The possibilities of ‘more human than human’ artificial intelligence and the dangers of playing God and are not new – they’re the subjects of one of the world’s first science-fiction novels.
Hamlet, the tormented prince of Denmark, embodies our own struggles: between reason and violence, courage and inaction. He is a modern character in an endlessly quotable play.
The Trojan Women is a genocide narrative. In this play, the great Athenian dramatist Euripides explores the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.
Ruth Hollick collection. State Library of Victoria
Samuel Beckett’s first play was once most notorious for the audible yawns, walkouts (and fights) during interval. But it is a play of great insight into the condition of waiting.
Giovanni Cariani, Portrait of Two Young Men. The bulk of the sonnets are addressed to a young man known as the ‘fair youth’.
Addressed to a ‘fair youth’ and later, ‘a dark lady’, the sonnets are less well known than Shakespeare’s plays. A journey into them is an unsettling and beguiling literary adventure.
In this influential novel, two Persians travel to Paris and report their bemusement at its customs. Questions such as the dilemmas of tolerance and the social nature of our identities are explored.
Atelier de Nicolas de Largilliere, portrait of Voltaire at 24.
Wikimedia Commons
First published 150 years ago, this work is shaped by Victorian-era sexual and racial stereotypes. But at a time when other evolutionists stressed humanity’s uniqueness, Darwin emphasised our ‘lowly nature’.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Productions
A new Netflix adaptation of Rebecca stars Lily James and Armie Hammer. The novel on which it is based, first published in 1938, explores domestic entrapment.
A new film version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden opens today. First published in 1911, the novel foregrounds Edwardian beliefs about the importance of gardens that still resonate.
A scene from the Decameron painted by Carlo Coppede in 1916.
Sailko/Wikimedia Commons
Written between 1348 and 1353, the Decameron is a prescription for psychological survival, a way of mentally distancing from today’s death counts and grim economic forecasts.