Newest Literature Essays

When two men confront similar situations and meet distinct fates, the perennial question emerges. Why does Orestes in Aeschylus' The Eumenides win redemption, and Pentheus in Euripides' The Bacchae die ignobly? Both address the same moral dilemma...

"This above all, to thine own self be true" (1.3.88). As Polonius offers this advice to his departing son Laertes, he also states one of the defining principles of the philosophical branch known collectively as existentialism. A paradigm firmly...

William Blake's collection of illuminated poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience depict, as the title page explains, "the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul" (Blake 1). Although Songs of Innocence, written in 1789, was crafted five years...

Emily Dickinson's poetry covers a broad range of topics, including poetic vision, love, nature, prayer, death, God, Christ, and immortality. There is a unity in her poetry, however, in that it focuses primarily on religion. Full of contradictions...

Vestiges of Hal in Shakespeare's Henry V

by, Anonymous

October 17, 2004

Over the course of Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry V plays, the character of Henry V evolves from a reckless youth to a great King and revered hero. In 1 Henry IV the Prince...

In Ovid's "Metamorphoses", there are a great many instances that link love and war, thus creating a disconcerting antithetical comparison prominent throughout the canon of literature. In particular, this theme can be seen in and around the region...

A seemingly impenetrable solitude permeates human life in D. H. Lawrence's two short stories, "Odour of Chrysanthemums" and "The Horse Dealer's Daughter". Inside Lawrence's fictional worlds, the thematic isolation of individuals from one another...

Unholy Mothers: Mothers as Negative Characters in Richard III, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest

by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

The mothers presented in Shakespeare's plays encompass a broad range of social positions, personalities,...

As Leopold Bloom goes through the ordinary motions of a single day, he tries at times to add excitement and mystery to his life so that he may imagine himself as an extraordinary man with exceptional problems. Bloom does this so as to dispel the...

In two of the concluding paragraphs of "Return of the Soldier", both Jenny and Margaret grapple with the moral dilemma of whether to or not to "cure" Chris. Although the women, while looking over Oliver's toys in the nursery, convince one another...

Flannery O'Connor's Intellectuals: Exposing Her World's Narrow "Field of Vision"

by, Robin K. Brubaker

June 24, 2004

Some critics would argue that a fiction writer's Christianity, or understanding of ultimate reality in terms of the Fall of...

SHADOWS ON THE SUN: THE IMPERFECTIONS OF PLATONIC POLITICAL THEORY

by, Michael Jin

December 5, 2004

Plato and Aristotle both reject the moral relativism of the sophists and address the question of how man can achieve absolute virtue. In The Republic,...

White as Death

by, Aaron Chan

December 10, 2004

White as Death

Don DeLillo's novel White Noise confronts the primal fear of death much in the way his own characters do-- by nullifying or minimizing this otherwise terrifying human phenomenon. What is...

Coleridge's Philosophy of Imagination

February 1, 2005

In Kubla Khan, Samuel Coleridge depicts the great Mongol ruler Kubla Khan creating a palace representative of his great power and ability to induce fear. But near the end of the poem Coleridge...

"Here I saw people more numerous than before, on

one side and the other, with great cries rolling

weights by the force of their chests" (Inferno 7.25-27)

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill man's heart. We have to imagine...

The year 1924 marked the beginning of the surrealist movement. Aimed at tapping into the subconscious, surrealism became a growing art form that still influences artists and writers to this day. According to Andr Breton, author of "The Surrealist...

Roy Disney explains that "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." This is an important theme for the characters of Stephen Dedalus from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and of Frank McCourt from...

As a time that marked radical changes in the way that poetry was written, the Romantic period of English Literature produced many works still celebrated and studied today. It was during this period that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote one of the...

In Kate Chopin's controversial novel "The Awakening", the protagonist, Mrs. Edna Pontellier, experiences a personal rebirth, becoming an independent, sexual, and feeling woman, shunning the restraints of the oppressive society in which she lives....

Ireland: for centuries, dreamers and tourists have associated it with rolling green hills, misty, cool fog, smiling, barefoot peasants, moss-covered castles built of stone, and haunting Celtic songs. This romantic picture may suit the foreigner,...

The characters of many poems, stories, and other works of art act as critics or representations of the author's society. American writers Benjamin Franklin and Herman Melville both commented on their respective eras using this method. Franklin...

In John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," a despairing speaker overhears a nightingale in the depths of a far away forest. The speaker yearns to leave behind his physical world and join the bird in its metaphysical world. The nightingale sings of a...

Appropriation, Politics and Theology in the Gospel of Mark

You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life;

and it is they who testify on my behalf

John 5.39

While it is impossible to ignore the theological weight of the...

Milton dedicated his life to the war of good and evil; this is apparent in his epic poem "Paradise Lost," but also in his political battles against the Royalists who abused the power of the monarchy and the Presbyterians who wanted to mandate...