Newest Literature Essays

A past attitude is reverted to and revised in Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" and "Elegiac Stanzas." Employing geographic metaphors, both celestial and earth-bound, the poems climb over rocky Wordsworthian terrain that details his reconciliation...

An autobiography in its entirety constitutes the full cry of an earthly individual, within an intrinsically unified species, beneath the invincibles of the universe. Gusdorf's "Conditions and Limits of Autobiography" grant this art form its place...

It is important to acknowledge that the past and the present can coexist in a single work to remarkable effect. In Maxine Hong Kingston's "Woman Warrior", memories are so closely associated with the present and with legends that it becomes...

The Woman Warrior is the memoir of Maxine Hong Kingston's experience growing up as a first-generation Chinese American. In it, she tells the stories of several other women to reveal the struggles and issues that have affected her own life. In...

In literature (novels, folk tales, plays, movies, etc.) one finds presented two forms of so called "coming-of-age" stories. The traditional method is preparation for adulthood. A youth (generally between 10 years old and 20) passes, by some...

The debate between Perdita and Polixenes about the merits of beautiful, but unnaturally crossbred flowers condenses Shakespeare's discussion on man-made art and God-made nature (represented by physical, ecological Nature as well as the characters'...

Leon. No foot shall stir.

Paul. Music, awake her; strike! [Music]

Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;

Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come!

I'll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away:

Bequeath to death your numbness; for from him

...

Sherwood Anderson, in his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio was "writing against the notion that stories have to have a plot which reveals a moral idea or conclusion" (Prof. Fisher, lecture). Like the "tales" that Doctor Parcival tells George Willard in...

"The Wild Swans at Coole" is a poem of equal parts reticence and disclosure. Though the substances are the same, a logic of proportion fails; reticence is disclosure. The poem is about mortality, transience, disillusionment, and loss; more...

Explicit accounts of hellfire and damnation may not be the hallmarks of contemporary popular novels, but America's first bestseller was full of such shocking imagery. Graphic illustrations of the Christian faith's Judgment Day saturate Michael...

Although Leslie A. Fiedler calls Charles Brockden Brown the "inventor of the American writer," and sees the revolt of the European middle classes translating in America to "feminism and anti-intellectualism," Brockden Brown seems to have a problem...

In the beginning of Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway, a young creole woman, lives in poverty with her mother, Annette, and her brother, Pierre, on the island of Jamaica. In the society in which they live, Antoinette is...

Truth or illusion? When the fantasy world people create in order to cope with the absurdity of life is brought too far into reality, it becomes hard to distinguish between authenticity and fiction. This ambiguity is apparent in both Edward Albee's...

Generations of readers and critics alike have denigrated the works of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, both equally brilliant poets, separated by a century, yet sharing a poetic vision of both political and sexual freedom, simply because the...

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp took a urinal, detached it from its usual setting, entitled it "Fountain" and called it art. By putting such a common, unglamorous object in this innovative context, Duchamp raised a new awareness of the urinal. Its...

Song of Myself is a poem of bold declarations that egotistically assert Walt Whitman's place and purpose in the context of a world of immense scope and romantically instilled vigor. And yet located within this chaotic unfurling of identity there...

In the novel White Noise, written by Don DeLillo, the Gladney family often succumbs to the supposed authority and superior knowledge of doctors. The Gladneys are extremely intimidated by the doctors and they feel as though the physicians are...

In addition to addressing the premonitory electricity of death, the title of Don DeLillo's White Noise alludes to another, subtler, sort of white noisethe muted death of suburban white identity. College-on-the-Hill is not only an elite academic...

David Hume, who wrote Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751, and Adam Smith, who authored The Wealth of Nations in 1776, both spoke of a particular human emotion or characteristic called sympathy that differs greatly in definition...

In his seminal poem "The Wasteland," T.S. Eliot vividly externalizes what he perceives to be a very internal death of pandemic proportions. Calling upon a vast catalogue of religion, classical writings, music and art, the work depicts an entire...

The modern crisis of authority revolves around the recognition that current versions of traditional authority are no longer credible or reliable. Such a dramatic shift in perception cannot be effectively realized in the safe, florid writing of La...

Many critics see Eliot's "Wasteland" as a form of social criticism, exposing the alternating boredom and terror inherent in modern life. While these themes do recur throughout the poem, a greater subtlety of meaning arises with Eliot's...

Throughout Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's personality could be defined as dark, menacing, and brooding. He is a dangerous character, with rapidly changing moods, capable of deep-seeded hatred, and incapable, it seems, of any kind of forgiveness...

Upon completion of T.S. Eliot's legendary poem, "The Wasteland", one may experience mixed feelings about the poem as a whole. "The Wasteland" presents a distinct style using countless allusions; a method that previously had not been used to such...