The Lance of Kanana: A Story of Arabia

French, Harry W. (Harry Willard), 1854-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
136K words
Chapters
14

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Legendary LivesAdventure JourneyBoy HeroDesert AdventureHeroismTribal ConflictCourage and GrowthArabian TaleOriental ImaginationExotic Culture

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Lance of Kanana: A Story of Arabia by Harry W. FrenchAuthor: French, Harry W. (Harry Willard), 1854-1915,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: May 30, 2012

Editor's review

The Lance of Kanana: A Story of Arabia is a young-adult adventure story set in Arabia, classified under juvenile belles lettres. The author, Harry W. French, uses the lance as an object to link the narrative, giving the book a marked flavor of exotic imagination and coming-of-age adventure. As a public-domain Project Gutenberg e-book, it is in English and of a length suitable for light reading, and convenient for selecting passages for classroom or book-club discussion. Readers should note that the work dates from an earlier era, and its depiction of the Arab world inevitably carries the perspectives and exoticizing tendencies of its time; today's readers can treat it both as an adventure story and as a text for observing how early Western young-adult literature imagined the East. It is not for readers seeking rigorous historical scholarship or realistic portrayals of contemporary Arab society, but it suits English extensive reading, supplementary material for the history of young-adult literature, and as an entry point for discussing "exotic images in adventure narrative."

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. First read through the story to grasp the main adventure line, then revisit the symbolic role of the lance in the plot.
  2. While reading, mark descriptions of Arabian customs and landscape, and consider which belong to period imagination rather than realism.
  3. If using it for English study, select dialogue and action passages for close reading and retelling practice.
  4. When organizing a book club, discuss the book in contrast with contemporary young-adult adventure novels with diverse perspectives.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14

FAQ

What age group is this book suitable for? Judging by its classification, it is a young-adult literary work, with adventure and coming-of-age as its main threads and moderate language difficulty. Older teenagers and adult readers can both read it; younger readers with limited English should read selected passages with a teacher's or parent's guidance, with appropriate explanation of the exoticizing portrayals in an older work.
Can the Arabian setting in the story be used as historical reference material? It should not be used directly as historical material. This book is an early young-adult adventure novel, and its depiction of the Arab world carries the perspectives and exotic imagination of its time; its focus is adventure narrative rather than factual scholarship. For learning about Arabian history and society, choose specialized historical works; this book is better used to observe how early Western literature imagined the East.
As English reading material, how difficult is this book? As a public-domain young-adult novel, its language is generally narrative in style and its sentences are not especially complex, but it contains older vocabulary and expressive habits. Readers with some English foundation can attempt to read it through; beginners are better off selecting dialogue and action passages, with notes or teacher explanation, to gradually adapt to older narrative language.

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About the author

French, Harry W. (Harry Willard), 1854-1915 Author · American · 1854–1915

Harry W. French (1854–1915) was an American author. He wrote a variety of works on popular science, history, and juvenile literature, which shows that his writing was aimed at general readers and young audiences, combining the spread of knowledge with readability. His representative work is The Lance of Kanana: A Story of Arabia, whose title and subtitle suggest a narrative set in Arabia and likely a work of history or adventure. Because public information is limited, his specific life, education, and writing career cannot be described in detail, and the library currently holds only one of his works. Overall, he was an American writer active in popular writing from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, introducing science, history, and exotic cultures to readers through a variety of subjects.