Wilfred Owen: Anthem for Doomed Youth, 1917
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The text to be commented upon is a poem written by Wilfred Owen in 1917 entitled Anthem for doomed youth. It is a petrarchan sonnet, a sort of diptych with two different parts which hinges upon lines 9 and 10. The title is a key for the interpretation of the sonnet which is an ideological poem, a...
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The scene takes place in a clearing, close to the Salinas river, “a few miles South of Soledad”, at dusk. Two men come (the two main characters), one following the other. The first one is George and the second one Lennie. They are ranch workers who travel together from a ranch to...
The idea of a fundamental agreement between Confucianism and Christianity
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
“After about 400 years of study and research, Confucianism in the West is still a subject which only involves a small group of scholars.” It is more than surprising when we actually realize how wide and deep is the effect of Confucianism on Chinese culture and society. More interesting,...
The concept of freedom according to Sartre
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The understanding of Sartrean freedom is quite easy. Sartre himself admits that human being is ?not free to cease being free' as he is drawn into a social and historical aspects. Nevertheless, taking these two points into consideration, Sartrean concept of freedom has some weaknesses. This...
The place of the French language in our society
Essay - 13 pages - Linguistics & languages
The French language is one those languages which are spoken all around the world. It's the 11th most used language through the world, the second most commonly-taught second language in the world (after English) and the official language in 29 countries . According to some estimations, more than...
Culture and Anarchy' by Matthew Arnold (1869)
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Matthew Arnold, in his philosophical essay Culture and Anarchy, published in 1869, expresses his view on culture in which culture could be applied to any society or any group of humans on earth. He wrote it during the time where Bentham's Utilitarianism was the prevailing thought in the...
Comment from the essay "Culture and anarchy" written by Matthew Arnold published in 1869
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Matthew Arnold, in his philosophical essay Culture and Anarchy, published in 1869, exposes his view of culture in a generally way, that is to say, that this view could and should be applied to any society or any group of men on the earth. He wrote it at a time where Bentham's Utilitarianism was...
Margaret Drabble, "The Millstone": part of the « Angry Young Men » movement? - publié le 23/11/2006
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield (Yorkshire) in 1939. She has an upper-class and intellectual background: her father was a barrister, a county court judge and a novelist; her mother was a teacher. She had a strict education and a studious life as a young girl: she went to a Quaker...
Margaret Drabble, "The Millstone": part of the « Angry Young Men » movement?
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Margaret Drabble is a writer who was often assimilated to what is called the ‘Angry Young Men' literary movement. But, as a lot of those writers of the 1950s who were put into the same category, she never claimed being fully part of this movement - all the more so since the term of «...
Antony and Cleopatra: Shakespeare's criticism of the XVIIth century's anti-feminism
Essay - 11 pages - Literature
like in his other Roman plays like Julius Caesar, Shakespeare used in Antony and Cleopatra the description of the Roman society to describe his own society. But in this play the main point of analysis was not politics but the place of women in the society. During the XVIth and XVIIth centuries,...
Cleopatra: Shakespeare's analysis of women's alienation
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
According to Yves Bonnefoy Shakespeare wanted to do with Antony and Cleopatra more than a political analysis of Rome. Indeed, Shakespeare analysed in this play the place of women in the Roman society, in order to make a comparison with their role in his own society. At the beginning of the XVIIth...
The urgency of thought; the ethical dilemma of a respectful encounter with others: a space for discourse between africa and the west
Essay - 10 pages - Philosophy
Philosophers for a very long time now have called attention to or revealed the difficulties men have in living together. Jean Paul Sartre, among others, has revealed the necessity of conflict in human relations in opposition to thinkers who have perceived other forms of relations among human...
Swinging London - 1963-1967
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The sixties were usually referred to as a period of joy and optimism, especially in England, as it was a span of time between two tougher periods in British history. Socially and economically speaking, the fifties was characterized as a period of severe struggle in the United Kingdom. The...
Swinging London - 1963-1967 - publié le 17/10/2006
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The Sixties are usually seen as a period of joy and optimism, especially in England, where they take place between two tougher periods of British history. The Fifties had indeed been quite difficult in the United Kingdom, socially and economically speaking. And during the Seventies, many problems...
Orwell said in an essay titled Why I write : "It is my purpose to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." How far does Orwell achieve this in 1984 ?
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Let us remember that, at the end of 1936, Orwell fought for the Republicans (against Franco) in Spain, where he was wounded. We know that Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949) was given this title because the novel was written in 1948, just after the end of the Second World War and the fall of...
Orwell said in an essay titled Why I write : "It is my purpose to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." How far does Orwell achieve this in 1984 ? - publié le 10/10/2006
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
It is to be remembered that George Orwell fought for the Republicans (against Franco) in Spain towards the end of 1936. It was during this battle that Orwell was wounded. We know that George Orwell's ?Nineteen Eighty-Four' (published in 1949) publication was given this title because the...
Why did Aristotle believe in natural slavery?
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
Aristotle wrote Politics as a criticism of Plato's Republic, after having been his student for 20 years. Aristotle especially disagrees with Plato's view that only knowledge and perfect forms count. He would criticize Plato's view that women and children should be held in the perfect state and...
Philip Roth, Portnoy's complaint
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The text under scrutiny presents us an extract of the confession of a man to his psychiatrist: he talks to him more precisely about his childhood, and the way his mother used to act with him during that period. What is interesting about this text is the manner the narrator presents his memory:...
How Shakespeare dramatized the changes in Lady Macbeth
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
“Ambition is the step that can turn a noble-hearted man into a sinner” is the message Shakespeare wanted to convey to the audience when he wrote the play Macbeth in 1606. Lady Macbeth's is the wife of an important nobleman: Macbeth, they are both characterized by their great ambition of...
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Essay - 8 pages - Literature
The Bluest Eye was written by Toni Morrison. It is the first of her novels and contains a number of autobiographical elements. The story is set in the town called Lorain. This was the town in which Morrison had earned her early childhood. It is a story which is told from the point of view of a...
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison - publié le 27/09/2006
Essay - 8 pages - Literature
The Bluest Eye contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up (Lorain), and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old girl, the age Morrison would have been the year the novel takes place (1941). Like the MacTeer family, Morrison's family...
St Patrick
Essay - 7 pages - Philosophy
It is difficult to retrace the life of Saint Patrick, because no one is sure of the exactness of the events. Indeed, the punctuality of the facts is mixed up by a lot of legends. The historical marks are not sure and it is difficult to extract the reality of the facts. This is why it is said...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1865
Essay - 25 pages - Literature
In 1843, the Reverend Charles Dodgson was asked to minister the parish of Croft on Tees in North Yorkshire. The family of Reverend Charles relocated along with him to North Yorkshire. The relocation proved fruitful and happiness swelled their way when a new entrant to the family was announced....
Intercultural communication: interaction in a changing world
Essay - 11 pages - Philosophy
When euripides wrote, all is change ; all yields its place and then goes in 422 B.C., he probably did not realize that he would be helping to introduce a book on intercultural communication. Yet, that study of intercultural communication is about change. It is about changes in the world and how...
Lewis, Fort Mandan, April 7, 1805 : The Lewis and Clark expedition
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
This text, written by Captain Meriwether Lewis at Fort Mandan on April 7th, 1805, may be regarded as one of the main turning points of the expedition. Indeed, the long and harsh winter they endured when they could not move on westward to the Missouri River since it was blocked with ice and when...
The Nineteenth Century's Middle Ages: Representation of the Middle Ages through nineteenth century novels or arts - publié le 18/08/2006
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913), by Henry Adams, is a study of the 13th century unity with descriptions about the medieval world. In this book, Henry Adams depicts several well-known monuments and old sights of France, all of which were built during the middle Ages. Published in 1913, this...
The Nineteenth Century's Middle Ages: Representation of the Middle Ages through nineteenth century novels or arts
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Henry Adams, Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913). In Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams depicts several well-known monuments and old sights of France, all of which were built during the Middle Ages. In this book, published in 1913, Adams comments on those monuments as he is looking...
The War (Marguerite Duras)
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Marguerite Duras was born near Saigon in Indochina in 1914. Her parents went to the French colony as teachers. She left Indonesia in 1932 to study political science and law in Paris. His childhood in Indonesia had a great impact on Duras and brought unity to her work. As she was living in Paris...
Music, emotion and Zipf's law
Essay - 59 pages - Linguistics & languages
The hypothesis of Zipf concerning a universal Principle of Least Effort, manifesting itself in Zipf 's law and modeled by Ferrer i Cancho and Sol´e in a signal-object reference matrix, gave rise to the idea that maybe the elements in music that elicit our emotional responses...
Music, emotion and Zipf's law - publié le 27/07/2006
Essay - 59 pages - Linguistics & languages
The hypothesis of Zipf concerning a universal Principle of Least Effort, manifested itself in Zipf's law and was modeled by Ferrer i Cancho and Sol´e into a signal-object reference matrix, giving rise to the idea that it may be possible to identify the elements in music that elicit emotional...
