Author Archives
Literariness is an open access collection of notes inviting everyone to explore the unfathomable English Language, Literature, and Theory. Feel free to discover and share knowledge.
Contributor: Nasrullah Mambrol
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Analysis of Daphne Du Maurier’s Novels
The theatrical quality of du Maurier’s (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) novels is evidenced by the frequency and reported ease with which her works were adapted for the big screen. Alfred Hitchcock directed film versions of Jamaica Inn,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Novels
Arthur Conan Doyle’s (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) epitaph “STEEL TRUE/BLADE STRAIGHT” can also serve as an introduction to the themes of his novels, both those that feature actual medieval settings and those that center on Sherlock Holmes…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Agatha Christie’s Novels
Agatha Christie’s (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) trademarks in detective fiction brought to maturity the classical tradition of the genre, which was in its adolescence when she began to write. The tradition had some stable characteristics, but she… Read More ›
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Analysis of J. G. Ballard’s Novels
Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) is one of a handful of writers who, after establishing early reputations as science-fiction writers, subsequently achieved a kind of “transcendence” of their genre origins to be accepted by a wider public…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Kingsley Amis’s Novels
Almost from the beginning of his career, Kingsley Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) enjoyed the attention of numerous commentators. Because his works have been filled with innovations, surprises, and variations in techniques and themes, it is not… Read More ›
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Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Novels
From the appearance of her first novel in 1915, Virginia Woolf’s work was received with respect—an important point, since she was extremely sensitive to criticism. Descendant of a distinguished literary family, member of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, herself an experienced… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Novels
Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was acknowledged during his lifetime as a prominent though not necessarily a weighty or enduring writer. He wished to entertain and he did so, at least until the late 1860’s when… Read More ›
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Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Novels
J. R. R. Tolkien’s (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) fiction dismayed most of his fellow scholars at the University of Oxford as much as it delighted most of his general readers. Such reactions sprang from their recognition of… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Novels
Long remembered as a social satirist par excellence, William Makepeace Thackeray (18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) wrote more in the manner of Henry Fielding than of Samuel Richardson and more in the realistic vein than in the style… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mary Shelley’s Novels
Shelley’s literary reputation rests solely on her first novel, Frankenstein. Her six other novels, which are of uneven quality, are very difficult indeed to find, even in the largest libraries. Nevertheless, Mary Shelley lays claim to a dazzling array of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Samuel Richardson’s Novels
Perhaps Richardson’s (19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) most important contribution to the development of the novel was his concern for the nonexceptional problems of daily conduct, the relationships between men and women, and the specific class-and-caste distinctions of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean Rhys’s Novel Wide Sargasso Sea
When Wide Sargasso Sea, her last novel, was published, Jean Rhys (24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was described in The New York Times as the greatest living novelist. Such praise is overstated, but Rhys’s fiction, long overlooked by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry Fielding’s Novels
Henry Fielding’s (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) lasting achievements in prose fiction—in contrast to his passing fame as an essayist, dramatist, and judge—result from his development of critical theory and from his aesthetic success in the novels themselves…. Read More ›
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Analysis of George Eliot’s Novels
George Eliot’s (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880) pivotal position in the history of the novel is attested by some of the most distinguished novelists. Reviewing Middlemarch in 1873, Henry James concluded, “It sets a limit, we think, to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Margaret Drabble’s Novels
Margaret Drabble’s (born 5 June 1939) novels charm and delight, but perhaps more significantly, they reward their readers with a distinctively modern woman’s narrative voice and their unusual blend of Victorian and modern structures and concerns. Although there seems to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Walter de la Mare’s Novels
Walter De la Mare (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) published only five novels, one of which, At First Sight, is more a long short story than a true novel. His fiction is metaphorical and resembles his poetry in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Novels
In the late twentieth century, Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in readership and in critical attention. Readers and critics alike have come to recognize that although one of Conrad’s last novels, The… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wilkie Collins’s Novels
Collins’s reputation nearly a century after his death rests almost entirely on two works—The Woman in White, published serially in All the Year Round between November 26, 1859, and August 25, 1860; and The Moonstone, published in 1868. About this… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Orwell’s Novels
Although George Orwell (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) is widely recognized as one of the best essayists of the twentieth century, his reputation as a novelist rests almost entirely on two works: the political allegory Animal Farm and… Read More ›
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CUCET M.Phil/Ph.D English 2019 Answer Key
CUCET M.Phil/Ph.D English 2019 Answer Key Part B 51. (D) John Milton 52. (A) Matthew Arnold 53. (C) The French Lieutenant’s Woman 54. (D) L. C. Knights 55. (B) Anachronism 56. (A) Martin Esslin 57. (B) Dr. Johnson 58. (C)… Read More ›
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CUCET English Answer Key 2019
Answer Key CUCET English (PG) PART B 26. (C) Morality plays A type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him or her to choose a good life over… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Meredith’s Novels
In the late nineteenth century, George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) achieved the status of a literary dictator or arbiter of taste. The path toward this recognition was, however, a long and arduous one. For years, Meredith… Read More ›
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Analysis of W. Somerset Maugham’s Novels
W. Somerset Maugham’s (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) twenty novels are exceptionally uneven; the first eight, though interesting, suggest the efforts of a young novelist to discover where his talent lies. From the publication of Of Human Bondage… Read More ›
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Analysis of Doris Lessing’s Novels
Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) has been one of the most widely read and influential British novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. Her works have been translated into many languages and have inspired critical attention… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s Novels
Best known for his short fiction, Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) wrote more than 250 stories. His style of leaving a story open-ended with the tantalizing phrase “But that’s another story” established his reputation for unlimited storytelling…. Read More ›
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Analysis of John Dryden’s Plays
In a period of just over thirty years (1663-1694), John Dryden (August 9, 1631 – May 12, 1700) wrote or coauthored twenty-eight plays, an output that made him the most prolific dramatist of his day. His amplitude remains even more remarkable… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Congreve’s Plays
William Congreve’s (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) first play, The Old Bachelor, was an instant success; its initial run of fourteen days made it the most popular play since Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved (pr., pb. 1682). The Double-Dealer… Read More ›
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Analysis of Lanford Wilson’s Plays
During his first period of playwriting (1963-1972), Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) struggled to learn his trade—mainly in the convivial atmosphere of Off-Off-Broadway, where it did not matter if sometimes audiences did not show up. His… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Plays
Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) has been acclaimed as one of the most distinguished American dramatists since Eugene O’Neill, the father of modern American drama. Because of his direct engagement with political issues and with the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Wycherley’s Plays
William Wycherley’s (8 April 1641 – 1 January 1716) dramatic canon consists of only four plays, and his stature in English letters depends almost entirely on a single work, The Country Wife. In his own day, The Plain-Dealer was his… Read More ›
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Analysis of Michel Tremblay’s Plays
Michel Tremblay (born 25 June 1942) is part of a new generation of playwrights that emerged in Quebec during the 1960’s and 1970’s, a time of profound political and cultural change for this province. Led by Tremblay, these writers saw… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wendy Wasserstein’s Plays
Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006) has been hailed as the foremost theatrical chronicler of the lives of women of her generation. Her plays, steeped in her unique brand of humor, are moving, sometimes wrenching explorations of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s Plays
To accuse Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) of anything so active-sounding as “achievement” would be an impertinence that the strenuously indolent author would most likely deplore. Yet it must be admitted that Wilde’s presence, poses, ideas,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Stephen Sondheim’s Plays
Stephen Sondheim (born. March 22, 1930) was the most critically acclaimed figure in American musical theater during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Sondheim has won the Tony Award for Best Original Score five times, more than any… Read More ›
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Analysis of August Strindberg’s Plays
Tremendously influential in both Europe and the United States, August Strindberg (22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was begrudgingly praised by Henrik Ibsen as one who would be greater than he, and more generously lauded half a century later… Read More ›
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Analysis of Neil Simon’s Plays
Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) has established himself as a leading American playwright of the late twentieth century. As a master of domestic comedy and one-line humor, his popular appeal was established early in his career…. Read More ›
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Plays
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (30 October 1751 – 7 July 1816) was the best playwright of eighteenth century England, a time of great actors rather than great playwrights. Judged on theatrical rather than strictly literary merit, Sheridan also ranks with the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Terence Rattigan’s Plays
The first author ever to have had two plays (French Without Tears and While the Sun Shines) run for more than one thousand performances each on London’s West End, Terence Rattigan (10 June 1911 – 30 November 1977) was one… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ntozake Shange’s Plays
Ntozake Shange’s (October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) work embodies a rich confusion of genres and all the contradictions inherent in a world in which violence and oppression polarize life and art. These polarizations in Shange’s work both contribute… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays
Few dramatists can lay claim to the universal reputation achieved by William Shakespeare. His plays have been translated into many languages and performed on amateur and professional stages throughout the world. Radio, television, and film versions of the plays in… Read More ›
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Analysis of J. B. Priestley’s Plays
Much of J. B. Priestley’s ((13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984)) drama explores the oneness of all human beings. That notion leads the dramatist to view individuals as members of a charmed or magic circle. The circle is continually… Read More ›
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Analysis of Christopher Durang’s Plays
Christopher Durang (born January 2, 1949) belongs to the postmodernist wave of American playwrights who emerged during the 1970’s, including A. R. Gurney, Jr., Tina Howe, and Sam Shepard. These writers fused the experimental techniques of the structuralist theater experiments… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s Plays
Henrik Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) is widely acknowledged as the father of modern drama, but his significance in literature and history overshadows the influence of his revolutionary stage techniques and his iconoclastic concept of the theater…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Noël Coward’s Plays
As a playwright, composer, lyricist, producer, director, author, and actor, Noël Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) spent his life entertaining the public. This he did with a flair, sophistication, and polish that are not readily found in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean Cocteau’s Plays
Early in his career, during and after World War I, Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) wrote scenarios for ballets and adaptations of Greek myths. His plays of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s were highly original… Read More ›
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Analysis of Caryl Churchill’s Plays
Caryl Churchill (born 3 September 1938, London) has become well known for her willingness to experiment with dramatic structure. Her innovations in this regard are sometimes so startling and compelling that reviewers tend to focus on the novelty of her… Read More ›
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Analysis of Frank Chin’s Plays
It may be said that Frank Chin (born February 25, 1940) has pioneered in the field of Asian American literature. His daring and verbally exuberant theater has asserted the presence of the richly unique and deeply human complexities of Chinese… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alan Ayckbourn’s Plays
With labels flourishing during the new era in drama (Osborne’s angry theater, Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd, Pinter’s comedy of menace, Arnold Wesker’s kitchen-sink drama), Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939), too, has been honored with his own label, the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aeschylus’s Plays
Despite the fifth century b.c.e. Athenian political and religious issues that are diffused more often in Aeschylus’s tragedies than in those of Sophocles and Euripides and that demand some historical explanation for the modern reader, the plays of Aeschylus (c…. Read More ›
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Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s Plays
T. S. Eliot’s conservative dramaturgy is clearly expressed in his 1928 essay “Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry” in which he suggests that “genuine drama” displays “a tension between liturgy and realism.” To be sure, Eliot differed sharply from the advocates of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anton Chekhov’s Plays
Anton Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904 was talking about other writers when he said, “The best of them are realists and depict life as it is, but because every line they write is permeated, as with a juice, by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Karel Capek’s Plays
Karel Capek (9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was concerned with the natural order of things, a theme that pervaded much of his work. His allegorical approach to expressionism linked his deep philosophical concerns to striking and often disturbing human… Read More ›
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Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Plays
The dramatic works of Samuel Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) reflect the evolution of his interests in various means of artistic expression, as he composed plays for stage, radio, cinema, and television. In his stage plays, he… Read More ›
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Analysis of Tennessee Williams’ Plays
If the weight of critical opinion places Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), below Eugene O’Neill as America’s premiere dramatist, there should be no question that the former playwright is without peer in either the diversity of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Amiri Baraka’s Plays
Working with forms ranging from the morality play to avant-garde expressionism, Amiri Baraka (October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014) throughout his career sought to create dramatic rituals expressing the intensity of the physical and psychological violence that dominates his… Read More ›
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Analysis of Sam Shepard’s Plays
Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was one of the United States’ most prolific, most celebrated, and most honored playwrights. Writing exclusively for the Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theater, Shepard has nevertheless won eleven Obie Awards (for Red… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean Anouilh’s Plays
The young Jean Anouilh (23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) arrived in Paris during one of the richest periods of French dramatic activity since the seventeenth century. Recently rescued from the commercial doldrums by a “Cartel” of four brilliant… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Millington Synge’s Plays
When, in 1893, John Millington Synge (16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909) was choosing between musical and literary careers, two seminal documents were published that would profoundly affect his decision and form the character of his subsequent work. These… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Osborne’s Plays
John Osborne’s (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) most generous critics credit him with having transformed the English stage on a single night: May 8, 1956, when Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court Theatre. He is… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Bernard Shaw’s Plays
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) came to an English theater settled into the well-made play, a theater that had not known a first-rate dramatist for more than a century. The pap on which its audiences… Read More ›
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Analysis of Tom Stoppard’s Plays
Tom Stoppard’s (born. 3 July 1937) dramaturgy reveals a cyclical pattern of activity. He tends to explore certain subjects or techniques in several minor works, then creates a major play that integrates the fruits of his earlier trial runs. Thus… Read More ›
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Analysis of Luigi Pirandello’s Plays
In Each in His Own Way, Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) playfully has one of his characters ask another to justify his incessant “harping on this illusion and reality string.” So persistent is Pirandello’s dramatic examination… Read More ›
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Analysis of Harold Pinter’s Plays
Harold Pinter (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) is sometimes associated with the generation of British playwrights who emerged in the 1950’s and are known as the Angry Young Men. His first plays, with their dingy, working-class settings and surface… Read More ›
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Analysis of Eugene O’Neill’s Plays
Eugene O’Neill has often been criticized for his choice of characters, for their aberrant psychologies, and for their emotionalism. Certainly he dealt with emotions, but he did so because he believed that emotions were a better guide than thoughts in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Eugene Ionesco’s Plays
Although Eugène Ionesco’s (26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) dramatic art is often traced to such precursors as the plays of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud, it is essentially sui generis, springing primarily from nightmarish visions deeply rooted in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Bertolt Brecht’s Plays
Bertolt Brecht’s (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) early dramas are anarchic, nihilistic, and antibourgeois. In them, he glorifies antisocial outsiders such as adventurers, pirates, and prostitutes; the tone of these works is often cynical. In the years after… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edward Albee’s Plays
Though he is touted sometimes as the chief American practitioner of the absurd in drama, Edward Albee (March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) only rarely combines in a single work both the techniques and the philosophy associated with that… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Aristotle
Aristotle (384–322 bce) was born in Stagira. His father, Nicomachus, was a doctor at the court of Macedonia. The profession of medicine may well have influenced Aristotle’s interests, and his association with Macedon was lifelong: in 343 he became tutor… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of George Berkeley
George Berkeley’s (1685–1753 ce) most lasting philosophical legacies are his immaterialism – the denial of the existence of matter – and his idealism, the positive doctrine that reality is constituted by spirits and their ideas. This is as Berkeley would… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883) was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, son of a Jewish lawyer who converted to Christianity in 1824. After studying law for a year at the University of Bonn, Marx left the Rhineland for the… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Buddha
The person known as “the Buddha” (c.480–400 bce) was Siddhattha Gotama (in Pali; in Sanskrit Siddhartha Gautama). “Buddha” means “Awakened One” or “Enlightened One,” and is a descriptive title rather than a name. Gotama lived in north-east India at a… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi [Chuang Tzu or Chuang Chou] (c.360 bce) may have written up to seven chapters (The “Inner Chapters”) of The Zhuangzi collection. His technical mastery of ancient Chinese linguistic theory in some of these suggests that Zhuangzi studied and thought… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Xunzi
Xunzi [Hsün Tzu] or Xun Kuang [Hsün K’uang], who lived between from about 310 to after 230 bce, made unique contributions to Chinese philosophy in several important areas: the role of music and ritual in government and society; the concept… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the leading analytical philosopher of the twentieth century. His two philosophical masterpieces, the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921) and the posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953), changed the course of the subject. The first was the primary origin of the… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza
Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677 ce) has been a figure of some notoriety in the history of Western philosophy. Born in Amsterdam, into a community of Marrano Jews from Portugal, the young Spinoza had an uneasy relationship to both Christianity and… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Socrates
Socrates (470/469–399 bce), mentor of Plato and founder of moral philosophy, was the son of Sophroniscus (a statuary) and Phaenarete (a midwife). According to a late doxographical tradition, he followed for a time in his father’s footsteps – a claim… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a model intellectual for the twentieth century. He was a multitalented thinker who not only created several philosophical systems but also wrote major novels and plays, essays on literary theory and art criticism, and some methodologically… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, third Earl Russell (1872–1970 ce), was born into an aristocratic English family with considerable political tradition and influence. Both his parents died before he turned four; he was brought up by his paternal grandmother, who seems… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty (1931– 2007) has stressed his adherence to antirepresentationalism, by which he means an account “which does not view knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900 ce) is one of the most controversial figures in the history of philosophy. He also has become one of its most diversely influential thinkers. He was never an “academic philosopher” either by education or by profession, and… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was born in Poiters, France, the second child of Anne Malapert and Paul Foucault. It was expected that he, like his father, would study and practice medicine. The Second World War disrupted education in France, however, and… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), a leading figure in French post-structuralist philosophy, is renowned for having developed deconstruction. His prolific writings treat both philosophical and literary works, and do so in various ways, of which deconstruction is the most philosophically significant. The… Read More ›
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Analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novels
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) remarked in the late 1930’s, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Novels
Although A Journal of the Plague Year is not Daniel Defoe’s first work of fiction, it offers an interesting perspective from which to examine all of the author’s novels. Purporting to be a journal, one man’s view of a period… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alice Adams’s Novels
The novels and short stories of Alice Adams are excellent studies in time and place. Adams captures the setting and surroundings and, more important, the dialogue, which is never forced. A native of Virginia, Adams is especially adept at drawing… Read More ›
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Analysis of Kōbō Abe’s Novels
Human loss, disappearance, allocation of responsibility, anguish, and futility stand out as the main issues that figure in Kōbō Abe’s (March 7, 1924 – January 22, 1993) writings. At first, Abe treated such matters mostly in a serious way. Gradually,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s Novels
Two dominant forces ruled Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s life: the Torah as the essence of a meaningful life and Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, as the ancestral homeland for the Jew. On a personal basis, Agnon integrated these passions into… Read More ›
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Analysis of E. M. Forster’s Novels
E. M. Forster’s (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) most systematic exposition of the novelist’s art, Aspects of the Novel, is no key to his own practice. Written three years after the publication of A Passage to India, the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Fyodor Dostoevski’s Novels
Fyodor Dostoevski’s (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) creative development is roughly divided into two stages. The shorter pieces, preceding his imprisonment, reflect native and foreign literary influences, although certain topics and stylistic innovations that became Dostoevski’s trademarks were already… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Bukowski’s Novels
Most of Charles Bukowski’s writing examines his life as a drunk, drifter, gambler, loner, and unemployed and unemployable creature of habit. As noted in many documentaries, biographies, and accounts of Bukowski’s life, however, he also had a gentle side. As… Read More ›
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Analysis of C. P. Snow’s Novels
Characterization is the foundation of C. P. Snow’s (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) fiction. While theme and idea, as one might expect from a writer as political and engagé as was Snow, are important to his work, and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Karel Capek’s Novels
Karel Capek (9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a philosophical writer par excellence regardless of the genre that he employed in a given work, but the form of long fiction in particular afforded him the amplitude to express complicated philosophical… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s Novels
The search for self and for autonomy is the underlying theme of most of Angela Carter’s ) ( 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), fiction. Her protagonists, usually described as bored or in some other way detached from their… Read More ›
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Analysis of Buchi Emecheta’s Novels
Buchi Emecheta’s (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) novels deal principally with the life experiences of Nigerian women, who are subordinated in an indigenous society deeply influenced by the Western values introduced by British colonists. Other Nigerian women, those… Read More ›
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Analysis of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Novels
The reader interested in understanding any of the works of Nikos Kazantzakis would do well to begin by reading Salvatores Dei: Asketike (1927; The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, 1960). In this short philosophical expostulation, Kazantzakis expresses succinctly his strange… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anita Brookner’s Novels
Anita Brookner (16 July 1928 – 10 March 2016) established her reputation as a novelist with four books published in rapid succession from 1981 to 1984. Written in austerely elegant prose, each of these four novels follows essentially the same… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Novels
The fictional world of Mario Vargas Llosa is one of complex novels, of murals of characters, of actions whose significance the reader must determine, of vast edifices that aspire to become total realities. Vargas Llosa’s vision of reality is consistently… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wole Soyinka’s Novels
Like other novelists in Africa during the years just before and after independence, Wole Soyinka faced the question of ethnic and cultural identity. The now notorious negritude movement, begun in the 1930’s, had attempted to promote a pan-African identity by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s Novels
Leo Tolstoy’s literary works may be viewed as repeated assaults on Romantic conventions. His view, expressed numerous times throughout his diary, was that such conventions blind both writer and reader to reality. Thus, his goal was to construct a new… Read More ›
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Analysis of Iris Murdoch’s Novels
A knowledge of Iris Murdoch’s (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) philosophical and critical essays is invaluable for the reader wishing to understand her fiction. Her moral philosophy, which entails a rejection of existentialism, behaviorism, and linguistic empiricism, informs… Read More ›