Newest Literature Essays

When one considers the criticism of Beowulf, from the beginnings to more recent writings the early lack of interest in Grendel’s mother is very apparent. In 1936 J. R. R. Tolkien dismissed her as a secondary figure to her son. Major feminist...

Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a postmodernist adaptation of the lives of two seemingly appurtenant characters from Shakespeares Hamlet. In the story, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern search for meaning in their isolated...

Nathanial Hawthorne successfully exposed the puritanical lifestyle in its’ entirety within his celebrated novel, The Scarlet Letter. He was born during the 19th century, but set his story in the 17th century, revealing his keen knowledge on the...

Contrary to the optimistic nature of the title, “Easter 1916”, Yeats’ poem speaks of death, sacrifice, rebellion and politics. It is not often that Yeats deals with the subject of the Irish Independence movement. The only other expressly political...

James Joyce’s A Mother is a short story based around the life of Mrs. Kearney, a strong-willed woman whose breach of convention results in the destruction of her acclaimed reputation. Joyce’s linguistic use of naturalism, modernism, and feminism,...

Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, and William Golding, an English author, lived and died in two seemingly separate worlds. They came from different time periods, places of origin, and had perceptions of humanity that draw no mass...

A comparison between the texts of Hemingway and Faulkner lies in the same fruitless category as comparing apples to oranges. The contrasting elements that set them apart from each other establish two immensely different reading experiences, both...

In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Julius Caesar, the contrast between honor and power in a leadership position is presented as many individuals work to better Rome with their own ideals of national glory. Brutus and his followers pursue the...

Civilization, at its core, was created to suppress barbaric instinct. However, in extreme circumstances, it is possible for instinct to prevail over civility. William Golding’s timeless Lord of the Flies is a prime example of instinct overpowering...

In Great Expectations, the word “taint” describes Pip's soiled conscience and shame for his identity, which he confuses with low class status and physical filth (Dickens 249). Pip's usage of it in the passage about his feeling of 'taint' shows the...

As simplistic and politically impartial as Victorian novels and their common familial themes of love and companionship may seem, there is customarily a greater sociopolitical concern inserted within the narrative for the reader of the time to have...

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a common psychological condition that is triggered by terrifying events. This disorder compels the inhibitor to have severe anxiety, flashbacks and negative fluctuations in mood. Likewise, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth...

In Beloved, characters experience egregious violations of their human rights that create situations that the English language cannot truly capture. The author, Toni Morrison attempts to communicate the meaning of some indescribable emotions and...

"Hell yes, we have a quota...We do keep women out, when we can. We don't want them here — and they don't want them elsewhere, either, whether or not they'll admit it." This statement, issued by an unnamed dean of a medical school in 1960,...

William Blake’s collection of poems, Songs of Innocence, highlights both the positive and negative aspects of the trait of innocence. Many of the poems within the collection feature speakers who find comfort in religious teachings and experiences...

The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley described man as one who obscures facts and evidence with "aimless rhetoric," in order to"distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to...

A Room of One’s Own explores the relationship between women and literature, and offers advice to aspiring female authors. According to Virginia Woolf “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). Woolf’s opinion...

The literary genre of fiction is immense and staggeringly diverse, yet it is unified by six basic elements. The deconstruction and analysis of each of these components yields a richer appreciation for the work being explored. The basic elements of...

Every American is familiar with the concept of the American Dream. It is the social myth at the very core of the nation’s identity. Unlike other countries, the United States is not rooted in a shared ancestry, history, or language. Instead,...

In Donne’s metaphysical love poem, ‘A Valediction: Of Weeping’, the central notion is that of spheres and cycles. This corroborates with Parfitt’s assertion that ‘in Donne’s lyric world stasis is rare’[1], which is expressed in ‘A Valediction’...

In “Master Harold”… and the Boys, black Africans are treated as though they are not as important as the white Africans. Fugard represents black Africans as people who have been disenfranchised, segregated, and less privileged in an attempt to show...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is as much of a philosophical work as it is a fictional story, not following a typical plotline. The novel includes multiple interwoven plotlines surrounding different characters with the same events being...