Newest Literature Essays

As humanity has evolved, individuals have become increasingly self-interested and insensitive toward others; morals and values within texts are subconsciously adapted to reflect these changes to suit the modern society in which we live. Exposure...

The idea that poetic forms are sensitive to and affected by the pressures of history is undisputed; yet whether a poet embraces this or challenges it varies. The adoption of a specific form inevitably implies historical concern. This is evident...

The struggle between women and authority has been a central concern for novelists throughout the ages, yet the rise of the novel in the 18th century brought with it the increase in number of female narrators and authors, giving women a platform...

Social critique has long been at the heart of drama, whether through satire, allegory or more direct devices, enabling dramatists to comment on the state of the world as they see it, to pose their own idealized version of society or to put forward...

In both the medieval morality play The Summoning of Everyman, first performed in 1510, and Christopher Marlowe’s Renaissance Drama Doctor Faustus, the search for progress arises through the themes of religion, morality and avarice. In Everyman, ...

The Renaissance period in European history oversaw a dramatic disintegration of beliefs that had largely helped to structure contemporary society, such as the belief that the Christian faith should be the epicenter of everyday life. It is...

“Player: We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” (I: 19)

As a paragon of the Theatre of the Absurd, the play Rosencrantz and...

Arguably, Shakespeare presents the male characters within Othello as spontaneously emotional, and unable to control their reactions to negative events. Within this extract, Othello obsesses over the idea of Desdemona’s infidelity, goaded by Iago’s...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther depicts the life of the psychologically troubled Werther, the young protagonist and artist. The novel was one of the earliest examples of the prototypical Romantic figure in literature and...

By bringing such a wide spectrum of people together, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales reveals a tremendous amount about basic human behavior. Characters ranging from the noble knight to the corrupt pardoner reveal tidbits of how life was in...

New Criticism is a theory focused on the human experience. It guides the reader to examine conflict and tensions within a literary work, which emulate the complexity of the human condition. Ambiguity within texts allows for different...

What appears to be “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by S. T. Coleridge’s generic theme of romanticism of respecting and valuing the natural world and all it’s creatures is revealed by closer readings to be a front for a far deeper message on how...

In Dryden’s satirical poem Mac Flecknoe mock heroism is used to convey a scathing view of dullness specifically as it pertains to writers, authority figures such as monarchs, and the unintelligent masses. This technique allows Dryden to convey an...

Both ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood, and ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley portray a sense of threat and the impact this has on individuals with reduced power. In Atwood’s novel, this threat is caused by the theocratic regime, Gilead,...

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood, and ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley use different voices within their novels to achieve greater success in delivering the messages of their texts. Shelley, through her novel, is warning readers about the...

The driving element of any film or script is the initial inability of the protagonist in overcoming opposing forces because they lack the expertise, awareness, or the right character tools. Subsequently, the protagonist achieves the ability by...

One of the best parts of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, is its embeddedness with critical conversations about literature as well as gender. In each image and on each page, the book promotes the story’s complex dynamic, one in which...

In the twentieth century, the advent of film meant that a new medium was used to identify and unify youth culture. Whereas previously youth experiences were significantly different based on where an individual lived, the medium of film created a...

In Richard Wilbur’s poem “Love Calls us to the Things of This World,” there are many aspects of the poem that are interesting and effective. These include imagery, the theological themes of the poem, and the word choices Wilbur used. These...

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson, follows the story of Frodo Baggins, a hobbit that has embarked on a journey with a fellowship of eight to destroy the One Ring that holds the power to control all of...

It is believed that Arabian Nights, sometimes known as One Thousand and One Nights, began as an oral narrative, told in public forums both to entertain audiences and to teach them significant moral lessons. Since its conception, its stories have...

One common theme in literature is power, and many works explore how different people use or abuse it in different ways. Often, settings emerge as illustrations of power and its abuse; they can act socioeconomic critiques and as metaphors for the...

The idea of suffering is central the poem "Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil"; in fact, Keats presents the suffering of both the lovers, displayed through the semantic field of illness and pain. This is coupled with exclamations of emotion from both...

Marriage is an institution build on trust and commitment between two parties; in the same vein, media is an establishment that is ethically meant to convey truth hence consumed with trust. Henceforth these two institutions are susceptible to being...