The most charming beauty of romantic literature is the trait of its being intensely autobiographical and subjective. Similarly, "Essays of Elia" unfold the life history and idiosyncratic mind of Charles Lamb in a semi-factual way. The real delight for the Romantic comes from his infusion of fact and fiction as, otherwise, his essays would have become mere boring and passionless statements about his personal and private life. Our charm and fascination do not grow less, for we are never too close to the reality or surrounded by totally imaginary details and accounts. Under the thin layer of mystified names and references, Lamb lays bare his entire existence.
In fact, it is not possible for readers to trace out a true history of Charles Lamb through his essays. He mystifies the details of his personal life by giving us false names and false kinship. Even the pseudonym of "Elia" is sufficient to blur our judgment. Without additional help in form of footnotes and comments, we cannot safely connect details given in the essays with Lamb's life. Sometimes, he may make a confessi...
Ethel Wilson’s exercise of brilliant literary techniques services the reader to comprehend the underlying message in her writing which is nominally responsibility of the human conscience when masked in nature. With application of clever symbolism, motif and character development, Wilson makes the reader question to what extent one should be responsible to through exploration of the human mind when manipulated by nature.
Literature of the English Restoration offers the example of a number of writers who wrote for a courtly audience: literary production, particularly in learned imitation of classical models, was part of the court culture of King Charles II. The fact of a shared model explains the remarkable similarities between “The Imperfect Enjoyment” by the Earl of Rochester and “The Disappointment” by Aphra Behn—remarkable only because readers are surprised to read one poem about male sexual impotence from the late seventeenth century, let alone two examples of this genre by well-known courtly writers. In fact, Richard Quaintance presents ten more examples by lesser-known poets as he defines the literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem,” written in imitation of Roman poems on the same subject, which is shared by Rochester and Behn (Quaintance 190). Since Rochester and Behn are working along such closely similar lines in terms of the artistic models that their own poems aim to imitate, it is therefore fair to ask the question: what are the main differences in their compositional technique within this tightly-defined literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem”? By examining features of each poem in turn—including form (including this sub-genre they share), but also narrative voice and tone—with some examination of the secondary critical literature on both Rochester and Behn, I hope to demonstrate that there are distinct differences in compositional technique which involve the difference in sex between these two writers. But my conclusion will attempt to problematize the very notion of an authorial sex difference by raising the concept of gender, and in particular the aspect of “performativity”—...
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
The central figures in these three works are all undoubtedly flawed, each one in a very different way. They may have responded to their positions in life, or the circumstances in which they find themselves may have brought out traits that already existed. Whichever applies to each individual, or the peculiar combination of the two that is specific to them, it effects the outcome of their lives. Their reaction to these defects, and the control or lack of it that they apply to these qualities, is also central to the narrative that drives these texts. The exploration of the characters of these men and their particular idiosyncrasies is the thread that runs throughout all of the works.
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
As one of the most renowned and well-known literary critics in the world of composition, Harold Bloom has self-importantly granted himself the privilege of specifying the reasons as to why we read. From human connection to self-actualization to the acquirement of knowledge, he adheres passionately and unquestionably that “the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.” Bloom, as an experienced critic, fully recognizes the task of judging a book for its merit.
In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.
Jokinen, Anniina. "Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature." Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. N.p., 1996. Web. 9 Nov. 2013. http://www.luminarium.org/
Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
Merriman, C.D. "Charles Lamb." The Literature Netwrok. Jalic Inc., 2008. Web. 12 Mar 2010. .
In this brief monograph, we shall be hunting down and examining various creatures from the bestiary of Medieval/Renaissance thought. Among these are the fierce lion of imperious, egotistical power, a pair of fantastic peacocks, one of vanity, one of preening social status, and the docile lamb of humility. The lion and the peacocks are of the species known as pride, while the lamb is of an entirely different, in fact antithetical race, that of humility and forgiveness. The textual regions we shall be exploring include the diverse expanses, from palace to heath, of William Shakespeare, the dark, sinister Italy of John Webster, and the perfumed lady's chambers of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick.
There are several instances in the book Night by Elie Wiesel where Elie has an internal conflict about his spirituality. Elie is the witness of many horrors and there are times when he questions God’s presence. However, there are other times where Elie thanks and prays to God. Elie’s beliefs change throughout the course of the book and he is uncertain about what to think.
My aspiration toward a better education starts all the way back to when I started school in Russia. Out of the short educational experience that I had in Russia, I remember that almost everybody wanted to be the straight-A student (or straight-"5" by Russian grading). That, combined with the constant pressure from my family helped me get excited about school and made me want to learn. My education in Russia was cut short, however, when we moved to the United States.
Creation stories may include multiple gods, provide insight on the creation of man, and define heroic attributes. The story, titled Enuma Elish, sketched out the creation of the world for the Babylonians. Gods make up the majority of the Enuma Elish’s personae, and the Babylonians envisioned these gods as a family: “Primeval Apsu was their progenitor. / And matrix-Tiamat was she who bore them all, / …Then were the gods formed within the(se two).” (Tablet 1, Lines 3-4, 7) The wisest and most accomplished god, Marduk, took over as ruler of the gods later in the story. The Babylonians thought of Marduk as the hero of the story, although he possessed undesirable attributes. “At his commands the gods shall pay heed.” (Tablet 6, Line 68) This quote from the Enuma Elish reveals that none of the other gods wanted to mess with Marduk. This got to his head, and, unfortunately, the hero of the story became prideful and arrogant. In the Enuma Elish, Marduk created man to work for the gods: “I shall create human kind, / They shall bear the gods’ burden that those may rest.” (Tablet 6, Lines 7-8) The creation of man takes plave after the gods formed the rest of the universe. This communicated to the Babylonians that their creation was an afterthought and that they were only useful for work. A creation story such as the Enuma Elish can certainly shape a whole civilization’s