The Rape of the Epic
Alexander Pope’s The Rape of Lock is a work of literature that does an excellent job of exercising the genre known as mock-epic. Pope opens up with a very comical preface in his letter to Mrs. Arabella...
View ArticleWhat is love?
What exactly is this emotion that everyone refers to as “love”? Is it performing over-the-top tasks to prove your affections? Is it poetry and love letters? Is it winning the fight? Is is giving up all...
View ArticleRole Reversal
Henry Fielding’s picaresque novel, Joseph Andrews, is a satirical survey of social corruption. He focuses much on exploiting the social vices and hypocrisy of the upper class in England. In order to...
View ArticleGulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels is a very important satire, both at the time it was written and today. Though there are specific details about the politics of the time in which it was written (like the way...
View ArticleJoseph Andrews as a Hero
In Henry Fielding’s novel Joseph Andrews, we are presented with a character that shares a name with the novel and is assumed to be the hero of the story. The question must be raised though, is he truly...
View ArticleA not so odd couple
After reading Beowulf over for the second time, I could not help but notice the similarities between Grendel and John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost. When the grandiose Heorot is initially...
View ArticleEarly Feminism
In the Tragedy of Miriam, the chorus is used as a voice of opinion that is not necessarily the voice of the text. At the end of Act 4, the chorus is condemning Mariam’s behavior because she does not...
View ArticleFree Will vs. Obedience
When God created Man, He gave them free will. He would not force man to obey Him and remain passive because then man would be useless and vain, and God would not know if man’s faith, love, and...
View ArticleThis post is about nothing.
The term “nothing” signifies emptiness or a lack of. In King Lear, however, this word creates a theme that becomes meaningful to the play and is especially seen throughout in Act One. For instance,...
View ArticleThe Meaning of Resurrecting Adonis
Adonis is an ancient Greek god, so his garden in The Faerie Queen would be given pagan qualities. Yet Adonis is not just some random Greek god. This god was originally mortal and died only to be...
View ArticleThe Devil May Not Be As Bad of A Guy As You Would Think
Believe it or not, it was the Adam Sandler film Little Nicky that first showed the devil to me in a different light then what I was used to. The devil is supposed to be some great evil beast who...
View ArticleRape or Rape?
Rape is the act of having sex with somebody by force without their consent and usually through violent action. Rape has taken on that meaning in modern times, but rape used to also mean to take away....
View ArticleBastard
Edmund brings up a serious point in the second scene of the first act of King Lear. Do bastard children have as much right to somebody’s lineage as those who are legitimate? For royalty, it is hard...
View Articlewhat’s in a gender?
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20 seems to compare men and women in ways that almost equate them, using phrases like “master-mistress of my passion.” Shakespeare also uses wordplay, most notably saying that...
View ArticleSay what you mean.
In Elizabeth Cary’s “The Tragedy of Mariam,” at least two conflicting views on the autonomy of women are presented and unevenly supported. Mainly, we have Mariam, arguably the heroine, who is faithful...
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