Critical review of the series: Twilight
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Janice Radway's article, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” Radway analyzes a group of suburban housewives who tend to read romance novels as an escape from their everyday lives as wives and mothers. Similarly, the popularity of the teenage vampire book...
Artistic harmonious balance between the reader's mind and the author's mind
Thesis - 15 pages - Literature
Vladimir Nabokov boasts an impressive resume. As a writer, critic and scholar, he perfected both his own craft, and his ability to analyze the work of others. Similarly, within his texts, he focused a great deal of energy on the manipulation of his readers own reactions, earning him a reputation...
Life as a weed
Thesis - 14 pages - Literature
On a bright sunny day in Brooklyn is where our story starts, where heat dazzles its inhabitants, where street thugs and hustlers hide in their street shops and apartments to avoid the blazing sun. Schools are closed; it is mid-July, the heat of New York City streets boiling even the most...
Analysis: Catherine Hall on Victorian domestic ideology
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
This chapter by Catherine Hall examines one particular factor she identifies as being crucial to the creation of the Victorian middle-class ideal of womanhood. Since the “angel in the house” was already established as a precept by the 1830s and '40s, the author seeks farther back in...
Tragic consequences: Themes of alienation in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
A contemporary Boston physician responded starkly to The Yellow Wallpaper. “Such a story ought not to be written,” he said. “It was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” What is it about the descent into madness that is so disturbing to read? Accounts of people behaving...
Critical review: Terrorist
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
This story explores the roots (or some of the roots) of Muslim discontent in America, showing how people who are chafing at what is essentially a culture clash can internalize this into hatreds and resentments justified with polemic and intellectual rationales. The contrast between Islamic...
Charlotte Gilman and Victoria Woodhull
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Bookish Charlotte Gilman, with the deft turn of phrase, and flamboyant Victoria Woodhull, shunning social convention: on the surface these are two very different women. But in fact, they were near-contemporaries who influenced important issues of their day and helped fuel dialog and debate about...
Postmodern and psychoanalytical approaches to Lolita
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Considering how multifaceted Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is, it is possible to apply to it a variety of literary theories, all more or less fruitfully. In this paper, I will consider the postmodern and the psychoanalytic approach. We will find that Lolita is very much a postmodern text, despite...
The poems of Gary Soto
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Throughout the three texts, A Fire in My Hands, Neighborhood Odes, and Where Sparrows Work Hard, Gary Soto uses small and normally insignificant items as the focus of many poems in these texts, celebrating them with odes and sharing the stories behind them in narrative poems. He does this in...
Better than others: Eighteenth century reactionism, elitism, and paradise lost
Thesis - 10 pages - Literature
The eighteenth-century adoption of Paradise Lost—and its continuing permanent position—into the canon of English “classics” is a testament to Milton's genius for subtlety and intertextuality. The combination of classical sources, contemporaneous politics, symbolism, sexuality...
East London love story
Thesis - 112 pages - Literature
They were both children of poverty, born into the dark slums of East London. Yet their worlds could hardly have been more different. Eric De Milo blessed with a loving Italian family and an artistic gift that gave him a chance for a better life. On the other hand, Helena Whitman who knew little...
Hellenistic poetry
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Hellenistic poetry arose after the late Alexander period and heavily influenced other styles of writing to come. One contemporary writer of time was Theocritus. Theocritus was a Greek poet from Syracuse poetry in the early third century B.C. . He was considered by some to be a “remaker of...
Pastoral images in poetic practice - published: 29/07/2009
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Pastoral “is a double longing after innocence and happiness,” its “universal idea is the Golden Age…it is based on the antithesis of Art and Nature; and its fundamental motive is hostility to urban life. ” As educational awakening started to filter into the consciousness...
Courtesan poetry of the Late Ming and early Qing dynasties
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
The strength, talent and individuality of the courtesan poets of the late Ming and early Qing period served to help develop courtesan poetry into a unique and important genre of poetry. Courtesan poets were pioneers that forged a new path in both the social realm and the literary realm,...
Old stories of love and tragedy - published: 22/07/2009
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet largely pulls from a traditional tale, written and copied for decades before Shakespeare took his pen with an effort to adapt. Shakespeare's version, unquestionably the most famous, tells the story of love but, more, it tells of the tragedies to which that love...
Gremio and Echoes, Gremio and Echoes
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
What determines a character's worth? Are heroes more important than villains? Importance seems to vary subjectively, as does one's curiosity. In The Taming of the Shrew one may become identified with, intrigued by, or appalled by a number of characters, and as in much of Shakespeare's work, most...
Sugar and vice and everything nice: Examining the dual qualities of - The Fable of the Bees
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In what way should we approach this startling claim? Is Bernard Mandeville simply a cynical philosopher degrading humanity and encouraging depravity? If private vices do in fact lead to public benefits what effects will this have on religion, economy, and morality? These questions, among many...
The languages of modernity in "Paper Pills" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Jean Francois Lyotard describes modernity as an era of irrevocable progress forward, a subtle movement onwards that is characterized by the centralization of authority and imposition of a teleological mentality, whereby every development is considered valuable from an evolutionary perspective....
Racism and Canada's marginalized members: A literature comparison
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Canadians are proud of the fact that they live in a tolerant and multicultural society, but this pride is often ignorant to the fact that racism has played a large part in this country's history, and in many cases it has been systematic and caused much hardship and suffering. Systematic racism...
Representations of social class in popular literature
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Many of the texts studied in literature portray Canada as a country that is divided by social class. Three of these novels in particular are Who Do You Think You Are?, The Wars and In the Skin of a Lion. The first of these novels is a set of small stories that chronicles the main character's...
Dejection and the eighth deadly sin: A Christian-critical engagement with Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"
Thesis - 7 pages - Literature
For the ordinary reader encountering Coleridge's “Dejection: An Ode,” the poet's dejection may seem irrelevant. The most explicit reason proffered for his dejection is that visitations of affliction have suspended “what nature gave me at my birth,/ The shaping spirit of...
Framing Jane Eyre: The mystery of St. John's letter
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
In the final pages of Jane Eyre, one encounters a mystery more impenetrable than the madness of Jane Poole. As many have noted, Charlotte Bronte has given us a novel of character, rejecting plot as the driving force in her story. One reads Jane Eyre to watch the slow unfolding of the person she...
Faery lands forlorn: A window onto one region of the imagination of John Keats
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Dooyeerdians tend to admit that indefinability characterizes an irreducible mode of being. At first, of course, this admission appears ludicrous. The modalities exist as a language for describing how the logical part of one encounters non-logical (not illogical) reality. But if they are pressed...
Transformations of literature: augustine's 'confessions' and virgil's 'aeneid' - published: 07/07/2009
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Both St. Augustine's Confessions and Virgil's epic The Aeneid marked a new direction in literature for the West. Each one was inspired by the works of previous authors, but was willing to forge a new literature for their times. In the Aeneid, Virgil established Rome as indebted to the Greek...
Success and its pressures as depicted in The Great Gatsby and Things Fall Apart
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Analysis of today's society reveals a deep-rooted desire for success. Indeed, it is human nature to strive to achieve, and it is encouraged to the point where ambition and competition become a way of living. For some, this translates into a life of blind devotion to a cause that is increasingly...
John Marshall and Mercy Otis Warren
Thesis - 12 pages - Literature
Though John Marshall and Mercy Otis Warren shared little ideological ground when it came to politics, they did come together in their respective revolutionary histories to condemn the treason of Benedict Arnold. During the war, the treason stirred up a good deal of emotionalism; the United...
Allegorical styles of writing
Thesis - 18 pages - Literature
Imagine you are standing at the edge of a rift. On this side of the rift lie life, reality, and the simplicity of the literary tale. On the other side of the rift is a world of mystery and ideals where morals and greater meanings are waiting to be discovered. Strung across the rift are a series...
Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger's importance in the Harry Potter series
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Many different events and characters contributed to the success which Harry achieved during the entire seven-book series in his goal of defeating Lord Voldemort, and saving the wizarding world from the despair it was experiencing. The one thing which helped him the most throughout the series were...
Saul Williams
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Sometimes it is by sheer coincidence that things are discovered. This chance is sometimes called serendipity, fate, luck, providence and many other words. Christopher Columbus was looking for a new way to get to India in 1492, and he accidentally wound up landing in The Americas. It was another...
Francesco Petrarca
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Francesco Petrarca, more commonly known as Petrarch, was an Italian man who wrote poetry in the 14th century. He was born in Arezzo, a town in central Italy, but did not spend much time there. During his childhood, his family followed the pope in a literal fashion, moving from Arezzo to Avignon...
