In Ashley’s critique of “The Grapes of Wrath,” he states that Steinbeck’s greatest work finally suited his greatest limitation, that he is not a great thinker, nor are his characters. He supports his opinion with a quote from a great American literary critic, Edmund Wilson, that Stienbeck specializes “not in those aspects of humanity in ...
In the article Character and Plot in the Antigone by Norman W. DeWitt, he argues that Antigone is manifested as a martyr; however a martyr cannot be a hero. DeWitt notes that Antigone is ready to accept the consequences of defying her king Creon. In fact she views her death as a reward, by looking ...
If you are college student, at some point you may be called upon to write an English term paper utilizing a specific type of literary theory as your thematic foundation. You may already be familiar with some of these critical theory terms and techniques: formalism, feminism, reader-response, new historicism, psychoanalytic, etc. One of the most ...
Students of literature know all about the different schools of criticism. However, most people outside the field hear “literary criticism” and they think that this is the act of picking apart literature to say that it is bad or the writer unskilled. Not the case. In brief, literary criticism is simply the analysis of literature, ...
Even if you have never read a poem by T.S. Eliot you will have read something influenced by him. He is perhaps the most influential poet of the last century. The innovations that Elliot brought to poetry caused a dramatic change to virtually every art form. This includes novels, films, and poetry. T.S. Eliot worked ...
“Kyrie, it is Zeus’ anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonize the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic, but my diagnosis would be that politicians ...
Edgar Allan Poe was the master of horror and suspense. As a fan of modern to ancient poetry, I’ve read a lot poems and yet I still go back to Poe. I remember reading him as a nine year old kid and his poems were so imaginative and dark. So my favorite poem is one ...
The hands of many serious poets graced pages of paper over the centuries. Their use of formal words convey universal truths and invoke deep feelings. Philip Larkin is not one of them. Philip Larkin achieves a similar, if not a more profound effect, using a different approach. Philip Larkin uses exaggeration to emphasize the focuses ...
