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10 Jul 2009
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Confessions of self-displacement in Great Expectations

Book review - 2 pages - Literature

One sometimes suspects, while reading Great Expectations, that Dickens could have been good friends with Bishop Tutu. One of the particular satisfactions of the novel is the often tender justice meeted out for character's sins. Very few characters who actually appear for any length of time remain...

07 Jul 2009
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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...

07 Jul 2009
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The empowered woman in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Book review - 7 pages - Literature

Speaking of his king's command to “stay [his wife's] tongue,” (The Winter's Tale, 2.3.110) Antigonus very succinctly states the theme of female empowerment in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Throughout the play, Shakespeare employs various strategies to communicate this idea. One...

07 Jul 2009
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A review of T.H. White's book The Once and Future King

Book review - 5 pages - Literature

An epic historical fantasy with a point that transcends the genre, T.H. White's classic four-part novel is a time telescope with a mirror at the end in place of a lens. As with most classical literature, White's tale contains a higher intention hidden beneath the folds of his satirical prose,...

07 Jul 2009
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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...

07 Jul 2009
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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...

07 Jul 2009
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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...

07 Jul 2009
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A review of The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

Book review - 3 pages - Literature

In “The Closing of the American Mind”, Allan Bloom argued about what he believes is the failure of contemporary American universities and colleges. The very first thing he mentioned in his book was that “almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes,...

03 Jul 2009
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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...

01 Jul 2009
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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...

01 Jul 2009
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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...

16 Jun 2009
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Mimetic rivalry in 'Envy' and 'Safe conduct'

Thesis - 8 pages - Literature

Mimetic desire is the desire of an object, not because of a rational choice to fulfill one's own needs, but instead because that object fulfills the needs of a rival subject. It is meta-desire, desire of someone else's desire. Mimetic desire develops out of an attempt to imitate the rival...

15 Jun 2009
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J.M.W. Turner: Incendiary change

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

The late eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed vast transformations in Europe, as the notions of a voice for every citizen and the power of the common people became powerful stimuli for change. Although the move away from unchecked monarchical power was...

15 Jun 2009
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Evil: Destroying from within

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

American literature in the nineteenth century was a journey in exploration of previously hidden aspects of the human psyche and this involved surpassing the boundaries of regular fiction to mystery and fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were pioneers in the subgenre of dark...

09 Jun 2009
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Dialectical inquiry and the divided line

Thesis - 4 pages - Literature

In Republic, Plato (using Socrates as a literary mouthpiece) examines the nature of justice and describes the ideal city as being ruled by philosopher-kings. In Books VI and VII, the philosophers engage in a discussion of the qualities of true philosophers and the process through which these...

09 Jun 2009
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Sufficient to have stood: Temptation in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Perelandra

Thesis - 7 pages - Literature

Original sin has a curious, irresolute connection to human freedom. God?s fundamental gifts to His children?reason, imagination, free will?are the very things that give men the desire to sin as well as the ability to resist. This combination makes the Fall of Man a paradoxical event, one that...

09 Jun 2009
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Pay a ticket, value life: Theories of drama in our town

Thesis - 4 pages - Literature

Thorton Wilder's Our Town remains a classic work of existential ideas and American theater because of its universality. While the play does take place specifically in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, this specific small-town life is a metaphor not even for our own towns; rather, Thorton Wilder's...

08 Jun 2009
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A review of Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher

Book review - 11 pages - Literature

Tom Perrotta, the reigning bard of American suburbia, can inspire compassion for the most unlikely of subjects. In Election, he humanizes heartless, bitchy Tracy; in Little Children, he measures out kindnesses to Larry the violent racist as well as Ronald the convicted sex offender. But in his...

04 Jun 2009
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Fitzgerald and Borges: The desire for the absolute

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

F. Scott Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby and Jorge Luis Borges?s ?El Aleph? can be said to share a structural framework or paradigm which takes the form of a paradox. This paradox concerns the fact that desire is at once finite, because it becomes substantialized in an object, and infinite, because...

31 May 2009
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Phallocracy in Alan Moore's "From Hell"

Book review - 8 pages - Literature

Alan Moore offers a diagnosis of reality that portrays misogyny, homophobia, racism, classism, and governmental tyranny as demonic forces. Moore uses the graphic narrative medium as a means to communicate the demonic nature of these systems of power. In Moore's work on Swamp Thing, he created...

28 May 2009
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Imagination and Self-Transformation in Puig's El beso del la mujer araña

Thesis - 6 pages - Literature

One of the first things to strike a reader of Mañuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña is its narrative, or rather, textual structure. The novel is composed of numerous different discourses, including film narrations, footnotes, surveillance evidence, dialogue, subjective thoughts, etc. Most of...

28 May 2009
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Victorian Gothic literature

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass...

22 May 2009
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Mary Magdalene in alternative Christian texts

Thesis - 9 pages - Literature

The most common portrayal of Mary Magdalene has been as a prostitute, though even the Roman Catholic Church, which invented that story, has conceded that it is not true. The second most common portrayal of her has been as the woman who was present at the crucifixion and went to the tomb....

22 May 2009
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The making of a saint: the early life of Mother Teresa

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

Of all the modern people canonized as saints by the Roman Catholic Church, Mother Teresa was the most famous. She was widely admired for her dedication and her charity and almost as widely criticized for her doctrinaire approach to religion. This paper will examine her life before she began...

18 May 2009
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More than they bargained for

Thesis - 5 pages - Literature

The process of maturation from childhood to adulthood, or “coming-of-age,” is a unique experience that often shapes the way that an adult will conduct his or her life in the future. In literature, a Bildungsroman outlines the transformational experiences of a young person as they...

18 May 2009
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Ethnographies in context and as fictional representations

Case study - 9 pages - Literature

Empirical observation and objective analysis are some of the core tenets of sound scientific inquiry. These processes lead to the recording of data and presentation of findings which confirm or disprove hypotheses, thus renewing the drive for further studies. Particularly in the social sciences,...

17 May 2009
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The drama of discrimination in Henry James' The Ambassadors

Book review - 4 pages - Literature

The Ambassadors is clearly a novel: the novel is free, and has the most elastic form. We could be tempted to say that there is no drama in the work. In fact, drama has different meanings. First, it is the name of theatrical plays of a particular kind or period. Secondly, it can mean a situation...

17 May 2009
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Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Book review - 5 pages - Literature

The theme that interests us is the quest for identity in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim. The book was written in 1901 and the plot takes place in India during the time of the British colonization. Kim presents several quests: a quest implies that the protagonist has to seek something noble, like the...

17 May 2009
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Philip Roth, Portnoy's complaint

Book review - 3 pages - Literature

The text under scrutiny presents us an extract of the confession of a man to his psychiatrist: he talks to him more precisely about his childhood, and the way his mother used to act with him during that period. What is interesting about this text is the manner the narrator presents his memory:...

17 May 2009
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How Shakespeare dramatized the changes in Lady Macbeth

Book review - 3 pages - Literature

“Ambition is the step that can turn a noble-hearted man into a sinner” is the message Shakespeare wanted to convey to the audience when he wrote the play Macbeth in 1606. Lady Macbeth's is the wife of an important nobleman: Macbeth, they are both characterized by their great ambition of...