Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages, was born in Florence, Italy on June 5, 1265. He was born to a middle-class Florentine family. At an early age he began to write poetry and became fascinated with lyrics. During his adolescence, Dante fell in love with a beautiful girl named Beatrice…
Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s short story, The Portable Phonograph, is a tale about the last survivors in the world after the total destruction of war. The author gives clues and hints of this throughout the beginning by writing in a narrative voice and describing the scene in dark war-like terms. The characters are then introduced…
In the novel, mocks the way we are as humans, particularly in those ways that lead to regressive thinking. The novel pokes fun at the attention to impractical details, such as to the spent copying the Leibowitz blueprints. Miller also mocks humans by describing the inordinate amount of attention and energy given to a spiritual…
Uh-Oh was written by Robert Fulghum, it is 244 pages long and was published by Villard Books. This book is a collection of small stories pertaining to the life of the author, and also his opinions, thoughts, and philosophies. There are no specific characters that are through the book except the author. This is not…
The Day of the Jackal, written by Fredrick Forsyth, is a fictional novel that displays the author’s brilliance by setting a mood and connecting you with the characters. The Day of the Jackal takes place in post-World War II in France. The Jackal is a professional assassin, whose name is not revealed, who is hired…
Fear, it has a way of controlling everything that it comes in contact with. As young children we are introduced to this intimidating desire with intrigue and suspicion. As we age, the thoughts of fears become more like realities, ideas of loneliness and death enter the picture as comprehensible thoughts and views of the future.…
It is not rare, sometimes it is even common, that an author speaks about his or her self in their works. Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is often considered such a story. Many of the characters in the story and images created allude to Melville’s writing career, which was generally deemed a failure. The main…
The novel Wuthering Heights has a very complex storyline and the characters involved are also quite intricate. The story takes place in northern England in an isolated, rural area. The main characters involved are residents of two opposing households: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. It is a tale of a powerful love between two people,…
The novel Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney relates the tale of a young man working for a prominent newspaper in Manhattan by day, while visiting many bars and nightclubs during the night. He manages to accomplish this through the help of his use of cocaine, to which he is powerfully addicted. Throughout the…
The Yellow Wallpaper – A Descent into Madness In the nineteenth century, women in literature were often portrayed as submissive to men. Literature of the period often characterized women as oppressed by society, as well as by the male influences in their lives. The Yellow Wallpaper presents the tragic story of a woman’s descent into…
The statement that “Beauty is truth; truth, beauty” does not hold to be a correct implication for everyone as far as life goes or the poem “London” goes. This poem written by William Blake, is about life as he saw it in that time frame and environment of society. In Blake’s, poem the reality or…
Most criticism and reflection of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown centers on a good versus evil theme. Critics also debate interpretations of the main character’s consciousness; is Brown awake or dreaming. What is certain is that he lives and dies in pain because his belief in his righteousness isolates him from his community. It is…
Wyrd was, in length, a short to medium novel that was written by Sue Gough. Briefly, it was the story of Berengaria, Saladin’s daughter and wife of King Richard. After her husband’s death, she was moved to a French nunnery with her handmaiden and son, the prince (incognito). There she kept an explicit and wise…
In the repressive society of Oceania in 1984, Winston Smith lived a restricted life in which all activities were aimed towards the good of the Party. Political and intellectual freedoms were completely non-existent. With no laws separating right from wrong, the whole population lived in fear, which resulted in easy control by the government. People…
William Shakespeare’s, Macbeth, is a play full of betrayal and deception. It is a story about Macbeth’s desire to achieve greatness and become king. Despite his involvement in actually committing the treasonous acts, he cannot be held solely accountable. From the opening scene, we begin to see the role that women play in Macbeth. The…
Wilfred Owen is considered by many to be perhaps the best war poet in English, if not world, literature. Yet, at the time of his death on November 4, 1918, only five of his poems had been published. Thus, due to his premature death, it is clear that Wilfred Owen was not responsible for the…
Walt Whitman, a famous American poet, was born on May 31, 1819 in the West Hills of Long Island, New York. His mother’s name was Loisia Van Velsor, of Dutch descent., and amazingly could not read very well, if at all. His dad was an English carpenter who probably could not read his son’s poetry.…
Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783 in Tarrytown, New York. His father was a merchant and owned an import business. Irving had literary influences early in his life. He was friends with Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Charles Dickens. Washington Irving had no formal schooling. Instead, he taught himself by reading as…
Pauline saw the beauty of life through the colors of her childhood down South. Her fondest memories were of purple berries, yellow lemonade, and “that streak of green them June bugs made on the trees the night we left down-home. All them colors was in me”1. Pauline and Cholly left the colors of the South…
As in most comedies, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night extensively uses disguises, masks, and mistaken identities to add to the comical nature of the play. Viola’s disguise as Orsino’s page, Cesario, becomes crucial to the action in the play. Without this important element, the action in the play would slow down dramatically, making the story much…