Paul Laurence Dunbar attended grade schools and Central High School in Dayton, Ohio. He was editor of the High School Times and president of Philomathean Literary Society in his senior year. Despite Dunbar’s growing reputation in the then small town of Dayton, writing jobs were closed to black applicants and the money to further his…
Emily Dickinson is regarded as “one of the greatest American poets that have ever existed.”(Benfey 5) The unique qualities of her brief, but emotional, poems were so uncommon that they made her peerless in a sense that her writing could not be compared to. Her diverse poetic character could be directly connected to her tragic…
Gerard Manley Hopkins, born on July 28 1844, was the eldest of eight children of a London marine insurance adjuster. Besides writing books about marine insurance Gerard’s father, Manley, also wrote a volume of poetry. His mother on the other hand was a very pious person. She was actively involved in the church and impressed…
James Joyce, an Irish novelist and poet, grew up near Dublin. James Joyce is one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. In each of his prose works he used symbols to experience what he called an “epiphany”, the revelation of certain revealing qualities about himself. His early writings reveal individual moods and…
In the beginning Jack Kerouac lived a wild and exciting life outside the realm of everyday “normal” American life. Though On the Road and The Dharma Bums were Kerouac’s only commercial successes, he was a man who changed American literature and pop-culture. Kerouac virtually created a life-style devoted to life, art, literature, music, and poetry.…
Oscar Wilde (real name Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde) was born on October 16th, 1854 in Dublin. His father, William Robert Wilde, was an eminent eye doctor, with an interest in myths and folklore. He was the founder of the first eye and ear hospital in Great Britain, as well as the appointed Surgeon Occultist…
Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly took his place in the history of American Literature. He lived in a time when romanticism was becoming a way of thinking and beginning to bloom in America, the time period known as The Romantic Age. Romantic thinking stressed on human imagination and emotion rather than on basic facts and reason. …
Robert Burns was born January 25, 1759, in a straw-thatched cottage, to William and Agnes Burns. His mother had a great store of folklore songs and ballads, and his father tried at all costs to surround his children with good reading and conversation. At the age of seven, his father moved the family to Mt.Otiphant…
Edward James Hughes is one of the most outstanding living British poets. In 1984 he was awarded the title of the nation’s Poet Laureate. He came into prominence in the late fifties and early sixties, having earned a reputation of a prolific, original and skilful poet, which he maintained to the present day. Ted Hughes…
Only in a time when the pressure of the world amounts to angst and the fight for freedom can a world advance in it’s literary achievements. A writer, just like an artist, builds his creations from the mood and settings of the surrounding atmosphere. In the first half of the twentieth century, the atmosphere was…
Sylvia Plath’s life, like her manic depression, constantly jumped between Heaven and Hell. Her seemingly perfect exterior hid a turbulent and deeply troubled spirit. A closer look at her childhood and personal experiences removes some element of mystery from her writings. One central character to Sylvia Plath’s poems is her father, Professor Otto Emile Plath.…
Maxine Kumin, who experienced many different views of the world through travel, feels the most comfortable in New Hampshire, her rural home. In any area that she travels, she always makes a similarity to her home, as expressed in her poems. In her poem, “The Long Approach”, she is driving in her Saab hatchback from…
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.…
The story of Virgil’s Aeneid was drawn from many sources, the most influential being the work of the Greek poet Homer. Virgil based the first six books of the Aeneid on the Odessey and the last six books on the Iliad both written by Homer. The Aeneid describes the adventures of Aeneas, the legendary Trojan…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to those who know and understand his poems well, exists in three modes, as Philosopher, Poet, Friend. If the truth were told, we should all be obliged to admit that the Philosopher escapes us. It is the opinion of many that Coleridge as Poet is almost equally an evanescent shadow; and though…
Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, which is now a part of London. He had no real formal education so he was largely self educated. His father was a smart man with an extensive library. His mother was kindly, religious minded woman, who loved music and her brilliant son. He lived…
POETRY A type of literature that expresses ideas, feelings, or tells a story in a specific form (usually using lines and stanzas) POET The poet is the author of the poem. SPEAKER The speaker of the poem is the “narrator” of the poem. POETRY FORM FORM – the appearance of the words on the page…