Download Free A Monk Of Fife By Andrew Lang Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online A Monk Of Fife By Andrew Lang and write the review.

This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer. The book: The recent revival of interest in the Maid of Orleans has resulted in the production of a considerable amount of romantic fiction, of which the most important example is Mr. Lang's " A Monk of Fife." The subject is one almost ideally suited to Mr. Lang's hand, appealing, as it does, to his deepest interests and intellectual sympathies — how warmly the noble poem in his latest volume of verse may witness. The romance before us pretends to be a translation of a French manuscript in the Ratisbons Scots College. Whether this pretence be wholly a bit of mystification we are not concerned to inquire; for all practical purposes "A Monk of Fife" is an original work of Mr. Lang's imagination, although it follows historical fact more closely than such fiction is wont to do. As to the style of the book, it may be described, in Mr. Lang's own words, as "not imitating, in manner, the almost contemporary English of the ' Paston Letters,' or the somewhat earlier English style of the Regent Bedford, but merely attempting to give a moderately old air to his (Mr. Lang's) version of a French which, genuine or imitative, is certainly, in character and spelling, antique." The story is told in the first person, and is essentially the narrative of a young Scotsman, fleeing from his own country in consequence of a brawl, and finding service with the French at such a time as to be concerned in the siege of Orleans, and to become closely associated with the fortunes of the Maid. The narrative is at times labored, as the result of a wish to omit no historical fact of importance, but is for the most part highly readable, giving a vivid impression of the stirring life of early fifteenth-century France.
A novelist, poet, literary critic and anthropologist, Andrew Lang is best known for his publications on folklore, mythology and religion; many have grown up with the ‘colour’ Fairy Books which he compiled between 1889 and 1910. This three volume set presents a selection of his work in these areas. The first volume covers the general and theoretical aspects of Lang’s work on folklore, mythology and anthropology along with the tools and concepts which he used in his often combative contributions to these inter-related disciplines. As a companion to the first volume, the second is comprised of various case studies made by Lang, ranging from ‘The Aryan Races of Peru’ and ‘The Folk-lore of France’ to ‘Irish Fairies’ and ‘The Ballads, Scottish and English’. The third volume arranges his literary criticism, first by geo-cultural context and then chronologically. It begins with Lang’s views on the nature and purpose of fiction, then presents samples of his work on some of the most important authors in the respective canons of French, American, Scottish and English literature including Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Burns and Charles Dickens among many others, mainly of the nineteenth century. Collectively, the General Introduction to the set and the Introductions to the individual volumes offer a thorough overview of Lang’s work in an astonishing variety of fields, including his translation work on Homer and his contributions to historiography (particularly Scottish). The Introduction to Volume III sets Lang within the context of the literature of his times, comparing and contrasting him with significant contemporaries. Headnotes to the individual items are of varying length and provide more detail on specific topics, and explanatory notes supply unique intellectual comment rather than merely factual information.
In a remarkable literary career, Andrew Lang challenged the increasing specialism that accompanied the advance of modernity and science in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, authoring an extraordinary body of rigorous, scholarly works in the fields of social anthropology, folklore, Homeric studies, history, and religion, while simultaneously turning out novels, poems for periodicals, and inexhaustible columns of prose journalism to make money. He was widely regarded as one of the most influential men of letters and reviewers of his day. He was a founding member and later President of the Folklore Society, and, with his wife, helped transform the taste in children's literature with their anthologized fairy stories for young people. G. K. Chesterton, paying tribute on Lang's death in 1912 to the scale and diversity of his legacy to the humanities, compared him to a 'kind of Indian god with a hundred hands'. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished correspondence and new sources of information, this first full biography of Lang documents in compelling detail his double existence as a scholar and journalist, the intellectual impact of his cross-disciplinary approach to learning and writing, and the critical controversies he courted as a writer and thinker to advance knowledge in the human sciences. The book also throws new light on Lang's personal life: on the uncomfortable legacy of his grandfather, whose notorious part in the Sutherland Clearances earlier in the century left its mark on the family; on the enduring influence on him of his early Scottish education and its generalist traditions of learning; and on his friendships with fellow writers, among them Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Rider Haggard, Edmund Gosse, Rhoda Broughton, and William Henley. The result is a fascinating portrait of a man who lived one of the most productive lives in literature, sought to make knowledge available to everyone, and bridged, as no other, the university and the literary world, the proverbial 'Grub Street and the ivory tower'.