Newest Literature Essays

Picasso once said, "Art is lies that tell the truth." Art requires the suspension of reality or rather the ability to transcend the expected. In suspending that reality, however, greater truths can be addressed without the restrictions established...

"We're people, we're just like the birds and the bees, We'd rather die on our feet, Than be livin' on our knees" ("James Brown Lyrics"). These lyrics for James Brown's classic soul hit "Say It Loud (I'm Black And I'm Proud)" could have easily been...

A torrid lesbian love affair. An acerbic commentary on the commercialization of sex. A dire struggle between physical temptation and spiritual good. A child's nursery rhyme. "Goblin Market" encompasses a wealth of interpretations, some of which...

But if, Sir Knight, you let me know

The cause of this tremendous ill,

As sure as God gives help, I will,

If power is granted to me, remove it...

"The Book of the Duchess" 548-551

Throughout the study of medieval literature, certain trends define the...

Pastoralism as a literary device thrives on the juxtaposition of city life and country life. Pastoralists often stress that the burdens of the city can be alleviated and clarified by a trip into the country's therapeutic environment. A sense of...

Romeo and Juliet - as characters, as symbols of love, and as symbols of innocence torn apart by a hardheaded society - are cultural icons so ingrained in society that they are often synonymous with the very concepts they represent. After centuries...

Their love is like a virtuous man at death. Their love is like the planets in their orbits, not earthquakes. Their love is like a sheet of flattened gold. Their love is like a compass used in math class. These sentiments as they stand would do...

As William Shakespeare wrote As You Like It, "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." Shakespeare further adds to this philosophy...

Right or wrong, black or white, good or evil. Some aspect within the human psyche commands that specific and rigid classifications exist. There is a yearning to categorize every aspect, object, and experience ever encountered-once categorized, it...

"The victimization, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on" (Dangarembga, 115). These ideas, which had been ingrained in Tambu...

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,...