The Importance of Being Ernest is one of the finest humorous plays to have premiered at the turn of twentieth century. Reviewers of the play, then and now, have universally classified as a ‘farce’ and a ‘social satire’. And this assessment is quite accurate. The focus of the play on street-smart humor was so pronounced…
Category: Classics
Pride and Prejudice: Critical Analysis
A critical appreciation and a literary analysis involving plot, point of view, character, setting, time and style in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the most popular novels in English literature. It continues to remain as popular today as it was upon its release in the United…
My Modest Proposal: A parody on Jonathan Swift’s classic essay
Ladies and Gentlemen, as you are well aware, our country is going through one of its worst economic crisis. Economists have termed it the Great Recession, next only in acuteness to the Great Depression of the early twentieth century. Unemployment has been at unprecedented levels since the 2008 Wall Street crash. And for those who…
Ramayana and Shakuntala: A Comparison
Both Ramayana and Shakuntala are great works of artistic and philosophical merit. Originally written in Sanskrit close to two millennia ago, their authorship and date of origin are both speculative and mythologized. Yet, these ambiguities do not detract from their unique contributions to Eastern philosophy and literature. Both are great dramatic narratives and are integral…
Romantic elements v Victorian elements in Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights is a key text in the English literary canon. The first and last novel of the short-lived life and career of Emily Bronte, the novel lends itself to analysis through various disciplines such as psychoanalysis, race, gender and cultural studies. For example, it could be read under the feminist framework…
Edgar Allan Poe’s Eleonora: Summary & Analysis
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most illustrious litterateurs to have graced the art in the United States of America. His short stories and poems were enjoyed by the public during his own life time as they are still relished posthumously. His two greatest artistic gifts are his perceptiveness of psychological nuances and his…
Comparing Percy Bysshe Shelley’s main purpose in ‘Alastor’ with that of William Wordsworth’s ‘Resolution and Independence’
A quest for intimate truths about nature is at the center of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Alastor, first published in 1816. This 720 line long poem has strong allusions to Roman mythology, starting with its title Alastor. The poem is about the adventure in search of truth of a poet, whose actions are inspired by…
Theological Inquiry: Night by Elie Wiesel
The Holocaust is without doubt the greatest human tragedy of the twentieth century. The literature surrounding Holocaust speak of the profound alienation of personality and loss of divine faith experienced by those affected. Those who survived to record these experiences are both lucky and unlucky. They are unlucky in that they had to continue to…
Compare & Contrast: Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce Et Decrum Est and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
The most painful episodes of twentieth century history are its wars. Starting with the losses of the First World War in 1914 the Second World War was even more catastrophic. Then followed the theatre of the Cold War, in which the American military intervened far and wide in the globe. Notable examples include the Korean…
How does Aeneas’s piety and sense of duty change as the Aeneid unfolds?
In Virgil’s great epic poem Aeneid, the adventures of Aeneas are registered to create a powerful human drama that still retains its force two millennia past. Aeneas, the hero of the epic, is born of a divine union between the mortal Anchises and the goddess Venus. Believed to have been written circa 20 BC, this…