The weather in “The Wanderer” is reflective of the author’s view of the world following his exile. Throughout the poem, weather is utilized in an effort to paint a picture as wretched and sorrowful as the persona’s view of life. As I read through the...
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is written using very casual language and follows the stream of conciseness narrative of a young boy named Oskar. Oskar’s extreme curiosity and childlike innocence lead him to observe, question, and comment on everything he sees,...
Both Lord Alfred Tennyson’s dramatic monologue, “Ulysses,” and Ezra Pound’s 1912 translation of the Old English dramatic monologue “The Seafarer” depict a man’s musings about seaward journeys. Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in the wake of his best friend Arthur Henry Hallam’s death. “The Seafarer” has traditionally...
The Wanderer is a poem that laments both the temporality of human life and the material world, posing existential questions that only appear to be answered in the comparatively short conclusion though appeal to the Christian God. In part because of this structural oddity, critical...
The poems The Seafarer and The Wanderer are both elegiac in nature: each speaker delivers a reflective monologue about their journey from the past they have lost to the solitary present they face, although there are limitations to the past’s disappearance, as it clearly lingers...
Beginning at the time of early settlements in the 5th century and spanning until 1150 A.D., the English language and that spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons during this time is referred to as Old English or simply, Anglo-Saxon. The influence of Christianity on Anglo-Saxon...
In Bernard F. Huppe’s critical exposition, “The “Wanderer”: Theme and Structure”, he speaks collectively for scholarship associated with the elegiac poem, The Wanderer, stating that “the purpose of the poem is entirely Christian, its general theme being the contrast between the transitoriness of earthly goods...
The Wanderer is a staple of Anglo-Saxon storytelling and has been recited over countless centuries to new audiences. The poem follows the story of a former warrior who is currently living a life of solitude. After the loss of his lord and kinsmen, the warrior...
The year 1924 marked the beginning of the surrealist movement. Aimed at tapping into the subconscious, surrealism became a growing art form that still influences artists and writers to this day. According to Andr Breton, author of “The Surrealist Manifesto”, surrealism is “psychic automatism in...
In his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar Allan Poe writes that in an ideal poem, “two things are invariably required first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning.” While he claims...
Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy 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, the existence of evil, and the path to God while locked...
Edgar Allen Poe created an interesting paradigm surrounding his theory on cosmic principle. He sees the universe as God’s artistic creation dispersed among humankind. Artists, namely poets, bring together the universe by breaking free of their physical world and its correlating corruption and materialism. To...
Edgar Allen Poe is, perhaps, the most popular Gothic author in American history. Many of his stories show the darker side of humanity and provoke a sense of eeriness in the reader. But what exactly makes his stories creepy or uncanny? To answer this question...
Introduction Water, with its myriad forms and dynamic nature, holds immense power within our world. It possesses the capability to nurture life or to extinguish it, serving as the bedrock of our planet and an essential element in human existence. Among the natural wonders of...
In Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer the theme of illumination is explored by the triple meaning of the word itself. Foer shows how illumination may mean to clarify or explain, to produce actual light, or to embellish something. These multiple meanings of illumination,...
Written by master realist Anton Chekhov, “Misery” is the story of an old man’s grief for having lost his son. He keeps looking for somebody with whom to talk about the death of his child. Throughout, the use of the old man’s narrative perspective enables...
Written in 1893, Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Black Monk” is one of the most potent and revealing works of the writer. It reflects the profound philosophy of the author, as well as the feelings of worry and anxiety which, according to the memoirs of...
Hawthorne’s science fiction short stories, such as ‘The Birthmark’ and ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter,’ are set in the seventeenth century. His novels, however, The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, are set in the nineteenth century, his own era. The progression of science from...
Writer and satirist Jonathan Swift stated that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” (Swift). Such beholders, as Swift mentions, use satiric narrative to convey social and political plights. In his satire A Modest Proposal, Swift...