Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Cloud 9 is a two-act play written in 1979 by Caryl Churchill, who is widely accepted as one of England's foremost modern playwrights. It is a controversial play that deals with sexual politics and has some female characters played by men to...
The orations of the Roman lawyer Cicero are still available and read today because rhetorical arguments were very highly regarded. As an attorney presenting his arguments, Cicero would be called upon to display his oratorical skills outdoors in a...
The Crying Game is a controversial 1991 thriller directed by Neil Jordan, which went from art house cult favorite to worldwide sensation on the basis of the film’s most shocking revelation. The Crying Game took advantage of viral marketing before...
Margery Kempe is a historic figure who lived in England between 1373 and 1438 and remained in history because of her writings and her religious beliefs. While Kempe was never formally made a saint by the Catholic Church she is named a Christian...
The version of the Christian Holy Bible commonly referred to as the King James Version goes by the more technically correct name of the “Authorized Version.” The creation of the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible can be directly traced back to...
Daphnis and Chloe is one of the few surviving examples of one of the most unusual genres of ancient literature: the Greek romance. The author is known only as Longus and is believed to have lived on the isle of Lesbos between the 2nd and 3rd...
Playwright Eugene Ionesco once provided a definition of his favorite mode of literary examination that positively overflows with existential weight: “The Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose.” Some would suggest that every time Ionesco put...
Cards On The Table is a detective novel written by Agatha Christie published in England in 1936, and published in the USA the following year. The novel "stars" one of Christie's two beloved sleuths, Hercule Poirot, renowned Belgian detective. Not...
"Clarissa, or The history of a young lady" is a novel written by Samuel Richardson in 4 parts in 1748. It was created in the genre of a family character-studying novel in the era of the Enlightenment Mature. This genre was at that time very common...
In the 1890s, a family immigrated into America from Poland. Anzia Yezierska recalls the stress and strife of living her with relatives among other Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side in Bread Givers. Published in 1925, the book...
Call it Sleep is a fictitious novel written by Henry Roth and follows the life of a young Jewish boy who lives in the Lower East Side of New York. The book was published in 1934 by Robert O. Ballou's publishing company.
The story follows David...
The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written by Arthur C. Clarke in the year 1968. The novel is the result of the collective effort of both Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick but only Clarke appears as the author of the book.
The novel is based...
Amerika is the first novel written by Franz Kafka, but remained incomplete until Kafka's death and was only published posthumously. The German book was released three years after Kafka's death in 1927 although the first English translation was not...
Anagrams is the first novel by acclaimed short story writer Lorrie Moore. Published in 1986, the novel is attempt to transfer the concept of anagrammatic rearrangement from letters to characters. Moore has described the work as a “cubist novel”...
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a collection of short stories written by Robert Olen Butler documenting the lives of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States of America. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993.
The stories...
Michelle Cliff, a Jamaican novelist, first released her book "Abeng" in 1984. The novel's examination of identity, colonialism, and personal history makes it a noteworthy piece of Caribbean literature.
"Abeng" by Michelle Cliff is a novel that...
Ariel is the second full-length collection of poetry written by Sylvia Plath, published in 1965. The poems in Ariel were largely written in the weeks preceding Plath's infamous death by suicide in 1963 and explore the themes of despair, rebirth,...
The Metaphysic or Metaphysics is a canonical collection of various writings by Aristotle which were collected and featured in the order they now appear, although there are historical-critical debates about whether this was the originally intended...
Here’s a timed quiz for you: name a memorable African-American female character living in the post-Civil War era from American Literature published before the Civil Rights Movement that wasn’t either a mammy, a prostitute or an ill-fated jazz...
With the publication of her very first volume of verse simply titled Poems, Anna Letitia Barbauld became an overnight literary sensation whose influence would go on to strongly manifest itself through the poetry of the Romantic Period. Sadly, many...
Anticlaudianus was written by French theologian and poet Alain de Lille. This lengthy, symbolic poem is about creation as well as the edification of the human soul by God, nature, theology, and philosophy. Alain is also well-known for another poem...
