Newest Literature Essays

Both Virginia Woolf’s critical essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) and her polemic Three Guineas (1938) explore feminist issues of freedom and influence. Despite being written almost a decade later, Three Guineas further explores the ideas and values...

Within his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke picks up where his predecessors in epistemological theorizing left off and proceeds to shift the study towards a more empiricist approach. Amongst the complexities of his theory, the notions...

The work of Thomas Aquinas, though somewhat insignificant in his own day, is arguably some of the most studied, discussed, and revered to emerge from the medieval period. As Plantinga, Thompson and Lundberg maintain, 'of all the theologians, it is...

Introduction

"The Poisonwood Bible," by Barbara Kingsolver, uses the character of Nathan Price to address the effects of western supremacy and one's personal superiority, specifically fueled by religion. The Price family travels to the Congo on a...

Aemelia Lanyer was the "first" established Englishwoman to have asserted her identity as a poet through her single collection of poems. Eve's Apologie by Lanyer is essentially a subversive text that questions dominant assumptions about the role of...

The novel Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Houng is a work that represents postwar Vietnam quite well, with the author holding nothing back in terms of her home nations virtues and ailments. So much is her unbridled frankness that the work has...

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, the 1996 cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, is imbued with religious imagery. The feuding families display such images on everything from their cars, to their clothes, to their guns. In addition, a statue of...

In E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, Tateh and Father avidly pursue the American Dream while possessing contrasting beliefs about their individual visions for freedom, wealth/opportunity, and social mobility. While Father’s nostalgia, archaic ideas...

A deconstructionist has many duties, and among them are deriving multiple meanings from a source as well as a destruction of previous criticisms of said source. This essay on deconstruction will take another look at James Joyce’s short story “...

Within “The Triumph of the Reformed Religion in America,” Cotton Mather represents his roots of Puritanism as well as transitioning towards more enlightenment thought. His essay centers on a minister named Eliot who seeks to save the natives by...

In an attempt to amend the traditional Benthamite hedonic calculus in which simply the quantity of pain or pleasure is considered, Mill, within his Utilitarianism, postulates an additional qualitative distinction resulting in the notion of a...

Ernest Hemingway, the poster child of modernism’s lost generation, frequently tackles masculinity and manhood in the subjects of his novels, using characters that reflect parts of himself and the other men of this wasted generation to explore the...

Nella Larsen’s novella Passing tells a compelling story about two mixed-race women, Irene and Clare, from drastically different outcomes who shape contrasting perspectives on the notion of “passing” as one race over another, as Irene is content...

Poetry is arguably the most democratized art form. It is written by the common man, for the common man. As a result, it becomes an effective medium to express sentiments of nationalism which lie in the deep consciousness of the ordinary man, but...

A seemingly excited lad initiates Plato’s Meno. Meno appears to have learned what virtue is and is eager to share this knowledge with the renowned Socrates. Thus, Meno tactically lays out calculated questions to Socrates: “…is virtue something...

Louisa May Alcott’s novella “Behind a Mask” portrays a protagonist who uses her acting skills to move up in society from a governess to a lady of British aristocracy. An article written by Elizabeth Schewe titled, “Domestic Conspiracy: Class...

The Gospel of Luke opens with a four-verse reflection on the Evangelist's intentions regarding his Gospel and what he hopes to achieve in writing it. He expresses his desire to construct a revised edition of the story of the life and ministry of...

Contrary to what some might think, the literary field of graphic novels tackles important issues such as gender, race, and religion. One work has stood out amongst the rest as a classicand revolutionary piece that has tackled one of, if not the,...

Cosmopolitanism is defined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community”. This belief not only applies to...

In the movie “The Painted Veil”, which is a story surrounded with love and romance, there are three very different yet interesting couple relationships.

Kitty and Walter Fane are the protagonists. At the beginning of the movie, Kitty was a self-...

Comparing texts from different contexts has enhanced our understanding of intertextual ideas, by continuing to engage with modern audience. Stories revolving around science fiction have remained timeless by discussing the various dangers of...

The Therigathas are essentially "Verses of The Elder Nuns", a seminal part of Buddhist scripture composed by the first nuns who joined the Buddhist sanga or formal religious community. This is a collection of short poems composed and eloquently...

The narrator and protagonist in Gunter Grass’ novel The Tin Drum is unique in not only his stature, but by his mental progress as well. He chooses to stop growing at the age of three and does not speak, except through the beating of his drum,...

In The Awakening, author Kate Chopin offers a tale of self exploration and fulfillment in protagonist Edna, who finds herself at odds with the warped society that is her reality. Taking place primarily in Louisiana islands, the Gulf of Mexico is...