Literature

In "The Merry Guide," the speaker follows a memory-ghost of himself as a youth as he dramatizes his walks through the countryside.

A master of the versanelle, Persian poet Saadi, also widely known as Saadi Shīrāzī, portrays colorful imagery, while dramatizing philosophical views, often emphasizing a moral.

Shakespeare Sonnet 43 finds the speaker musing on the transformative powers of his poetic muse. She can turn night into day, while ordinary vision fails to inspire.

The speaker is contemplating the unified nature of art and artist, as he addresses his talent, personifying that talent as a lover who has tried to pursue his mistress, the poem. His conclusion offers him the comfort he continues to seek.

"The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue" is the tale of a classic Faustian bargain, but with a twist. The hidden and true meaning of the story is that the deal with the devil ends. Revisit five quotes from this bestselling novel to see for yourself that Luc has a change of heart.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a contemporary romantic love story with gothic vibes set in a fictional version of Trinidad. It is arguably one of the best romances in fiction in 2022, and it is a debut novel.

In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe published an essay titled ‘The Philosophy of Composition,’ where he discusses his writing technique. Many have disagreed with and debated the contents of this essay.

Noted primarily for his novels, Richard Wright also did some dabbling in photography and poetry. He seemed especially drawn to haiku.

The late Rod McKuen's musical and entertainment accomplishments are undermined by his claim to the title of "poet"; his "poems" exemplify the work of a poetaster—not a poet. Still he success in the music field remains stellar and undeniable.

In sonnet 41, the speaker is addressing his poem, dramatizing the differences between true poetic qualities and poetic license to create. He also declares his unity with his art, as he makes a promise to his future readers to remain genuine.

A list of nine Satanic readings to help understand the philosophies, impact, and activities of The Satanic Temple.

"A Poison Tree" appears in "Songs of Innocence and Experience" published in 1789. This nearly childlike poem deals with the dangers of suppressed anger in relationships.

Sonnet 40 continues the hiatus from unity taken by the speaker that he declared in sonnet 39, but instead of praising the poem, he appears to be chiding it.

Louisa May Alcott's favourite author was the German poet Goethe. Not only was she inspired by Goethe's plots and used them in novels such as "Little Women", but Goethe was one of the primary models for Jo's husband, Professor Bhaer.

Elisavietta Ritchie's "Sorting Laundry" provides an entertaining look at a mundane household chore, while accomplishing a tribute to her love for her spouse. Terrence Winch's speaker plays with the notion that things in the past were better, when people felt safe unlike the paranoid present.

Since being discovered as a literary fraudster, Kent Johnson has become prolific in attempting to create plausible deniability; he has never admitted to the hoax he tried to pull off with the American Poetry Review back in 1996.

In sonnet 39, the speaker is dramatizing a division between himself and his poem, in order to think lovingly about the value of the poem without slipping into solipsism.

In Sonnet 38, the speaker is delineating a fine distinction between his talent and his "Muse" and essentially manages to create a useful tenth muse, not to add to the original nine Muses in The Theogony but to work to preserve his own poetic legacy.

Hailed as the most important nonsense poem in the English language, the poem, Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" serves to exemplify how language works and how it revitalizes itself.

The speaker of all the Shakespeare sonnets has honed a skill in praising his own talent while appearing to remain humble.

The speaker in sonnet 83 again offers a tribute to his poetry, as he dramatizes the nature of poetry cosmetics pitted against profound insight and inspiration.

Sonnet 81 offers a glowing tribute to the speaker’s poems. He often extols the virtue of his own poetry because he is certain it will live long after he is gone.

Addressing his muse, the speaker professes that his art will continue to be infused with the permanent beauty and spiritual strength that the heavenly muse provides.

The speaker in sonnet 80 is once again examining the nature of his most important subject, love in regard to his talent, as he recognizes the intervention of not only the muse, but also the Divine Muse or Spirit.

Sonnet 34 dramatizes its subject, extending a metaphor of weather with sun and clouds and with the troughs and crests that appear in the always evolving tumult of the speaker’s writing ability.

In sonnet 61, the speaker has found that his muse is playing coy once again, and he finds it difficult to sleep, wondering where the muse is, as he poses three questions only he can answer.

The speaker in sonnet 78 addresses his muse with appreciation for her ever constant influence and power that elevates his art above lesser artists.

Sonnet 33 offers an extended metaphor, dramatizing the phenomenon of clouds hiding the sun. The sun represents the speaker’s muse; the clouds are lulls in inspiration, as the writer faces another bout of writer’s block, but still manages to pull off a brilliant little drama, despite that malady.

Again addressing his muse, the speaker in sonnet 125 concludes that despite his dedication to poetry creation, all he has to give his muse is his own soul.

The speaker in sonnet 76 explores and dramatizes the fact that he always writes about one subject: his writing talent, which he calls his love.

In this Pudd'nhead Wilson book review, I examine Mark Twain's depiction of life in a small Missouri town on the Mississippi River in the early 1800s. I also analyze Twain's use of humor and satire in confronting aristocracy, racism, slavery, and new technology.

Dickinson closely observed and investigated her surroundings; she also keenly examined her own feelings then dramatized those feelings in poems. In "There's a certain Slant of light," her speaker is infusing melancholy into her perception of light streaming through a window on a winter afternoon.

Emily Dickinson's "A Bird came down the Walk" is one of the poet's many fun poems loaded with clever plays on words, making a keen observation that serves to remind the reader of images stored in memory.

Sonnet 75 finds the speaker returning to contemplating his considerable talent as well as his belovèd muse who nourishes his inspiration in creating his sonnet dramas. But he also bemoans the dual nature of the thinking process that is sometimes fertile, other times quite dry.

Sonnet 74 reveals the speaker’s awareness that the triune nature of the human body’s composition and that nature’s relationship to art creation, as he closes out the theme on life’s brevity.

The speaker of John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Mystic's Christmas" understands fully the meaning of Christmas and the nature and soul-significance of Christ Consciousness.

The speaker in sonnet 73 is employing three different metaphors—a tree, a day, and a fire—to describe the effect that a temporary lack of inspiration exerts on the speaker's ability to create his little dramas.

The speaker/poet addresses his poem again, creating a drama about his death and advising the poem not to advertise the his merit after he has departed because he wants the emphasis to remain upon his works not his biography.

Emily Dickinson's masterful poem resembles a sculpture of grief; the poet has metaphorically carved out of the rock of pain a remarkable statue of the body of suffering.

Sonnet 68 is a companion piece to sonnet 67, continuing the theme of authentic art vs. the artificial.

In Shakespeare sonnet 32, the speaker seems more humble than usual about his poems, even as he creatively and colorfully personifies a sonnet, giving it the ability to read. The speaker is musing on the future of his body of work, speculating about its ability to remain relevant in a changing world

The 20th century literary fad that became the Modernist movement produced four major poets who straddled the time line between tradition and Modernism, yet nevertheless managed to help usher in the budding movement of Postmodernism.

In sonnet 9, the speaker queries the young man about another possible reason for his remaining single: does he fear leaving some poor woman a widow?

The speaker is elucidating and dramatizing the difference between the inner and outer qualities that constitute the human personality, with implications for the healing nature of art.

In sonnet 37, the speaker is addressing his poem. He is exploring the ways in which his art, particularly his poetry creation, enriches his life. His sonnets enhance his joy in life and afford him pride of accomplishment, somewhat as a child would do.

In sonnet 82, the speaker is addressing his favorite subject which is "love," as he dramatizes the superior nature that this subject offers to his art.

In 14th century Europe, the Catholic Church stood at the height of its corruption, which would soon be challenged in the 1500s by the Reformation wrought by Martin Luther. Yet before that, Geoffry Chaucer, the father of English literature, used his magnum opus to reveal this rampant corruption.

The two central ideas of one of Fydor Dostoyevsky's celebrated novels are eponymic, crime, and punishment. Yet, a third critical arc of the story can lead us to reexamine Dostoyevsky's novel in the light of Christian symbols. So thus what if the novel was titled Crime and Punishment and Redemption?

Modern audiences are most familiar with Walt Disney's family-friendly versions of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, but the original versions featured child abuse, extreme violence, and anti-semitism. Here are some examples.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most well-known of T. S. Eliot's works. It's reflective of era of New Criticism in the early 20th century.