"A tale so plausible, so boldly uttered": Reading the Popish Plot in Nahum Tate's The History of King Lear
Case study - 9 pages - Literature
On March 21, 1681, King Charles II appeared before the British House of Lords to deliver a speech regarding allegations of a Catholic plot against him, which had enveloped England in yet another storm of religious furor. An Anglican clergyman named Titus Oates had initially brought the charges of...
Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro - Discuss
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
A dystopia is the idea of an imaginary society ruled by a repressive and controlled state, often in order to reach an utopian goal. It comes from the Greek “bad or hard place”. The society described by Ishiguro uses human cloning in order to heal people, without any regards for ethical...
A Woman's "Complaint": Power and Gender in Andrew Marvell's "Nymph"
Case study - 17 pages - Literature
Andrew Marvell wrote numerous lyric poems throughout his life, but few of them were published until after he died. His contemporaries knew him mainly as a writer of prose and satire, and as a politician and member of Parliament under the governments of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Although...
The limits of mankind's understanding: a comparison of Franklin and Swift
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
To compare Gulliver's Travels and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is to compare two definitive insights into the nature of humanity and humanity's role in the world. Perhaps due to the various and differing social movements of the times and places in which they lived, or perhaps as a result of...
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
In the first chapter of his essay On Liberty, Mill emphasizes on the importance of the civil and social grounds of liberty, as opposed to the « Liberty of the Will ». Therefore his work deals with the opposition between his concept of liberty and the needed authority of the state. At first Mill...
Consider the relationship and struggle between Urizen and Los in Blake's work
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
The recognition of the English poet's literary talent William Blake has been slow and this is to be linked with the novelty of the ideas he developed, but also with the subversive aspect of his reinterpretation of the biblical works, in order to express his views about the world around him....
Discuss the interaction between the translators and their agents, editors and publishers. What effect does such direct contact have on nature and quality of translation?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout history the concept of translation and translation in itself has played a major role as it has made the access to important texts easier such as the bible and thus has enabled people to interact more easily. Since the 1970's its role has increased because of the fast evolution of this...
Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim and David Irving: Tralfamadorians in Training
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
Where Billy Pilgrim begins, Kurt Vonnegut ends and this is where David Irving intrudes for good measure. However this is what makes the post-modern interpretation of this book so interesting (at least to this author). Certainly, an all pervading odor of fatalism and cynicism colors the work and...
The Mother Tongue (Bill Bryson)
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In the fourth chapter of Mother Tongue (Penguin 31/10/1991), “The First Thousand years”, Bill Bryson highlights the history of the development of the English tongue. In a small area of northern Germany, the country language is very closed to the Old English. This place was indeed the...
Stone of Laughter - Hoda Barakat
Case study - 6 pages - Literature
Many have undertaken the task of writing in the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Among them, a few female Lebanese authors have attempted to recount their own experience of the war through fiction. The most renowned are Hanan el Sheykh with her novel Hikayat Zahra and Hoda...
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the earliest of all known works literature in the world. The poem tells the story of King Gilgamesh of Uruk who is thought to have reigned around 2700 BCE. Uruk is believed by some to be the origin of the name of modern day Iraq and was located in southern...
Commentary about: The Tiger, poem by William Blake
Case study - 1 pages - Literature
This poem in verse comes from the collection Songs of experience. The poem is entitled The Tiger and it was written by William Blake in the 18th century, more precisely in 1794. This written document deals with a tiger which symbolizes all the creator's work at the time of Genesis. So, there...
Testaments betrayed by Milan Kundera
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
« We don't give a damn about testaments» declares Milan Kundera in Testaments betrayed. Why Max Brod has not respected Kafka's testament? Why has Vogel accepted that people make alterations to his friend Janacek's work? Kundera highlights the growing disrespect to the wishes of the authors. The...
"The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven", Sherman Alexie
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie paints through twenty two short stories a dark picture of Native Americans' today's situation in the United States of America. Published in 1993 by The Atlantic Monthly Press, this book describes the current conditions of livings in...
Once upon a time, women in fairy tales
Case study - 15 pages - Literature
The release of Rapunzel in December 2010 tackles the issue of the female condition by re-interpreting and modernizing a classical fairy tale. In the original one, the heroine is a princess, whose hair are three-meter long, locked in doorless tower. She is victimized and passive, undergoing the...
The Dark Virgins
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
For ages now, the great Rache tribe has cursed the dwellers of Raginpoo forest. Whenever there's a commotion or a calamity in the village, they would blame the Raginpoo people right away without even knowing the truth about the said people. One day, Reug and Delash, the two sons of the wise...
Defining the intimacy between the work of English poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Shakespeare
Course material - 7 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare is a world-renowned poet and playwright who has brought the narrative stories into a different level of genius he so cleverly crafted through the sublime musings he got from his views on the society, love, and the likes. On the other hand, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poet...
Shakespeare - The tempest art and nature
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
The Tempest by William Shakespeare pursues the idea of a celebratory exploration of the nature of theatrical art. More than this, the whole play is set on a duality between art and nature, sometimes combining and sometimes contrasting each other. Art would be defined as grace, civility and...
Paper about the major themes of the book "The Canterbury Tales"
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Written in the late 14th century, during a period in history when England was experiencing a political and social turmoil, the Canterbury Tales are Geoffrey Chaucer's most celebrated literary work. At that time, a schism was beginning to develop with the Christian church. The significance of...
Gandhi, 1982, by Richard Attenborough
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
As you might know, India became a British colony in 1857. The histories of Gandhi and India are linked together since he fought for the independence of India. Therefore we decided to study the film Gandhi, produced by Richard Attenborough. He is a talented actor, director and producer who was...
Twelfth Night, Act 3 scene 1, v.59-162
Text commentary - 4 pages - Literature
Act III opens in Olivia's garden. We can say that this scene is light and jovial because Viola (disguised as Cesario since Act I) has just encountered Olivia's Clown Feste. It is mainly a scene between Olivia and Viola, and we may say that the last time they were together on stage was in...
With their backs against fort walls a soldier's-eye, view of the siege of Zeelandia
Book review - 25 pages - Literature
On February 17th, 1662, in the stifling, humid chill of Formosa's cold season, they marched. Despite being deathly sick, injured, partially starved and otherwise exhausted, the 400 to 500 men of the Dutch East India Company remaining in the garrison of Fort Zeelandia marched to the beat of...
Commentary on Libra's shooting scene
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
Libra is a novel written by Don Delillo and published in 1988. It deals with the life of Lee Harvey Oswald in parallel with the plotters of the conspiracy which led him to be charged with John Fitzgerald Kennedy's murder. This extract is the climax of the novel, the scene where the President...
The connection between Blanche DuBois and Sex
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
There is no doubt when it comes to Blanche Dubois' state of mind. On the first look she seems fragile, lost, and of course delusional. But on a further examination it becomes apparent that there is more than what meets the eye. To put it aptly, Blanche Dubois is insecure, and wants to feel needed...
To Kill a Mockingbird, a story, an author and an historical reality
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
- I'm going to talk to you about a novel : To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee and published in 1960. - This novel is a real masterpiece : it received the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and became very famous. - The story is narrated by a smart little girl whose character and feelings about the...
In the Merchant of Venice, do you consider Shylock to be a villain or a victim?
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
One area that I need to look at before I discuss this question is whether Shakespeare himself was anti-Semitic or that he was influenced when writing The Merchant of Venice by the attitudes of Christians to Jewish people at the time. At the time that Shakespeare was writing Britain was a...
Compare the Presentation of School Life in "The Pieces of Silver" and "The Winter Oak". How do Sealy and Nagibin suggest to you that the schools in these stories are out of touch with the needs of their pupils?
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
“The Winter Oak” and “The Pieces of Silver” are both set within a school and both of the boys come from poor backgrounds. Some of the ideas in the stories are similar. Both refer to the teacher learning a lesson, or a system which the teachers uphold is challenged or defeated...
Compare the presentation of the speaker in Alan Bennett's monologues 'A chip in the sugar' and 'A Lady of letters'. How does Alan Bennett guide your reactions to the characters?
Case study - 6 pages - Literature
In Bennett's monologues the characters and their attitudes have quite a lot in common. To realise these similarities and differences, it is necessary to see what we learn directly or implicitly about the main characters' lives and what they tell us about their situations. In ‘A Chip in the...
Would you agree that the main focus in Heaney's poems about childhood is the loss of innocence?
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
The Early Purges is about when a boy of about the age of 6 is frightened at the sight of kittens being drowned on a farm as he is told that they are pests. Then when he is older he just sees it as the norm and something that must be done. Death of a Naturalist is about a very young boy who...
Compare the ways in which the writers present the relationship between the colonial authority and the oppressed in the novels 'The Siege of Krishnapur' and 'True History of the Kelly Gang'
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
In their novels, both Carey and Farrell present the Colonial Authority as multi-faceted organizations. In Farrell's ‘The Siege of Krishnapur' the foremost voices of the Colonial Authority are the Collector, initially representative of the British Empire's quest for progress, and Fleury,...
