Critics basically agree to divide John Donne’s writing into two groups related to his life stages, his romantic, or love, poetry in the stage dating prior to 1615, and the spiritual poetry emanating from the time of his ordination in… Read More ›
Literature
Analysis of John Donne’s Batter My Heart
Critics feel fairly certain that one group of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets was published in 1633, a collection that included “Batter My Heart,” sometimes listed as “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God.” It gained fame as a prime example of… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast
John Dryden wrote his second ode (1697) in celebration of St. Cecilia’s Day, Alexander’s Feast; Or the Power of Music, 10 years after his first tribute, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. Set to music by Jeremiah Clarke, it became… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis
With Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 John Dryden published his first major nondramatic poem, and his last major poem utilizing the heroic quatrain format. In addition to its subtitle, The Year of Wonders, 1666, the work contained an… Read More ›
Analysis of George Herbert’s Affliction
George Herbert wrote five “Affliction” poems, all contained in his collection The Temple. The first of the series, while not essentially autobiographical, did grow from Herbert’s life and experiences. While the poem begins with positive aspects of the speaker’s life,… Read More ›
Analysis of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden’s publication of Absalom and Achitophel (1681) had a specific political motivation. He wrote the poem during the threat of revolution in England, connected to the so-called Popish plot and the move to exclude the reigning King Charles II’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s There’s a certain Slant of light
When Mabel Loomis Todd published this poem in the 1890 Poems under the rubric of nature poems, she set a precedent that would be followed by editors for more than half a century. Todd may have seen it as a… Read More ›
Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death
One of Dickinson’s most famous and widely discussed poems, Fr 479 appeared in the first 1890 edition of her poems, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson had given it the inappropriate title “The Chariot,” thinking, perhaps,… Read More ›
Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Religion and Literature
Another essay from that period in Eliot’s career as a social and literary critic when he was staking out the parameters of his conservative views, Religion and Literature was originally from a lecture organized by the Reverend V. A. Demant… Read More ›
Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Literature of Politics
First presented on April 19, 1955, as a lecture at a literary luncheon organized by the London Conservative Union, The Literature of Politics was later collected in Eliot’s last collection of prose, To Criticize the Critic, which was published posthumously… Read More ›
A Brief History of English Novels
To a greater extent than any other literary form, the novel is consistently and directly engaged with the society in which the writer lives and feels compelled to explain, extol, or criticize. The English novel, from its disparate origins to… Read More ›
Analysis of Edith Wharton’s Stories
Because many of Edith Wharton’s (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) characters and themes resemble those of Henry James, her work has sometimes been regarded as derivative of his. Each of these authors wrote a number of stories regarding… Read More ›
Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s Stories
Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) is uncharacteristic of her age. In writing about the pervasive disbelief in the Christian mysteries during modern times, O’Connor seems better suited to the Middle Ages in her rather old-fashioned and… Read More ›
Analysis of Bernard Malamud’s Stories
All Bernard Malamud’s (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) fiction seems based on a single affirmation: Despite its disappointments, horror, pain, and suffering, life is truly worth living. His work may be best understood in the context of mid-twentieth… Read More ›
Analysis of Franz Kafka’s Stories
Franz Kafka’s (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) stories are not about love or success. They do not leave the reader feeling comfortable. Writing was, for him, a necessity. On August 6, 1914, Kafka wrote in his diary: “My… Read More ›
Analysis of Guy de Maupassant’s Stories
Although his active literary career began in 1880 and lasted only ten years, Guy de Maupassant was nevertheless an extraordinarily productive writer whose short stories dealt with such diverse themes as war, prostitution, marital infidelity, religion, madness, cultural misunderstanding between… Read More ›
Analysis of Kate Chopin’s Stories
Until the 1970’s, Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was known best literarily, if at all, as a “local colorist,” primarily for her tales of life in New Orleans and rural Louisiana. Chopin manages in these stories (about twothirds of her total output)… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Stories
Any study of Ernest Hemingway’s (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) short stories must begin with a discussion of style. Reacting against the overblown, rhetorical, and often bombastic narrative techniques of his predecessors, Hemingway spent considerable time as a… Read More ›
Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stories
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s reading in American colonial history confirmed his basically ambivalent attitude toward the American past, particularly the form that Puritanism took in the New England colonies. Especially interested in the intensity of the Puritan-Cavalier rivalry, the Puritan inclination to… Read More ›
Analysis of Nikolai Gogol’s Stories
Nikolai Gogol (31 March 1809 – 4 March 1852) combines the consummate stylist with the innocent spectator, flourishes and flounces with pure human emotion, naturalism with delicate sensitivity. He bridges the period between Romanticism and realism in Russian literature. He… Read More ›
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