Kitty Johnson, Ph.D.

Before I discuss particular instances of satire, it's worth noting that the humanoid Yahoos are meant to mock human beings in Swift's native England and that the enlightened, intelligent horses...

The last few lines provide us with all the evidence that we need: Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together....

Homer's Odyssey often shows how intelligence can prevail over brute strength, and Odysseus's encounter with the giant Polyphemus is an excellent example of this theme. Recall that one of Odysseus'...

The three abnormal forms of division of labor are anomie, forced division, and disorganization. The normal function of division of labor is to produce social solidarity; under each of the abnormal...

Swift's own description of the novel was: Upon that great foundation of Misanthropy is the whole building of my Travels erected; And I will never have peace of mind until honest men are of my...

One of Marx's profoundest insights concerned the way in which inequalities among different classes led to strife; he also claimed that this strife would be the undoing of the ruling classes. One...

Let us begin by understanding what's meant by 'stream of consciousness' in this context; it's a literary term with various definitions, but we can appeal to Woolf's own description of it in "Modern...

Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is about a woman called Jean Brodie who is a teacher at the Marcia Blaine girls' school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Jean Brodie is a powerful yet...

The First World War had a direct effect on philosophy much as philosophical thinking had an effect on the discourse around the war, and especially during the inter-war years from 1918 until 1939....

Neruda's “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” describes a love story from the initial infatuation to the painful separation. This poem expresses the pain the poet feels after losing his...

The central theme of The Persian Letters is cultural relativism; he explores this theme by using the voices of two fictional Persian travelers: Usbek and Rica. Montesquieu got his details from...

In the Apology, Socrates is tried for a range of reasons; one of them is that he has corrupted the youth of Athens. According to his accusers, of whom Anytus is one, Socrates has charged money in...

The classical unities come from Aristotle's Poetics. It is not uncommon for Euripides to frame the plots for his plays with external retrospective narration at the beginning and external...

Archaic tales of Medea depict her as a savage sorceress and princess who was gifted with superhuman powers. A Greek prince owes her his very life but ends up betraying her. When he betrays her,...

Medea and Odysseus are two unusual characters to compare, as the first character is the creation of the fifth-century playwright Euripides and the second character is the creation of the...

A range of philosophical ideas served to reinforce these inequalities. We might begin with the early medical writers—recall that, in ancient Greek, there were no hard divisions between philosophy,...

Pi is an Indian boy (a Hindu majority country) immigrating to Canada (a Christian majority country) who declares that he is not only Hindu (the religion into which he was born) but also Catholic...

The first of the two stories in question is that of Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi), who survived for 227 days after the ship carrying him and his family, along with a collection of zoo animals, sank in...

The central theme of "The Shapes of Death" by the early twentieth century British poet, Stephen Spender, is that unrequited love can warp a character and that ambition serves only to prevent love....

Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy describes, as the title suggests, the history of philosophy in the western world from the ancient Greeks until his present day (1945). It is an...

One of the most remarkable stylistic features of the philosophical novel The Stranger by Albert Camus,at least in the original French, is Camus' continuous use of the past perfect and imperfect...

One of the central themes of the Antigone by Sophocles is the tension between religion and politics. One of Creon's central motivations is upholding his political decisions and the law as decreed...

Socrates was a Greek philosopher and is seen by many as the founding figure of western philosophy. There were philosophers before Socrates (referred to as the pre-Socratics) but no philosopher,...

Homer's Odyssey tells the story of its protagonist Odysseus and his travels through many strange lands before coming home to Ithaca at last. The epic begins ten years after the events of the Iliad...

In Theory of Justice, Rawls sets out to describe social justice from within a liberal democratic society. The entire work is about reconciling a concern for egalitarianism with a concern for...

We can make the distinction clearer with the aid of a thought experiment. Imagine that you are asked by someone to shoot one person. If you do not do as you are asked, the person asking you to...

Gulliver's Travels is a satirical work, and its main target is the experimental science promoted by Enlightenment thinkers such as Sir Isaac Newton.  The Enlightenment was marked by a...

In The Children of Men, "Quietus" refers to the state-sanctioned mass "suicide" by drowning. What superficially appears to be mass suicide, however, can be better described as mass homicide,...

Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau are all 'state of nature' theorists—they attempt to explain politics and government by constructing a thought experiment of an original state of nature...

These are words that admit of various definitions, depending on the context, but it appears that you are asking for explanations of Jakobsonian terms. Three of these are 'functions' laid out by...

Mulk Raj Anand's novel, written in pre-Independence India, tackles a theme that still resonates in present-day India. The story revolves around the character of a man called Bakha who belongs to...

Let's first consider the primary characteristics of a 'tragic hero,' as defined by Aristotle in his Poetics. The hero usually possesses excessive pride (hubris); he undergoes a reversal...

Plato, thankfully, did not poison himself; Socrates did. This is described in Plato's dialogue Phaedo. Socrates was a historical figure, whose writings do not survive, and he was famously the...

I'm afraid that the answer on this page is not quite accurate. The theory of recollection (anamnēsis) does not appear anywhere in Plato's Republic. The earliest version of it...

Dr Heidegger's 'venerable' friends were Mrs Wycherly, Colonel Killigrew, Mr Gascoigne, and Mr Medbourne. Mr Medbourne was once a prosperous merchant who lost everything through wild speculation and...

Dr. Heidegger's guests are delighted with their physical transformations, and they immediately begin to behave like their younger selves. Each one of them made mistakes in their youth, and they are...

1) In Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, the eponymous doctor tests four of his acquaintances by offering them water from a river in Florida near the Fountain of Youth. This supernatural...

First, let's get clear on what an epic simile is. A simile, as you probably know, is simply an explicit comparison using words such as "like" or "as" (e.g., "His words beat down on...

The eponymous brothers are separated when they are seven years old; the play is a classic comedy involving mistaken identity. (Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors is but one of the plays that...

Polyneices, the son of Oedipus and Jocasta, has been left unburied because Creon, king of Thebes and brother of Jocasta (both uncle and grand uncle to Polyneices) has issued a decree forbidding his...

Records of the earliest Hindu beliefs can be found in the Vedas and the later Brahamanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads (philosophical commentaries on the Vedas), which record beliefs...

The supernatural elements in Act I include the witnessing of strange sights and omens in the streets of Rome, such as owls flying in the daytime and a lion. In general, Shakespeare has many...

Before I answer this question, I should clarify that "happiness" was not the same thing for Aristotle and for Kant, and it's yet another thing for us; this has something to do with the different...

There are a series of events that mark the conclusion of the book. First, Dane O'Neill, the son of Meggie O'Sullivan (née Cleary) and Ralph de Bricassart, dies in Greece. This event occurs shortly...

A Renaissance masque was a spectacle performed at court or at the manor of a member of the aristocracy with the purpose of glorifying a particular member of court or a particular aristocrat....

Dylan Thomas' poems are full of symbols and images and this often adds to their complexity and ambiguity. You should also keep in mind there is rarely only one coherent interpretation of a...

The first thing to realize is that, in Greek, a thing's excellence (arētē) and the good (to agathon) are closely linked in meaning. However, in his function argument (Nicomachean Ethics Book...

Let's begin by clarifying what "existentialism" means. It was a term coined by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (although it arguably has older roots) and is exemplified in a number of his...

That’s an intriguing question. Kipling spent some time in India and presumably based the book on his experiences there (although the book was composed while he was living in Vermont!). Kipling...