Book review: "The Death of Adam" by Marilynne Robinson
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam is an essay collection by the author of the acclaimed novel Giliad. The essays in the book fall into two main categories, as Robinson describes in the preface. Some of them are dedicated to pointing out foolishness and ugliness where modern thought...
Emily Dickinson
Dissertation - 4 pages - Literature
The poetess is the most fantastic of implausibilities. She is a bizarre stray onto the wrong pedestal. Emily Dickinson, in the lonely ranks of poetry, has this particular distinction. Only Sappho, Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Browning keep her company in the otherwise fraternal pantheon. One can,...
John Donne and the Baroque
Dissertation - 6 pages - Literature
The monstrous beauty of the 17th century, all its aspiring whorls and lopsided rhetoric, its weird configurations and ghastly echoes, and the vast empty spaces evoked by its obsessive detail—all this is apotheosized in the Anglican priest, John Donne. In poetry and person, he embodies the...
Dealin' some justice: Wargrave style
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Every good mystery has suspense, deception, and plot twists. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is no different. Published in 1939, the book has sold well even today. The book features high suspense with cold-blooded murders and a mystery killer. All the characters and even the reader...
Gesundheit: On Chiasmus
Dissertation - 1 pages - Literature
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” It just so happens that one of the most immortal phrases of one of the most immortal political speeches in history is a chiasmus. Coincidence? Indeed not. Jack knew what he was doing. Chiasmus, which...
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
Set in the idyllic landscape of far-off Illyria, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night presents a tale of mischief and merriment, marriage and masquerade. It's the stuff great plays are made of: someone dressing in drag, someone donning yellow stockings, blatant homoerotic tendencies flying every which...
Suffraging Shakespeare
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
Set in the idyllic landscape of far-off Illyria, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night presents a tale of mischief and merriment, marriage and masquerade. It's the stuff great plays are made of: someone dressing in drag, someone donning yellow stockings, blatant homoerotic tendencies flying every which...
A convenient truth
Dissertation - 1 pages - Literature
McFate is the term coined ironically by Humbert to address the role of coincidence in his life. McFate; an interesting classification when one considers that Lolita was written before the era of fast food commercialization, and yet the nickname still has the same dilutive effect and connotations...
Struggle for freedom and sanity in one flew over the cuckoo's nest
Dissertation - 3 pages - Literature
The struggle for freedom and sanity in society is a constant one. Societal leaders relentlessly place standards and requirements on people, and this produces a detrimental effect in many cases. The unavoidable contradiction between the interest of the whole and the cause of the individual...
Revolt against blandness: Language, sexuality and idealism in The Catcher in the Rye
Dissertation - 3 pages - Literature
J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in the early 1950's, a time of refinement and standardized ways of living. Salinger experienced firsthand the terrors of World War II, as well as life in America during an uncertain time. Salinger's early influences at school and in...
Water vs. fire
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
Life is a constant struggle with those around us. In Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, this struggle is the constant desire to overcome the opponent. Despite similarities, two characters in Moby-Dick showcase this constant desire to defeat one another. The wily Captain Ahab and mysterious white...
Irrelevant cynicism
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
In John Gardner's Grendel, the Dragon's most important character trait is his complete and limitless knowledge of the past, present, and future, producing his biting and relentless sarcasm and his ability to understand the complete and utter irrelevance of the daily exploits of Grendel and...
The warmth in life: (Despite the frost)
Dissertation - 3 pages - Literature
It is from the ancient Greeks and the Miltonic era that romantic poets have learned to so casually reject their profound place in society. They claim often to be some small part of an awesome whole; the vastness of earth, its circularity (life cycle), the infinitudes of time all decreasing the...
Homeless Mothers: Book review and topic discussion
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Homeless Mothers: Face to Face with Women and Poverty by Deborah R. Connolly (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000) is an ethnography based on participant observation and extensive interviews and written for the general public. Its main subjects are homeless mothers and their...
Physical deterioration of Beckett Characters
Dissertation - 3 pages - Literature
As a playwright, Samuel Beckett wrote unconventional plays that tested the boundaries of theater. His stories are often perplexing upon first glance, and many employ devices not often seen by audiences, including disembodied voices, the lack of a full physical body throughout the play, and...
The appeal of Toru
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
The main character of Norwegian Wood is Toru Watanabe. As the central figure in the novel, he meets and interacts with many other characters in the book. He finds himself in a position where, at least in his own opinion, there are a lot of characters that are drawn to him for one reason or...
Baudrillard on image: Illusion
Dissertation - 4 pages - Literature
Our modern society is obsessed with the image in many different ways. The more our technology has progressed, the more we have found ways in which to create images in ways that are indiscernible from reality. Special effects in movies are defining the way that we view cinema, and televisions...
The ancient history and literature of England
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
The Romans, following their usual policy, had destroyed all jealousies among the British tribes, but, at the same time, had destroyed their power of self-defense. When the last Roman garrison was withdrawn in 410, Britain was like a derelict ship. The “Picts” and the “Scots”...
"Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus", Mary Shelley (1818) - letter IV
Text analysis - 1 pages - Literature
This last letter before the first chapter of the book is written at sea. It is composed of three letters (5th August, 13th August and 19th August). The story takes place in the three weeks between 31st July and 19th August; we can know it because the chronology is very detailed. This story...
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", Tom Stoppard (1967)
Text analysis - 4 pages - Literature
In this excerpt from 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', the two minor characters turned protagonists are reunited with the player they encountered earlier and on whom they walked out as he and his companions were acting out a play form theme. There ensues a lament on the...
Famous women poets: Emily Dickinson
Dissertation - 4 pages - Literature
As a byproduct of the sheer amount of Emily Dickinson poetry that has been recovered, readers have been given a unique slant into the progression of her innermost, clandestine perspectives. Over time topics have been revisited, and perspectives rewritten by her lush poems, brimmed with new...
The changing English language
Dissertation - 3 pages - Literature
Over the past 700 years or so, English sentences have shrunk from around 70 words per sentence in circa 1380 to around 20 words in a typical general-internet book today. An analysis of a work each from the respective periods indicates that such change in the linguistic features of the language...
White noise
Dissertation - 5 pages - Literature
Traditional nature writers often describe the benefit man can derive from interacting with nature. For example, in Nature , Ralph Waldo Emerson describes “in the presence of nature a wild delight runs through man, in spite of real sorrows” (Emerson 38). Furthermore, he purports that...
Colonialism in Things fall apart
Dissertation - 6 pages - Literature
Colonialism is the enforcement of political, cultural, economic, and military troops over the weak nations in order to exploit them; it is the method employed to spread capitalism and its values. When Britain embraced Capitalism, it started to colonize nations so as to secure its material...
Character analysis: Okonkwo
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Okonkwo is the main character of the book “Things Fall Apart,” by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. This character is a hero to his village, a clansman, warrior, farmer and family man. However, no one is ever perfect. As Aristotle said, a tragic hero is defined by a noble or heroic person...
An Upheaval by Anton Chekhov
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
“An Upheaval” by Anton Chekhov is a story about a young girl, Mashenka Pavletsky, who works as a governess for an upper-class household. Mashenka, who once felt herself superior to the lady of the house, has had her room searched because her boss, Fedosya Vassilyevna Kushkin, had lost a...
"Youth", J. M. Coetze - the main character in the book
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Youth' relates to a young man who has left South Africa after having finished his studies to live in London. According to him, he can reveal himself as a poet, as an artist, he can only get rid of his bleak appearance by leaving his native country. He expects a lot from London where his...
"Flying Carpet", Steven Millhauser - "flying up to the sky" - publié le 30/06/2010
Text analysis - 4 pages - Literature
Steven Millhauser is a writer of realist fiction. However, his work cannot be limited by labeling it only realistic. Another dimension is added to his short stories. They are full of interpretations. In Flying Carpet, though the story seems to be quite casual, even banal - a child trying to reach...
Children's stories: Basic propaganda
Dissertation - 2 pages - Literature
“No; it is never worth while to do wrong. Little boys who read this story, consider which you would have rather been- the honest boy, or the thief?” So read the very last lines of The Orange-Man; or The Honest Boy and the Thief. This tale clearly espouses a moral message, as the story...
The magician's nephew: Perception shaped by the imagination
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
C. S. Lewis wrote seven stories that made up The Chronicles of Narnia. All of the seven stories have characteristics that pertain to “perception shaped by the imagination”, a subheading of Colin Duriez's A Field Guide to Narnia. Of the seven stories I am going to focus on The Magician's...
