Newest Study Guides
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.
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.
At the time of its release, James Cameron's Titanic was the most expensive film production ever mounted, and widely expected to be a critical and commercial failure. Negative rumors about the film began to swirl after the film's production, which...
Despite popular belief, Badlands was not actually the first screenplay that Terrence Malick wrote; in fact he had previously worked as a screenwriter on a movie called Money in 1972, and again on his own screenplay Deadhead Miles the same year; in...
Reasons of State is a fictional political novel written by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, and published in 1975. The novel is a very important piece of Latin American literature, as it captures the events of the times, which were mostly of...
Le Père Goriot, translated literally in English as “The Father Goriot,” is a novel by Honoré de Balzac. As a Realist writer, Balzac strove to present people and events exactly as they were, without idealizing or romanticizing people. His work,...
Down to his last few hundred dollars and without a job, Taylor Sheridan went on a mad dash to produce as many quality scripts as he could before his family lost their home and went hungry. Flash forward to 2012, when the script (then titled...
Hannah Arendt, a German-born American political theorist who escaped from Germany in her youth, was uniquely qualified to comment on the trials of the notorious Eichmann. Eichmann In Jerusalem—A Report on the Banality of Evil is the result of a...
Oliver Parker's 1995 adaptation of one of William Shakespeare's most tragic of tragedies is surprisingly loyal to the Bard's original plot, but leaves out much of the verbiage, replacing it instead with silent scenes that are not featured in the...
Imagine trying to cope with the changes both within yourself and in the world around you as you are turning eight years old; then imagine trying to cope when the older brother you look up to and depend on has an accident that forever changes his...
William Butler Yeats first began publishing collected volumes of poetry in the late 1880’s. He was still regularly publishing new and updated compendia until just a few years before his death in 1939. Scholars, academics, fellow poets and...
Slumdog Millionaire is a British film from 2008, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was one of the biggest hits of 2008. It won eight Academy Awards in total, including Best Picture and Best Director. Its Oscar-winning screenplay...
In 1959, one of the last of those 1950’s films about politicians and generals working together to create a strategy to stave off an invasion by aliens was released titled Invisible Invaders. The title characters manage to reach the earth safely...
First published in 1928 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, "The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American author H.P. Lovecraft, an early twentieth-century short-story writer famous for his works of horror and science fiction. Farnsworth...
Marguerite of Navarre was the sister of the French King Francois I and bore the title Queen of Navarre herself following her marriage to Henry II. Her legacy has eclipsed her celebrated who was not exactly a slouch himself. A vigorously productive...
The Removalists is a play by David Williamson, initially premiering in 1971. The play follows main ideas and themes of domestic violence, emphasizing its application to Australian society at the time, and the harmful effects that it has. Peter...
Parramatta Girls is playwright Alana Valentine's dramatization of the testimony of the girls imprisoned at the Girls Training School in Parramatta. The play frames the story as a reunion between eight of the inmates of the "school" nearly 40 years...
Good Night, Mr. Tom is a children's book published in 1981, written by English actress, dancer, and writer Michelle Magorian. Magorian had a strong passion for the history of children's literature which inspired her to try her hand at writing....
Broken Arrow is director Delmer Daves' 1950 film starring James Stewart as Tom Jeffords, Jeff Chandler as Cochise, and Debra Paget as Sonseeahray. The film follows Stewart's Jeffords as he tries to make peace between Apache Indians and settlers in...
Boyz n the Hood is Writer/Director John Singleton's debut effort. It was released in 1991 and stars Cuba Gooding Jr. as Tre Styles, Angela Bassett as Reva Styles, Laurence Fishburne as Jason Styles Jr., and Ice Cube as Darrin Baker. The movie...
In the early 1970s, an ethnic sub-genre of movies emerged known as "Blaxploitation". The films featured largely stereotypical black characters, and for this reason received considerable backlash, but despite this, Blaxploitation movies were the...
Maurice is a novel about homosexuality written by E. M. Forster. It was first published after several years of revision and work in 1971, a year after the death of its author. The book was initially written between the years 1913 and 1914, revised...
History of the Peloponnesian War is an historical recollection of the war between the Peloponnesian League and the Delian League, called the Peloponnesian War. It is also commonly known as a conflict between Athens and Sparta and their allies. The...
German film director Fritz Lang was sailing into New York City for the first time in 1924 when he was struck with his initial inspiration for Metropolis. He described his first glimpse of the skyline thus: "I looked into the streets—the glaring...
Little Dorrit is a novel written by Charles Dickens published between 1855 and 1857. The book was published in serial form and was divided into nineteen parts, each sold separately. Each installment was illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and had...
Considered one of the defining works of contemporary gay literature, Call Me By Your Name is a coming-of-age-story and romantic novel that meditates on time, desire, and the intensity of the experiences that punctuate our lives and leave a...