Newest Literature Essays

Many have lamented the tragic story of a Japanese wife abandoned by her American husband in Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera, Madame Butterfly, which was adapted from John Luther Long’s novella, Madame Butterfly. In the opera, Cio-cio san (Butterfly),...

Ambrose Bierce’s “The Coup de Grâce” is a work of Civil War fiction that, along with his other short stories on war, thematically opposes those texts of his time whose patriotism seemed “aimed at popularizing the “martial spirit” of the age”...

WoMan: The Inescapable Patriarchy

Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes and Rupi Kaur’s poetry and prose collection, Milk and Honey, may cover vastly different topics, but both works have one thing in common – a female narrator. While The Book of...

Cultural Cacophony: Conrad and Sembène on African Culture

Literature has always served as a window into the souls of cultures. However, the perspective from which one looks through that window can substantially shift one’s view of the culture in...

Both Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia (Buddha) and Rawi Hage’s Cockroach are situated within the diaspora writing that proliferates Canadian literature as a whole. Diaspora is a Greek word, a combination of the prefix dia- (meaning “through”)...

Often horror movies can tell more about a culture than the movies chosen as classics. The Friday the 13th series reflected the prudish “return to family values” of the 1980s where teenagers who engage in premarital sex are killed. The last decade...

The genre classifications of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy anthology have always been an interesting discussion topic for both scholars and casual readers alike. Not many compendiums can claim they range in style from children’s book, to modern...

Arguably the most iconic scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the reveal of what exactly he has been writing during his time at The Overlook. As a terrified Wendy flips through pages and pages filled with only the phrase “All work and no play...

The Maltese Falcon is a work of detective fiction by Dashiell Hammett that follows a private investigator, Sam Spade, as he tries to piece together the truth surrounding an ancient statue of a falcon. Spade embodies 1930’s American masculinity –...

Through the first line of Sula, Toni Morrison gives a sense of place, community, and culture. By starting the novel after all the events of Sulahave taken place, she is able to give the reader the notion that every single detail is responsible for...

How has the timeless story of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot changed over the years to reflect the time period(s) that they are recreated in? From the Medieval period to the 1960’s, the legend of Camelot has been repurposed to push...

Power struggles are a defining feature in many of William Shakespeare’s stories. Titus Andronicus, Richard III, and Julius Caesar are three prominent examples of such stories, each depicting a powerful protagonist and their conflicts with others...

There are many overarching themes that can be applied to the different genres of literature. People can relate to these themes, and they can be applied to short fiction, poetry and drama. The theme of fate is something that can be applied to all...

In the novel The Monk, author Matthew Gregory Lewis’ portrayal of women is often blatantly fused with patriarchal stereotypes. While not surprising in a piece of literature from this period, the weak development and cliche characteristics of many...

In French, la petite mortis an expression that literally means "the brief loss or weakening of consciousness" but usually refers to "the sensation of orgasm as likened to death." This phenomenon is probably not a revelation, given that every...

For over 27,000 years, ever since the first cave paintings were uncovered, telling tales has been one of our most underlying methods of communication. Various compelling legends and tales originate from culturally diverse regions from all around...

Franz Kafka subverts the idea of the romanticized past with “In the Penal Colony” particular in the character of The Officer. The Officer is the kind of character that one encounters at trade shows. This is a man who knows everything about a...

At the time that Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron became popular there were numerous similar works in circulation. Readers mainly enjoyed the tales as facile entertainment rather than literature, and most...

Theatre reflects the society from which it springs, and in the case of The Removalists by David Williamson (1971), this reflection is an exploration of cultural and social issues of Australian society. Set in Melbourne in 1970’s Australian...

Theatre reflects the society from which it springs, and in the case of No Sugar by Jack Davis (1986) this reflection is an exploration of cultural and social issues of Australian society. Although written later, Jack Davis’ commissioned play is...

Alana Valentine’s massaged verbatim play Parramatta Girls (2007) explores the experiences of women who were incarcerated into the Parramatta Girls Home. Through her eight distinct characters that she created, she gives a voice to over five hundred...

Texts written in the After the Bomb period represent the personal and political consequences of an era. George Clooney’s Good Night And Good Luck, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, and Oliver Stone’s film,...

The institution of marriage has changed over the last century from a patriarchal control construct to a more open organization. The books Their Eyes were Watching God and Stranger in a Strange Land both attack the institution of traditional...

Both Maurice by E.M Forster and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are the stories of revolutionary love, capable of inspiring moral improvement and moral compromise within relationships. Specifically, it is the stories of Maurice and Alec and...