Newest Literature Essays

William Wordsworth’s poem “A slumber did my spirit seal” compels different interpretations with different readers. In this case, two critics, Cleanth Brooks and F.W. Bateson, analyze the poem and produce two contrasting interpretations. For the...

The central conflict in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is the self-discovery, or “awakening,” of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. Throughout the course of the novel she transforms from the bored, submissive wife of Lèonce Pontellier to a vibrant,...

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ is one of the most simultaneously celebrated and contested of all his works. In scholarship, there is debate over many facets of the tale, including the sanity and reliability of the narrator, the cause of Rowena’s...

Anne Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees contains many Gothic conventions – an eerie mood, an isolated house and castle, supernatural encounters, and secrets from the past that advance the plot. However, MacDonald’s characters do not conform to...

Shakespeare’s plays employ many allusions to religious stories and beliefs. Hamlet and Measure for Measure, for example, both address religious themes and incorporate religious imagery. However, Shakespeare’s personal religious beliefs have never...

The four canonical gospels of the Bible all intend to educate religious groups about the existence and purpose of Jesus Christ. However, the four gospels do not portray this teaching in the same manner. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew and the...

Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including historical and tragedy, involve the political intrigue which results in the killing of a king. While the action revolving around this event may involve many more obvious themes, it is interesting to note...

Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, focuses a great deal on the character of Kate, the “shrew” of the story, and her transition from an unlovable, temperamental harridan into the picture of a perfect wife. Surrounding this tale of...

Among the many and varied plotlines interwoven throughout Shakespeare’s comedy, The Merchant of Venice, the story of Bassanio’s rivalled affections for his friend Antonio and for his eventual wife Portia is one of the more significant. Bassanio...

Shakespeare frequently makes use of the adjective ‘weird’ in his tragedy Macbeth. Along with bringing to mind the supernatural and unearthly, the word also forces one to consider the nature of the word’s antonym – what is normal? Macbeth’s...

One of the primary objectives of the Enlightenment was to promote reason and rationalism as a method of achieving social and political reform. However, Voltaire, a powerful and renowned philosopher and writer during the period, often criticized...

In Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, narrator Humbert Humbert exerts the power of memory as he attempts to manipulate time to suit his devices and desires. Realizing that the nymphet stage which occurs in the lives of a select number of girls...

Iago’s isolation from humanity is ideological and emotional hermitry rather than physical solitariness: he detaches himself from social standards and practices, but continues to weave his diabolical influence as a player in the social scene,...

In a play of jealousies and passions, patience, as a virtue, is presented as a foil to the “raging motions” seen in many characters. There are two aspects to patience in Othello, demonstrated firstly by suspending intellectual judgment and...

For many readers, Montaigne’s Selections from the Essays at first seems scattered both in rhetorical structure and topic. However, as one reads through the individual works, there is one concept that the diverse text consistently refers to: man's...

In Mary Shelley’s chilling novel Frankenstein, certain characters represent major thematic ideas that Shelley endeavors to criticize or praise. The main character, the scientist Frankenstein, is used to exemplify the consequences of uninhibited,...

Jane Austen is commonly viewed as anti-romantic, but her novel Northanger Abbey possesses and promotes many of the ideas prevalent in romantic literature. Heroine Catherine Morland is an especially romantic character whose spontaneity, emotion,...

Bottom’s speech at the end of Act 4, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks a transition from a dream world to reality. In it, Bottom struggles to make his dream of an encounter with Titania the fairy queen into something concrete. Bottom’s...

Victorian literature is over-populated with orphans. The Bronte sisters, Trollope, George Elliot, Thackeray and Gaskell all positioned orphans as leading characters in their novels. This trend continued into the Edwardian period, as Frances...

In his poem “Among School Children,” W.B. Yeats describes his feelings upon entering a classroom full of young children as a sixty year old man. The beauty of the children that he encounters in the classroom leads him to question the value of the...

As one of the great stylists of the twentieth century, William Faulkner explores the South’s haunting past throughout several novels. His novel Light in August is one of many set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional place in Mississippi, where he...

According to Edmund Burke, knowledge of historical precedent can be a valuable tool in dealing with more current issues of a similar nature. He is a proponent of allowing policies and customs from the past to endure not only for the sake of...

In Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon makes reference to an “alliance of spears” as a metaphor pertaining to the necessary allegiance a society has to its ruler. Initially he feels his authority must be proven as absolute and in an act of hubris he...

Great Expectations is the account of a young boy’s transition into adulthood as Pip, the central character, searches for contentment. Born into no particular wealth or distinction, he may have lived wholly satisfied with his modest pedigree had it...