Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays

Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays

von: Joseph Addison

Liberty Fund Inc., 2012

ISBN: 9781614872115

Format: ePUB

Kopierschutz: DRM

Windows PC,Mac OSX geeignet für alle DRM-fähigen eReader Apple iPad, Android Tablet PC's Apple iPod touch, iPhone und Android Smartphones

Preis: 24,29 EUR

Mehr zum Inhalt

Cato: A Tragedy and Selected Essays


 

",A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.",-Joseph Addison, Cato 1713Joseph Addison was born in 1672 in Milston, Wiltshire, England. Hewas educated in the classics at Oxford and became widely known as anessayist, playwright, poet, and statesman. First produced in 1713, Cato,A Tragedy inspired generations toward a pursuit of liberty. Liberty Fundsnew edition of Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays brings togetherAddisons dramatic masterpiece along with a selection of his essays thatdevelop key themes in the play.Cato, A Tragedy is the account of the final hours of Marcus PorciusCato (9546 B.C.), a Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric, and resistance to thetyranny of Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue, and liberty. By all accounts, Cato was an uncompromisingly principled man, deeplycommitted to liberty. He opposed Caesars tyrannical assertion of powerand took arms against him. As Caesars forces closed in on Cato, he choseto take his life, preferring death by his own hand to a life of submissionto Caesar.Addisons theatrical depiction of Cato enlivened the glorious image of acitizen ready to sacrifice everything in the cause of freedom, and it influencedfriends of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. Captain NathanHales last words before being hanged were, I only regret that I have butone life to lose for my country, a close paraphrase of Addisons What pityis it that we can die but once to serve our country! George Washingtonfound Cato such a powerful statement of liberty, honor, virtue, and patriotismthat he had it performed for his men at Valley Forge. And ForrestMcDonald says in his Foreword that Patrick Henry adapted his famousGive me liberty or give me death speech directly from lines in Cato.Despite Catos enormous success, Addison was perhaps best-known asan essayist. In periodicals like the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler, and Freeholder,he sought to educate Englands developing middle class in the habits,morals, and manners he believed necessary for the preservation of a freesociety. Addisons work in these periodicals helped to define the modernEnglish essay form. Samuel Johnson said of his writing, Whoever wishesto attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but notostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison.Christine Dunn Henderson is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund. Prior to joining Liberty Fund in 2000, she was assistant professor of political science at Marshall University.Mark E. Yellin, also a Fellow at Liberty Fund, received his Ph.D. fromRutgers University, has taught at North Carolina State University, and editedDouglass Adairs Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy.Click here for a pdf of the Cato: A Tragedy brochure