Newest Literature Essays

Jonathan Swift played the misanthrope; that is, such was his thorough enjoyment in moralising those practices he perceived to be symptomatic of the rancid condition of human nature, that this vehemence became as much a part of his poetry as the...

The socio-religious climate of sixteenth century post-Reformation England, despite being during a time often noted as one of the most glorious eras in history, was also one of great change, the country tearing itself apart with warring doctrines....

Novelist Rossiter Worthington Raymond once said, "Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." A horizon, by definition, is no more than the range of one's knowledge or...

Nature. It is a word that seems so expansive and all-inclusive. Within a novel, elements of nature and setting often become so expected and mundane that they are easily glossed over in order to get to the "more important" elements of a story-the...

To existentialist writers, the universe is a foreign and indifferent place. Every aspect of creation, including the universe itself, is pitted against the individual. Existence is meaningless and oblivion both before birth and after death-save for...

Among the fragmented layers and voices of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land there is a distinct cry for humanity to accept the comfort of a greater level of intelligence - God. This is dramatically reinforced in the lamenting howl of The Hollow Men....

Ignatius and Irene: Partnership and Polarization

by Daniel G. Dolgicer

December 07, 2005

Familial bonds add arresting dimensions to even the most torturously mundane of novels. The literary options are truly myriad; family ties can represent both...

It is a truth universally acknowledged: an individual who wishes to belong is inevitably influenced by his or her community. The extent to which the village actually raises the child is the crux of William Deresiewicz's argument in his critical...

The tragedy in both Othello and Macbeth is found not so much in the scattering of bodies covering the stage at the end of each play, but instead in the degeneration of the plays' respective protagonists. Men championed by Shakespeare at the...

'The whole things is allegorical from start to end, yet he never takes you by the neck and says "Get down to it, that's an allegory, you've got to interpret it", the way most allegorists do.' (Basil Bunting on Poetry, p.15.)

'The poem however does...

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 Elizabethan...

Though written almost fifty years apart, and by two authors from completely different backgrounds, Nella Larsen's novel Quicksand and Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House (also known by the title A Doll House) address similar issues concerning the...

In 1971, V.S. Naipaul told Ian Hamilton, "It took me a long time to see that I had no society to write about. I had to write differently. I had to look at the world afresh." Sixteen years later, he would publish The Enigma of Arrival, his most...

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts

~ Jacques, As You Like It, Act II,...

'Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth - to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture - with this end: to teach and delight'.

...

'I have considered our whole life is like a Play: wherein every man, forgetfull of himselfe, is in travail with expression of another. Nay, wee so insiste in imitating others, as wee cannot (when it is necessary) returne to ourselves' (Jonson,...

On the surface, the thirteenth-century poem "The Romance of the Rose" exists as an allegory of courtly love set in a dream vision narrative. While the first part, composed by Guillaume de Lorris, differs slightly in tone and style from the rest of...

Webster's decision to cast strong female characters as the protagonists in his two most popular plays could have been considered highly controversial and unexpected by the audiences of his time. This unintended effect immediately seems to prompt a...

"I was a kind of bastard of the West... I might search in them in vain for any reflection of myself... At the time I saw that I had no other heritage which I could possibly hope to use... I would have to appropriate those white centuries, I would...

Paul's concern over certain issues in 1 Corinthians gives the reader insight into the condition of the early Christian Church. Without a binding, supreme authority, the missionaries spreading the Gospel often expressed widely varied...

"Yes, if you understood me, Mama, you'd see I was trying to explain it, in blues, without words, the explanation somewhere behind the words. To explain what will always be there" (Gayl Jones, Corregidora, p 66).

In Gayl Jones' novel Corregidora,...

Typically one of the subtler parts of a novel, setting usually serves as a frame that supports the plot and characters. In Ethan Frome, however, Edith Wharton reinvents the use of setting as an integral element of the story. She weaves the...

Edmund Burke and Karl Marx would have been mortified at each other's conception of acceptable progress and the movement of history. Such repugnance, in fact, was indeed expressed by Marx, reflecting the two polar views of his and Burke's...

If a novel is indeed grounded in a vision of the world, how do authors who find themselves essentially "groundless", caught in a web of shifting homes, cultural allegiances, and ethnic identities find their unique vision? Paule Marshall and Caryl...