Virgil’s Aeneid is one of the seminal works of the antiquity which offers us a lens into the life and art of ancient Romans in the era of 1 BC – the year the epic was written. A reading of the epic shows that Virgil’s...
Fundamental human similarities in motivation are at the core of the works of novelist Saul Bellow. Bellow was a Chicago born Jewish author, and as such his protagonists are often of a similar demographic, young Jewish men in Chicago. Despite Bellow’s uniformity of protagonists, his...
The genre of the detective story is one of the most remarkable categories of short fiction. The Sherlock Holmes stories are genuine masterpieces created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the usage of the detective stories elements has contributed to their popularity. In “The Adventure...
Winston Churchill said that ‘the truth is incontrovertible’. This statement construes ‘truth’ as an absolute concept, where there is only one truth, and anything else is by definition a non-truth. Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Thackeray’s ‘Going to see a Man Hanged’ are certainly diverse in...
Indubitably, Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ is largely reminiscent of the archetypal Grecian tragedy; evoking an overwhelming sense of pity/catharsis for the female protagonist. However, the constituents of said ‘tragedy’; though in essence prevalent throughout, are discordant throughout the majority of Hardy’s novel. It...
Upon reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one may notice that references to pagan goddesses and ancient religions of the past are strewn throughout the book. These allusions range from the affectionate names of endearment by which Angel Clare refers to Tess, such as...
Although it is commonly understood that God created the natural world, Nature is often depicted as a force working in opposition to God and His creation. In lyric 56 of the poem In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Nature seems to have conquered God, leading...
In the opening line of Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters,” Odysseus issues the rallying call of “Courage!” to his men as they head forward in their trajectory towards a strange and unnamed “land.” For these weary wanderers, this place is clearly another inevitable detour and not...
Tennyson’s reclusive speaker is shown to condemn the actions of both people and society as a whole within ‘Maud’; many of the speaker’s social criticisms are shown to be valid social critiques of the Victorian age, in contrast to his sometimes erratic and distorted cognitive...
As legendary poet and hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur once said, “The seed must grow regardless of the fact that it’s planted in stone.” Those who live in impoverished neighborhoods are prone to a life empty of education and full of crime. From the very beginning...
In Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy uses nature to influence the actions of his shepherd and shepherdess protagonists, Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, in two separate episodes involving rain storms. The conflict of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd centers upon Bathsheba Everdene’s...
After one has read The Holy Grail by Alfred Lord Tennyson and watched the movie The Fisher King directed by Terry Gilliam, the question about the identity of the Fisher King in the movie naturally arises. In The Holy Grail, the Fisher King is described...
In presenting the concept of the closed door, it advocates the very opposite idea that, once, the door was open. With this knowledge there comes a possibility that perhaps a closed door can be opened again, suggesting that there are two sides to a doorway....
For centuries, nature in literature has been used as a means to reflect both our society and humanity. Both Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Christina Rossetti’s selected poems use nature as both a tool of oppression and a support, challenging the inequalities and ideals of their...
“The Lady of Shalott” was published in 1832, during the early Victorian epoch. It explores a series of themes that trigger the reader to question the societal prejudices that occurred during Queen Victoria’s reign. In order to stimulate thought, Tennyson paints a romantic picture of...
The relationship between art and the self is a reoccurring theme in Tennyson’s poetry; indeed in The Palace of Art the narrator declares “I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house”[i]; bridging the gap between the interior (soul) and exterior (palace) through art. In Maud we...
Introduction The theme of enclosure or entrapment permeates Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poetry, offering a lens through which we can examine the complexities of human existence. This essay delves into the notion of enclosure in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and explores its manifestations in other...
In Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”, he brings into question the differing perspectives that each individual possesses. By describing the reality of the sailors before the consumption of the Lotos flower and after the ingestion of the enchanted Lotos, he brings attention to the idea that...
Poets often revise and re-revise their work, as it can be difficult to fully express the emotions they want to invoke in the reader. Just a change of one word can change the entire meaning of a line, and poetry’s usual brevity requires every single...