Essays on Literary Genres

3212

Jacoby's Evasive and Unappealing Vision of Utopia

1 page / 1789 words

American society is rarely content with its present state. Rather, it constantly seeks ways to improve and enhance the current standard of living. Ideally, these changes should be paving the path to a better future, one in which hostility and conflict become practically obsolete and...

Novel Utopia

3213

Human Bodies Are Geographical Markers as They Can Span Physical Borders Through Their Affection.

1 page / 2277 words

Textual, mnemonic, and physical gaps leave room in which identity is found through body and environment in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Ondaatje’s characters retrieve their absent personas by mutually colonizing lovers’ bodies, thus developing a metaphor for the body as...

Jazz Novel

3214

The Role of Imagery, Symbolism and Metaphor in The English Patient

1 page / 2383 words

Whilst the four main characters of The English Patient are extremely powerful, and important to the reader’s understanding of the story, they cannot stand alone without the patterns of imagery, symbolism and metaphor which underpin the text, and offer a complexity which extends beyond the...

Novel

3215

Wins and Losses in The Chicago World's Fair

1 page / 886 words

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 represented a triumphant moment of success for the city of Chicago as well as for the entire nation. Yet, the grandeur of the fair was paralleled with an equally great amount of corruption and abuse. During this time known...

Literature Review Novel

3216

Purpose of Communication in 'The Dew Breaker'

1 page / 998 words

Many people in today’s world have trouble when it comes to communicating. In literature many authors use communication as a way to either create relationships or to create barriers in one. In the novel The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat, many characters struggle when it...

Creole Novel

3217

Characterization of Macoute in The Dew Breaker

1 page / 1417 words

The Dew Breaker, a novel by Edwidge Danticat that tells of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s inherited dictatorship in Haiti, appears to be a novel about two things. On the one hand, it documents the life and trials of a Tonton Macoute, a government sanctioned torturer; on the...

Creole Novel

3218

Inspiration and Education Achieved Through Poetry

1 page / 2192 words

‘Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth – to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture – with this end: to teach and delight’. Made-to-order essay as fast...

Poetry

3219

Poetry's Impact on Society in 'A Defense of Poesy'

1 page / 1217 words

In the long essay, “A Defense of Poesy,” Sir Philip Sidney responds to the attempts of repression by the Puritan Movement on poets and their work by characterizing poetry as the roots of culture and intelligence. Sidney uses mythical allusions and historical references to various...

Poetry Puritans

3220

Hard Work Doesn't Always Pay as Portrayed in 'The Devil in The White City'

1 page / 834 words

Novels are often written to convey an inherent truth of life. However, when a nonfiction book is written and the inherent truth is still prevalent, one must take notice of the lesson to learn. This concept occurs in The Devil in the White City, a...

Book Review Hard Work Novel

3221

Sexual Relations Narration by Dioneo in "The Decameron"

1 page / 2603 words

At the beginning of Boccaccio’s Decameron, both the male and female narrators hesitate to discuss the seemingly lewd topic of sexual relations. On Day I, the Florentines discuss various topics, yet only one narrator is brave enough to introduce sex as a theme: Dioneo. This...

Renaissance Short Story The Decameron

3222

Female Liberation and Power in Boccaccio’s "The Decameron"

1 page / 2862 words

Introduction Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval masterpiece “The Decameron” is a collection of stories, chronicled over ten days, which highlights the best and worst of human nature. Boccaccio’s tales deal with themes such as adultery, love, premarital sex, devotion, trickery, and manipulation, among others. Yet this work...

Renaissance Short Story The Decameron

3223

Renaissance Implications on Morality and Censorship in "The Decameron"

1 page / 841 words

Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” serves as a fascinating exploration of morality and censorship during the Renaissance period. Written in the 14th century, Boccaccio’s work emerges against the backdrop of a society transitioning from the rigid moral structures of the Middle Ages, dominated by the Church, to...

Renaissance Short Story The Decameron

3224

Significance of Gardens in "Decameron" and "Confessions"

1 page / 1009 words

She told him about country sounds and country smells and how fresh and clean everything in the country is. She said that he ought to live there and that if he did, he would find that all his troubles were city troubles. Made-to-order essay as...

Renaissance Short Story The Decameron

3225

Depiction of Culture Clash in The Dark Child

1 page / 1420 words

Camara Laye’s demonstrative narrative The Dark Child delineates the author’s childhood and adolescence in colonial Upper Guinea in the early twentieth century. Simple in construction, the story gives emotional value to the experiences common among young boys of Laye’s social class as well as to...

Literature Review Narrator Novel

3226

The Phallus: The Art of Rejection

1 page / 929 words

According to Jack Halberstam in his book The Queer Art of Failure, “the queer art of failure turns on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and...

Fiction Gender

3227

The View of Entropy in The Crying of Lot 49

3 pages / 767 words

In Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49, the concept of entropy is intricately woven into the narrative through the experiences of the protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Entropy, in this context, can be defined as both a measure of the efficiency of a system in...

Postmodernism Short Story The Crying of Lot 49

3228

The Use of Imagery to Portray Conspiracy in The Crying of Lot 49

3 pages / 1628 words

Near the end of Thomas Pynchon’s 1965 novel The Crying of Lot 49, the protagonist Oedipa finds herself at a crossroads after trying to unravel the mystery of W.A.S.T.E., a conspiratorial underground postal system, without finding many tangible results. “It was now like walking among...

Postmodernism Short Story The Crying of Lot 49

3229

Meaningless Fragments Symbolizing Meaninglessness in 'The Crying of Lot 49'

3 pages / 1277 words

In Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, standard hierarchical structures are abandoned in a setting of postmodern cultural chaos. The use of fragmented pop culture contributes to many aspects of the book, namely the sense of combined freedom in the search for meaning. Moreover,...

Postmodernism Short Story The Crying of Lot 49

3230

The Crying of Lot 49 and Chaos

3 pages / 1198 words

A recurring theme that can be found in Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 is the conception that chaos has a tremendous effect on society. Pynchon engages in a dualistic method of literary technique to engender the realization of the effect that chaos...

Postmodernism Short Story The Crying of Lot 49