Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies - Overture (Chap. 1) "It was early" - "were lost forever"
Text analysis - 1 pages - Literature
This text is an extract from the novel The Brooklyn Follies, written by Paul Auster and published in 2005. Earlier in the novel, we discovered the main character, Nathan Glass, a 60 year old man in remission from cancer. He was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn to...
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
The History of love is a novel written by Nicole Krauss and was published in 2006. First of all, this excerpt is astonishing as far as the figure of the narrator is concerned. As we do not know the novel and its plot, we will consider that the narrator is a masculine child feeling his first love...
The Sea, John Banville (p. 112-114)
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
The Sea is a novel written by John Banville. Even if it was published in 2006, its story takes place at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century in France. This extract begins with the meeting and the marriage of Pierre Bonnard and Marthe de Méligny. Then, it offers a long...
Reading in the dark, Seamus Dean Chapter six
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
The chapter is from the third part of the novel and it is sixth chapter which runs from page 225 to page 227. The extract, as the title suggests, is dedicated to the narrator's father. The narrator describes in the previous chapter the failed relationship with his mother with whom he can no...
The Garden Party, de Katherine Mansfield
Text analysis - 1 pages - Literature
The Garden Party is considered as Katherine Mansfield's most frequently anthologized short story. In this fiction story which was published in 1922, Mansfield draws the contrasted painting of childhood and adulthood, its innocence and experience, the upper and lower classes which was...
First scene of Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child"
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
This extract is the first scene of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child, a book published in 1988 which deals with Ben a monster-like child whose birth deeply alters his parent's life. This first scene introduces us to the main characters i.e. David and Harriet and sets the general tone of the...
Literary commentary on the poem "the satirist" taken from collected poems by Louis Mac Neice
Text analysis - 1 pages - Literature
Louis Mac Neice was a famous Irish playwright and poet. He was born on September 12th, 1907 and died on September 3rd, 1963. He was a member of the "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, C. Day Lewis and Stephen Spender. He wrote many plays like The Dark Tower and other radio scripts and...
Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress": a Baroque reworking of conventions
Text analysis - 4 pages - Literature
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was an English Metaphysical poet. Marvell wrote several satirical poems against the corruption of the court, but they were published after his death (for being too subversive). ?To His Coy Mistress', though not about politics, is also a subversive poem. It is an...
The Duchess of Malfi - John Webster
Text analysis - 4 pages - Literature
The Duchess of Malfi is a tragedy by the English Jacobean dramatist John Webster. Little is known of Webster's life. He was born around 1580 and probably died in 1634. His plays are considered masterpieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean Theater. The two most famous ones are The White Devil and...
William Blake's "London"
Text analysis - 2 pages - Literature
William Blake's version of the city of London is a rather negative picture. In his poem "London", the speaker shows a much damaged population. Though the description is one of a plagued eighteenth-century London, the poem is meant to relate the condition of more than a single city in a single...
Analyze of the sonnet ?to sleep' by J. Keats
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
One may get the impression that this poem is about pain and agony and troubles encountered throughout life, yet at the same time one expects a sonnet to possess the qualities of romance, adoration, and themes of love. Although this poem may appear to only deal with dark images about the...
Comment by the end of Chapter 12 of "Jacob's Room" by Virginia Woolf ("The Clock Struck The Quarter" to "The church clock, however, strikes twelve.")
Text analysis - 2 pages - Literature
Time has always been an irresistible fascination in literature. The great authors who wrote about time, such as Yourcenar, Proust, Joyce or Woolf have all offered their unique perception of time. For some, it was a way to self-introspect, for others, a tool to describe the world in which they...
Poem "The Wanderer" by W. H. Auden
Text analysis - 3 pages - Literature
What could a layman think about such a poem? When one tries to understand a poem, it is in fact a whole work that must be understood; a whole thought that has to be reached. Whether we are studying a poem by W. H. Auden, E. Bishop, W. B. Yeats, or A. Sexton, it is impossible to understand it...
Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn" : Chapter 19
Text analysis - 6 pages - Literature
Published in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, describes the epic rambling of two boys, Huck and his Black friend Jim, a runaway slave, and narrates their attempts to reach the free states. But more than an adventure story, the book is an insight to the awakening of a boy, caught between...
"The Madonna of Excelsior" by Zakes Mda: The Garden Party
Text analysis - 5 pages - Literature
"The Garden Party" is the second chapter of Zakes Mda's fourth novel The Madonna of Excelsior which was published in 2001. The author was born in Hershel in 1948 and grew up in Lesotho where his family emigrated for political reasons. He left South Africa in 1963 for the United States where...
