Newest Literature Essays

The Victorian Era produced a community organized strictly into stratified classes and social positions. Men dominated this cultural structure, with women acting as their inferior counterparts. Women were bound to an expectation of servitude,...

Lao-tse's Tao te Ching is the defining text in the Chinese religious philosophy of Taoism. Written at an unknown time predating the 4th century BC, the Tao te Ching has been adapted and translated countless times, yet remains a guiding source of...

Separation of Two Worlds Within John Donne’s “The Sun Rising”

Published in 1633, John Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising” represents an era of metaphysical literary strategies. In order to capture the engrossing love of the poem’s two characters,...

In the majority of John Donne’s poetry, it is easy to characterize Donne as a domineering speaker, one who frequently overbears the female voice. Yet in “The Flea,” Donne complicates the prototypical gender roles seen in most early modern love...

Regarded as the most prominent writer from the South, William Faulkner spent his entire writing career building stories that both speak of human nature and of the nature of his homeland. In Faulkner’s large volume of work, he goes about exploring...

William Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, brimming with metaphors and figurative clowning walks the line of comedy and tragedy. As Shakespeare flexes his exemplary wit which brands his work as so signature and formulaic; he brings probably the...

Medea, as introduced by Euripides, is known for her violent actions and domestic violations. Motivated by Jason’s unfaithfulness and wavering heart, Medea loses her sanity and eventually commits infanticide. Medea’s story is representative of...

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines worth (n.) as the position or standing of a person in respect of property. On the other hand, worth is also defined as the character or standing of a person in respect of moral or intellectual qualities;...

In the early twentieth century vast social change was occurring across the country of Mexico. The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and ultimately resulted in the introduction of a more democratic government that championed the people. But an...

During the 16th century, the court masque was a popular form of entertainment, one often used to celebrate the king and aristocracy. Shakespeare's greatest contribution to the genre was his play The Tempest, which masterfully wove the elements of...

In Harriet Jacobs’ historically renowned narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the story of Linda Brent’s struggles as a slave woman help to shed light on the unrealistic standards placed on women during the nineteenth century. As...

Born in 1897 in Mississippi, William Faulkner knew black people as servants and laborers, not as equals. Yet, sharing the same space with blacks led him to a deeper understanding of their plight and circumstances. Despite his negative view of...

“What and how they speak may not be so remarkable as that they speak at all” (qtd in Estess par.1) are words that Ted Estess uses to describe Elie Wiesel’s writing career and, specifically, what Wiesel incorporates in his books. In this critique,...

In the novel The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini focuses on many critical parts of life. The main character, Amir, struggles to find redemption throughout the story, and finally finds it when he rescues Sohrab, his half-brother Hassan’s son,...

Working at the height of the Romantic Era, Percy Bysshe Shelley set the standard for literature of the period. Consistently using the conventional comparisons between humans and nature, Shelley in his poetry emphasizes man’s ability to remove...

During the creation of the Constitution in 1787, Constitutional Framers were faced with the responsibility of crafting an improved court system after the failure of The Articles of Confederation. When analyzing the beginning stages of the judicial...

Considered to be blueprint for the mechanics of tragedy, Aristotle’s Poetics revolves around the assumption that great works of tragedy must include a generous number of mimetic elements, or elements which readily imitate human life. In addition,...

1963 was a particularly important year for American Confessional Poetry Movement for one of its chief proponents, Sylvia Plath famously committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, sticking her head inside the oven and leaving behind a...

Albert Camus was an Algerian-French absurdist author, who wrote novels like The Outsider and The Plague. In The Outsider he tells the story of an emotionless and immoral character, Meursault, and how he deals with the norms of the society and the...

In “The Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin uses powerful imagery to allow the reader to feel Mrs. Mallard’s true emotions. Visuals in a story can provide an enormous amount of information about a character. What the character sees out a window can...

In the novel Grendel, by John Gardner, the author associates each chapter with a different astrological sign, such as Aries, Gemini, and Sagittarius, not only to enhance the role of nature in the story, but also to better chronologize Grendel’s...

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” This quote by Rachael Carson evokes the internal struggle of man in his yearning to survive against the incessant onslaught of nature. “To Build a Fire”...

The literary canon is comprised of texts said to be of considerable value, texts regarded as experimentally profound and which may even be said to change the way the reader perceives the world. A Clockwork Orange can be deemed an experimental...

In ancient Eastern society, written novels eventually rose to a prominent place in culture, following upon a long tradition of oral accounts and short works such as poetry. In addition, with strict government policy on content, many authors and...