Comedy in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: 'Moral' Pilgrims and the Stories They Tell
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Viewed in a certain light, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales offers a realistic slice of life from a diverse cross section of fourteenth century English society. Represented among the travelers are members of all three estates, the church, nobility and peasantry, as well as the middle class,...
The Necessary Female Perspective in To Kill A Mockingbird
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
If a producer was to make an adaptation of Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird and wanted to extricate Miss Maudie's role from the film, not only would the dynamic of the characters be irreparably damaged, but the film would also be excluding one of the most powerful humanizing forces in the...
Sal Paradise and the False Dream of America
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
American literature reveals a counter-culture of identity which undermines and even contradicts the popular optimism of national identity. Part of this undermining takes place in the ideologies of American literary characters, or in their “imaginary relationships…to the real conditions...
Commentary ' the chimney sweeper ' by William Blake
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
This poem, written in 1789 by William Blake, was published in “Songs of Inno-cence”. Like its fellow poems, it deals with childhood as an epitome for innocence and purity; here, the poet chooses to look into the life of the poor young boys who used to sweep chimneys in London in those...
Are the Gospel-writers collectors of earlier stories, biographers or preachers?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
The Gospels raise a whole series of intriguing questions as we do not know for sure the authorship of these writings, nor the aim, not even the audience to whom it was written for. These three aspects of authorship, purpose and audience of the Gospels implicitly underline the general differences...
The Trees: Jupiter and Mercury Destroy the City of Phrygia
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Rife with evil, the town needed to be destroyed. Piety had built Phrygia, but gluttony, unfaithfulness, and greed had razed the now repugnant country. Disgusted by the drinking orgies, sexual perversions, and absence of worship, Jupiter and Mercury watched from the Heavens. Phrygia's time had...
Hamlet: Playing a Role
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
One of the most prominent themes in “Hamlet” is acting. Its uses and abuses are constantly remarked on by Hamlet and other characters. Hamlet's view of play-acting is a complicated one; sometimes he admires it, but at other times he is disillusioned with the fakery that playing demands....
Melts in your Mouth: A Look at Humbert Humbert's Lolita
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Humbert, throughout Lolita, creates an inescapable defeat through his interactions with Lolita and his antagonist, Clare Quilty. These interactions contradict his early confidence in possessing Lolita. These characters consciously threat Humbert's exclusive relationship with Lolita. Their...
Investigating Madness Within Power Structures
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Kafka's The Metamorphosis is full of power structures that dictate the actions of each character. Each character finds him or herself in a role of accountability and responsibility that dictates how he or she acts, particularly towards other characters. Gregor, for instance, is accountable to his...
Eying Down Sanctuary: A Study of the Effects of Representation upon Readers
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Laura Tanner, in her Intimate Violence, points out that, while reading, one becomes detached from victims of violence in particular texts such that the reader is able to observe the act of violence without suffering its consequences (Tanner, 9). While Tanner is correct in her assertion that...
Sex With Necks: An Investigation of Phallic Imagery
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In literature, the vampire bite is often interpreted as a symbol of coitus between the vampire and his or her victim. However, when one takes a closer look into the anatomy and functions involved in the sex of particular blood-sucking scenes found in vampire literature, it becomes clear that the...
Stein's Translation of Art to Literature
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Because Gertrude Stein works within the medium of writing instead of painting, it is easier for her audience to view her separate from Cubism or Post-Impressionism though it still stands that they influenced her. She shares many values and ideals held by the members of those two painterly...
A Contrast of Lovers An Analysis of "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Is it better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all? When considering the abstractness and relativity of love, poetry is an art form unrivaled. T.S. Eliot and Andrew Marvell, each poets of incredible vision, analyzed love in two entirely different lights while concurrently capturing...
Faust and Nature: A Look Goethe's Faust
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The thinker's woe at his own ignorance, despite some great deal of learning, has been a common literary predicament since the Age of Reason. While many of the mathematicians and scientists kept insisting upon the reducibility of existence to laws, educated men of other fields have not always...
Modern women writers: Essay on So Long a Letter, by Mariama Bâ
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
"Par l'écriture, [les femmes africaines] signent leur premier acte de rébellion contre ces sociétés qui ont toujours fait d'elles de simples spectatrices". In this sentence, the author shows that writing is a form of emancipation for African women. In the context of decolonization of the...
A comparative account of the French and the English versions of one Beckett's text
Essay - 12 pages - Literature
Translation is usually studied from another language to ours, in order to consider changes that have to be made. With Samuel Beckett, it is interesting to analyze the process of translation from French, which is not his mother tongue, to English. In fact, Beckett was, in the 50's, one of the rare...
"Corpsing" (by Toby Litt) as a thriller?
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
According to International Thriller Writers, a thriller is characterized by "the sudden rush of emotions, the excitement, and the sense of suspense, apprehension, and exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks and lulls, and sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace." In...
The different types of irony
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
One of the definitions of irony attributed to Aristotle is "saying something but meaning the opposite". This means that irony is displayed, when, in making a statement, the speaker wants to communicate something else. Kierkegaard, (1996) in Concept of Irony, resumes this idea, saying that with...
"Pride and Prejudice", Commentary of Volume II, Chapter 11, " And this ", cried Darcyend of chapter
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This excerpt, taken from the second part of Volume II Chapter 11, of Pride and Prejudice, is located in the middle of Jane Austen's novel and deals with Darcy's first proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. The author has carefully structured the novel so that Darcy's proposal comes at the...
Reflection on Lowell's "For the union Dead"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Robert Lowell opens his poem, For the Union Dead, with an image of destruction, despair, and the loss of something that represents his youth. This opening stanza sets the tone for the rest of the poem. For the Union Dead is ultimately more discouraging than inspiring. Its disheartening tone can...
The grapes of wrath: analysis of chapter 6
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This excerpt, taken from Chapter 6 of ?The Grapes of Wrath', deals with Muley Graves's account of the depletion of man, when he is separated from his land. It is the third of many narrative chapters, which move away from the social, economic and historical situations that shape the...
The pre-raphaelite children of Sir John Everett Millais (1840 ? 1896)
Essay - 25 pages - Literature
In 1855, John Everett Millais begins one of his most intriguing paintings, the painting that will mark his career as one of the founders of the PRB. His models are a group of young girls, all of them under 13, allegedly chosen for their youth and beauty. Between 1856 and 1868, John Everett...
The Appearance in Dorian Gray
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of the title character who wishes to stay young and handsome while his portrait becomes older and uglier. As such, we can say that appearance is an important theme in the novel. While discussing the relationship between appearance and essence, it is...
The Earle Perry Charlton Story
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The Earle Perry Charlton biography, the Charlton Story, is about one of America's greatest entrepreneurs, in the early 1900's. The book chronicles Charlton's life from birth to death, and explains in detail his business relationships and tactics. Overall the main topic of the book was how...
Courtly Romances: Literature or Theatre?
Tutorials/exercises - 6 pages - Literature
The definitions of theatre and, less specifically, performance, have been in constant flux since theorists set about trying to create them. Oscar Brockett, in his History of the Theatre, opens his text with the statement that “performative elements are present in every society, no matter...
Melancholy in Winnie the pooh
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Winnie-the-pooh is a fictional bear created by Alan Alexander Milne. The character first appeared in the children's books Winnie-the-pooh (1926) and Winnie at the Pooh Corner (1928). It is a reference to children literature, since the Pooh stories have been translated into many languages,...
The American History of Race & Gender in Literature
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout the course of American history, the literature of the nation has served to reflect the social climate of the time in which it was written. Society's values in regards to both race and gender have thus been contextualized in history by American writers. In some cases, American literary...
Fate versus Free Will: Dave Boyle
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
The explicit mention of fate occurs only once in regard to Dave Boyle in Dennis Lehane's Mystic River, but the battle between fate and free will in his life is evident throughout the novel. Dave Boyle, a tragic character, has little free will to change the pre-determined forces that have shaped...
Breaking Through the Trappings of Stereotyped Femininity
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Edna Pontellier is a victim of the mother/whore duality, unable to escape the conditions of her culture that prevent her from being capable of self-actualization, and so walks into the ocean and never comes out again. This is the conclusion to Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, in which she...
Post impressionism in To the Lighthouse
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
Very little endures in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; by the third book most of the characters have died tragic and largely overlooked deaths, or they have disappeared almost without mention. Only two characters, the neurotic philosopher Mr. Ramsay and the lone artist Lily Briscoe are...
