Newest Literature Essays

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (HOB), Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are immersed in a setting that appears to transcend the known limits of the physical world. A demoniacal hound roaming the moors of Devonshire is...

The title of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” has been the subject of as much speculation as the novel itself, and like all modernist writing, this title has been able to maintain its open-ended nature. Indeed, this open-endedness has...

The stream-of-consciousness novel is a twentieth-century innovation, which aims to depict the totality of experience through the human consciousness. This necessarily means a retreat from the direct portrayal of social interactions, and a...

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is a “Kunstlerroman”, and the story of a young artistic aspirant in a particular social setting. That is why the political background of the novel is so important, for it provides the environment for the...

The social constructs of gender are manifested through the forced institution of marriage in Kate Chopin’s “La Belle Zoraïde” and “The Story of an Hour.” The protagonists in each story experience suppressed emotions in response to the social...

In Annie Dillard’s non-fiction narrative, For the Time Being, Dillard explores the question: Is God fair? A belief in God's fairness (or unfairness) is a cultural aspect with a strong impact on the narrative. This question is studied and explained...

The best style is that in which the form and the content, the manner and the matter are well-balanced and supportive of each other. The style of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” was so novel that it drew the attention of readers and...

The word “epiphany”, literally meaning “showing forth”, is originally a Biblical term, referring to the festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, often called the “Magi”, usually celebrated on 6th January, or Twelfth...

Although Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf belong to the same literary period, Modernism, their styles are quite different. Modernism is a literary period characterised by variety of ideas, styles, techniques, theories, and tendencies that...

I. Introduction

Dominant interpretations of the Leviathan seem to always point to fear as the affect that convinces Hobbesian subjects to enter the social contract in the first place and to steadfastly obey the sovereign. Hobbes often defines...

Thomas Hardy wrote “The Shadow on the Stone” after his wife’s death, and the ghost he mentions is his wife’s. The poem focuses on the realities of time and death. The poet’s feelings are complex, which is reflected in the complex rhyme scheme of...

Psalm 142, verse 2: “No man cared...” This Biblical verse applies perfectly to “In Tenbris”, a poem written out of despair for the society Hardy in which lived. He expresses his pity and contempt for the materialist citizens and power hungry...

Published in the early years of the Great Depression, Pearl Buck’s novel The Good Earth brought hope and encouragement to many people struggling economically. The main character, Wang Lung, rises from a Chinese farmer to a landowner and...

Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Nadine Gordimer Burger's Daughter, two examples of the female bildungsroman, do not share many of the same stylistic features. Burger's Daughter is characterized by imaginary confessions, interior...

The poem 'Canonization' by John Donne, with its witty analogies and inventive use of conceits, exemplifies metaphysical poetry. The poem begins abruptly in typical Donne fashion. The speaker is addressing someone who seems to disapprove of his...

In order to truly appreciate life, or recognize its value, one must be able to comprehend the powerful finality that accompanies death. Furthermore, there also must be comprehension of this topic when seeking to destroy and inflict death on...

Integrity is a quality frequently sought after but rarely achieved; once achieved; it is even more rarely maintained. It is an elusive gem with the potential to inspire and transform a person. Unfortunately, it is often compromised – a valuable...

Travel literature became, after the novel, the most famous literary genre in the eighteenth century. Thanks to the geographical discoveries made by important navigators of that time, enlightened people finally could explore with their imagination...

Both romance and anti-romance hold connotations of triviality and low-brow culture, reducing women to simplistic figures in which to indulge. Yet, for all their critical analyses, it seems inconclusive as to which genre is more sexist. This...

Jane Tompkins writes on how nineteenth century domestic novels characterise ‘a monumental effort to reorganize culture from the woman's point of view…in certain cases, it offers a critique of American society far more devastating than any...

The gothic phenomena, although short-lived, left an indisputably heavy influence on literary practices in the late 1700’s, particularly that of the ‘feminist’ literary space. Jane Austen’s questionable heroine, Catherine Morland, is both the...

Sharon D. Welch, in ““Lush Life”: Foucault’s Analytics of Power and a Jazz Aesthetic,” states:

What is seen through a jazz aesthetic is what is seen now by many: conflict, difference, failure, mistakes, suffering, meaning, beauty, commitment to...

Michel Foucault, in his seminal essay, What Is An Author?, considers the relationship between author, text, and reader: “…the quibbling and confrontations that a writer generates between himself and his text cancel out the signs of his particular...

Thomas Richards, in his 1990 exposition on cultural theory, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 states: “In the mid-nineteenth century the commodity became the living letter of the law of supply and...