Bounderby is a totally negative character, who, unlike Gradgrind is inherently corrupt and unfeeling. With him it is not a matter of imposed principle, as with Gradgrind, but of inherent character. He is actually materialistic, the image of the corr Continue Reading...
Thomas Hardy / Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Considered purely as a poet, Thomas Hardy has earned the status of a Modernist, or at the very least an honorary Modernist. Claire Tomalin's recent biography of Hardy would have us believe that, in essence, Continue Reading...
Hard Times
In his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens is not shy in confronting what he sees as the paramount social evils of his day, particularly when those evils come in the form of ostensibly beneficent social movements themselves. In particular, Continue Reading...
"It was a curious childhood, full of weird, fantastic impressions and contradictory influences, stimulating alike to the imagination and that embryo philosophy of life which begins almost with infancy."
Paine 14) His consummate biography written in Continue Reading...
Balzac and Kafka: From Realism to Magical Realism
French author Honore de Balzac defined the genre of realism in the early 19th century with his novel Old Man Goriot, which served as a cornerstone for his more ambitious project, The Human Comedy. Ol Continue Reading...