Newest Literature Essays

Edgar Allan Poe composed “The Fall of the House of Usher” some two decades before Abraham Lincoln warned those living both above and below the Mason-Dixon about the dangers of trying to live comfortably inside a house divided against itself....

In a colloquial context, a state of ‘alienation’ is one in which an individual is excluded or isolated from a group with whom that individual belongs or should be involved (Merriam-Webster, 2015). However, in the context of Marxist theory, ‘...

Throughout the history of literature, authors and playwrights have often employed a foil – a character whose purpose is to create a contrast with the main character that allows the latter’s attributes to cement their presence. Ancient Greek...

Keats’ exploration of the nature of love is enhanced through his utilisation of the imagination and the overtly supernatural settings which he creates. Both Lamia, which relates the mystical story of a beautiful serpent who strikes a deal with...

Both ‘How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 116’ explore the ideas of love and romance in the traditional form of a sonnet. Whereas Browning writes about the intense love she felt towards her...

Andrea Dworkin, claimed that, ‘Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge’, this is shown within both novels as the female characters are presented as being controlled within...

“The Dead” by James Joyce, from Dubliners, centers around the events that take place at an annual Christmas party in Dublin, Ireland. This short story follows the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, who is thrust into these events, and is the only...

Newland Archer is not only a well-read intellect, but an introspective thinker who deeply considers his own life. One concept that Newland consistently struggles with is his understanding of “reality”, and a major journey exposed through Wharton’s...

In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a range of narrative techniques are used to reveal the severity of life in Gilead, a dystopia foreshadowing the corrupt future of American society under a fundamentalist Christian regime. Published in...

In both Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’ and Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’, the question of morality is not a straightforward one, as there is tension surrounding the purpose of marriage and traditional social expectations. However,...

In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley uses acute detail and comprehensive explanation to convey theme and symbolism. His use of explicit interpretation provides readers with a forthright account of emotion, thought, and opinion of not just...

As a Restoration Comedy humour is central to Wycherley's play. Like many other Restoration Comedies The Country Wife is characterised by farcical humour that runs throughout the whole play, generated through wit, sexual innuendo and a great deal...

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is, in many aspects, a story of love and relationships. Two couples, Kitty and Levin, and Anna and Vronsky, find some form of love and passion throughout the course of the novel, yet their personalities determine the...

The Plague is an exploration of caricatures and how they respond in desperate situations. Albert Camus does this by putting multiple characters in the same situation, the controlled variable, but changing the philosophies each represent, the...

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake is a story that is parallel to Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat. Gogol’s work is commended and mentioned countless times by Lahiri in her writing. The Overcoat is about a man named Akaky Akakievich, who, at...

Famous novelist, Truman Capote, in his non-fiction book, In Cold Blood, recounts the murders of the Clutter family committed by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Although this book is considered non-fiction, critics have questioned the authenticity of...

"We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under...

In comparing the Edwardian era - that is, the early 20th century - to the modern age, we can see that some distinct social constructs and class systems are present in both. However, social and class-related barriers are noticeably more porous in...

The fairy tale of Bluebeard has fascinated writers, filmmakers, photographers, and artists throughout history and across national boundaries. Coming from the European oral tradition, the first, and most famous, written version is Charles Perrault’...

In the poem To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn’t Find Me Identifiably Indian, Arundhathi Subramaniam explores the politics of language and how it affects the identity of Indian immigrants in England. She poses questions about where and with whom...

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys uses her female characters predominately in a feminist style. The narrative itself is a rewriting of the literary history of Jane Eyre with a focus on the marginalised Bertha Mason both as a woman, a creole and in her...