Essays on Literary Genres

3060

An Unreliable Narrator in Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

2 pages / 1273 words

In Robert Browning's dramatic monologue, "Porphyria's Lover," the love-stricken frustrations of a nameless speaker end in a passionate, annihilating response to society's scrutiny towards human sensuality. Cleverly juxtaposing Porphyria's innocent femininity and her sexual transgression, Browning succeeds in displaying society's contradictory embrace of morality next...

Poetry Robert Browning

3061

God as The Quiet in "Caliban Upon Setebos"

4 pages / 1958 words

The nature of God has been a controversial subject for writers throughout the centuries. In the poem “Caliban upon Setebos,” Robert Browning explores the relationship between deities and their subjects through the voice of Caliban, a brutish monster-servant adopted from Shakespeare’s Tempest. Though the cruel...

Poetry Robert Browning

3062

The Hart of Language: Analyzing The Purpose of Riddleyspeak in "Riddley Walker"

1 page / 769 words

In Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Hoban portrays a post-apocalyptic society ravaged by a nuclear war. While he masterfully crafts the story to warn readers about the dangers of technology, the real achievement is in the strange language, called Riddleyspeak, in which the book is written...

Novel Science Fiction

3063

Love and Its Corruption: Never The Time and The Place, Porphyria’s Lover and Andrea Del Sarto

2 pages / 1130 words

In both Porphyria’s Lover and Andrea del Sarto, Robert Browning explores the notions of love and its capacity to corrupt an individual’s character and potential through his signature diegetic form; the dramatic monologue. While the form of these two poems is based around an implied...

Poetry Robert Browning

3064

Tortured Knights: Eliot, Byron, and Browning

7 pages / 3541 words

Though they come from the shores of different eras and the minds of different authors, the protagonists of Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” are all knights in their...

Poetry Robert Browning

3065

"Her Darling One Wish Would Be Heard": How Dramatic Monologue Illustrates Distorted Rationality in "Porphyria’s Lover" and "My Last Duchess"

2 pages / 721 words

In Robert Browning’s poems “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess,” the theme of obsessive love is intricately woven into the fabric of the narratives, revealing how distorted rationality can lead to devastating consequences. Both narrators, driven by their compulsive desires, attempt to exert control over...

My Last Duchess Poetry Robert Browning

3066

Illusion of Divinity in Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson

1 page / 767 words

It is a common notion for people to believe other people tend to have better lives than their own. Regardless of the situation, people will compare the worst part of their own life to the best parts of other peoples’ lives, creating a wider disparity...

Poetry

3067

Literary Analysis of Richard Wilbur's Poem "The Winter"

2 pages / 923 words

Parents are innately protective of their children. They know that their children will meet struggles in their lives, but at one point the parent must let their child be and simply wish him or “her a lucky passage.” In “The Writer” by Richard Wilbur, the...

Poetry

3068

Irony and Interpretation in Wilbur’s "Boy at The Window"

3 pages / 1568 words

Richard Wilbur’s poem “Boy at the Window” describes a young boy looking at the snowman he has built outside his window at twilight. Noting the cold outdoor environment in which his snowman must spend the night, the boy weeps; however, the poem reveals that the...

Poetry

3069

The Dangers and Benefits of Emotion in 19th Century American Literature

2 pages / 1166 words

Many of the popular texts found in 19th century American literature represent emotion, the effects of which can be perceived as both beneficial and dangerous to individuals and communities. In Lippard’s The Quaker City, the characters’ intense emotion help position the story as a cautionary...

American Literature Literature Review Novel

3070

Superficial Values in Revolutionary Road

4 pages / 1861 words

When colonial settlers arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620, the primary concern of the newly established society was to ensure survival; however, nowadays, Western consumer society has placed a significant emphasis on shallow ideals, particularly the worth of outward appearance. Over the...

Novel

3071

A Continuous Metaphor: Theater in Revolutionary Road

2 pages / 935 words

Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road unveils the emptiness of suburban life by incorporating a play into the opening paragraphs and then continuing a metaphor of theater throughout the rest of the novel. The novel opens with theatrical failure that foreshadows the evident downfall of Frank and...

Novel

3072

The Role of Foreshadowing in Remembering Babylon

1 page / 785 words

The first chapter of Remembering Babylon contains the introduction young boy, Gemmy, and his first encounter with the white settlers of Australia. The exposition foreshadows characters’ actions and potential conflicts, establishing later events in the novel and Gemmy’s eventual rejection from society. As Gemmy finds,...

Literature Review Novel

3073

Class and Love: Nuanced Dynamics in Tess and Rebecca

2 pages / 1293 words

Both Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Rebecca are texts in which social class proves to be a factor in the relationships between lovers. Tess is born into a low class poor family, which significantly alters the outcome of events in her life. Contrastingly in Rebecca,...

Novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles

3074

Jane Eyre and The Unnamed Narrator of Rebecca as Innocent Victims

5 pages / 2286 words

A female victim in Gothic literature is typically innocent, unworldly and powerless, a useful stereotype creating tension and drama as well as encapsulating ideals of male desire. Jane Eyre has lived a sheltered life, unexposed to worldly dangers such as evil, insanity and true love....

Jane Eyre Novel

3075

Narrative Structure and The Narrative Manipulation in ‘rebecca’

2 pages / 1019 words

A narrative is a spoken or written account of events and the structure is the order that the author organizes events; though these definitions may seem simple, much of the interest in a narrative can arise from the distortion or manipulation of key information. The...

Novel

3076

Mrs Danvers: a Foil for The Narrator of "Rebecca"

1 page / 772 words

In the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the character of Mrs Danvers is presented as a foil to the narrator: a character who provides a contrast to the narrator in order to highlight her attributes. Mrs Danvers is the housekeeper at Mannerly and looked...

Novel

3077

Racial Ambiguity in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif"

7 pages / 3491 words

Post-colonialism is concerned with the effects of colonization on the colonized. In fact, Richard Schur argues “that there can be no simple escape from the effects race, racism, gender, and sexism without some sort of decolonization” (277). One affect involves how language is used to...

Short Story

3078

Imagery and Diction in Red Sorghum

2 pages / 993 words

Through war torn villages and billowing sorghum fields, author Mo Yan depicts the subtle joys and harsh realities of the life of a Chinese family during the Second Sino-Japanese War in his novel, Red Sorghum. The intensity of the challenges and hardships that face this...

Novel