Newest Literature Essays

In "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America," Phillis Wheatley, through her convincing use of pathos and masterful manipulation of poetic elements, implores Earl William Legge...

When one reads the title Church Going, one is inclined to think the poem that follows is going to be deeply religious. However, Philip Larkin's "Church Going" introduces an interesting play of words; when one goes on to read the poem, it becomes...

There is a long standing tradition within literature of art within the text holding symbolic meaning. Through either referring or depicting art the author is able to convey, and often consolidate, the ideas of the artist whom they are referring...

Cormac McCarthy has created a tradition in American literature of violence and desolation, his work dismembering American myth and replacing it with a brutal, epic and often uncomfortable reality. In The Road McCarthy maintains the hallmarks of...

In the works of Virginia Woolf freedom is an often unattainable ideal. Woolf discusses freedom at great length in her texts, ranging from the broader freedom of the individual to live as they please in her fiction to the creative freedom of the...

The thoughtful formation of identity is a significant part of Hailsham life, and as a narrator, Kathy shares her doubts while consciously searching for the aspects of her personality that could answer her queries about her life at Hailsham. Kathy’...

In the novel Ulysses, a hallmark of modernist writing, James Joyce presents to the reader a particular relationship between inner and outer worlds, blurring the distinction between the internal consciousness’s of his characters and the externality...

The writers of the early modern period often presented in their texts characters who struggled with a crisis of identity. Furthermore, these characters were unable to reconcile their identity with the role that they played within the fictional...

In James Baldwin’s novel Another Country nearly all of the central characters experience anxiety, confusion, or conflict when it comes to the interweaving of their bodies, identities, and desires. The character of Eric however, a homosexual...

Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise is a text firmly situated in the modern world. Through the novel, part Postmodernist satire part Post-Structuralist understanding of the world, DeLillo presents an incredibly cynical view of the modern world through...

Charles Altieri writes that in his collection of poetry, Turtle Island, Gary Snyder encapsulates two roles: the seer and the prophet. Altieri describes the two roles vaguely, the seer being one who is able to look past the irrelevant aspects of...

According to Nina Baym, the heroine of woman’s fiction “brings into being a new kind of family life, organized around love rather than money. Money subsides into its adjunct function of ensuring domestic comfort” (39-40). Little Women is the...

In explanation of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, J.R.R. Tolkien said “They depend on a balance and a weight and emotional content. They are more like masonry than music” (59). The original manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written...

In both his poem ‘Kubla Khan’ and its accompanying prologue Samuel Taylor Coleridge presents two ideas: the variable nature of the imagination and the beauty of the foreign and exotic. Many scholars view the story behind the poem’s composition as...

Across Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and ‘For My Lover, Returning to His Wife’ by Anne Sexton, jealousy is presented as both resulting in self-deprecation and anger. Whereas in ‘After the Lunch’ by Wendy Cope a form of love that does not contain...

Flannery O’Connor’s short story appears to be greatly influenced by the time and place in which she grew up, and thus, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” lends itself easily in examination through biographical criticism. Psychoanalytic criticism can be...

The short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston details the finer points of the abusive relationship and failing marriage of Delia and Sykes Jones. Hurston presents Delia as a hardworking woman and a faithful wife, but the same cannot be said of...

Samuel Pepys’s Diary is often studied for its first-hand account of important events in London’s history. Pepys records information on the Restoration of the Stuart Monarchy, the Plague, and the Great Fire of London, and readers are able to gain a...

Mary Astell is often attributed as being England’s first feminist because of her writing which questioned gender politics of the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. For the time period, Astell’s writing was groundbreaking. She...

Everyone has his or her own idea of literature and what separates a work of literary fiction from a work of popular fiction. Generally speaking, a work must adhere to literary traditions, convey a deeper meaning, and present conventional themes in...

The Sorrow of War is a unique war novel in that it places special attention on the different parts of the lives of its characters: before the war, and after. The main character, Kien, takes up most of the book with his life stories. However, there...

“All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is echoed throughout the texts ‘Animal Farm’ (George Orwell, 1945) and Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014). Both texts demonstrate that the struggle for power is deep rooted in...

From the point of view of a reader, it is clear that Jamaica Kincaid is not satisfied with the way Antigua is now. By comparing pre-colonial Antigua with colonial and post-colonial Antigua, Kincaid creates a novel that is anti-tourist and...

There is a balance to ideals in individuality and truth, both at positive and negative extremes. The movie Dead Poets Society by Peter Weir captures the incredible role romanticism and embracement of truth on an individual's life, separating the...