The joke by Milan Kundera
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
Children are not as good at thinking for themselves as adults are. Their entire lives have been spent taking commands from teachers, parents, and anyone older than them. Adults, however, already have learned how to think for themselves exactly because they went through all of this and learned...
A critique of three works: Shakespeare's "The Tempest", Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" and Sophocles "The Oedipus Rex
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
Three great works that have stood the test of time include the book Shakespeare, the Tempest, the second book, Toni Morrison and the Song of Solomon, and Sophocles and his great work, the Oedipus Rex. These works are wonderful works which are great for reading, and have been studied and analyzed...
Obsessions from "The Underground"
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
“I am as insecure and touchy as a hunchback or a dwarf, and yet there have been moments when if I had been slapped, I might even have been glad of it. I say it seriously: surely I'd have managed to deliver some sort of pleasure in it as well - the pleasure of despair, of course, but it is in...
Re-presenting Galileo: Creative responses to Sidereus Nuncius in the seventeenth century
Case study - 8 pages - Literature
The last gasps of the sixteenth century and the first breaths of the seventeenth brought an explosion in the scientific observation and subsequent discoveries of the heavens. In 1609, the Englishman Thomas Harriot became the first man to map the Moon based on observations from a telescope;...
Is the codex obsolete?
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
Is the codex obsolete? It seems as if we're moving in that direction. As I sit down at the desk in my living room to write, I glance out the window of my apartment. In the distance I can see the strip mall that holds the empty shell of a recently-shuttered Borders bookstore. I can also see a...
Covering "L'Affaire Richard" in Eastern Canada
Case study - 23 pages - Literature
“Like the bear-pits in Shakespeare's time, we attend hockey games as our popular theater. It is a place where the monumental themes of Canadian life are played out - English and French, East and West, Canada and the United States, Canada and the world, the timeless tensions of commerce and...
Walking in the City Old West: The Performing Gamer and Red Dead Redemption
Case study - 18 pages - Literature
In this ethnographic moment, blogger Michael Abbott recalls the first of his many violent encounters with an anti-Semitic shopkeeper in Rockstar Games‘ Western title Red Dead Redemption (2010). He notes the Groundhog-Day-like quality of his experience: every five days, he returns to the...
Hover through fog and filthy air": Scottish Play, Scottish Plague Tim Hamilton *English 764* Fall 2010
Essay - 12 pages - Literature
Macbeth. The very mention of the title of Shakespeare's most supernatural tragedy sends shivers down the spine of all too many theatre practitioners and enthusiasts, with good reason. Since Richard Burbage first stepped onto the stage of the Great Hall at Hampton Court to play the cursed tyrant...
Boston's Faneuil Hall as Contested Performance Space: 1765 to 1776
Essay - 10 pages - Literature
In the fall of 1775 following the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Continental Army had laid siege to Boston. While the redcoats held Boston proper, the Continentals controlled most of the surrounding area: their goal was thus to barricade the half-mile-wide “neck” of land which connected...
"A tale so plausible, so boldly uttered": Reading the Popish Plot in Nahum Tate's The History of King Lear
Case study - 9 pages - Literature
On March 21, 1681, King Charles II appeared before the British House of Lords to deliver a speech regarding allegations of a Catholic plot against him, which had enveloped England in yet another storm of religious furor. An Anglican clergyman named Titus Oates had initially brought the charges of...
A Woman's "Complaint": Power and Gender in Andrew Marvell's "Nymph"
Case study - 17 pages - Literature
Andrew Marvell wrote numerous lyric poems throughout his life, but few of them were published until after he died. His contemporaries knew him mainly as a writer of prose and satire, and as a politician and member of Parliament under the governments of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Although...
The limits of mankind's understanding: a comparison of Franklin and Swift
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
To compare Gulliver's Travels and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is to compare two definitive insights into the nature of humanity and humanity's role in the world. Perhaps due to the various and differing social movements of the times and places in which they lived, or perhaps as a result of...
Consider the relationship and struggle between Urizen and Los in Blake's work
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
The recognition of the English poet's literary talent William Blake has been slow and this is to be linked with the novelty of the ideas he developed, but also with the subversive aspect of his reinterpretation of the biblical works, in order to express his views about the world around him....
Discuss the interaction between the translators and their agents, editors and publishers. What effect does such direct contact have on nature and quality of translation?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout history the concept of translation and translation in itself has played a major role as it has made the access to important texts easier such as the bible and thus has enabled people to interact more easily. Since the 1970's its role has increased because of the fast evolution of this...
Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim and David Irving: Tralfamadorians in Training
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
Where Billy Pilgrim begins, Kurt Vonnegut ends and this is where David Irving intrudes for good measure. However this is what makes the post-modern interpretation of this book so interesting (at least to this author). Certainly, an all pervading odor of fatalism and cynicism colors the work and...
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Case study - 5 pages - Literature
The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the earliest of all known works literature in the world. The poem tells the story of King Gilgamesh of Uruk who is thought to have reigned around 2700 BCE. Uruk is believed by some to be the origin of the name of modern day Iraq and was located in southern...
The Dark Virgins
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
For ages now, the great Rache tribe has cursed the dwellers of Raginpoo forest. Whenever there's a commotion or a calamity in the village, they would blame the Raginpoo people right away without even knowing the truth about the said people. One day, Reug and Delash, the two sons of the wise...
Defining the intimacy between the work of English poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Shakespeare
Course material - 7 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare is a world-renowned poet and playwright who has brought the narrative stories into a different level of genius he so cleverly crafted through the sublime musings he got from his views on the society, love, and the likes. On the other hand, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poet...
Paper about the major themes of the book "The Canterbury Tales"
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Written in the late 14th century, during a period in history when England was experiencing a political and social turmoil, the Canterbury Tales are Geoffrey Chaucer's most celebrated literary work. At that time, a schism was beginning to develop with the Christian church. The significance of...
With their backs against fort walls a soldier's-eye, view of the siege of Zeelandia
Book review - 25 pages - Literature
On February 17th, 1662, in the stifling, humid chill of Formosa's cold season, they marched. Despite being deathly sick, injured, partially starved and otherwise exhausted, the 400 to 500 men of the Dutch East India Company remaining in the garrison of Fort Zeelandia marched to the beat of...
The connection between Blanche DuBois and Sex
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
There is no doubt when it comes to Blanche Dubois' state of mind. On the first look she seems fragile, lost, and of course delusional. But on a further examination it becomes apparent that there is more than what meets the eye. To put it aptly, Blanche Dubois is insecure, and wants to feel needed...
In the Merchant of Venice, do you consider Shylock to be a villain or a victim?
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
One area that I need to look at before I discuss this question is whether Shakespeare himself was anti-Semitic or that he was influenced when writing The Merchant of Venice by the attitudes of Christians to Jewish people at the time. At the time that Shakespeare was writing Britain was a...
Compare the Presentation of School Life in "The Pieces of Silver" and "The Winter Oak". How do Sealy and Nagibin suggest to you that the schools in these stories are out of touch with the needs of their pupils?
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
“The Winter Oak” and “The Pieces of Silver” are both set within a school and both of the boys come from poor backgrounds. Some of the ideas in the stories are similar. Both refer to the teacher learning a lesson, or a system which the teachers uphold is challenged or defeated...
Compare the presentation of the speaker in Alan Bennett's monologues 'A chip in the sugar' and 'A Lady of letters'. How does Alan Bennett guide your reactions to the characters?
Case study - 6 pages - Literature
In Bennett's monologues the characters and their attitudes have quite a lot in common. To realise these similarities and differences, it is necessary to see what we learn directly or implicitly about the main characters' lives and what they tell us about their situations. In ‘A Chip in the...
Would you agree that the main focus in Heaney's poems about childhood is the loss of innocence?
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
The Early Purges is about when a boy of about the age of 6 is frightened at the sight of kittens being drowned on a farm as he is told that they are pests. Then when he is older he just sees it as the norm and something that must be done. Death of a Naturalist is about a very young boy who...
Compare the ways in which the writers present the relationship between the colonial authority and the oppressed in the novels 'The Siege of Krishnapur' and 'True History of the Kelly Gang'
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
In their novels, both Carey and Farrell present the Colonial Authority as multi-faceted organizations. In Farrell's ‘The Siege of Krishnapur' the foremost voices of the Colonial Authority are the Collector, initially representative of the British Empire's quest for progress, and Fleury,...
Explication of "The Winter Evening Settles Down"
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
T.S. Eliot's poem, “The Winter Evening Settles Down”, tells about the time period of which the poem was written in 1917. During this time, World War I was occurring, there was an early economic depression that preceded the Great Depression of the late 1920s into the 1930s, and it was a...
"Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock" Explication
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In Wallace Stevens' free-verse poem, “Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock,” he presents the reader with an aggregation of vivid and descriptive words that help illuminate the theme, or the idea, of the poem. Stevens uses his literary work in a way that affects the person reading it and most...
William Blake's "The Tyger"
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
In William Blake's “The Tyger,” he questions, multiple times throughout, how the tiger was created - ultimately, it is up to the reader to draw his or own conclusion. Blake's questioning of who created the tiger and how the tiger was created is the central theme of this poem. As a...
Tale of Kieu
Case study - 3 pages - Literature
The notion of morality has been the focus of numerous philosophical and sociological debates. A number of experts have examined the issue, arriving to a number of different models and schemes to define morality and its influence on human behavior. One of the major figures in this field was the...
