Need some tips for writing essays on literature? How about you check our free samples of literature essay topics or order an essay today and leave the hard task for us? Like all academic papers, literature essay topics require you to think critically and produce strong arguments. The outline is ...Read More
Need some tips for writing essays on literature? How about you check our free samples of literature essay topics or order an essay today and leave the hard task for us? Like all academic papers, literature essay topics require you to think critically and produce strong arguments. The outline is similar to most types of essays but what makes it unique is the language style in addition to the contextual analysis. We have tips we would like to share with you concerning every section of literary essays from the introduction to the conclusion. First, avoid giving a plot summary because readers are already familiar with it and focus on advancing an argument. However, you can mention some plot details and extra information to support your arguments.
In the third and final play of The Oresteia trilogy, The Eumenides, Apollo testifies for Orestes and the Furies testify for the late Clytemnestra in a trial that will decide whether or not Orestes is guilty. In this play, a new system of justice centered...
The Oresteia is a multipurpose work that sets the foundation for the evolution of modern political thought throughout the ages. It also serves to outline the beginning of the understanding of humanity through multiple different lenses. The human life is examined to a thorough extent,...
The failed British invasion of Suez in 1957 has come to represent the end of Britain’s reign of military, commercial and imperial dominance in the world. British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigned in the wake of this humiliating defeat; shortly thereafter, he traveled to...
The Greek rationalists’ search for the meaning of life through rational thought instead of the traditional legends marked the first radical shift from mythos to logos. While there was no clean break with either traditional religion or belief in the supernatural, Greek thought as a...
The evolving workplace of 1920s America presented industries and businesses with an innovative new standard of operation: work smarter, not harder. These innovations included the popularization of the assembly line, the right for women to vote (and, thereafter, the quest for the right to equal...
In David Mamet’s Oleanna, John, a university teacher, attempts to explain to his student Carol how he himself struggled with education as a child, in order to make her feel better about her own hardships and create an emotional connection with her. However, it is...
David Mamet’s short, two-character play Oleanna deals with the shifting linguistic power dynamics between professor John and student Carol over the series of three separate meetings. Both characters continually trail off, interrupt one another, and digress from the primary issue at hand: Carol’s confusion in...
“And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself” (McEwan 119). Throughout the novel On...
Frank Kermode writes in his book The Genesis of Secrecy “We are most unwilling to accept mystery, what cannot be reduced to other and more intelligible forms. Yet that is what we find here: something irreducible, therefore perpetually to be interpreted; not secrets to be...
Translations of Sophocles’ play are generally interpreted in one of two ways, ‘Oedipus Rex’, meaning Oedipus the King, or ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’, meaning Oedipus the Tyrant. The exact distinction between the two titles is undefined, though through the lens of Socrates’ five characterizations of the soul,...
The genius of Sophocles’ Oedipus Plays is enriched through the many levels of interpretation that can be explored by each individual reader. One major area left open for interpretation is sight. It is divided into two categories, “physical” sight and “non-physical” sight. Physical sight is...
Athenian citizens believed they had no volition in life, but rather contended with a lack of free will and choice as they struggled with the presence of oracles and belief of destiny. They accepted that deities could foresee the future and select individuals as intermediaries...
Throughout the history of literature, authors and playwrights have often employed a foil – a character whose purpose is to create a contrast with the main character that allows the latter’s attributes to cement their presence. Ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles, in his play Oedipus Rex,...
“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eye are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light,which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as...
The story of Oedipus the King is the epitome of tragedy. A great hero, who was once revered as an equal to the gods, fell from grace when it was learned that he had killed his father and married his mother. In the time of...
Sophocles makes frequent use of seafaring imagery in his Oedipus the King, creating new perspectives from which to view its characters and cities. Oedipus tells the story of a king undone by a lack of faith in prophesy, the king of a people in need...
Introduction Chorus, in drama and music, are those who function vocally in a crew as antagonistic to those who perform singly. The chorus in Classical Greek drama was once a group of artists who expressed and commented upon the foremost motion of a play with...
What happens when pride takes control of a human? In the plays Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Sophocles paints a dismal picture of what happens, where pride is depicted as both an obstruction to sight and an obstruction to hearing. According to Sophocles, the pride of...
One of the key thematic threads running through the plays of The Oedipus Cycle is the debate regarding the primary importance between the laws of the gods over those of the State. For example, in both Oedipus Rex and Antigone, the eponymous characters are torn...