Newest Literature Essays

A historical novel can be understood as a collision between the factual archives of the past and the creative substance that arises from those gaps within that archive. In this sense, the writer recognizes the open spaces within the knowledge of...

Aphra Behn was born in the midst of the English Civil War and by the time of her death in 1689, she had seen Charles I executed by his own parliament, the overthrow and restoration of the monarchy with Charles II, and finally the deposition and...

For the sake of the audience, a theatre production relies on a well-designed and thematically relevant setting. This is because a setting is responsible for designating the audience in a particular time and place, in addition to creating a...

Embedded deep within American culture is a multitude of internalized subjects that, for a time, seemed to be tearing individuals apart; examples of these topics are religion, sexuality, race, gender, economic class, and far more. Tony Kushner’s...

One of the more impactful means by which the experience of war is recreated for a civilian audience is through the illustration of the human body, with lived experience and relevant literature illustrating war as an entity so powerful that it...

The tragic hero is a popular archetype of classic literature, generally referring to a character that embodies the qualities of a classic hero as well as a fatal flaw that dooms him to failure. In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton...

American character is heavily based upon the persona of the adventurer, someone who fearlessly explores the wilderness, the unknown. Theodore Roosevelt says in his 1899 speech, “The Strenuous Life”, that, “The men who founded these communities...

One of the most prominent and important features of Southern Gothic literature is its incorporation of a character that is a “freak” into the narrative, with this freak being someone who stands out due to a disability that is external, internal,...

The term “coming of age” is identified with many concepts of growing up: loss of innocence, solidification of an identity that adulthood is based upon, and conforming to society to one degree or another. These concepts are tied to various “rites...

In the years between Geoffrey of Monmouth’s (1136) History of the Kings of Britain, which featured tales of a young warrior who would become ruler of an empire, and the prison-inked Le Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, the religious landscape of...

The Book of Genesis establishes the archetypal tale of the fall, and through it, develops the literary significance of a fall. In Genesis, the characters Adam and Eve are banished from paradise due to the seizure of knowledge. The fall they...

For human beings, life inherently exists with a void, which people look to fill through indulging in various constructs set up and measured by society. Some invest themselves in money, some absolve themselves with religion, and still others...

Percy Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” (1818) is, in many ways, an outlier in his oeuvre: it is short, adhering to the fourteen line length of most traditional sonnets; its precise language, filled with concrete nouns and active verbs, contrasts...

Subtle association of primitivism with the working class in Eugene O’Neill’s expressionist play The Hairy Ape is quite intriguing. In the play, we sense the primitivistic approach to the firemen working together in the ship who are likened to a...

The Cabrals, like many other Dominican families claim to be “victim[s] of a high-level fukú” (p. 154). They are constantly plagued by bad luck, so frequently, in fact that it does not seem to be just luck, making them helpless to their...

Facial expressions and body language communicate one’s intentions and emotions far better than words. Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, describes a plethora of physical descriptions, enabling the reader to more completely understand the characters’...

Black body has a relatively long history and there has always been certain approaches and meanings assigned to this particular body in dramatic writings as in the cases of The Tropical Breeze Hotel, That Old Black Magic and Pantomime, which are...

El Cid and Peter Abelard were both extremely well known, influential men during their respective times. They were each masculine in their own way which proves that masculinity was defined several different ways in medieval Europe, depending on...

A traditional aspect of rural Australian society was the ordered role of gender. Stereotypically, men were the titleholders, landowners and accumulators of wealth from agriculture, whereas it was the role of women to fulfil expectations of their...

Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” both makes use of irony and draws upon the experiences and feelings of a wife in the nineteenth century. After her husband has been pronounced dead in a tragic accident, the main character, Mrs....

Although innocence may seem at times like a desirable state, a lack of innocence most often pertains to intelligence and maturity. In Rudolfo Anaya’s novel, Bless Me, Ultima, the main character, Antonio Maréz, loses his innocence through...

One of the worst feelings in the world is the one you get when it seems like you are trapped in the life you live. This is the feeling when the routine of your life gets so repetitive and tired that it’s stifling, and the city you live in becomes...

Throughout Invisible Man there are recurring images of waves and rhythms, which create a reality in which everything has its own frequency and wavelength. This concept operates as an underlying theme, which once examined is revealed to play into...