Newest Literature Essays

Questions like these that baffle the human mind, and have done so for centuries: what happens after we die? Is there truly life after death? Such riddles can never be known to those who have not crossed over “to the other side”, so to speak, and...

A quick read-through of the Old English epic poem Beowulf revealsthat the text centers heavily around male characters and typically masculine themes. The main character, Beowulf, a powerful and renowned hero, sets on an epic journey to save the...

Plato’s “Symposium” is an essential piece of philosophical literature that concerns itself with the genesis, purpose and nature of love, or eros. Love is examined in a sequence of speeches by men attending a symposium, or drinking party. A...

UnderstandingAfrican American sentiments during the Civil Rights Movement is crucialin understanding Ton Morrison's novel,The Bluest Eye. W.E.B. Du Bois thinks that a biography of an African-Americanalways possesses a"double-consciousness of the...

Insanity is defined as doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome. In Shakespeare'sHamlet, the young and not fully matureHamlet might be thought of asinsane. However, althoughhe says and doesthings that are out of the...

S1151541/B020117

3rd April 2014

Visalini S.

Do not re-print without express permission from the author.

The Fall of Man

York Mystery Cycle (Play 5)

Medieval Theatre Conventions

Language and Staging

The Fall of Man was traditionally performed as...

Shakespeare uses stagecraft in a number of different ways to create dramatic effects in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Jacobean stages were very simple, not much more than an empty wooden platform thrust into the middle of spectators with no scenery to...

In the play Fences, by August Wilson, a fence represents protection and incomplete or broken relationships. Through the fence, Wilson is trying to show that even things that were once perfect and have gone awry can still be rebuilt.

One way Wilson...

When a man’s road to happiness is cut off by a wrong turn and a person finds themselves lost in an unknown state, a second chance is a miraculous hand that comes out at the person, opening up another path, even at his lowest of stages, to once...

West African autochthon Phillis Wheatley employs her tactful methods of writing to convey a subtle but powerful message in her poem ”On Being Brought from Africa to America” (1773). At a very young age, about 7 or 8, Phillis was enslaved and...

In Euripides’ Medea, Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women, Lycurgus and Xenophon’s Spartan Society, it is made clear that filicide is a byproduct of the dichotomy of an honor vs. shame society. Medea, the barbarian wife of a man who remarries in...

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar is a soon-to-be monarch who is murdered by a group called the Conspirators whose justification for their actions may be debated. Throughout the story, Brutus switches sides several times, starting as Caesar's...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter employs dramatic clout within the characters with the light and dark contrast. The “blackness” did not allude to race. The dark colors underline sin and their evil, distraught intentions while the...

Lines from the first laisse of the epic, The Song of Roland express the focus of the poem: the demise of paganism and the victory of the superior, Christianity through the will of God. “Saragossa . . .held by King Marsiliun who does not love God....

The Oresteia opens with a plea from a watchman: “I ask the gods for release from this misery” (3). This petition reveals the plight of many Aeschylus’ characters. The curse on the house of Atreus is one of corruption, and it is a curse that cannot...

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings...

Washington Irving

Washington Irving, considered the father and creator of the American short story, writes symbolically of American society through his characters and themes. Heis credited withbringing short stories into the Dark Romantic...

Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being outlines a richly detailed world of philosophical and metaphysical exploration. The novel projects and addresses a variety of sociocultural, political and ideological issues of the period of...

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presents an exciting exploration of the vast ethnic and geographical depths of Africa and the Congo River. The novella is a tale of immense conquest of new ground and culture, but under the primary level of the...

Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 explores the idea of a person living a tedious, restrictive life while trying to fool himself into believing in a sense of happiness. Similarly, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask,” proposes the idea...

In 1929, Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms. During this era, there were many books centered on the Great War. Percy Hutchinson, a contemporary writer for the New York Times, predicted that Hemingway’s book “[…] is to be given...

Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, follows a distinct narrative structure. Each component of the plot – exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution – is contained within a book. This definite sectioning allows the...

While most people in society strive to have moral attributes, not everyone understands what traits are important in achieving this goal. Often, people attempt to model themselves after another’s example. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by...

In Much Ado About Nothing, love is fickle and volatile. Several pairs of characters fall in and out of love at nearly a moment’s notice and a few accept their emotions without question. Many complex events cause these sudden emotional changes to...