Newest Literature Essays

Henry James wrote of A Sentimental Education,

{Flaubert} takes Frédéric Moreau on the threshold of life and conducts him to the extreme of maturity without apparently suspecting for a moment either our wonder or our protest - 'Why, why him?'...

"To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This work is, by his Royal Highness's Permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness's dutiful and obedient humble servant, the author" (Austen, Emma ii).

The preceding is the dedication of...

"I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child". Jane Austen wrote these words about her novel, Sense and Sensibility, in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811. Such a maternal feeling in Austen is interesting to note,...

The potential for self-discovery, complemented by the capacity for transformation, lies latent within each man. When circumstances instigate a strong stimulus for change, man finds a way to actuate his innate potential. In Joseph Conrad's The...

In defining "sameness of a being", Locke distinguishes between the idea of the "same man" and the "same person". Although he acknowledges that the words are often used interchangeably, he states that "person" is in fact representative of personal...

Students and scholars alike are often deceived by the association between Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau as founders of the social contract. Grouping these authors together often causes people to forget the essential variations presented by each man....

Throughout the late 18th century and 19th century, Romanticism was a highly popular literary style adopted by many novelists. Nature, a prominent element of Romanticism, is used in these authors' writings not just for descriptions and images, but...

The story of Adam and Eve illustrates the sinful nature of man. A common theory about the story of Adam and Eve is that God intended Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The argument is, if God had not intended Adam to eat the...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne has committed adultery, and her subsequent bearing of an illegitimate child has cast her beyond the pale of polite society. It is difficult for us, in the late twentieth century, to...

The entity of Nature acts as a double-edged sword in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In the novel, Nature shows its ability to both harm and heal through its effects on the characters. The novel highlights Nature's complexity by showing...

Evolution is defined as "a process of change"(Webster's Dictionary), and it has been proved many times in the past that sin is a direct process that leads to change in one's spiritual as well as fleshly life. The three main characters, Hester,...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes the consequences of one sinful act in a Puritan community. This sinful act involves three main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingsworth. As The Scarlet Letter progresses, each...

Hawthorne wrote his great, psychological novel, The Scarlet Letter, not only in the literal sense, but also symbolically to thoroughly instill his strong ideas into the minds of readers. He uses sunshine, the forest, roses, the scarlet letter,...

A few moments before Reverend Dimmsdale professes his sin to the crowd of onlookers, Hester's hopes of escape are dashed by the knowledge that Roger Chillingworth also booked a passage on the departing shipa ship that she prayed would give her and...

In Hawthorne's intricately woven tale The Scarlet Letter, his characters create a parallel theme with the Biblical story of Original Sin. By examining the characters and their interactions and insights about each other, one can examine the...

In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester and Dimmesdale are entangled in self-delusion because they are both caught up in a false interpretation of their respective sins and in an opaque vision of a better life. Hester is confused by...

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many of the characters suffer from the tolls of sin, but none as horribly as Hester's daughter Pearl. She alone suffers from sin that is not her own, but rather that of her mother. From the day she is...

Samson Agonistes is Milton's attempt to bring together the seemingly opposing worldviews of Christianity and tragedy. While some would contest that tragedy has no place in Christianity, Milton observed the tragedy in Judges 12-16, and, as an...

In Milton's drama, Samson Agonistes, the reader is shown the Biblical figure of Samson portrayed as a martyr of sorts. In the beginning of his life, though he was a great warrior, who fought not only against his enemies but those of God, he was...

What Do We Learn Of The Characters Of Samson And Dalila And What Is The Significance Of This Episode ?

The character of Dalila is first described by Samson, in his opening dialogue with the Chorus, as "that specious Monster, my accomplish'd snare."...

In many of Whitman's Civil War poems, he focuses on dead or wounded soldiers and draws particular attention to grotesque, often disturbing images. In "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest," he writes, "Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the...

In 1895, Mark Twain put his formula for how to tell a humorous story down on paper. The speaker should know how and when to deliver the punchline, learn to be apparently indifferent to his own humor, and exhibit mastery of the pause. Some years...

Alex Haley's 1976 novel, Roots, portrayed the history of a Kunta Kinte's family as an epic story of survival. Haley presented the history of a man and his family torn apart, but not broken, under enslavement in America. The experiences that...

An underlying, general disgust for the opposite sex is one of the sentiments shared by writers Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. While the two authors have similar perspectives on the two genders, both viewing males as the inferior sex, the means by...