Newest Literature Essays

In the Irish Catholic Society portrayed by James Joyce in Dubliners, the characters live in a world guided by "respectability", yet some are driven by the urge to escape. Joyce illustrates the reputable populace as false and undesirable, and...

In James Joyce's "Araby", an arcane glimpse into the life of a young boy is revealed as he passes from a state of naivete into cognizance of his life. We watch as he leads himself through a fateful-ending journey in which he realizes his...

James Joyce's Dubliners is a fearlessly candid portrayal of his native city, providing his readers a glimpse of a "dear dirty Dublin", and to his countrymen "one good look at themselves". Joyce's collection of stories, virtually chronicling the...

The characters whom inhabit Joyce's world in "Dubliners," often have, as Harvard Literature Professor Fischer stated in lecture, a "limited way" of thinking about and understanding themselves and the world around them. Such "determinism," however,...

Joyce's depiction of women is characterized by a high degree of literary self-consciousness, perhaps even more so than in the rest of his work. The self-consciousness emerges as an awareness of both genre and linguistic expectations. contrasting...

On the surface, James Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories and unrelated characters woven together only by the common element of the city of Dublin in the early 20th century. Upon closer examination, however, it is evident that each...

In "The Sisters" James Joyce creates an elusive mystery surrounding the death of James Flynn by withholding narrator insight into the events of the story. He achieves this by selecting a young boy as the narrator, whose age is not specified but is...

The era of industrialization ushered in new ways of disseminating and creating art. Along with technological innovation come the anxious reservations of aesthetic purists. These reservations stem from wariness about the dehumanizing effect of...

The title character in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is a sexually perplexing figure. Nietzche wrote of a creative being called the "berman", or "superman". Men who overcome their handicaps and identify with God are potential supermen; as models of this...

In periods of cultural insecurity, when there are fears of regression and degeneration, the longing for strict border controls around the definition of gender, as well as race, class, and nationality, becomes especially intense. If the different...

With his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson presents encounters between several upstanding members of Victorian society and Mr. Hyde, a man who seems to disregard all social conventions in favor of selfishness and barbarity. To be...

Throughout the course of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, a complex relationship develops between Dr. Faustus and the devil Mephastophilis that can be characterized by Faustus' total dependence on his counterpart and a mutual sense of...

In the world of theatre, there are many plays in which the central figure is one who harnesses extreme personality traits above all others. For example, Sophocles' Oedipus is a fatherly king with great ambition and strength; and Shakespeare's...

ÃÂÂLoveÃÂÂs DeityÃÂ? is an anti-lyric poem; rather than lament loveÃÂÂs inconstancy or celebrate loveÃÂÂs union, Donne questions the nature of love itself. Donne presents the poem as a theogony, an account of the origin of the god of love. For...

The renaissance that spread through Europe, while effectively marking the transformation from medieval traditionalism to modern pragmatism, brought a plethora of new and old ideas into conflict with each other. From the enlightenment born of the...

Donne: Holy Sonnet V

(essay follows poem reproduced below)

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray'd to endless night

My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven...

This poem chiefly concerns the lack of constancy in women. The tone taken is one of gentle cynicism, and mocking. Donne asks the reader to do the impossible, which he compares with finding a constant woman, thus insinuating that such a woman does...

In the novel East of Eden, Steinbeck emphasizes the theme of the struggle between good and evil. He says that this perpetual battle is the only true human story in that all of mankind can find themselves and their thoughts and actions in this...

In the Prologue to Don Quixote, Cervantes presents his protagonist as a ÃÂÂdry, shriveled, whimsical offspring... just what might be begotten in a prison, where every discomfort is lodged and every dismal noise has its dwellingÃÂ? (41). But if...

One recurring motif in Don Quijote is love relationships that develop between males and females and the many different consequences these relationships can have. In fact, most of the "stories" found within the text of the novel are driven in some...

The process of perception involves two steps: the recognition of sensory information and the interpretation of sensory information. In order for the truth to be perceived, or, in other words, for something to be perceived accurately, sensory...

For much of the opening part of Don Quijote, the narrator contents himself with narrating. Though we are made aware of his presence as a character by his first-person style, his subjective interpretation of Quijote's actions, and occasional...

It is difficult to read more than one or two pages of Don Quijote de la Mancha without coming across an example of the union (or conflict) between the extraordinary and the mundane. Indeed, Cervantes uses this juxtaposition repeatedly as his...

It is Joyce's use of voyeurism that most characterizes the erotic in "The Dead," "The Boarding House," "Two Gallants," and "Araby." Eroticism is strongly driven by mystery and suspense. By creating a passive individual experiencing sexuality...