Newest Literature Essays

It is often speculated as to why Alan Bennett’s The History Boys has endured as a successful comedy despite the play’s often disturbing undertones and tragic themes such as the political state of Thatcherite Britain. However, it is in fact the...

‘Ye who amid this feverish world would wear/ a body free of pain, of cares a mind,/ Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air’(JOHN ARMSTRONG) Trinity 2017.

Here, John Armstrong connects the Restoration city to ideas of suffering, evident in his...

‘Why that is an avision,/ And why this is a revelacion,/ Why this a drem, why that a sweven, And noght to every man lyche even;/ Why this a fantome, why these oracles.’ Trinity 2016.

With the quotation above, Geoffrey Chaucer relates the act of...

Marxist ideology states that due to the capitalist regime and enforced social structure within society, complete autonomy is non-existent; Members of society therefore assimilate to the belief that all members of society, including the...

Disability and deformity is a very interesting topic to have come out of the Romantic period. It challenged stereotypes and what the public saw as crippling. The literature written by disabled writers or that feature disabled writers made...

The English Renaissance notably developed alongside a volatile political backdrop intertwined with internal conflict, dynastic instability and, perhaps most importantly, religious tension. Religious settlement in the sixteenth and early...

Act One of Arthur Miller's All My Sons introduces themes of money and materialism and a reliance on the supernatural as sources of conflict. The tense beginning indicates escalating acrimony in the following act and foreshadows the tragic finale....

Conformism is a concept that is lusted upon or embraced for the sense of security or safety that it offers. However it is beyond just a choice to be made, it is a force of nature that is quite inevitable considering the demands and expectations...

The oral tradition of Archaic Greece involved reciters who recreated the individual characters and incidences each time the poems were orated. The Iliad as among literature conceived during ancient Greece were preserved through oral culture in...

In literary analysis, it is critical for readers to assess whether or not a story contains closure. Renowned author Karyn Kusama argues that stories do not “need closure, “they need a beginning, middle, and end”. Other notable writers such as...

In the novel Frankenstein, Victor’s single-minded pursuit for knowledge drives him further into loneliness and solitude, leaving behind his family and the ones that love him like his adopted sister Elizabeth and his father. But in the Handmaid’s...

Of all the feelings enjoyed by humankind, one of the greatest and most desired is freedom. Freedom is the reason why many fight for independence from tyranny, colonization, and injustice despite the danger and uncertainty of victory. In addition,...

“The Swimmer,” is a short story written by John Cheever. In his short story titled “The Swimmer,” the main character, Neddy Merrill, attempts to travel home by swimming through his neighbors’ pools. As the story progresses, time is shown to be...

A guilty conscious can be a crippling ordeal to the mind especially if the basis of the guilt cannot be undone or corrected. When the mind is in emotional distress it will grasp on any construct that makes it feel better. In Martin Scorsese’s ...

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross uses oral storytelling and dialogue to illustrate the ideas that underlie the plot of the novel, making statements about the colonization and decolonization of Kenya. Kenya’s capitalism and corruption caused...

Henry Green’s Party Going explores the relationships of a group of socialites centered around the character, Max. Max dictates the role of each member of the group, serving as the person in control, and thereby dictates the role of each woman in...

Vladimir Nabokov’s “Spring in Fialta” and Anton Chekhov’s “The Darling” both explore relationships focusing on the point of view of only one, Victor and Olenka respectively, in the relationship(s). The relationships in both stories end in the...

Christina Rossetti’s “In an Artist’s Studio” describes the relationship between a male artist and his female muse. The poem takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, traditionally used by men to write about a glorified female love interest. In the...

John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes explores the supernatural love of Madeline and Porphyro. Keats uses the holy trance of Madeline to explore her relationship with Porphyro, as well as love’s place in their world. The callous environments...

Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ embraces the conventions of the fairy-tale genre in order to destabilize its underlying power structures. The manipulation of the archetypes of the virgin and her ‘Prince Charming’ in the story...

In his article “Literature,” David M. Bethea explains how “the pagan concept of “mother Earth” and the Christian concept of “Holy Russia” … were telescoped again, made extension of each other. As a result, perhaps the greatest of all modern...

In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles Chesnutt clearly depicts the white journalist at fault for causing the spark of anger which set the black community to react in violence. Chesnutt makes it clear the sympathy lies with the black community. The...

The United States of America has progressed so far in terms of equal rights for all of its citizens that when one looks back at the USA of the past, a country that widely exercised the use of slavery, modern day America is unrecognisable in...

A rare two-tailed form of the sonnet serves as the canvas for one of Milton’s political poems regarding the state and the church’s limitations on individual thoughts, actions, and subjectivity in “On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long...