Newest Literature Essays

Many of Robert Frost's poems explore the splendor of the outdoors. In poems such as "A Prayer in Spring" and "To the Thawing Wind," the speakers show appreciation of nature's beauty surrounding them. However, "A Servant to Servants" is a contrast...

Some of the greatest novels in history were masterfully written with twists and turns often achieved through the existence of complex characters that are either unpredictable or clever at disguising their true motives or desires. Just as a child...

In William Butler Yeats' "Among School Children," the speaker addresses his anxieties about aging. Manipulating traditional rhyme schemes, Yeats articulates the impermanence of youth to examine the need to unify the body and the soul. Although the...

In his poem "Sailing to Byzantium," Yeats rejects his perceptions of the sensual mortal world and fondly imagines a paradise of intellectual intransience in Byzantium. The impermanence of human life is recounted, for Yeats who himself is a part of...

In his famous essay "The Poet," Emerson claims that men who are skilled in the use of words are not true poets, saying, "...we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet" (qtd. in Richards,...

The very first lines of Poe's "The Man of the Crowd" imply that this is a secretive story by nature, for Poe suggests that this particular narrative may not "permit itself to be read" (p.1561). The story itself takes on a responsibility...

In his essay entitled "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe writes, "the death...of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a...

In his stories "Ligea," "Berenice," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe shows a series of women in transit. All the women are in transit between death and life. The fact that this path is not one-way emphasizes the flux. More immediately,...

In "The Philosophy of Composition," Edgar Allan Poe describes a credible set of short and simple guidelines regarding the structure of a great literary work. These procedures may seem insignificant and useless to experienced writers. On the other...

Any literary critic or scholar who sets out to verify the relationship between the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe and the English novelist/poet Thomas Hardy cannot realistically begin without considering the questions posed by Cyril Clemens in the...

In The Republic Plato fosters an idea of the democratic soul which is fundamentally flawed. He posits that a man with a democratic soul "lives his life in accord with a certain equality of pleasures he has established" (The Republic, VIII, 561b)....

In both Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, happiness is a state of stability and harmony that is present both within the individual and in his relations with other people. Furthermore, both philosophers emphasize...

The "noble lie" is perhaps one of the most disturbing and thought-worthy aspects of Plato's Republic. Through its use, the people of the "just regime" are intentionally misled and misdirected in an attempt to make them unified as a group and loyal...

The role of art in society has always presented a battle between freedom of expression and decency, as is clearly presented in Book III of The Republic. Plato argues that the purpose of the arts is to promote the virtues of wisdom, justice,...

The main prompt or assertion provided in the lecture notes, being "Whatever might be its philosophical value, the idea of the Good has no political relevance," goes completely against Plato's philosophical tenets and contrasts sharply with his two...

Plato's most precise ethical argument in his Socratic dialogues is that of justice's dual effect; he holds that while a "good" may be pleasant in effect, it must also be good in itself in order to qualify as justice. Justice fills the whole of...

In his text, The Republic, Plato takes on the monumental task of elucidating the topic of justice through the discourse of Socrates with his auditors. Adding to the challenge of this task is Socrates' faithfulness to arguments made with reason,...

Very early in Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus argues that "In any and every situation, a moral person is worse off than an immoral one". (343d) Furthermore, that a moral person is a simpleton, while an immoral person exercises sound judgement....

Plato's Republic is rife with evidence of, and commentary on, the nature of the Greek religion. Some of the treatment is overt, as in the censorship of canonical works of poets and dramatists or in the references to the powers and functions of the...

Many of Aristotle's views have stemmed from those of Plato. However, in Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle criticizes four main arguments in Plato's Republic. They are: the way in which women and children should be held in common, the...

Plato thinks that in the Republic Justice is to be found because all persons are treated equally in that each is given a social position and vocational place suited to his/her talents. Do you agree that Plato's arrangement satisfies what may be...

Plato introduces his famous allegory of the cave with the phrase, "like this:" thus establishing that the passage is structured as a metaphor, and therefore must be read both as a figurative description and a symbolic representation of a concrete...

Since the birth of society thousands of years ago, thinkers have pondered one of the most basic, important questions with which mankind must grapple: How should society be organized? Plato was one of the first to write his response to that...

Plato employs a meritocratic logic in his proposal for gender equality in Book V of The Republic. In his ideal community, the kallipolis, comprised of producers, guardians, and rulers, Plato advocates a specialization of employment and status...