Newest Literature Essays

If we examine Ulysses for the use of animals, we soon realize that Joyce draws on an extensive bestiary which includes basilisks, wrens, pigs, eagles, hyenas, panthers, pards, pelicans, roebucks, unicorns, dogs, bats, whales and serpents among...

In Episode 8 of Ulysses, Joyce sends Bloom and the reader through a gauntlet of food that enlarges one of the novels main linguistic strategies, that of gradual digestion. While Episode 10 may seem like a more appropriate choice for a spatial...

With all the irregular movements in Nausicaa Gerty's limping walk, Bloom's masturbation, the jerky flight of a hovering bat , the abrupt and erratic changes of scene and perspective, and finally the seasick movement of the sea (1189; 1162, "Do...

T.S. Eliot declared that Ulysses was a masterpiece because it demonstrated the futility of all prior literary styles. Indeed, the episodes of "Oxen of the Sun" and "Aeolus" could be taken as challenging primers on English style and rhetoric. This...

It has often been said that "the clothes make the man." It could never seem truer than in Twelfth Night where disguises and mistaken identities run the gamut of use. The identity of people, things and ideas are swept away under the facade of...

In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare creates a duality between the worlds of the nobility and its associates and the said "outsiders." There is a great element of selfishness involved in the actions of the characters deemed "in" as they peruse through...

In both plays, Twelfth Night and Doctor Faustus, there exists a high and a low (or comic) plot. This plot division serves as a parallel - the actions and characters in the low plot coincide with the actions and characters in the high plot. The...

Theatre began as a presentation of stories and ideas, mostly revolving around festival times in the calendar of the church year. This concept was carried on in Shakespeare's times and is exemplified in his plays Twelfth Night, or What You Will and...

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the Feste's role might originally appear to be as a minor character, but in actuality his role is of principal significance. Because the action of the play occurs during the revelry of the holiday season, the clown...

To be female is to be frivolous and inconstant. This is the position that Geoffrey Chaucer takes in his love poem, "Troilus and Criseyde". The lovely Criseyde, with whom Troilus falls madly in love, is the epitome of frivolity and inconstancy, in...

Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' opens to the ringing tones of Troilus's 'double sorwe'. From the first lines it is ascertained that he is the main character of the poem, no matter how attractive Pandarus and Criseyde appear. Troilus' heartbreak,...

Why, she is a pearl

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships

And turned crowned kings to merchants. (2.2.81-3)

The world of ShakespeareÃÂÂs Troilus and Cressida does not distinguish decidedly between the Greeks and the Trojans. Though the...

In Beowulf and Beroul's The Romance of Tristan, the heroes Beowulf and Tristan are magnificent fighters. Their numerous victories against seemingly insurmountable odds and powerful enemies are testaments to their battle-talents. Yet the two heroes...

Nihilism is "the destruction of everything without pity" (Palmieri, 3). A completely different movement that is sometimes lumped together with Nihilism is Existentialism, which is a belief that "the world is without meaning or purpose." It also...

In order to address the paradoxes of eroticism and human desire for intimacy in The Trial, it is important to recognize the ongoing theme of bondage (in the classic master/slave sense). Without this undercurrent of power and servitude, it is...

One particular climax in the story "Treasure Island" occurs when Jim Hawkins unwittingly stumbles into enemy camp and is captured by Long John Silver and his pirates. This passage is of particular importance because it ultimately allows Jim to...

To the Lighthouse is a novel about Mrs. Ramsay; her ways, her wiles, and her lasting impact. Though she dies with half the novel left to read, there is no doubt that, whatever intention Woolf had, Mrs. Ramsay is the main character for she is...

In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf bases her exploration of consciousness on the premise that men and women perceive the world in vastly different ways. However, Woolf believes that creativity can (and must) transcend the boundaries of gender....

A "splendid mind," is Mr. Ramsay's most coveted and powerful instrument, the one constantly at his disposal for perceiving, judging and dissecting the universe. His is an intelligence comparable to a mechanism with gears which move steadily in one...

In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf focuses in great detail on the workings of dark and light on the relationships between her characters. The presence of light or dark tends to govern certain scenes: light brings people together in a harmony...

The method of Virginia Woolfâs To the Lighthouse is intensely related to its story. The two are so conflated that the novel is almost about itself. Every character struggles to find a balance between elucidation, creation and representation,...

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighouse is ultimately a celebration of the human spirit. In the novel, time is synonymous with the ocean and darkness, and this triumvirate of forces, in essence, acts as the antagonist. Time ebbs and flows, continuing on...

Virginia Woolf's claim that plot is banished in modern fiction is a misleading tenet of Modernism. The plot is not eliminated so much as mapped out onto a more local level, most obviously with the epic structural comparison in Ulysses. In To the...

Throughout literature the ideology of the society in which the author was living is evident in the text. This can cause certain groups within a text to be empowered while the other groups are marginalised and constrained by the social restrictions...