Newest Literature Essays

Set in post-WWI-era Europe among a seemingly rich and careless group of English and American expatriates, The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway’s debut full-length novel. It is interesting that he chose to narrate the novel in the first person...

It seems almost clichéd to note the distracted, disparate plurality of a certain contemporary consciousness that has developed alongside personal computers and the blogosphere, with its roots in television and cable. But it is just such an...

<BLOCKQUOTE>As for disappointing them, I should not mind much; but I can’t abide to disappoint myself!</BLOCKQUOTE>

Thus speaks Tony Lumpkin in the first scene of Oliver Goldsmith’s eighteenth-century comedy of errors <i>She...

Flannery O’Connor once said: “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” In the brilliant novella <i>The Ponder Heart</i>,...

Vikas Swarup’s <i>Q & A</i> tells the story of a young orphan who miraculously transforms from being penniless to possessing more money than he could ever imagine. It seems Ram’s ability to answer all of the questions on a quiz...

Philip K. Dick’s <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep</i> (a novel) and Ridley Scott’s <i>Blade Runner</i> (a film) insist comparison: Ridley Scott’s film is based on the story told by Philip K. Dick’s novel. These works...

“In Memoriam” is a lyric elegy written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in remembrance of his dear friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam’s death’s effect on Tennyson becomes clear throughout this elegy as the reader is exposed to not only Tennyson’s...

Edmund Spenser’s revolting description of Duessa being stripped in <i>The Faerie Queen</i> (Book I, Canto VIII, Stanzas 45-49) emotionally contrasts with John Donne’s glorifying description of his lover’s body in the poem “Elegy XIX:...

Chaucer’s “General Prologue” to <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> explores the portraits of twenty-eight of the thirty pilgrims, all of whom are taking part in a trip to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The...

Encountering a dead deer on the road is not an unusual occurrence; oncoming drivers see the road block and handle the situation accordingly. Some drivers will swerve to miss the animal -- it is safe to say that most drivers will swerve -- but a...

The originality of Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i> lies in its ability to transform the predominantly secular spirit of Homer, Virgil, Boiardo, and other masters of literary epic into a theological subject outside of the tradition....

In modern society, “corruption” connotes financial bribery, dishonest proceedings, or underhanded deals in business or politics. The perpetrators might waste others’ money and will supposedly suffer emotionally, but Romantic literature points out...

At first glance, Charlotte Bronte’s <i>Jane Eyre</i> seems to be a novel promoting tameness, preaching moderation and balance. This is shown through Jane’s metamorphosis from a wild, passionate youth to a woman whose passion is...

Boethius’s <i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i> and the Old English poem “The Wanderer” are both testament to the enduring quality of literature. Writing in the sixth century A.D., Boethius discusses such varied topics as happiness,...

In his aesthetic treatise <i>A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful</i> (1757), Edmund Burke (1729-1797) proposes his concept of the sublime. Although several eighteenth-century...

The Christian religion plays a key role in both Flannery O’Connor’s <i>Wise Blood</i> and Richard Wright’s <i>Black Boy</i>. Despite the authors’ ideological differences, both Wright’s childhood self and O’Connor’s...

Anthony Burgess’s <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> is a novel pervaded by a multifaceted and intrinsic musical presence. Protagonist Alex’s fondness for classical music imbues his character with interesting dimensions, and resonates well...

In the novels <i>Arabesques</i> by Anton Shammas and <i>Persepolis</i> by Marjane Satrapi, autobiographical narrative is created through the use of unconventional styles of writing. Shammas’s use of the novel as the...

Shakespeare’s <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> is often criticized for its seemingly misogynistic themes: namely, the idea of breaking a woman’s spirit and making her subservient to her husband. This is apparent through the “taming” of...

Much of the tension in Ivan Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> arises from the conflict between the two main characters, Bazarov and Arkady. Bazarov is a nihilist and the catalyst for much of the action of the novel. He does not share...

Naguib Mahfouz and Franz Kafka both use setting as an important literary feature in their respective works, <i>Midaq Alley</i> and <i>The Metamorphosis</i>. Mahfouz’s <i>Midaq Alley</i> takes place in the back...

The destruction of tradition in the name of progress exists in Flannery O’Connor’s “A View of the Woods” and Ivan Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> through the main protagonists in each work. Bazarov is the central character of...

John Donne and Emily Dickinson, in their poems “Death Be Not Proud” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” personify death in order to explain the phenomenon of death and, more importantly, the wonder of eternal life. In his Holy Sonnet “Death...

Dehumanization of the protagonist is a common thematic element in both Kafka’s <i>The Metamorphosis</i> and O’Connor’s “A Late Encounter of the Enemy,” although the various aspects of dehumanization differ between the two works....