Stephen Holliday
eNotes Educator
Achievements
19
Educator Level
870
Answers Posted
524
Answers Bonused
About
Born in New Orleans, LA, and raised in San Jose, CA. Attended high school at Wasatch Academy, Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Have a PhD in English (18thC. British Literature; Old English to 1500; Colonial American Literature to 1800) from the University of California, Davis, and an MA and BA in English from San Jose State University, San Jose, CA. In addition to teaching English at community and four-year colleges, have worked in the financial industry, specializing in commercial real estate and mortgage-backed securities as a remediator and portfolio risk manager. Published two articles in University Publishing and two in Scholia Satyrica; articles in Suite 101, Daily Writing Tips and WiseGeek. Editor for the Geknowm Project. Married, two children.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in The Tyger
William Blake's "The Tyger," one of the most compelling poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794), is an exploration of the nature of God and of good and evil. As your question notes,... -
Answered a Question in Mary Rowlandson
Your instructor's statement with respect to the "apparent emotional peace and stability" Mary Rowlandson describes at the end of her narrative gets to the heart of two important elements in the... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
As your question suggests, the motives for Beowulf's decision to risk his life and the lives of his warriors are complex and cannot be attributed to a single cause. In Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon... -
Answered a Question in Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) was a prolific poet in the early sixteenth century. He is credited with introducing the Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet to English literature. As your question suggests,... -
Answered a Question in The Canterbury Tales
Of the four pilgrims your question addresses, the Franklin represents the upper middle-class landed gentry; the Merchant is part of the rising middle-class within a commercial class just becoming... -
Answered a Question in General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
In the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is quite explicit regarding the time of year in which the pilgrimage occurs: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote / The droghte of March... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Beowulf stands as a foundational epic in Old English and includes, within its more than 3,000 lines, many elements traditionally associated with epic poetry: the hero's struggle with supernatural... -
Answered a Question in Essays
Francis Bacon's Essays, written in groups between 1597 and 1625, are masterpieces of practical guidance in how to get along in the world of business, politics, government, and personal relations.... -
Answered a Question in Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (1735), addressed to his good friend Dr. John Arbuthnot, is both a vitriolic attack on Pope's literary and political enemies--most notably, Joseph Addison and Lord... -
Answered a Question in Dante's Inferno
As your question implies, in the Inferno, canto 5, Dante and Virgil encounter men and women who are guilty of love (and lust) outside of marriage and suffer eternal torment in the Circle of... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
The Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon warrior cultures depicted in Beowulf (ca. 850CE) are driven, among other things, by tribal loyalty, and one of the most powerful incentives for that loyalty is the... -
Answered a Question in History of Plymouth Plantation
Although John Robinson did not make the voyage with the Pilgrims in 1620, he sent two letters to John Carver, both dated in July of 1620, with advice for the Pilgrims once they establish the colony... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
On one level, Hrothgar's queen, Wealhtheow, and Grendel's mother, who is nameless, cannot contrast more starkly. Even though they are both female characters in a masculine society, Wealhtheow... -
Answered a Question in Essays
Fortunately, you have chosen a topic that immediately resonates with many people, most of whom are already primed for a reason to detest the practice of human trafficking. The spectrum of people... -
Answered a Question in Matsuo Bashō
As your question suggests, classical Japanese haiku, such as Basho's "Four Haiku," are designed to invoke one image and dominant impression that is often startling in both its simplicity and... -
Answered a Question in The Story of an Hour
As your question suggests, the cause of Louise Mallard's death in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is forever debatable, but there are details in the narrative that can lead us to infer a... -
Answered a Question in An Essay on Criticism
In order to fully understand these lines from Pope's verse discourse An Essay on Criticism (1711), a seminal exploration of Neoclassical poetic ideals and literary criticism, we need to look... -
Answered a Question in Going After Cacciato
Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (1978) can be characterized by something O'Brien says in "How To Tell a True War Story," a chapter in his later novel The Things They Carried—"when you go to... -
Answered a Question in The Wife of Bath's Tale
The Wife of Bath's Tale is, quite literally, framed by death. The tale begins with the young knight condemned to death for his act of rape and ends with the Wife of Bath praying that wives will... -
Answered a Question in The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried explores the physical, mental, and spiritual burdens of young American soldiers thrown together into the Vietnam War, a brutal conflict that none are prepared... -
Answered a Question in The Canterbury Tales
Your question gets to an ongoing debate among scholars of The Canterbury Tales with respect to the persona of Chaucer the Pilgrim and Chaucer the Poet. Is the Pilgrim an observant narrator but not... -
Answered a Question in The Second Great Awakening
In order to understand how the Second Great Awakening, which began in about 1800 and lasted through the middle of the century, influences the temperance movement, as well as the abolitionist... -
Answered a Question in Aeneid
As your question implies, the reasons for Aeneas's stay in Carthage, about a year, are not readily apparent and require us to explore the possibilities for this relatively long diversion from... -
Answered a Question in The Deserted Village
Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770), which he defended as an accurate description of the "the disorders" faced by the rural population of England resulting from the enclosure acts, is... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
As your question implies, Penelope, or rather the idea of Penelope, is a constant subtext running through Odysseus's mind and pushes him to endure increasingly arduous challenges to reach... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
The short answer to your question about the fate of Odysseus's men is that they are all fated to die before they reach Ithaca. At the beginning of Book I is the invocation to the Muse, which... -
Answered a Question in The Great Gatsby
In chapter 3, Nick discloses that he has been invited by Gatsby to one of Gatsby's legendary parties in which alcohol, food, banality, crude and polite behavior, and people ebb and flow well into... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
To answer your question, let's briefly recount the essential elements of an epic: 1) we need a hero or heroes of undoubted courage who willingly face death even when their survival is unsure; 2)... -
Answered a Question in Young Goodman Brown
The ending of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," as your question implies, intrigues almost every reader because Hawthorne leaves it to the reader to decide whether Brown meets Satan in... -
Answered a Question in Socrates
Socrates's first logical fallacy is a form of post hoc ergo propter hoc—that is, after this, because of this—and is centered on Socrates's argument that his personal god or spirit, the daimonion,... -
Answered a Question in A&P
Your instructor has used an interesting "hook" to encourage you to examine whether John Updike's "A & P" meets his own criteria for a good short story. Updike is a masterful story teller, so,... -
Answered a Question in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
In Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933), three characters—the young and old waiters and the drunken old man—represent three different stages of attachment to the world. The young... -
Answered a Question in Francis Bacon
As usual with Bacon's essays on the difference between attributes and people that serve the public best, in "Of Marriage and Single Life," he explores the difference between married and unmarried... -
Answered a Question in The Seafarer
Both "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer," both of which are found in the Exeter Book (ca. 725 CE), are dramatic monologues in which the speakers describe their experience of hardship, the loss of... -
Answered a Question in Essays
Francis Bacon's essay "Of Youth and Age," like many of his other essays, explores two sides of the same coin, that is, the benefits and detriments of youth as opposed to those of "age," by which he... -
Answered a Question in History of Plymouth Plantation
Summarizing a text requires you to use your own words (for the most part) to re-state a work's most important points with accuracy and brevity. Unlike argument, in which you take a particular point... -
Answered a Question in Letter from Birmingham City Jail
Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," his response to criticism from eight white clergymen regarding his presence in Birmingham, Alabama, during a bus boycott brought about by... -
Answered a Question in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
In the absence of a writer's explicit statement about the purpose of a particular work, we must infer the writer's intentions from what we know about his or her life, travels, interests, and... -
Answered a Question in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, which he referred to as his Memoirs and wrote in several parts over the course of twenty years, is initially intended as a family history for his son William:... -
Answered a Question in Trifles
Susan Glaspell's one-act play Trifles examines how men and women communicate with each other. Men are often oblivious to what women are trying to communicate because they consider themselves... -
Answered a Question in The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," first published in 1843, is perhaps Hawthorne's most well-known exploration of the tension between nature and science—the struggle for ascendancy of two... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
One of the most understated, but important, examples of Odysseus's intelligence (metis, a combination of cunning and intelligence) is in book 3 when Nestor, known in The Iliad as the wisest of... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
Demodocus, whose name means "beloved of the people," has several important functions in book 8, not the least of which is that Demodocus gives us a clear picture of the importance of the bard in... -
Answered a Question in Letter from Birmingham City Jail
Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, as your question implies, is his response to a letter from eight clergymen, all white men, criticizing King for having come to Birmingham, Alabama,... -
Answered a Question in Law and Politics
This is a complex legal issue because the resolution depends upon whether the building is ultimately considered to be part of the real property or defined as chattel. As your question implies,... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
For a warrior-king like Odysseus, a man whose metis (cunning intelligence) is instrumental in winning the Trojan War, excessive pride is his natural state, and humility is not usually a part of a... -
Answered a Question in Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown," as your question suggests, is built on ambiguity: does Brown make a physical trip into the forest in this visit to his dark side, or is his... -
Answered a Question in The Things They Carried
In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, there is no shortage of symbols: the talismans that many troops carry symbolize the hope for survival and luck; the enemy is a collective emblem of death;... -
Answered a Question in Literature
The Seafarer and The Wanderer, two of the most well-known and studied Old English poems, were most likely composed around 750 CE, roughly contemporaneous with Beowulf. Like Beowulf, these two... -
Answered a Question in Literature
"The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer," both of which have distinct thematic similarities—the exile of the speaker and longing for what has passed into oblivion—are very different in their focus but end...
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