Newest Literature Essays

In his early poem "The Rhodora," Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "If eyes were meant for seeing, than beauty is its own excuse for being." If one were to ask the speaker in Robert Frost's "The Most of It" how he feels about Emerson's quote, there would...

Alone in his childhood home, his father buried and his mother married to another man, Hamlet laments, "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into dew" (1.2.129-30). Hamlet brings up suicide early in Act I and...

Families in Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude are often breeding grounds for distortion and curses, not of the stability and progress expected of most kin relations. Genealogies are either perverted or unsuccessful: The BuendÃa line, with...

...'twas amazing to imagine where it was he learned so much humanity; or, to give his accomplishments a juster name, where 'twas he got that real greatness of soul, those refined notions of true honour, that absolute generosity, and that softness...

W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, seems to be speaking for a raceless society where the quality of one's character was the sole basis for being judged. Yet this is not what Du Bois saw in his day and it is not what we see today. The...

The introductory paragraph of "Fall of the House of Usher" (90-91) is a sharp plunge into the deep, haunting tone of this story. The language of the narrative immediately brings the reader into the surreal and horrific world of the Ushers as the...

Edna Pontellier's domestic situation is nothing out of the ordinary for a wealthy New Orleans family. Her roles as a housewife and a mother exemplify society's expectations of upper-class women during the Victorian era. Edna's burning desire to...

"The dream-vision appears personal and private." Discuss

Despite their frequent internal contradictions and their transitive, pseudo-empirical character, dreams can make inexplicably authoritative claims to factuality. Accordingly, the dream-vision...

Near the conclusion of The Late Mattia Pascal, after Mattia has returned from his two-year absence and reclaimed his name, he wonders what the point of his extraordinary life was. Mattia's fellow librarian, Don Eligo, contends, "it proves that...

When The Crucible opened on January 22, 1953, audiences greeted it with lukewarm applause. Critics did what they do best by berating the new play. What is now arguably the most influential allegorical play on the subject of Communism written...

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that the Anglo-Saxon heroic culture came to an end. There is no doubt, however, that the ideals prominent during the time of Beowulf, Hrothgar, and Wiglaf have gradually dissipated and taken on...

Throughout her body of work, Angela Carter continuously twists and transforms conventional ideas. Whether Carter places a feminist spin on traditional stories or challenges conventional thought by raising questions, her writing reveals innovative...

After much deliberation and many intense arguments, Socrates finally reaches a definition for justice and claims that leading a just life is worthwhile both for its consequences and for its own sake. Although these conclusions summarize the main...

Although it could be contended that chivalry and courtesy are essentially aspects of the same code of restraint and responsibility, the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents a distinction between the domestic test of the Gawain's...

When Lady Olivia first beseeches Viola, a girl disguised as the male page Cesario, to love her, the two share a repartee that seems to question Cesario's affection for the countess. But as Viola responds to Olivia, "you do think you are not what...

During the first weeks of August 1902, Samuel Taylor Coleridge toured the hills of England near Scafell on foot. Ironically, the lines that "involuntarily poured forth" into a "Hymn" did not end up describing Coleridge's ascent of Scafell, but...

Chaucer is known for his talent at pushing his readers to step outside their preconceived notions regarding genre, characters, and themes. In addition to this, Chaucer uses words with double meanings to create ambiguity and depth throughout his...

Among the various definitions of tragedy, the one most commonly proffered is: a play that treats - at the most uncompromising level - human suffering, or pathos, with death being the usual conclusion. According to Aristotle's Poetics, the purpose...

In the "Aeolus" chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus tries to express to Professor MacHugh that he has "much, much to learn" about Dublin, but that he also has a "vision" (Joyce 119). Whether his vision pertains to the city or to his...

Jane Austen's Perfect Heroine:

The Use of Reserve in Persuasion

"Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself."

Jane Austen, Persuasion

Anne Elliot is often described as Jane Austen's most mature and perfect heroine; and so she is. One...

One of Pope's most fundamental premises in The Dunciad is the idea that the demise of the word cannot be blamed solely on the Grub Street hacks but also on academicians at large. Not only does the 'uncreating word' of Chaos (IV 653) pose as a...

Several aspects of classical lesbian poet Sappho's work would come to be admired and built upon by the Decadent poets of the nearly two and a half millennia after her time. The mixing of gender aspects and themes of masculine power and feminine...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. contends "race" is not itself a natural entity, rather a synthetic construct used to degrade certain peoples. He implores society to move forward free from the shackles of categorization, liberating itself from a false...

"Hamlet challenges the conventions of revenge tragedy by deviating from them" (Sydney Bolt, 1985)

The typical Elizabethan theatre-goer attending the first production of 'Hamlet' in 1604 would have had clear expectations. The conventions of...