Newest Literature Essays

Guillermo Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five mirror each other in that fact that both feature a main character who struggles to accept the realities of war, but the works vary in various ways. Details from both...

In the Russian novel A Hero of Our Time, translated by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov, author Mikhail Lermontov relates the travels of the alienated and manipulative Pechorin, an upper-class military officer struggling with fate in his attempts to...

"I already know a thing or two. I know it’s not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction or costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don’t know where. I only...

In a world where happy stories become sad stories and sad ones are transformed into happy ones, where “once upon a time” begins a tale of a police decoy on a drug bust, inversions of what is considered normal come to be expected. This world is San...

Gender roles of 18th century British society were seemingly set in stone. Men, who were presumed to be the superior of the sexes, were to hold all the power, both politically and domestically, and they were expected to exist, to some extent, in...

Sunset Boulevard: A Fresh Avenue for a Familiar Genre

In Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard, an unwitting male protagonist, played by William Holden, falls into the grips of (and is eventually murdered by) a dangerous and scheming former...

The purpose of a myth is to promote an ideology and to set standards for society. In this way, according to Bidney, the myth is the source of morality and religion (Myth, Symbolism, and Truth 22). This would explain the various connections between...

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could only be given to traveling: namely, the strange” – Jane Jacobs.

In both The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton the figure of ‘the other’ emerges through the female characters...

In the 16th century, Niccolo Machiavelli stated on "The Prince" that leadership came mostly from theatrics. That is to say, to be a good leader one must first be a good actor, or at the very least be convincing enough to get the loyalty of the...

With the twentieth century now receded, students and scholars will return time and again to contributors of this century’s literary canon. In the realm of poetry, there are several candidates to consider, but one forceful contender for the list of...

Often criticized for its sensationalism, melodramatic qualities, and its play on the supernatural, the Gothic novel dominated English literature from its conception in 1764 with the publication of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole to its...

A soundtrack is essential to any movie, music is used in various ways by a director - to portray emotion, create and introduce relationships and to also make references to the time period. In Clueless music is mostly used to highlight the major...

When the Civil War ended, the Southern countryside and its people were crippled nearly beyond all hope. Of the most dramatic decline, Southern aristocrats took the cake. Before the war, the first half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a...

'The telling of a story of seduction is also a mode of seduction.' (Ros Ballaster)

In our contemporary world, to 'seduce' or be 'seduced' often has a sexual connotation, of a person persuading another, using various techniques, to engage in a...

Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German playwright, natural scientist, poet, and writer, who was a member of the literary group Young Germany. To this end, he was also considered a revolutionary, as the liberal...

‘Oh London…. Thou hast all things in thee to make thee fairest, and all things in thee to make thee foulest: for thou art attir’de like a Bride, drawing all that looke upon thee, to be in love with thee but there is much harlot in thine eyes.’...

Ha Jin’s In the Pond is a tactful yet an oscillation between subtle and violent upheaval delineation of the decadent post Mao-China in a pro communist setting repleted with shades of corruption. Jin meticulously captures the panoramic view of the...

In Book VIII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates details the degenerative process of regime change, which transitions from kingship to timocracy to oligarchy to democracy to tyranny. Each regime has its analogue in the soul of man, which is structured...

Aristotle’s reasoning as to why he believed the Greek polis to be superior to other forms of associations can be found in Book 1.2 of his teachings in Politics. It contains an analysis of the individual components which make up a polis, the...

In St. Augustine’s Confessions, language was necessary on Augustine’s path to conversion, but also caused him to deviate from the same path. By being able to speak and read, Augustine first learned about God, while his final conversion in the...

In the Inferno, Dante teaches readers about the role of reason and emotion in the Christian life. On his journey through Hell, Dante the Pilgrim shows unregulated human emotion through the different reactions he has towards the sinners. Virgil...

Aristotle’s definition of the virtue of high-mindedness in Nichomachean Ethics, and of what constitutes the excess and deficiency of this virtue, poses a problem when applied to Socrates' in Plato’s Apology. On one hand, Socrates is high-minded...

'Annihilating all that's made/To a green thought in green shade.' -Marvell

'I am re-begot/of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.' -Donne

'Nothing,' as a concept has plasticity; it can be used in a number of different ways and refer...

‘[T]he modern period […] begins really with the late nineteenth [century], when the sense of the passing of a major phase of English history was already in the air.’ Indeed, when we discuss ‘modern’ in terms of literature this tends to be a...