Newest Literature Essays

During the late Middle Ages, the ideals of chivalry and honor emerged as the dominant themes in literature. Romantic tales of gallant knights and courtly love captured the imaginations of medieval readers, and this influence carried over into the...

In Ibsen's A Doll's House, the path to self-realization and transformation is depicted by the main character, Nora Helmer. She is a woman constrained by both her husband's domineering ways as well as her own. From a Jungian perspective, Nora's...

Henrik Ibsen's well known play, A Doll's House, has long been considered a predominantly feminist work. The play focuses on the seemingly happy Helmers, Nora and Torvald, who appear to have an ideal life. Nora is charming, sweet, and stunningly...

When Nora Helmer slammed the door shut on her doll's house in 1879, her message sent shockwaves around the world that persist to this day. "I must stand quite alone," Nora declares, "if I am to understand myself and everything about me" (Ibsen...

The donning of her [dancing] dress has brought about the turning point of her life.

-Barbara Fass Leavy

Dress and outward appearance have historically played a significant role in the plot development of fairy tales. Perhaps the most famous dress in...

'Ibsen's knowledge of humanity is nowhere more obvious than in his portrayal of women' (Joyce). Discuss and illustrate:

In his often quoted 'Notes for a Modern Society' Ibsen stated that, 'in practical life, woman is judged by masculine law, as...

Next to Beatrice, Mary is probably the most important female character in Danteâs Comedy. Maryâs symbolism in relation to the souls of purgatory appears relatively simple at first: her examples of virtue both reprove the penitent sinners for their...

Dante's Inferno is a classic work of the Christian author, depicting his fictitious journey through the hierarchical levels of Hell in the year 1300 AD. As Dante travels down through the underworld, he stops at each stage of condemnation, often...

A number of overlying themes have persisted throughout the three canticles of Dante's Commedia. The politically charged and spiritually passionate Florentine elegantly laced into his masterpiece general topics - affairs of state, religion, and...

In Canto XIII of Dante's Inferno, one of the most pitiful souls that Dante comes in contact with is Piero delle Vigne. Condemned to the second tier of hell for the sin of self-abuse and suicide, the reader, like Dante, is torn between sympathizing...

Pity plays a huge role in Dante's Inferno. It is the key emotion that Dante confronts during his passage through hell. Those in hell feel sadness, and this sadness, being an ordinary human emotion, is expected to result in the ordinary human...

Canto IX of Dante's Inferno is remarkably representative of the work as a whole. It includes a number of prominent themes, among them the role Virgil plays as the manifestation of human reason and the argument that faith can achieve what reason...

To tell a story is to narrate events, or to give an account. Within literature, storytelling becomes a frame within a frame, a story within a story. A character from the outer frame of the book creates a smaller frame in the form of his or her...

In Canto XI of Dante's Inferno, Virgil carefully explains the layout of hell to his student, Dante. Toward the end of his speech, Virgil says that "Sodom and Cahors" are "speak[ing] in passionate contempt of God," (XI, 50-51), and divine will thus...

"What is fame? Fame is but a slow decay Even this shall pass away." Theodore Tilton

The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is a poem laden with such Christian themes as love, the search for happiness, and the desire to see God. Among these...

Instead of leaving all of Inferno's sinners to burn in the traditional flames of Hell, Dante successfully uses contrapasso to build a world with unique psychological depth, and therefore a deeper potential for suffering. Contrapasso distinguishes...

Dante's Inferno, itself one piece of a literary trilogy, repeatedly deploys the leitmotif of the number three as a metaphor for ambiguity, compromise, and transition. A work in terza rima that details a descent through Nine Circles of Hell, The...

Often when we set out to journey in ourselves, we come to places that surprise us with their strangeness. Expecting to see what is straightforward and acceptable, we suddenly run across the exceptions. Just as we as selfexaminers might encounter...

In Jack Kerouac's novels and poetry he is always searching for something to believe in, be it himself, God, or something else. Surprisingly, he manages to also simultaneously be constantly running away. Fear of responsibility and conformity is...

There are several subtle images in Walter Mosley's detective novel Devil In a Blue Dress that suggest the unusual ending. Throughout the novel, the main character, a black man named Easy Rawlins, sees people as either black or white. He is...

Vladimir Nabokov manipulates language's ambiguous properties in Despair and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. By toying with words' sounds and meanings he creates an atmosphere of duplicitous layers that resonates with the novel's thematic...

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise.

-Alexander Pope

In the Seventh Story of the Eighth Day in Boccaccio's Decameron, the storyteller states "Many of the...

Ivan Ilych is dead. His death is hardly what one would call "mourned", and his family and friends think only of how they can profit from his timely demise. He has led a terrible life, and suffered through a generally meaningless existence. One...

Like death or abandonment, alienation is one of the deepest-rooted fears experienced by human beings. As social creatures, humans have the need to identify themselves as one of a group, whether that group is a family, a culture, or a religion. The...