Tikai Tevi, Alexandrs Caks; Only You, Poem for Riga
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
"The Buddhists might say that the soul of a secretive and unique poet had transferred itself to a no less peculiar and secretive bird of the night?" This is how a contemporary remember the burial of Alexandrs ?aks, in February 1950. He was born in 1901 under the name of Alexandra ?adarainis ....
Judgment and Portrayal of Character in the "Love Suicides" and "What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
The two narratives of “What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker” by Saikaku and the “Love Suicides” by Chikamatsu present variegated looks at the complications of love and society and the need for harmony between the two. Both are prime examples of Japanese literature, full...
Power and Sexuality in "Leda and the Swan" and "Goblin Market"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Duality and opposition are forces that play beneath the surface of both William Butler Yeats' “Leda and the Swan” and Christina Rossetti's “Goblin Market”, two poems that focus on sexuality while incorporating animal figures as holders of power, both sexual and otherwise....
Essay on "The Boarding Hous", by James Joyce: A well-orchestrated "human comedy"
Essay - 7 pages - Literature
"The Boarding House?: This article, will study the most interesting aspects of Joyce's narrative technique in this short story. Joyce's (1882-1941) short story ?The Boarding House' was published in ?the Dubliners', a collection of stories set in the ?paralyzed' town of Dublin....
All in the Family: The Economics of Interpersonal Relationships in the Gulag
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
The synopsis on the back cover of Alexander Solzhenistyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich claims that it is “the harrowing account of one day in the life of a man who has conceded to all things evil with patience, dignity, and enduring strength.” Like so many others, the author...
The Epileptic Loophole: Self-control and the Judiciary in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Epilepsy and the punitive system—two seemingly unrelated items that Fyodor Dostoevsky juxtaposes in order to make a point about Russia and the futility of the judiciary. In his giant oeuvre The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky exemplifies the tension between rational and irrational behavior by...
The Crucible Character Analysis : Abigail Williams "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In any unfavorable situation, we seek a solution and if there is none, then a way out. When one of main characters of Arthur Miller's The Crucible finds herself in a vulnerable position, she not only manages to escape her problems, but also succeeds in placing the repercussions of her actions on...
A critical review of 'A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War by Harry V. Jaffa
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War by Harry V. Jaffa is the long awaited sequel to the author's 1959 book, Crisis of the House Divided. Although the specific objective of the A New Birth of Freedom is to examine Lincoln's development of the Gettysburg Address, what...
Hospitable Hosts, Educated Elites: Relativism vs. Absolutism in the writings of Alberuni and Ibn Battuta
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
In exploring nations and cultures outside of their own, Alberuni and Ibn Battuta encountered ideologies, customs, and practices that stood in opposition to the beliefs and ways of life they personally upheld. Faced with foreign behavior and thought, the authors found themselves in a position to...
Harold Pinter and the absent 'Center'
Essay - 9 pages - Literature
At the very beginning there is the structure. The structure is a skeleton, the premise, the base on which the flesh is arranged, systematically, so that a body maybe created. It may not always make itself palpable but if there is a structure then there must also be a center. A structure without a...
Nietzsche and the Mother: A Contrast to Kantian Enlightenment
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
To what extent does Nietzsche impose his ideals on the reader or create an open and flexible world-view? Upon closing his arguments in On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche imagines a reader asking him “'What are you really doing, erecting an ideal or knocking one down?'” (95). He...
Heteroglossia and Shelly's Frankenstein
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
According to M. M. Bahktin, heteroglossia is the use of different novelistic modes of expression (authorial speech, narrators, inserted genres, speech of characters, dialogue, etc.) to express and represent the diversity of social speech types and a diversity of individual voices. Mary Shelly's...
Langston Hughes's "Trumpet Player"
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Langston Hughes's poem, "Trumpet Player", is both a celebration of and reach for a Black identity. The poem's vivid imagery and careful metaphors connote to a theme consistent among Hughes's work. The poem quietly speaks of oppression, of a violent past, of desperation and ongoing...
Fidelity and Infidelity (to Tolstoy's Novel) in Duvivier's and Zarkhi's Anna Kareninas
Tutorials/exercises - 15 pages - Literature
A viewer watching the 1948 and then the 1967 film versions of Anna Karenina (directed by Julien Duvivier and Aleksandr Zharkhi, respectively) for the first time might think that there is much in common between the two films. They look very similar, and this is due in large part to attempts, by...
Society Woman: Days of a Russian Noblewoman
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
The memoirs of Anna Evdokimovna Labzina, a noblewoman during the reign of Catherine the Great, might be expected to contain numerous references to the salon of St. Petersburg and the fashions of the time. Titled Days of a Russian Noblewoman, her account is remarkable for its religious tone and...
Subplot and Plot: The Commentary of the Madhouse on the Castle in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
In the seventeenth-century Jacobean revenge tragedy The Changeling, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley present two seemingly separate worlds in both location and action. The main plot is characterized by the locale of the castle in Alicante, ruled by Vermandero. This setting is centered on the...
The Absent Wife and Mother as the Source for the Downfall of a Family and Kingdom in Shakespeare's King Lear
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
In King Lear, Shakespeare incorporates a theme that is prevalent in many of his other works, that of family structure, specifically, absent wives and mothers. The nonexistence of King Lear's wife and his daughters' mother also implies the absence of a Queen and a female political figure to...
The Workshop
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Writing is not for the faint-hearted. Writers do the hard work of expelling ignorance, trying to change the way people think while taking in every chance to learn about the lives of others. The business of fiction is people, but in order to write about people, one has to understand them well....
Symbolism in "The Chrysanthemums" and "A Rose for Emily."
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Writers employ a wide variety of devices to further enhance the nature of their works. Whether through eloquent description or profound repetition, certain aspects of an author's technique lend a stronger reflection of the theme or idea behind the simple story. The effect can be likened to an...
The Scarlet Letter : Exposition
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
America's Declaration of Independence gives all men an equal and unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness and this right cannot be usurped by any other principle unless the latter is governed by free will. However, because free will is subject to individual beliefs and happiness occurs in a...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest : A Study of Tragic Characters Using "Cool-Hand Luke"
Tutorials/exercises - 7 pages - Literature
Arthur Miller once wrote that the reason so few tragedies exist is because the world is in lack of heroes and the common man thinks too little of himself to be otherwise. The reluctance to be anything more than ordinary is attributed to the inherent assumption that heroes can only come from...
Anne Fadiman: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
When I'm old and gray, I probably won't remember very well every book that I've read. In fact, upon recollection, the contents of each novel will most likely be condensed to a single descriptive sentence; for textbooks, a verb and noun will do (i.e. Napoleon loses). As insignificant as that...
The Sufferings Endured by Griselda and Custance in The Clerk's Tale and The Man of Law's Tale
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
In both The Clerk's Tale and The Man of Law's Tale, the major female characters, Griselda and Custance, find themselves in positions of immeasurable suffering, and both meet their challenges with immeasurable virtue. These tales are meant to act as moral ones, didactic stories about the ideal...
Morality and the Relationship Between the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Based on his proclaimed ‘theme,' Radix malorum est Cupiditas, the Pardoner seems a worthy teller of a moral tale, but based on his description of himself and his work, he seems the least able of the pilgrims to truly appreciate morality. His Prologue offers a picture of a man completely...
Chaucer's Presentation of Marriage and Love in The Wife of Bath's and The Franklin's Tales
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
In both the Wife of Bath's Tale and the Franklin's Tale, the Breton lai romances of the Tales, as well as in the Wife of Bath's Prologue, Chaucer explores the roles and rules of love and marriage for the medievals. Through the Wife of Bath's Prologue, he presents the vast body of anti-feminist...
Charles Dickens Essay : Philosophical, Psychological, Sociological Issue
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
A great burden for human beings is to carry ourselves the way we want others to see us. Though each governed by a private set of beliefs, no man is an island for a reason, as we are subject to natural instinct, which compels us to strive for acceptance by others in society. However, though one...
Othello and Ethics of Care
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
While considering the time period and by closely evaluating how events and people play against each other, Shakespeare's Othello can be considered a full bodied and consummate feminist work. In fact, Shakespeare's close and dramatic critique of a system of absolutes in a patriarchal military...
The Violence of Childhood
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Being an adult usually implies that you have a power of perspective, that is, to see things in a larger system and then to understand these things as being symptomatic of this system. Naturally, children lack this ability and their sense of reality is tenuous and fragmented, and many times their...
Uncontrollable Urges: Women's Frightening Presence in Classical Athenian Drama and it's Reflection on Athenian Society
Essay - 7 pages - Literature
In classical Athenian society, anxiety about gender roles abounded, as women were regarded dichotomously as pillars of purity as well as receptacles and originators of filth, both moral and physical. Many ancient sources, often funerary monuments or epitaphs, praise individual women for their...
The Price of the American Dream
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
The Great Gatsby relates Nick Carraway's experiences with a disillusioned assortment of wealthy individuals following his move to West Egg, the "less fashionable" counterpart to East egg, the home of antiquated affluence (5). In this harsh region of unlikely opposites, the 1915 Yale graduate...
