Newest Literature Essays

In modern society, “corruption” connotes financial bribery, dishonest proceedings, or underhanded deals in business or politics. The perpetrators might waste others’ money and will supposedly suffer emotionally, but Romantic literature points out...

At first glance, Charlotte Bronte’s <i>Jane Eyre</i> seems to be a novel promoting tameness, preaching moderation and balance. This is shown through Jane’s metamorphosis from a wild, passionate youth to a woman whose passion is...

Boethius’s <i>The Consolation of Philosophy</i> and the Old English poem “The Wanderer” are both testament to the enduring quality of literature. Writing in the sixth century A.D., Boethius discusses such varied topics as happiness,...

In his aesthetic treatise <i>A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful</i> (1757), Edmund Burke (1729-1797) proposes his concept of the sublime. Although several eighteenth-century...

The Christian religion plays a key role in both Flannery O’Connor’s <i>Wise Blood</i> and Richard Wright’s <i>Black Boy</i>. Despite the authors’ ideological differences, both Wright’s childhood self and O’Connor’s...

Anthony Burgess’s <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> is a novel pervaded by a multifaceted and intrinsic musical presence. Protagonist Alex’s fondness for classical music imbues his character with interesting dimensions, and resonates well...

In the novels <i>Arabesques</i> by Anton Shammas and <i>Persepolis</i> by Marjane Satrapi, autobiographical narrative is created through the use of unconventional styles of writing. Shammas’s use of the novel as the...

Shakespeare’s <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> is often criticized for its seemingly misogynistic themes: namely, the idea of breaking a woman’s spirit and making her subservient to her husband. This is apparent through the “taming” of...

Much of the tension in Ivan Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> arises from the conflict between the two main characters, Bazarov and Arkady. Bazarov is a nihilist and the catalyst for much of the action of the novel. He does not share...

Naguib Mahfouz and Franz Kafka both use setting as an important literary feature in their respective works, <i>Midaq Alley</i> and <i>The Metamorphosis</i>. Mahfouz’s <i>Midaq Alley</i> takes place in the back...

The destruction of tradition in the name of progress exists in Flannery O’Connor’s “A View of the Woods” and Ivan Turgenev’s <i>Fathers and Sons</i> through the main protagonists in each work. Bazarov is the central character of...

John Donne and Emily Dickinson, in their poems “Death Be Not Proud” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” personify death in order to explain the phenomenon of death and, more importantly, the wonder of eternal life. In his Holy Sonnet “Death...

Dehumanization of the protagonist is a common thematic element in both Kafka’s <i>The Metamorphosis</i> and O’Connor’s “A Late Encounter of the Enemy,” although the various aspects of dehumanization differ between the two works....

The idea of the grotesque is presented in both Naguib Mahfouz’s novel <i>Midaq Alley</i> and Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People.” Although the settings, plots, and characters differ, both works present an underlying...

“Poetry,” said Robert Frost “is a way of seizing life by the throat.” Not having been equipped with the media and technology of today, poets of the post-1770s era often approached their poetry in this fashion. They took advantage of the freedom of...

In Ken Kesey’s <i>Sometimes a Great Notion</i>, the Stamper family illustrates how the idealistic American culture -- and the equally idealistic individuals living and working within that culture -- become corrupted by the dark side of...

In Gabriel García Márquez’s <i>One Hundred Years of Solitude</i>, Colonel Aureliano Buendía experiences several metamorphoses that grant him his multidimensional character. However, these metamorphoses become regressive, and he finds...

In her essay “From the Women’s Prison: Third World Women’s Narratives of Prison,” Barbara Harlow argues that the solidarity that transcends race, gender, class, and other social categories is a vital component in the fight against oppressive...

In Shakespeare’s <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, the “death” of Hermione catalyzes the narrative development. Quantitatively, she plays little role beyond the first three acts, but the play revolves and eventually unites around her. It is,...

With the close of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th, much of the world was changing. In particular, world literature was shifting from the ideals of Romanticism to the stark realism of novels written after the Great War. At the beginning...

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “Gorilla Girl” tells the twisted coming-of-age story of a budding sociopath in southern Michigan. The narrator, whose name is not revealed in the text, takes the reader through some of the more notable life events in her...

Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale,” written apart from but included in his unfinished anthology <i>The Canterbury Tales</i>, is considered one of his greatest works. It could be at once a number of things: a dark meditation on...

Within the pages of Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i>, the author explores concepts of love, darkness, and sexuality as well as the theme of good versus evil. The most powerful theme surrounding the infamous vampire, however, is that of...

Geoffrey Chaucer’s <i>The Canterbury Tales</i> contain his trademark challenges to and reimaginings of the popular literary genres of his time. With each tale, Chaucer takes a common genre and follows its general conventions in order...