Newest Literature Essays

Although Leslie A. Fiedler calls Charles Brockden Brown the "inventor of the American writer," and sees the revolt of the European middle classes translating in America to "feminism and anti-intellectualism," Brockden Brown seems to have a problem...

In the beginning of Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway, a young creole woman, lives in poverty with her mother, Annette, and her brother, Pierre, on the island of Jamaica. In the society in which they live, Antoinette is...

Truth or illusion? When the fantasy world people create in order to cope with the absurdity of life is brought too far into reality, it becomes hard to distinguish between authenticity and fiction. This ambiguity is apparent in both Edward Albee's...

Generations of readers and critics alike have denigrated the works of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, both equally brilliant poets, separated by a century, yet sharing a poetic vision of both political and sexual freedom, simply because the...

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp took a urinal, detached it from its usual setting, entitled it "Fountain" and called it art. By putting such a common, unglamorous object in this innovative context, Duchamp raised a new awareness of the urinal. Its...

Song of Myself is a poem of bold declarations that egotistically assert Walt Whitman's place and purpose in the context of a world of immense scope and romantically instilled vigor. And yet located within this chaotic unfurling of identity there...

In the novel White Noise, written by Don DeLillo, the Gladney family often succumbs to the supposed authority and superior knowledge of doctors. The Gladneys are extremely intimidated by the doctors and they feel as though the physicians are...

In addition to addressing the premonitory electricity of death, the title of Don DeLillo's White Noise alludes to another, subtler, sort of white noisethe muted death of suburban white identity. College-on-the-Hill is not only an elite academic...

David Hume, who wrote Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751, and Adam Smith, who authored The Wealth of Nations in 1776, both spoke of a particular human emotion or characteristic called sympathy that differs greatly in definition...

In his seminal poem "The Wasteland," T.S. Eliot vividly externalizes what he perceives to be a very internal death of pandemic proportions. Calling upon a vast catalogue of religion, classical writings, music and art, the work depicts an entire...

The modern crisis of authority revolves around the recognition that current versions of traditional authority are no longer credible or reliable. Such a dramatic shift in perception cannot be effectively realized in the safe, florid writing of La...

Many critics see Eliot's "Wasteland" as a form of social criticism, exposing the alternating boredom and terror inherent in modern life. While these themes do recur throughout the poem, a greater subtlety of meaning arises with Eliot's...

Throughout Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's personality could be defined as dark, menacing, and brooding. He is a dangerous character, with rapidly changing moods, capable of deep-seeded hatred, and incapable, it seems, of any kind of forgiveness...

Upon completion of T.S. Eliot's legendary poem, "The Wasteland", one may experience mixed feelings about the poem as a whole. "The Wasteland" presents a distinct style using countless allusions; a method that previously had not been used to such...

Eliot's "The Waste Land" is perhaps a prime example of the experimentation in poetic technique occurring during the period encompassing the Modernist movement. Loathed and adored by critics and students alike, the complexities of technique,...

T.S. Eliot peppers "The Wasteland," his apocalyptic poem, with images of modern aridity and inarticulacy that contrast with fertile allusions to previous times. Eliot's language details a brittle era, rife with wars physical and sexual,...

Realism, as described by William Dean Howells in the late nineteenth century, replaces the high art and style of the literature of the preceding decades by permitting such characters as Howells' Silas Lapham to have a distinct place in the...

Throughout War and Peace, Pierre exhibits Tolstoy's ideals of passivity, humility, and passion. However, even Pierre succumbs to self-centered willfulness. He uses a highly contrived occult numerology and calculates the value of almost every...

With the end of the civil war in America came the huge task of inventing a national identity. America wished to cut its European ties, and forge a new voice through literature, as it is through the word that a nation expresses itself. However even...

One of the more superficial lessons often gleaned from Thoreau's Walden is the superiority of the "natural" laws of time over those of commercially-motivated, fast-paced humans. This viewpoint has its supports in Thoreau's almost constant...

The 1930's worlds of Clifford Odets and Tennessee Williams portray assertive and domineering women as the center of families in the age of the depression. Women in the plays are always fighting poverty in any way they can. The mothers often...

In his play "Waiting for Lefty" Clifford Odets attempts to stir up the weary American public of the 1930s by providing examples of everyday people who, with some coaxing, rise above the capitalist mess they've inherited and take control of their...

In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the playwright bestows upon his work the veneer of comedy, but invests the heart of it with the "absurd", the tragic. He employs the gags and the routines, the circus comedy and the songs of the "lowbrow"...

GUILDENSTERN: All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. ~ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom...