Othello
Aristotle's Poetics is the most informative piece of work on the nature of art. It is in the Poetics that Aristotle defines the fundamental nature of tragedy. For Aristotle, what defines tragedy (and all art, in general) is in the way that i Continue Reading...
Short story -- A brief story where the plot drives the narrative, substantially shorter than a novel. Example: "Hills like White Elephants," by Ernest Hemingway.
Allusion -- A casual reference in one literary work to a person, place, event, or ano Continue Reading...
The first comes with the name of the main character, Oedipa, a play on the famous Oedipus. Part of Oedipus's destiny is related to his capacity to solve several mysteries, which is also what Oedipa has to do. Some of the names the author uses are si Continue Reading...
Willy Loman's Failures as a Husband, Employee, and Father in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman (1949), depicts the slow disintegration of an ordinary man, a traveling salesman named Willy Loman. Willy is p Continue Reading...
Miller and Eliot on Beauty
Comparing and Contrasting "Beauty" in Miller and Eliot
Arthur Miller and T.S. Eliot are two 20th century American playwrights. While the latter is more commonly noted for expatriating to Britain and writing some of the mo Continue Reading...
Popular entertainment is overly influenced by commercial interest. Superficiality, obscenity, and violence characterize films and television today because those qualities are commercially successful. Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree Continue Reading...
Scotland PA: Shakespeare ReimaginedBilly Morrissettes 2001 Scotland PA is a dark comedy adaptation of Shakespeares Tragedy of Macbeth. The film is set in small town USA in the 1970s; instead of a castle, the main stage is a diner; instead of a warrio Continue Reading...
Grotesque
If one goes back to Plato and examines what the Greek philosopher had to say about beauty and truth, one discovers the foundation of the transcendental spirit in the West. The Greek philosophers -- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle -- more or le Continue Reading...
Father Abandonment Issues Continued
Teen Pregnancy
Father abandonment affects females in one area where it simply cannot affect males. When dealing with reproduction, daughters who have absent fathers tend to repeat this cycle of family practice an Continue Reading...
Cleopatra's death tragic or triumphant? Explain in reference to text
Is Cleopatra's death tragic or triumphant?
As a character, Shakespeare's Cleopatra is both sublimely sensual and sublimely ridiculous. She is described early on as beautiful and Continue Reading...
Of course, the studious scholar might point out that nearly every document produced since the time of Shakespeare must have been influenced by the writer because of the sheer number of vocabulary words he created, but the focus of this essay is lite Continue Reading...
Italo Cavino
Historians differ on the origin of tarot cards. Most believe that Egypt was the first to use similar images and symbols. Tarot is also represented from the early Greek, Roman, Norse and Indian cultures to the Italian and French medieval Continue Reading...
Crow & Hawk: the Bird Spirit Poetry of Ted Hughes
Poets and prophets from Aesop to Isaiah to Blake have traditionally used animal figures to convey a criticism of existing culture, endowing the natural with metaphoric import. In most preliterate Continue Reading...
Death of a Salesman: Tragedy in Prose
Tragedy, can easily lure us into talking nonsense."
Eric Bentley
In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we are introduced to Willy Loman, who believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the Am Continue Reading...
Drama
Arthur Miller's Death of a salesman and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House appear to contain no common themes on first reading. But upon close analysis of the two plays, readers are likely to discover that there is indeed the one major theme that i Continue Reading...