Newest Literature Essays

"Fate: 'what has been spoken,' a power beyond men's control that is held to determine what happens" (Webster's Intermediate Dictionary 270).

Everywhere in the world, people attribute events to fate because of the belief that one has no control...

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., is the tale of a gawky World War II veteran/soldier, Billy Pilgrim. His wartime experiences and their effects lead him to the ultimate conclusion that war is unexplainable. To portray this effectively,...

In Sister Carrie, the city is the narrator. It is the main focus of the book, and greatly impacts all those who are influenced by its magnitude. For some, it is a beacon of hope and a promised land of wealth and opportunity, while for others its...

In Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser creates a world in which people are defined by desire. By viewing this world through the eyes of his protagonist, Carrie, the reader becomes aware of a dichotomy. On one hand, there is the desire for wealth,...

As is the case with almost every example of romantic epics, and certainly every story concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the characters carefully observe a strict code of ethics, or chivalry. In Sir Gawain and the Green...

In Stanza 74 of the epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the lady of the castle offers a magical green girdle to Sir Gawain and explains that the wearer of this corset "cannot be killed by any cunning on earth." Sir Gawain, amidst an ethical...

"Everyman" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" are without doubt two of the best-known works of medieval English literature. The stories demonstrate the epitome of the Christian themes of salvation, mortality, and truth that resonate throughout...

The artful creator of the fourteenth- century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" cleverly leads his reader with a trail of words through the mysterious world of "a castle cut of paper..."(Sir Gawain 802). Here, he puts his main character Sir...

The mystery of love has stumped men and women for ages. Literature, drama, and art have and will always try to understand courting, romance, and passion. So too do they want to understand what happens after love is gone: where it went and how it...

"On Sir Gawain that girdle of green appeared fine!

It looked rich on that red cloth, and rightly adorned."

-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Lines 2036-2037

In the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain's acceptance of the green girdle shows...

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the anonymous author offers the reader a protagonist infinitely aware of his place in society and of the potentially capricious nature of his acclaim. Popularly considered one of the most virtuous knights in...

The medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight depicts two different medieval models of courtesy - courtesy towards men and courtesy towards women. Defined by different members of the community, the two types of courtesy also necessitate...

As a result of betrayal, Silas Marner of George Eliot's so titled novel becomes a man in body without incurring any of the duties normally associated with nineteenth century working class adults. Eliot creates these unusual circumstances by...

It is impossible to maintain a completely objective outlook on life, unaffected by personal needs, desires, and biases. Individual perceptions, no matter how grievously mistaken, strongly influence both trivial and crucial decisions. In Joseph...

In the words of Oscar Wilde, "The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves." Conflict between the "well-bred" people and their "wise" counterparts satiates William Faulkner's short stories "A Rose for Emily" and "Barn...

Horseracing has always been a magical sport and referred to as "The Sport of Kings". The excitement and drama has always caused new fans to flock to the sport. In "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence it is no different. The racetracks and...

Through a careful interpretation of A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Democratic Vistas by Walt Whitman, one can gain a holistic sense of poetry, what it is and what it does, that can be applied to literary texts of all times. One...

The careful craft and design of poetry condenses the amount of text needed to convey information. This is true of all art, in that pieces are often qualitatively judged by how much they "say." Good works may carry one or two levels of meaning...

Innumerable poems address the concept of love, with the written battle between positive love and negative love continuing to be waged today. Not surprisingly, there are not, nor would we expect many future poets to write, many poems that juxtapose...

In "Second Best", D.H. Lawrence uses the symbol of the mole as the basis for three separate metaphors for dilemmas in the lives of his characters. Each character shows differences in attitude and action towards the creatures, and these differences...

Many men in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries composed sequences of sonnets about women whom they loved. William Shakespeare's incomplete sonnet sequence is among the genre's most acclaimed. Most authors embellished their women's...

In sonnet 146, Shakespeare presents the battle between depth and surface in different ways. The theme and message of the poem point consistently to a contradictory and difficult relationship between the inner and outer realms of a human being. The...

Germinating in anonymous Middle English lyrics, the subversion of the classical poetic representation of feminine beauty as fair-haired and blue-eyed took on new meaning in the age of exploration under sonneteers Sidney and Shakespeare. No longer...

The swelling energy and particularization of imagery of season, time, and light both complement and counter the speaker's fading body in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Moving from metaphors of abstract bleakness to those of specific vitality and passion...