Newest Literature Essays

Amelia is certainly a change in direction from the writing style Henry Fielding employed in Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. Gone are the frequent author-as-narrator interjections, as well as much of the comedic relief captured in the later mentioned...

Tom Jones is a comedic novel by Henry Fielding that relays moral messages in an entertaining format, often demonstrating the downfalls of making assumptions, and of not questioning someone else’s motives in certain situations. Tom himself...

Strindberg recurrently uses symbolism drawn from nature to great effect throughout his play Miss Julie, accentuating the impact of the act of sexual intercourse on the shifting class divisions between Julie and Jean. The evocative imagery...

In Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a range of interesting narrative techniques are used to explore the fundamental core of man, the relationship between man and nature and how our actions leave an irreversible mark on the universe....

Of the many themes in Joseph Andrews, one of the most complicated issues is the value of a formal education. Throughout the novel, Parson Adams is depicted as a man who has been educated in the classics, and a formal education is important to him....

Comic elements are often said to be integral in both in Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker and The Tempest by William Shakespeare. In The Tempest, the characters of Trinculo and Stephano are arguable almost entirely for comic effect,...

In Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, techniques including scene titles, a play within a play, self-referencing and music are utilised in order to effectively convey messages that would not be as profound using only ‘...

‘The American Dream’ is an ideal which states that every man, woman and child should have equal opportunity to be prosperous and achieve the highest possible goals; this principle is supported by the United States Declaration of Independence,...

Throughout "The Silken Tent," Robert Frost employs an extended metaphor in comparing a woman to a delicate tent surrounded by nature. This device explores the idea of freedom possessed by a woman in 1940s America, but also confronts the...

The horrors of war have, for centuries, tormented the human soul. Some veterans are able to re-acclimate themselves to normalcy, while others are crippled by trauma due to the gore and violence. In Virginia Woolf's novelistic masterpiece Mrs....

Most modern children grow up listening to their mothers tell fairytales and other fictional stories, but what did they do before the time of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White? In earlier centuries, it was not uncommon for care of small children to be...

Because postcolonial studies focuses on historical impacts of cross-cultural assimilation following World War II, it is closely linked with determinism, the notion that every event has an historical antecedent causing the present event's...

In a play largely about politics, class struggles, and the right of rhetoric versus the will to action, what remains most interesting about Coriolanus is its titular character: a relatively laconic soldier thrust into an unchosen world. Whereas...

Love is one of the most prolific topics in all of literature. From the perverse to the overly romantic, poets and authors from around the world continue to settle on love as a vehicle for relaying their innermost thoughts, feelings, and...

In his essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson often radiates an arrogant and self-important tone, writing, for example, “A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me.” Although...

Fundamental human similarities in motivation are at the core of the works of novelist Saul Bellow. Bellow was a Chicago born Jewish author, and as such his protagonists are often of a similar demographic, young Jewish men in Chicago. Despite...

Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart both emphasize the complexities of father-son relationships. The major theme of parental conflict is developed throughout the course of both texts and serves to illustrate...

A man lives his life and evolves over time; he embodies a synthesis of all his experiences with those he meets over his lifetime. What he sees when he finally meets the son he helps bring into this world for the first time is unique to who he is...

Jane Austen's Persuasion is a satirical romp through the cold and arrogant lives of the aristocracy as seen through the eyes of a self-sufficient and free thinking woman, who must realize the false values in her life and learn enough to reconcile...

In James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” the contrast between Mitty represented as a brave hero in his daydreams and Mitty as a cowardly mouse in real life suggests that his daydreams cause him to lose touch with reality, to the point...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Blithedale Romance is an extremely enigmatic text. Due to its highly complicated and confusing plot, as well as its somewhat unreliable narrative, it is difficult--and some theorists would say impossible--to...

The romantic view of a seamanship is that the crew keeps with the ship through all types of weather and troubles. Yet in 1880, an event happened that shook this romantic belief throughout the world. The abandonment of the steamship Jeddah, along...

On the surface, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (1729) suggests that the most convenient method for dealing with the starving children of Ireland is to convert them into useful -- and edible -- members of society. His horrid proposal...