Newest Literature Essays

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...

The Tell-Tale Heart and the Black Cat

Overwhelming obsession and guilt often lead to deadly consequences. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat," Edgar Allan Poe presents us with two men who each commit brutal murders motivated by...

In law a husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person...

A woman...has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her...

In Middlemarch, George Eliot offers a portrayal of a closely-knit, semi-rural community, but in fact...

Compare and contrast the use made of argument and dramatic

irony in some morality plays.

By allegorising the redemption of mankind and the principles of Christian aretaics, morality plays, in the words of Robert Potter, "celebrate the permanent...

From Baudelaire's Spleen:

Nothing could drag as do those limping days

When, beneath flakes each snowing season lays,

Tedium, the fruit of glum indifference,

Takes on a frightening deathless permanence.

Consider the manifestations and consequences of...

Most of Chaucer's works contain references to famous historical, classical, and mythical figures. This trend holds true in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Most strikingly, The Black Knight plays a hefty role in the story. Because of the character's...

Perhaps no other play in Shakespeare's repertoire has provoked greater controversy regarding its fundamental moral and religious attitudes than The Merchant of Venice. To understand Shakespeare's treatment of the Jews in this play, we need to...

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it." Although Addie Bundren dismisses the word love when used by her husband, Anse, as "just a shape to fill a lack," her other relationships are not as empty (172). In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner reveals the...

Elizabeth Fowler

Drama Essay / Eng 113-700

April 28, 2006

In William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Queen Gertrude's culpability of King Hamlet's death has been the subject of much debate. Although her guilt or innocence in this matter is arguable, her...

In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, the author forces his readers to think and reflect, and to avoid simply taking any story at its face value. This is exemplified by the Zen koan he places at the very beginning of the book. Though we are never...

In the plays of Shakespeare, readers can find several issues of human nature addressed. In Othello, Shakespeare addresses jealously and racism. In King Lear, he addresses pride and love. In Romeo and Juliet, he examines fate. In The Tempest and...

"I have the honour to attend Court regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of Judgment." Bleak House.

In a novel so acutely dedicated to exposing the real and actual misery of its characters, very little of it arises...

Today, most Americans can only imagine what the horrors of the Holocaust must have been like - and, to be frank, they are probably very glad that they have no personal experiences to draw on. However, the Holocaust, and other catastrophic events...

Albert Camus's novel The Stranger is an extremely explicit work describing violent acts witnessed by a narrator who seems to be wholly unaffected by their brutality. The novel begins with death - "Mamman died today" (3) - and ends with the...

In "The Knight's Tale", Chaucer clearly draws on themes used by other writers, and is particularly influenced by the work of Giovanni Boccaccio. In Boccaccio's Teseida dell Nozze d'Emilia, he creates the character of Emilia, with whom the Theban...

Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye is a tragic narrative of how one black community loathes itself simply for not being white. Yet, even more tragic is the fact that an innocent little girl, Pecola, also comes to hate herself for not being white. She...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn correlates extremely well with novels like The Catcher in the Rye in that it illustrates the profound, omnipresent difficulties, with which characters like Huck and Holden must struggle as they are growing up....

Edgar Allan Poe is known for his thrilling tales of madmen, cunning murderers, and intense, claustrophobic situations. "The Cask of Amontillado" is one such tale. From the very beginning of the story, the narrator's unreliable nature shines...

"Blessed are those in whom grace shines so copiously that love of food does not arouse excessive appetite, but lets them hunger after righteousness" (2.23.150-154). On the sixth terrace of Purgatory, a tree speaks these words, communicating a...

Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis is as a disturbing look at the absurdity of life-and is literature at its most unsettling and most introspective. Throughout much of his life, Kafka suffered from insecurity and internal torment. An...