Essays on Literary Genres

3877

An Understanding of Rossetti’s Methods and Concerns in "Promises Like Piecrust"

3 pages / 1587 words

First Impressions When I first read Christina Rossetti's "Promises Like Piecrust," I was struck by how she uses such a simple metaphor - comparing promises to pie crust - to talk about something way deeper. Like, we all know pie crust breaks easily, right? That's...

Christina Rossetti Poetry

3878

The Humbling of Humanity Through Extraterrestrial Intervention: an Unlikely Utopia in "Childhood’s End"

2 pages / 958 words

When the Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End descend over mankind, humanity is immediately awestruck and completely humbled by their scientific and technological prowess. As the Overlords become more active in human society and affairs, their intelligence and pure ability to easily accomplish...

Science Fiction Utopia

3879

Chaucer’s Dream Poetry in Context

2 pages / 1007 words

In Chaucer’s three dream poems, “The Book of the Duchess“, “The Parliament of Fowles” and the unfinished “House of Fame”, universal issues such as love are explored by a narrator recounting a dream. Writing that incorporated dreams was popular in Medieval England as it allowed...

Geoffrey Chaucer Poetry

3880

Shifting The Binaries in "A Joke" by Anton Chekhov

3 pages / 1577 words

The Anton Chekhov short story titled “A Joke” is an interesting read for the inquisitive readers. Very carefully written, the story allows the readers a chance to dive deeper into the unconscious of the characters and dig out layers of meaning behind the apparently normal...

Literature Review Short Story

3881

Chekhov's Visions of Transcendent Humanity in His Short Stories

4 pages / 1813 words

Anton Chekhov might look like a hedgehog when he returns time and again to the theme of universal humanity and its future path. But Chekhov as ‘the humanist writer’ does not really work towards a unified concept of mankind’s ultimate fate. Rather, the thinking men...

Humanity Literature Review Short Story

3882

The Role of Charlotte's Ghost in Charlotte Temple

5 pages / 2059 words

In Susanna Rowson’s novel Charlotte Temple, the main character dies; this spoiler is given immediately at the beginning of the book, leaving no question as to whether Charlotte Temple will thrive on to live a happy life. With a (rather horrific) death undoubtedly present in...

Book Review Character Novel

3883

Defining Virtue in Colonial America

2 pages / 935 words

The concept of virtue in colonial America was a complex and multifaceted construct, intricately woven into the fabric of society. It encompassed a broad spectrum of attributes and values, with a particular emphasis on the expectations placed upon women. Perceived as the cornerstone of moral...

Novel Virtue

3884

Baudelaire’s "The Albatross" and The Changing Role of The Poet

3 pages / 1249 words

Charles Baudelaire is often considered a late Romantic poet. Even Baudelaire sought to equate himself with archetypal Romantic figures like Byron, Hugo, and Gautier; the latter once claimed that Baudelaire had “found a way to inject new life into Romanticism” with the publication of his...

Poetry

3885

Explaining The Success and Popularity of Susanna Rowson’s ‘charlotte Temple’

7 pages / 3269 words

In her novel Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, probably better known under the title of Charlotte Temple, Susanna Rowson relates the unfortunate life of a young girl for a specific purpose that she presents in the opening lines of her work, through the following words:...

Book Review Novel Success

3886

An Analysis of The Use of Tone in "Alone with Everybody"

2 pages / 1037 words

Charles Bukowski’s poem “Alone with Everybody” was written in the mid-1970s, and it was first published in a poetry collection titled Love Is a Dog from Hell in 1977. Bukowski is a German-born American author who is known for his ability to convey feelings of...

Poetry

3887

Charles Simic Memories: Real and Unreal

4 pages / 1775 words

In an interview, Charles Simic said, “My early life seems like a dream…There’s an element of unreality about it.”[i] Simic’s early life was spent attempting to flee World War Two bombs in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he “could easily have been a casualty of war.”[ii] The...

Poetry

3888

The Injustice of Reality: Social Messages in Gilman’s "Wedded Bliss" and Plath’s "Kindness"

4 pages / 1723 words

Poetry is a meaningful expression of art through the illustration of fascinating words and their hidden implication used to reflect the sense of life. Sylvia Plath as well as Charlotte Gilman were both prolific female poets who made a mark in the world of poetry...

Poetry

3889

Sensibility and Alienation in Charlotte Smith’s "The Emigrants"

5 pages / 2461 words

In September 1792, French revolutionaries murdered over one thousand political prisoners to prevent them from being freed and joining enemy forces. After the September Massacres, many, including the English poet Charlotte Turner Smith, had to question their support of the French Revolution and its founding...

Poetry

3890

Close Reading of ‘ode to Death’: Smith’s Paradox of Acceptance

3 pages / 1505 words

Charlotte Smith’s late poem ‘Ode to Death’, published in 1797 in her collection of Elegiac Sonnets, draws on the idea of accepting death as a ‘friend’ (l.1) rather than fearing it. The ode carries a deep sense of desperation and sorrow, as it alludes to...

Poetry

3891

Close Reading: Sonnet 32 by Charlotte Smith

4 pages / 1808 words

The new sensibility that characterizes Romantic literature often leads to the recurrence of melancholy as a powerful and recurrent motif, especially in poetry. Romantic poets recur to their poems to express personal feelings and anxieties and in order to capture this, poets use the imagination....

Poetry

3892

Carrion: Undying Love in The Face of Vile Death

2 pages / 783 words

Charles Baudelaire uses his works to describe his idea of the spleen, or “the restless malaise affecting modern life” (Bedford 414). The spleen is an organ that removes toxins from the human body, but to Baudelaire it is also a symbol of melancholy, moral degradation,...

Poetry

3893

Nurture and Nature in "Girls, at Play"

2 pages / 962 words

People will always revert to what is most comfortable, reliant on their natural state. In Celeste Ng’s coming of age short story, “Girls, At Play”, the debate of nurture versus nature lies in the struggles between four girls. The theme of “Girls, At Play” is...

Book Review Nature Versus Nurture Short Story

3894

A Story About a Yo-yo: How Catch-22 Comes Full Circle Without Being Circular

4 pages / 1949 words

It seems fitting that Yossarian’s nickname in Catch-22 is “Yo-Yo.” A yo-yo is a perfect metaphor for the recurring images of circularity and linearity that characterizes the chaotic world of Joseph Heller’s novel. On one hand, a yo-yo follows the straight-line, linear path of its...

Catch 22 Novel

3895

Comparison of Catch-22 and Dr. Strangelove

11 pages / 4814 words

As Daniel R. White writes in Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee, “To laugh at the literal behavior of other characters in the social drama, is to change the truth value of what those characters do so as to undermine its seriousness, its claim...

Catch 22 Novel