Literature

Literature is also a form of time travel that helps put today in context. All those apocalyptic lamentations about how "things used to be so much better" are controverted in literature of the last...

Literature is one way for us to hear the voices of the past and work with the present. It is a way for the present to connect to the possible future. Story telling is one way for humans to reach...

The basic elements of prose are: character, setting, plot, point of view, and mood. Character refers to: biographical information; personality traits; social roles, and psychological factors such...

The poem “Identity” by Julio Noboa Polanco is an unrepentant celebration of individuality. Asserting himself against other people, whom he contemptuously likens to well-fed, well-watered flowers,...

A primary difference between academic and non-academic texts involves audience, which also speaks to purpose. An academic, nonfiction text will be based on research methods that can be replicated....

There exists a duality in this sparsely written poem through combining the speaker's frustration and recognition of the humiliation of women with a spirit of resilience and dry optimism. The...

A novel is a book-length fictional prose narrative that contains six primary elements: character, plot, point of view, setting, style, and theme. Let's look at these six through a sample novel,...

A literary convention is: A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme...

The main difference between the different forms of literature is the purpose and the way words are arranged. The main difference between prose and poetry is how the words are used. In prose we...

"Olden days" is a fairly relative phrase. Some younger students might consider olden days any time before Instagram existed. They can't fathom a world that existed before cell phones and texting,...

Dictionary.com defines myth this way: A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation,...

Medieval literature extends over a wide geographic area and a long span of time, so it is difficult to identify characteristics that apply to all or even most literature of the Middle Ages. That...

Sean O'Faolain's short story of childhood exploration and imagination begins as with a description of one of twelve-year-old Julia's favorite places, the Dark Walk. This overgrown path always fills...

In stave 3, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who takes him to the Cratchit household in the poorest section of town, where the family is celebrating Christmas dinner. Dickens...

Figures of speech enhance the author's creation. This is true of any genre and any form of writing. The effective use of figures of speech brings to life what would have been mere words, phrases...

In examining the terms "traditional" and "modern," literary scholars will differ on the defining time periods or characteristics which qualify those classifications. The following are provided as a...

Poetry is a form of writing in verse, which usually has a musical quality obtained through the specific use of literary elements such as meter and rhyme, and literary devices such as alliteration,...

The simplest and most obvious point is that "humble" is an adjective or a verb, whereas "humility" is a noun. More significantly, however, "humble" is often used refer to social status, in phrases...

Drama is a broad category and includes plays as a macro category or can be a portion of a work in a sub heading. Whether discussed in the macro or micro realms, drama has some definite...

The relationship between history and literature is complex and multifaceted. First, literature often presents historical people, places, and events in story form. Think, for instance, of the...

The main theme of Coolie is the exploitation of the poor by the rich in early twentieth century India and the human suffering that this brings about. In his descriptions of Munoo’s experiences...

In a critical appreciation of "Bequest," you could focus on the role of women as it is presented in the poem and how Souza utilizes literary devices and form to accomplish that purpose. Souza was...

It sounds like what you may be referring to is, as the other instructor has pointed out, a frame story. Such stories start at the ending and then flash back in time to demonstrate how this pivotal...

Certainly, one theme of the story is that we must be wary of strangers. Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf in the forest, "but as she did not know what a bad sort of animal she was, she did not...

The primary similarities between a novel and a drama are that they both have plots, complete with rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution; they both have conflicts, characters, and...

In the short story "The Rain Came" by Grace Ogot, customs and traditional beliefs leave Oganda having to face death for her people to have rain. Oganda is to be sacrificed in order to end the...

The basic characteristics of African English Literature are: 1) Written in both African and European languages. The predominant African languages used are Amharic, Zulu, Hausa, and Swahili. 2)...

Prose refers to written or spoken language that is not in poetic form, whether in rhythm, rhyme, or structure. Drama is a performing art in which actors use dialogue and actions to tell a story or...

In the science fiction short story "The Wretched and the Beautiful" by E. Lily Yu, an alien spaceship lands on a popular tourist beach. Inside are strangely shaped alien refugees (the wretched) who...

As was mentioned in the previous post, the central themes throughout the short story examine justice, responsibility, discernment, and friendship. Both characters, Jumman Shaikh and Algu Chowdhry,...

The poem "The Last Lesson of the Afternoon" by D.H. Lawrence is about a teacher who is second-guessing his life’s work as an instructor to various students. In this six stanza poem, the poet begins...

Beauty and the Beast is a well-known fairytale written by French author and novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, originally published in 1740. Another equally as popular publication is...

One the most general level, most literature portrays people engaging in social interactions. Thus literature gives an image of society in words just as your bathroom mirror gives a reflected visual...

The purpose of literary criticism likely depends on who’s answering the question. A person with a conservative philosophy could answer that studying literary criticism is nefarious and subversive....

This poem turns on its head the idea that a tenth birthday is a joyous occasion. Instead, the young speaker laments the loss he is feeling as he grows older. The poem shows the pain of maturing...

Mr. Robert Baldwin is Mr. John Gresham's personal secretary. At the start of the play, Baldwin's wife (Martha), son (John), and daughter (Evie) are tense and worried: John Gresham has just been...

There are many examples of parallelism in Abraham Lincoln's short speech. Parallelism is the repetition of the same grammatical structure in a work of writing. Some examples of parallelism include...

You will recognize a simile (take care spelling simile as there is no extra i) when you see a comparison using the word "like" or a description of something using as....as when those two things...

This phrase is contained in a speech found in Act II of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. It is spoken by John Proctor at the height of the witchcraft/accusation frenzy in the courts of Salem. At the...

Santa Rama Rau's short story "By Any Other Name" refutes Juliet's contention that something retains its essence no matter what its name. In this colonial story of English imperialism, the teacher...

This ancient Navajo proverb has begun to circulate recently as an inspirational quote. It is often used on online memes and printed on tote bags and so on. It can be interpreted in several ways,...

JFK's 1961 inaugural address came at the height of the Cold War, in which America was deep in an arms race with the Soviet Union. His primary concern at that point was presenting America as a...

The difference between non-academic and academic writing can be important to you when you are doing research for a paper. It also will concern you if you are considering writing as a career. When...

Ruskin Bond’s short story “The Eyes Are Not Here” is very brief but is also intriguingly complex. Although most worthwhile stories cannot be easily paraphrased or reduced to a single theme, this...

Sometimes I think you can learn more from short stories than novels, simply because the author gets to his/her point much quicker and is more concise with descriptions. Authors don't write just to...

In general, we read stories to learn about life, about the world around us, and about how people in the world react to their circumstances and experiences. Characters in stories help us see how...

Novels were a new literary form in the eighteenth century, and in many ways, they were a reaction against earlier tales called romances that featured grand adventures, noble characters, and...

The verse to which you refer appears in the second stanza of Edgar A. Guests's poem "Don't Quit"; a poem that has been successfully translated into other languages and still instills the same...

As graphic novels are by their very definition a blend of writing and illustration, it goes without saying that they will achieve a level of descriptiveness that a traditional novel will fall short...

A biography is the true story of a person's life. An autobiography is the true story of a person's life when it is written by that person. The author writes about him- or herself in an...