Newest Literature Essays

“That remark you just made: ‘Not to be so ashamed of myself, for that is the cause of everything’ – it’s as if you pierced me right through and read inside me. That is exactly how it all seems to me, when I walk into a room, that I’m lower than...

A liberal is someone who believes in the primacy of liberty as a socio-political value. Liberalism posits freedom a priori, and thus within its tradition the burden of proof rests on those who would limit or somehow restrict individual freedom....

In his oration, Pericles sheds new light on traditional Greek virtues by examining not only the accomplishments of the Athenian empire, but the particular qualities and institutions that have facilitated Athenian greatness. Pericles defies the...

“What good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring if I recognized it or not?”

Soren Kierkegaard – “father of existentialism,” critic of both Hegelian idealism and its entire philosophical tradition – viewed his...

Whether enthusiastically placed on a pedestal or shoved in a dark corner, Georg Friedrich Hegel remains one of the most controversial and influential figures in modern philosophy. In perhaps his most famous work, Elements of the Philosophy of...

Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life reads as a polemic against German historicism, the prevailing attitude of his time with respect to the value of history. Originally published as the second of four...

This world is the will to power and nothing besides. And you yourself are also this will to power and nothing besides.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Human beings have struggled for centuries to explain their existence: some have thought it meaningless,...

In the Apology, Socrates tries to convince the jurors that, if they kill him, they will only be harming themselves. This argument is part of Socrates’ larger defense of his actions as he seeks to avoid drinking the hemlock. Socrates makes two...

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole...

Renowned French writer and philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet (better known as “Voltaire”) once stated, “One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.” Indeed, his words could not ring truer when used to...

Sigmund Freud represents an extremely rare breed of literary genius. His ability to delve into the human subconscious and extrapolate meaning from the apparently nonsensical gives his works an exploratory, constantly twisting feel that finds its...

Throughout the novel, Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, Tita, the struggling protagonist wages an emotional battle with herself. Given that the tale takes place in early 20th century Mexico, the concepts of uncontested familial...

Both Ibsen and Zola were firm believers in portraying their characters and works from a realistic perspective. Zola founded the naturalist movement in fiction and shared the same general perspective on society as Ibsen, who was the first of a new...

Roddy Doyle's novel 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha', set in 1960's Dublin, in the fictional suburb of Barrytown, is narrated in first person by Paddy, a 10 year old boy. Doyle effectively crafts the text to reassemble Paddy's thoughts by manipulating the...

Virgil borrows many stories and themes from the Homeric epics and revises them for the Roman tradition in the Aeneid. Aeneas’ journey in search of the Latium shores parallels Odysseus’ journey to Ithaca, except the latter knows what home he is...

W.B. Yeats is considered one of the greatest Irish writers due to his eloquent, ‘otherworldly’ early poetry and many of his later dramas and works for which he received the Nobel Prize. Often associated with the Irish Literary Revival, Yeats’...

Chaplin’s Modern Times was a silent film, an unusual sight in the burgeoning era of “talkies,” or films with synchronized human voices. Chaplin felt that the art of filmmaking was already at its peak and that adding additional features such as...

Jeffrey S. Uzzel

Dr. Katarina Gephardt

English 4480

29 November 2007

“Meta-Art, Exorcism, and Existentialism in The Masterpiece”

The Masterpiece is perhaps the most blatantly autobiographical work in Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. In the novel,...

Part 7 forms the dramatic climax of the poem in which the Mariner returns to his own “countree”. Coleridge uses the focal character, the eponymous Ancient Mariner, to narrate the aftermath of the journey and his life since and includes dialogue...

Educating Rita is a play about change and transformation. Susan White, a working class girl, wants to escape the trappings of the class system and become “educated”, thinking that this will allow her to “sing a better song“. By the end of the...

Camus wrote that “the world is ugly and cruel, but it is only by adding to that ugliness and cruelty that we sin most gravely”.

Dystopian novels can be both a mirror and a magnifying glass, reflecting our world and exaggerating aspects of it to...

In Act 1 Scene 1, Marlowe continues to subtly parody the structure of a typical Aristotelian tragedy, following the Chorus’ unusual introduction with a seemingly orthodox dialogue from the protagonist, Dr Faustus. However, he does not interact...

“‘How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?’ But Frieda was asleep. And I didn’t know” (Morrison 32). The innocent question posed by Pecola from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is representative of a recurring theme in the...

In Theodore Roethke’s poem, “In a Dark Time,” the speaker crosses over into the undiscovered world of insanity and communicates perceptions that others have disproved. Likely representative of Roethke’s own personal struggles with schizophrenia, “...