Rationale behind silence and Queen Eufeme's Chaste Kissing
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
What a scandalous scene in Silence when Queen Eufeme and the protagonist, whom the story is named after, come close, very close to sleeping together. It is such an emotionally charged scene: a predator chasing its unwilling prey. Will Silence succumb to the Queen's advances to keep up...
Doing gender: Reasserting masculinity
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Gender is a socially constructed status. Based on how others perceive us we are labeled as men or women, the only two genders recognized in Western society. Walking to class I notice everyone is ‘doing gender,' or they display evidences of masculinity or femininity. I see a heterosexual...
Tess of d'Urbervilles: The dark shadow of death
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of d'Urbervilles tells the story of a young girl named Tess Durbeyfield who is seduced by, Alec d'Ubervilles, her distant relative. The loss of her virginity, and the birth of a child, haunts her and makes it impossible for her to succeed in marriage with the man she...
The rhetorical application of pity in 'We Shall Overcome'
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Painting an image of the role emotion plays in human cognition, American thinker William James once said, “emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.” The correlation of emotion and action is applicable to rhetorical...
The significance of Isaiah 45:1-13 for Yahweh and the exiled
Thesis - 7 pages - Philosophy
Isaiah 45:1-13 is, in many ways, a microcosm of Second Isaiah as a whole. Anchored firmly in historical context, this passage portrays people still confined to exile, yet also looking forward to the possibility of future release and redemption. In tone, it is strikingly different from the...
Capitalism and Christianity: Weber's capitalist spirit and potential Christian influences
Essay - 9 pages - Philosophy
The questions of what is capitalism and how did it arise have been of central concern to Western economists and sociologists since the 1840s. At that time, commentators began to recognize that a fundamentally new economic and social order - with the expansion of machines in manufacturing and...
Postmodern American literature: Transformation and commodification within The Crying of Lot 49
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
A prominent theme among the writings of many postmodern analysts in characterizing postmodernism is the notion that the age of post-modernity is essentially the age of commercialism and commoditization. In his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean- François Lyotard contends...
Fallacies in Descartes' Dream Argument
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Descartes begins his Meditations with a discussion of doubt, believing it to be the tool by which knowledge can be verified. Betrayed by “the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood (Descartes, 12),” the philosopher seeks a decisive mode of...
Freedom and the self
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish, “The Body of the Condemned” is a section dedicated to the concept of power and its relationship to modern punishment, which focuses primarily on the soul of the criminal, a sharp contrast to the punishments aimed to inflict pain on the...
Heroism in Beowulf and Macbeth
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Grendel first appeared in Herot, the mead hall of the king of the Danes, Hrothgar. Disturbed by the feasting and celebration taking place in the evenings by Danish warriors and heroes, who often met in the hall to tell exaggerated tales of glory and drink mead, Grendel stole in during the night...
Literary analysis of "The Dead"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
James Joyce was born on February 2nd, 1882, in Dublin. His lifelong obsession with his own Irish culture, and the local city of Dublin, inspired many of his works. In particular, Dubliners, a collection of short stories taking place in Dublin, published in 1914, testifies to this obsession....
Domination and submission in Jane Eyre: An essay on power play
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In a manner of speaking, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre reinvents the concept of romance. One hardly expects a sordid tale of domination and submission from a sickly country girl, yet Bronte dabbled experimentally with the idea of feminism and power play in her hugely successful first novel. Jane...
In the hands of Yankees: Fitzgerald's "The Ice Palace" as a Northern American captivity narrative
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The effective removal of the American Indian from North America failed to kill off the American tradition of captivity narratives established by the primarily female Anglo-American authors of Indian captivity narratives. In these memoirs of life among the “other,” Anglo-American women...
The Church's Grasp: Captivity in Joyce's Dubliners - published: 12/04/2010
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
It is easy to recognize when one is held captive by the unfamiliar, but the crippling effect of familiar forces is not so easily realized. Throughout American captivity narratives, typically female Anglo-Americans are ensnared by Native Americans, the “other” of early Anglo-American...
Descartes' dream argument and its followed knowledge
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
Meditations on first philosophy, a text written by René Descartes, is one of Descartes most recognized works. The book is divided in to 6 meditations in which Descartes helps the meditator cast a series of progressively radical doubts on preconceived notions, and metaphysical beliefs. The...
Defining virtues in Plato's Euthyphro
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
In this essay I examine the motivations behind Socrates' pursuit of a precise definition of a virtue. The particular virtue that interests me is piety, examined by Socrates and his interlocutor, Euthyphro, in Plato's Euthyphro. Like many of Plato's early dialogues, Euthyphro features the standard...
The parodic treatment of religion in contemporary culture is just another manifestation of the consumerism of late capitalism
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
During the twentieth century, in the unstable years following the world wars, capitalism proved itself to be a successful and enduring system. This success seems to have come mainly from its, ' ...extraordinary versatility and flexability...' [1]. Despite many threats, such as the rising...
Renaissance Literature is indebted more to emblematic and allegorical modes, than to modern forms of realism
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
The aftermath of reformation, mid 16th.Century, left the art and literary world in upheaval. The former art of Catholicism which had been figurative and vivid, depicting the saints in all their glory, was redundant and even despised. Many reformers believed that to idolize the saints and to...
The prose style of an author
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
What is so compelling about Faulkner's work is his gloriously bold approach toward form and content. He embraces the dark side of humanity, through the characters of Jason, Caddy and Quentin, refusing to deny or disguise its existence and in doing so redefines despair, it is no longer, '...
Representations of history and regeneration by Pat Barker
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Barker has chosen to tell the tale from the viewpoint of the patients and staff of a war hospital, which treats mainly psychiatric injuries caused by battle. Straight away we are dealing with issues of masculinity. These patients have been discharged, not for receiving injuries in the line of...
What role did women play within Anglo Saxon culture?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout history, the position of women in society has fluxed dramatically. It seems quite clear from looking at historical evidence that most of this movement has been a decline, rather than an improvement in the social attitudes towards women. In Anglo- Saxons times, women were valued members...
How is the notion of woman represented by 18th century writing?
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout the 18th century, we see gender as a site of much anxiety. At this time, women were emerging as key contributors to both political and popular writing, through works such as Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn, and A Vindication of the Rights of Man, by Mary Wollenstonecraft Godwin. This feminine...
Willy Loman and the death of an American dreamer
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a portrait of a man who wrestles with his own delusions of success and happiness within the business world. One of the main themes of the story is how the main character has attached his success and failures in other areas of life to his self-image as a...
The things they carried: Time O'Brien
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
This book is, debatably, a memoir of the Vietnam War. By debatably, I mean to say that it is written in the form of a memoir, although the author denies that many of these events actually took place. This book includes the stories of Tim O'Brien and the soldiers that he knew in Vietnam during the...
The House on Mango Street
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I chose this book because my aunt recommended me reading it. Although I don't usually read books like this, because it was a book about coming of age, I thought it would be interesting to read. This book was somewhat like The Catcher in the Rye, but instead of taking place in New York, it...
Daisy Miller: Henry James
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
This book takes place in 1878 and centers around the idea of an extended trip throughout Europe, which was very popular among wealthy Americans at this time. This novel addresses the behavior of the young American girls who visit Europe and due to their new distance from home, become very...
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I chose to read the Picture of Dorian Gray because I was already semi familiar with the story and numerous friends recommended it to me. This famous novel takes place in nineteenth century England and revolves around the high society of that time and place. There is a supernatural aspect to this...
The Secret Life of Bees: Sue Kidd
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
I selected this book because I know a lot of people who have read it before. I was expecting this book to be about animals, well more like bees. It turns out to be more about the story of a young white girl living in a time without black rights. This book is fiction; it takes place in a time...
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Charles Dickens highlights that facts aren't everything. You can't always rely on them, because they can burn out being untrue and serving you wrong. When Louisa was talking to her father, Mr. Gradgrind about how facts ruined her life and how she didn't know how to rebate and handle her feelings,...
Brave New World: Aldous Huxley
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Brave New World is a classic novel written by Aldous Huxley. Set in the future, this book portrays a society where each person's life is visibly controlled by the views that they have been taught since they were decanted out of their bottles. This book is set in England, and explains the process...
