Newest Literature Essays

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

the wanderer, harried for years on end,

after he plundered the stronghold

on the proud height of Troy.

He saw the townlands

and learned the minds of many...

Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby revolve around one primary character who serves as a vessel that reveals the major theme of the book. The Great Gatsby chronicles Jay Gatsby's pursuit of love, while...

According to Aristotle in his book Poetics, the cathartic effects of a tragedy are its purpose, which is mediated through its form. An examination of Shakespeare's King Lear in relation to the Aristotelian elements of tragedy - focusing on his...

The New Gnosticism:

Reading Romantics in Wuthering Heights

Like the romantic poets who so influenced her, Emily Bronte explores the redefining of religious categories in her most famous novel, Wuthering Heights. Through the relations between her...

William Blake and John Keats were both prolific English poets of the Romantic era. Blake, an early Romantic along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, produced a poem called "Night" in 1789, which is part of a series of illustrated poetry called "Songs...

"Is there any greater evil we can mention for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?...And when all the citizens rejoice and are pained by the...

A pragmatic approach to literary criticism enhances the 21st-century reader's understanding of Shakespeare's King Lear in a multitude of ways. The pragmatic approach was the popular canon at the time of Shakespeare's composition, and continued to...

Honore De Balzac's Cousin Bette is a novel about obsession, but what makes the premise so fantastic is the manner in which each obsession is related to the others. The characters are obsessed with art, but the bourgeois universe of post-Napoleonic...

Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, is chiefly a novel about the consequences of abandonment. Dickens utilizes a mixture of nameless third-person narrative and the personal narrative of Esther Summerson, thereby balancing social criticism with a...

Throughout western history, enormous gender differences have been evident in both monotheistic and polytheistic cultures. Indeed, the patriarchal hierarchies in both social systems have emphasized the superiority of the male sex; however, greater...

Samuel Beckett, in Waiting for Godot, and Ionesco, in The Bald Prima Donna, both embody the values associated with "Theatre of the Absurd". This is achieved through their use of language, characterisation, and stage direction in order to portray...

The family is the strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. (82)

Delillo's portrayal of the American family in his acclaimed novel White Noise is atypical. The narratology changes from a contented American family who...

The contrast between illusion and fact functions as the central focus of countless texts in the canon of English literature. The subject occupies a prominent position in a diverse array of genres and forms, among which is that of the modern...

Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government - and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell he recalls a time when...

Crime and Punishment Part Two: Essay

In Part Two of Crime and Punishment, the reader sees a continuation of many themes earlier presented, but in a new and more extreme environment. As Raskolnikov tries to remain clear of accusation, he continues...

Nineteenth century novelists used physical descriptions in their narratives to impose a thematic integrity onto their characters. Flaubert, it could be argued, likewise followed the traditions of realism and moderated Frédéric's inclinations...

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians ...and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of...

The Book of Matthew, the first of the Gospels in the New Testament, appears to be directed towards the Hebrews to compel them to accept Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. As a result, the Book of Matthew is in many ways seemingly continuous of...

Shakespeare's Hamlet has often been considered one of the most intriguing and problematic plays of the English language. Among the many questions that Hamlet raises, lies the subject of whether or not Hamlet actually becomes insane. Using...

Much of Charles Dickens' representation of morality in his most famous of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, is derived from "the wisdom of our ancestors." (1) From the beginning of his narrative Dickens explains his usage of the phrase "dead...

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the constant possibility of resurrection and transformation, both on a personal level and on a societal level. The narrative suggests that Sydney Carton's death secures a new, peaceful life...

Part of an old southern family from Mississippi, William Faulkner chooses to inscribe in his writing the culture of his white heritage: the stories, myths and nightmares of the South. He particularly selects to portray the fall of the old...

Although God asserts otherwise in Milton's work "Paradise Lost", it seems certain that it was God's will, and not the cunning endeavors of Satan, that provided for the inevitable fall of man. Aware that Satan was the physical manifestation of...

The word "parody" comes from the Latin parodia, meaning "burlesque song or poem", but it has come to refer to any artistic composition in which "the characteristic themes and the style of a particular work, author, etc., are exaggerated or applied...