Tolstoy wrote, in What is Art? " If a man is infected by the author's condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art: but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the same author and others who a...

To most people, analyzing The Sorrows of Young Werther is a simple task. Relying on the worldview of a pragmatic, technology-driven, and self-assured society, they look at Werther and see a young, romantic who, because of personal weakness, developed an obsession with a woman probably because he kne...

Born in 1795, Keats, the son of a stablekeeper, was raised in Moorfields, London, and attended the Clarke School in Enfield. The death of his mother in 1810 left Keats and his three younger siblings in the care of a guardian, Richard Abbey. Although Keats was apprenticed to an apothecary, he soon ...

The "Beast in the Jungle" is a story that expresses tragic irony and great loss. Henry James commences his story by introducing two characters: John Marcher and May Bartram. The two meet at a mansion, after a ten-year separation. The mansion is filled with decadent art, antiques, and other...

Have you ever loved someone and then lost them? Ernest Hemingway shows us a novel with a war background and a love between two people that eventually end. The author's work in the novel helps provide the literary critique. Since the time period is between to major wars there is plenty of inf...

The strength of his rational mind is not diminishing the pains of his emotions. On the contrary, the speaker is losing his sanity as time progresses. In the past, perhaps, the speaker's rational thought processes allowed him to cope with failed romances. However, in the presence of this lo...

In Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne seems to intimate that what Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmsdale shared wasn't quite as sinful as is supposed. The real sin seems to lie in the marriage of Hester with Chillingworth. Similarly, "A Pair of Eyes; or Modern Magic" by Louisa May Alcott also por...

Shakespeare\'s love sonnets describe three different contexts in which love operates, as such, he depicts a multi-faceted picture of love. Love in Shakespeare\'s poems does not have a single definition, but rather, an intangible conglomeration of characteristics that, together, make up an ever power...

The Bell Shakespeare Company's play Troilus+Cressida – Directed by Michael Bogdanov is an example of the many 're-skinned' Shakespearean plays that emerge out of obscurity to challenge social mores in modern society. Troilus+Cressida, based in the 10 year "war for a whore...