Newest Literature Essays

Reading the novels of Defoe alongside those of Austen or Brontë feels very different, even though they wrote less than a century apart. In Austen’s novels, the formal delineation of chapters increases distance in the reading experience that a...

In 1987, Michael McKeon theorized that the novel form developed concomitant with the rise of the individual in English society. This correlation implies that the novel marked a shift from a communal experience of literature to a solitary...

Aeschylus poses two impossible tasks for his heroes Eteocles in Seven Against Thebes and Agamemnon in Agamemnon. Their decisions in these moral dilemmas rest on the split between family and politics. Aeschylus presents a vision in which politics...

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare explores the concept of covenants through several motifs including marriage, inheritance, filial piety, and justice. While revenge is personal, justice intends to right societal wrongs, but The Merchant of...

Emilia from Othello and Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream both experience a constant battle against the institutions of men, such as marriage and courting. These institutions have the implications of turning these women against their own sex...

Appearance versus reality is a major theme of contemporary American fiction. The characters of American Pastoral, We Were the Mulvaneys, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf may appear to be living one way, or portray a strong public face, but the...

Jhumpa Lahiri eloquently points out in her novel, The Namesake, “For his [Gogol’s] father had a point; the only person who didn’t take Gogol seriously, the only person who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the...

“‘Nothing?’ said Mama piercingly, ‘Nothing to come home to?’ She gave me a short glance full of meaning. I had, after all, come home, even husbandless, childless, driving a fall-apart car” (Erdrich, 13).

This moment from Louis Erdrich’s Love...

In “Maus II” by Art Spiegelman a series of three panels helps to encapsulate a continuous theme throughout the two part story. In these panels Artie and Francoise are in the car driving to assist Artie’s father who has just been left by his second...

Dylan Thomas expertly investigates notions of reality and higher power as he reflects on life and death in his poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. Seemingly a rejection of religion and God altogether, the poem never directly states a...

There is ample dispute over L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables: whether it is a feminist novel, whether is it supposed to be a feminist novel and what it is actually suggesting about women. Montgomery disassociated herself from the feminist...

In Act 4 Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence, Paris, and Juliet converse about the upcoming marriage of Juliet and Paris. In the scene, Juliet’s new identity of an independent woman is forged through her vigor in dealing with Paris and the...

William Butler Yeats articulates a variety of opinions concerning the arts in his poem Lapis Lazuli. As the poem begins the speaker appears to refute a definition of artistic purpose, but as the poem closes the speaker’s words illuminate a...

In 1916, Susan Glaspell chose to publish a controversial play entitled Trifles. The play investigates the murder of a man with the main suspect being his wife. This piece of literature, like others at the time, was ridiculed for its feminism. What...

“And he has bought / With his sweet voice and eyes,

from savage men, / His rest and food.”

- Percy Shelley’s Alastor

In Shelley’s Alastor, the Poet is initially presented as an “early youth” relying upon his “sweet” words to obtain his nourishment....

“For he alone knew, what no other initiate knew, how

easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world.”

– Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist”

What does it mean to willfully fast, or to deny hunger, the most fundamental of human drives? The short...

Aphra Behn and Alexander Pope both present various situations of crisis and uprising in their works, Oroonoko and The Rape of the Lock, respectively. Although the nature and intensity of the crisis situations are very different, both authors use...

Poets in the Romantic period were not preoccupied with reason, unlike most of the intellectuals in the Eighteenth Century. Rather, they were able recognize the importance of non-rational processes in the mind. S.T. Coleridge was particularly...

Nourishment as a Symbol in The Grapes Of Wrath

In The Grapes of Wrath, families traveling to California suffer starvation and exhaustion because of malnourishment. The Dust Bowl is a physical embodiment of their starvation. Possibly more important...

The Scarlet Prayer: Genesis Allegory and Christian Symbolism in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray and the Bible (NKJV) seem to agree on at least one semblance of doctrine, if only partially. They both maintain that the body is a temple,...

In Shakespeare's Othello, the primary obstacle in Othello and Desdemona's relationship is Othello’s race, and hence, his status as an outsider. This difference becomes a barrier when Brabantio objects to their marriage, however, it plays much more...

There is much debate amongst literary critics over L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. The arguments stem from the whether or not it should be defined as a feminist novel and what the narrative really implies about women. L.M. Montgomery...

In the Oresteia, Aeschylus presents his three books (“Agamemnon”, “The Libation Bearers”, and “The Furies”) so that the narrative progresses from madness and lack of justice in “Agamemnon”, where Clytemnestra receives no penalty for her homicide,...

Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV is one of the most outrageous and memorable characters in the entire Shakespearean Canon. His charisma that ensnared even Queen Elizabeth. In fact, the character of Falstaff inspired Shakespeare to write another play,...