Catch-22 : black comedy or satire ?
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Catch-22, often considered as one of the literary masterpieces of the twentieth century, is also often analyzed as being either satirical, or characteristic of the theater of the absurd, or even both. At first sight, this appears to be totally irrelevant, given the subtle but still significant...
Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies - Overture (Chap. 1) "It was early" - "were lost forever"
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
This text is an extract from the novel The Brooklyn Follies, written by Paul Auster and published in 2005. Earlier in the novel, we discovered the main character, Nathan Glass, a 60 year old man in remission from cancer. He was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn to...
Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies Farewell to the court (Chap. 3)
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
What we are about to study is an extract from the novel The Brooklyn Follies, written by Paul Auster and published in 2005. Here, we are at the beginning of the novel, where Nathan and Tom are having lunch and talking about Tom's activities. We may wonder in what ways the passage is...
Review of the Rabbits who caused all the trouble by James Thurber in Fables of your times
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
The text we are going to study is entitled “The Rabbits who caused all the trouble”. It is an extract from “Fables of your times” written by James Thurber in 1940. The main characters of this text are the rabbits and the wolves. However, there are other animals involved in the...
First scene of Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This extract is the first scene of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child, a book published in 1988 which deals with Ben a monster-like child whose birth deeply alters his parent's life. This first scene introduces us to the main characters i.e. David and Harriet and sets the general tone of the...
Wife-Wooing, by John Updike
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
In his short story, 'Wife-Wooing', John Updike portrays the life of what seems to be an ordinary family through which he discusses matters related to matrimony. This story centers around two people who seem to have forgotten the meaning of their marriage. Through this essay, I will...
Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress": a Baroque reworking of conventions
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was an English Metaphysical poet. Marvell wrote several satirical poems against the corruption of the court, but they were published after his death (for being too subversive). ?To His Coy Mistress', though not about politics, is also a subversive poem. It is an...
Analysis of the sonnet 'to sleep' by J. Keats
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
One may get the impression that this poem is about pain and agony and troubles encountered throughout life, yet at the same time one expects a sonnet to possess the qualities of romance, adoration, and themes of love. Although this poem may appear to only deal with dark images about the...
Commentary Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is known as one of the author's most powerful novels. Even though the story is completely imaginary, the plot takes place in a very precise historical and geographical context: 1930s California. Moreover, one of the main themes of the novel is humanity and...
De Lacey Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
In a disconcertingly candid manner, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers its readers a sensible critique on the callous superficiality of human social interaction. Shelley imaginatively introduces a repugnant, yet kindhearted monster into the world of man, who is only to be received, and...
The theme of the declining Big House in Bowen's The Last September
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
'The Last September', Elizabeth Bowen's second novel, describes the Anglo-Irish life of the provincial aristocracy during the turbulent times of 1920, and deals directly with the crisis of being Anglo-Irish. In this particular context, Bowen makes a combination between social comedy and...
"Answers to a questionnaire" by James Graham Ballard
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Answers to a Questionnaire' is a short story which was written by James Graham Ballard, and published for the first time in the English literary magazine 'Ambit', in 1985. Ballard's style of writing is highly important to understand his works, he is a member of the 'New...
"The Wanderer" by W. H. Auden
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
What could a layman think about such a poem? When one tries to understand a poem, it is in fact a whole work that must be understood; a whole thought that has to be reached. Whether we are studying a poem by W. H. Auden, E. Bishop, W. B. Yeats, or A. Sexton, it is impossible to understand it...
Post-structuralism and deconstruction
Essay - 8 pages - Literature
Literary theory has penetrated all spheres of modern day life. It has shifted from being a prerogative of Academia to being a part of a popular culture. Yet, how can the term "literary theory" be defined lucidly? According to McLaughlin, literary theory is the "debate over nature and function of...
Commentary ' the chimney sweeper ' by William Blake
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
This poem, written in 1789 by William Blake, was published in “Songs of Inno-cence”. Like its fellow poems, it deals with childhood as an epitome for innocence and purity; here, the poet chooses to look into the life of the poor young boys who used to sweep chimneys in London in those...
The grapes of wrath: analysis of chapter 6
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
This excerpt, taken from Chapter 6 of ?The Grapes of Wrath', deals with Muley Graves's account of the depletion of man, when he is separated from his land. It is the third of many narrative chapters, which move away from the social, economic and historical situations that shape the...
Analysis of Ode on Melancholy by John Keats
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Ode on Melancholy is an example of a Pindaric ode, i.e., it is composed in iambic pentameter (we have some occasional spondees too), while the rhyme scheme is a b a b c d e c d e for the first two stanzas and a b a b c d e d c e for the third and last one. We have three stanzas, the first one...
Literary devices and style in pride and prejudice
Book review - 15 pages - Literature
Sound effects connect the 2 words in the title ?Pride and Prejudice? right from the start of the novelv(also used in Sense and Sensibility). This connection between Pride and Prejudice helps define the 2 main characters of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, and participates in the development of the...
Storytelling in Beckett's collected shorter plays
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
"The exposition of the story and its communication by suitable means of estrangement, constitute the main business of the theatre; everything hangs on the story; it is the heart of the theatrical performance" (Bertolt Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre). Thus it is observed that, in...
What is an American?, from Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, Letter III
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
A Frenchman by birth, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735?-1813) soon transformed himself into Hector St. John as part of his quest to become an epitome of the American farmer. Leaving his mother land around 1754 as a pioneer to French Canada, he finally settled in America in the...
Twelfth night, William Shakespeare, Acte II, scene V
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Written in 1599 and first performed in 1602, "Twelfth Night?, like other Shakespearean comedies, presents us with a blend of realism and a fanciful atmosphere. The main plot deals with the love triangle between the countess Olivia, her suitor the Duke Orsino, and Viola, a shipwrecked young woman...
Critical Commentary on Paul Verlaine's Une Grande Dame
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Paul Verlaine was born in 1844 and died in Paris in 1896. His work ?Une Grande Dame' is, therefore, an orthodox Petrarchan sonnet, as was typical of the poetry composed from the sixteenth century onward. In this document, I shall be studying form, imagery and vocabulary in particular, but...
The shining
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
By choosing to produce ?The Shining' Stephen King's masterpiece, in 1980, Stanley Kubrick tackled one of the most bounded and codified cinematographic genres: the fantastic mode. Kubrick produced the film just after the relative failure of Barry Lyndon, and this time, it was a huge...
Repetition, Re(-)presentation and Interpretation in Beckett's Shorter Plays
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
When one reads Beckett's works for the first time, one cannot but be stricken by the overabundant repetitions the text is replete with. There seems to be a real compulsion of repetition in various forms- in Beckett' plays. This is most evident in his shorter works. During this seminar, we...
Darwin and darwinian infuence on Thomas Hardy (Jude The Obscure) and Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and through the looking-glass)
Dissertation - 58 pages - Literature
Charles Darwin's theories upon “Evolution” had a great impact on the scientific world in the nineteenth century, and contributed to change with respect to mentalities in a well-established Victorian society. He is mostly remembered for his conception of Evolutionism based on his theory...
Coriolanus (act two, scene one)
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
Shakespeare's play Coriolanus is a political tragedy, which exposes the events that took place in Rome in the early days of the Republic. This play is set up around 490 BC, at a time when the city was divided by a conflict between the Patricians and the Plebeians because of shortage of grain....
Commentary upon Mary Shelley's statement: "What terrified me will terrify others"
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Creature in itself is not what is the most terrifying. Indeed, in her dream and in the novel afterwards, if Doctor Frankenstein is afraid at the sight of his creature, it is also its coming to life which creates fear: how can an amount of bones, skin,...
Women in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
In The Canterbury Tales, women appear either as storytellers or as part of the tales themselves. We must therefore make a clear distinction between the women of the pilgrimage and the characters mentioned in the tales. The former are supposed to belong to the real life, if we agree to play the...
A Scanner Darkly, by Philippe K. Dick
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
The novel, deals with drugs and its consequences, its process of marginalization of distorted social relationships, the subjective deterioration of reality, hallucinations and the paranoia that they generate, Richard Linklater will bring out an adaptation of the letter and the spirit. Adapted...
The fantastic atmosphere in The Moon Bog by HP Lovecraft
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
In his short story entitled ?The Moon Bog', Lovecraft adheres to his methods to create a genuine fantastic atmosphere. Both his style and his narration contribute to the setting of a cosmic ambiance in a very effective way. From the point of view of the narrative, the themes in this short...
