Book Report: Romantics, Rebels & Reactionaries by Marilyn Butler
Book review - 7 pages - Literature
Offering a precise and coherent definition of artistic movements has always been a tempting prospect for whoever seeks to make sense out of our historical and cultural background. One has to confess, that it is equally tempting to approach the Romantic period in an attempt to set fixed...
The Magazine Press in Britain
Tutorials/exercises - 4 pages - Literature
The British are often imagined as newspaper addicts impatiently waiting for the postman to deliver their paper on Sunday morning. Yet, it would be wrong to believe that they do not share a similar interest for the booming world of the magazine press. As we will see, the magazines sector in...
Book Report : "Reflections on the Revolution in France" By Edmund Burke
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
When the writer and politician Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, Britain was particularly focused on what had just happened on the other side of the Channel. At a time when radical societies were emerging in Britain and dissenters were about to claim new...
Unger's Views on Skepticism and Certainty
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Peter Unger applies a unique approach to skepticism. In his essay, “An Argument for Skepticism”, he endorses the concept by insisting that if one is not a skeptic, he/she must be (more or less) dogmatic. The way in which he supports this is by attempting to prove that...
Jane Eyre's Preservation of Self
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is a novel that focuses heavily on the protagonist's sense of self-respect and her insistence on remaining true to her principles and standards despite all odds. One of the most fundamental aspects of Jane's character is her refusal to sacrifice her own...
The Presence of Walt Whitman in "A Supermarket in California"
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Allen Ginsberg's poem “A Supermarket in California” is a vivid depiction of the contrast between a lighted, populated American supermarket and the dark, solitary streets outside; a contrast between the youthful American generation and the aged, solitary Walt Whitman who is contained...
Cesario and Homosexuality in The Twelfth Night
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Found within William Shakespeare's play The Twelfth Night are many aspects of irony that contribute to its comical nature. In particular, the character Cesario, whose actor is veiled under two layers of falsity, is interesting not only because of the humor that surrounds him, but because...
Hilary Putnam on Realism and Relativism
Thesis - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Perhaps one of the most widely and longest-held issues that have been debated in the study of philosophy, is that of the dispute over the way in which we as humans can accurately describe the external world with regards to our everyday lives. Philosophers range in opinion from a view in...
Divine Flaws
Thesis - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The question of whether gods are capable of being flawed has long preoccupied theologists and philosophers alike. The mythological deities of the ancient Greek pantheon possessed a myriad of humanistic attributes, including a wide range of notable character flaws; Zeus, of course,...
Homer's epic poem, The Iliad
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Homer's epic poem, The Iliad, creates two very distinct heroic figures: Achilles and Hektor. These men come from different backgrounds and have different reasons for fighting in the Trojan War; Achilles fights for honor, whereas Hektor fights to defend his city, and yet both know that if...
The Road to the Good Life?
Thesis - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Today, when people use the word stoic, they often are not referring to the philosophical tradition, but to a type of person who does not show much outward emotion, someone who is strong in the face of tragedy or pain. However, in a culture in which we are encouraged to express our...
The Two Theban Tragedies: Antigone and Oedipus the King
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Greek tragedies all possess a common trait: the protagonist displays a tragic flaw, which ultimately leads to his or her downfall. In the two Theban tragedies, Antigone and Oedipus the King, Creon's tragic flaw is immoderation, while Oedipus' unwillingness to accept his fate causes his...
A Defense of the Capabilities Approach
Essay - 8 pages - Humanities/philosophy
There is no country in the world where women are treated equally to men. Women are consistently fed less than men, given fewer educational opportunities, and fewer freedoms. Situations in developing countries are often more overtly detrimental to women, for example in India, it is...
Butterfly or Bumblebee?: The Sting of Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Oscar Wilde said that his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, subtitled “A Serious Comedy for Trivial People” was “written by a butterfly for butterflies” (qtd. in Stokes 115). Although this statement may be true, the subject of the play itself, while treated in a...
The Enlightenment of Sir Gawain
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is a model knight in all things material; he excels in his physical prowess as well as the arts of conversation and courtly love. Although he also exhibits outward signs of devotion and piety, his spirituality is called into question through...
King Mongkut: Man, Myth, and Misrepresentation
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Fewer stories of a Western encounter with the “Other” have been more popular than that of the English governess Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut (Rama IV) of Siam, now Thailand. The fascination began with the two books written by Anna herself, The English Governess at the Siamese...
Transcending the Fallacy of the Binary Through Ambivalence
Thesis - 6 pages - Humanities/philosophy
A thought process that appears to be common to all humans is that of setting up binaries. It is a tendency that exists across cultures and since “the beginning of time.” This may be because it is easier to define what something is not than what it actually is. The...
Alatiel and Helen: War Caused by Beauty?
Thesis - 7 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Few storylines are more familiar than that of the woman so beautiful that men cannot resist her and will stop short of nothing, even murder or treachery, to possess her. The most famous of these women is of course, Helen, with “the face that launched a thousand ships,” many of...
The Problematic Third Speech of the Phaedrus and Ficino's Neoplatonic Reinterpretation
Thesis - 7 pages - Humanities/philosophy
There has been much scholarly debate concerning the relative merit of the three speeches in Plato's Phaedrus; the third speech, in particular, is much contested. While the first two speeches are undeniably mired in self-contradiction and materialism, the third speech, though mythical in...
What are the differences between Locke's and Hobbes' notions of the "state of nature"? - published: 11/04/2007
Essay - 6 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are probably the most famous political thinkers of the 17th century. The generally accepted view asserts that these authors stood poles apart, the first one advocating an absolutist regime and the latter recommending a stable civil society where powers are separated....
How (if at all) do you know that you are not a brain in a vat?
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Our whole life (attitudes, reactions, actions) is based on knowledge. Depending on our present state of knowledge, we are going to react to different situations in different ways, give different answers to different questions. To do that however, one has to know something. Even though we do not...
Treatment of time in Virginia Woolf's Work
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
In her novel "Orlando: a Biography" published in 1927, Virginia Woolf evokes 'the extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind' (Orlando p.91) and the opposition she expresses between this two conceptions of time is to be found, more or less obviously, in most...
"Araby", James Joyce
Book review - 8 pages - Literature
This short story was written by James Joyce who lived from 1882 to 1941; it is an extract from Dubliners, published in 1914. The book is compound with several short stories which take place in Dublin, and deal with the monotone life of some citizens. The text is entitled "Araby" and tells the...
Comment from the essay "Culture and anarchy" written by Matthew Arnold published in 1869
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Matthew Arnold, in his philosophical essay Culture and Anarchy, published in 1869, exposes his view of culture in a generally way, that is to say, that this view could and should be applied to any society or any group of men on the earth. He wrote it at a time where Bentham's Utilitarianism was...
Margaret Drabble, "The Millstone": part of the « Angry Young Men » movement?
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Margaret Drabble is a writer who was often assimilated to what is called the ‘Angry Young Men' literary movement. But, as a lot of those writers of the 1950s who were put into the same category, she never claimed being fully part of this movement - all the more so since the term of «...
Swinging London - 1963-1967
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The Sixties are usually seen as a period of joy and optimism, especially in England, where they take place between two tougher periods of British history. The Fifties had indeed been quite difficult in the United Kingdom, socially and economically speaking. And during the Seventies, many problems...
Orwell said in an essay titled Why I write : "It is my purpose to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." How far does Orwell achieve this in 1984 ? - published: 10/10/2006
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Let us remember that, at the end of 1936, Orwell fought for the Republicans (against Franco) in Spain, where he was wounded. We know that Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949) was given this title because the novel was written in 1948, just after the end of the Second World War and the fall...
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Essay - 8 pages - Literature
The Bluest Eye contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up (Lorain), and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old girl, the age Morrison would have been the year the novel takes place (1941). Like the MacTeer family, Morrison's family...
The Nineteenth Century's Middle Ages: Representation of the Middle Ages through nineteenth century novels or arts
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Henry Adams, Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913). In Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams depicts several well-known monuments and old sights of France, all of which were built during the Middle Ages. In this book, published in 1913, Adams comments on those monuments as...
Music, emotion and Zipf's law
Essay - 59 pages - Linguistics
The hypothesis of Zipf concerning a universal Principle of Least Effort, manifesting itself in Zipf 's law and modeled by Ferrer i Cancho and Sol´e in a signal-object reference matrix,...
