the best-loved novels in English literature – "Robinson Crusoe", of course....

I was one of those rotten kids who taught himself to read at the age of three, fifty-(ahem) years ago, and I studied literature in...