Alfred Young

Young’s book, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier, little was known about Deborah Sampson and the life she lead. The idea that Deborah Sampson had accomplished the male soldier charade was well known, however there was little documentation that detailed further into this masked soldier. Herman Mann, a budding journalist and fictional author, is the author of the only novel documenting Deborah Sampson’s achievements in a hybrid writing style of fiction and reality. Alfred Young, a distinguished professor of history at Northern Illinois University and senior research fellow at the Newberry Library, explores the exaggerated detailing of the female soldier and begins to construct a realistic timeline of Ms.Sampson’s life. Using knowledge of the time period’s social views and customs, Young is able to sort through the fabrications and the truth that lies within Mann’s book and frame the true events that formed who Deborah Sampson…

Alfred F. Young seeks to shed some light on the American Revolution by telling the life of George Robert Twelves Hewes, a shoemaker, who fought for a better future in hopes of providing for his family. However how did a poor shoemaker end up being an essential character in several important events during the revolution? As well as, why had Hewes been granted a place in history when the majority of people from his social class have been forgotten? Young “discovered Hewes through an inordinately…

that it was not suggestive in any way. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a prominent author in the Victorian era. By the age of forty-one, Tennyson became the most popular poet of the Victorian era. “The Lady of Shalott” is a famous poem written by Tennyson that expresses a great deal of isolation. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lonely “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson uses the characteristics…

Complete Isolation Throughout history, art and poetry have seemed to begin to share some of the same characteristics. Poetry is another form of art, and the art itself allows you to visualize the setting and feelings of the poem. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem and Waterhouse’s painting, both titled “The Lady of Shalott,” depict the lady not experiencing reality and only seeing life through a reflection. Her life is lived in complete isolation, and remains that way even after she departs from the…

that we were ever young; / It is to add, immured/ In the hot prison of the present, month/ To month with weary pain” (Arnold 21-25). Similar to Dorian Gray, the speaker would do anything to stay young and beautiful, aware of the better life one can live in society. During the late Victorian Era, there was an immense pressure put upon people to maintain their beauty. Aestheticism was an ongoing movement where individuals only had a value in society if they had a youthful appearance. Pressure to…

people, convinced it is the truth. Unaware of the horrors, the men will go in with a positive attitude. After their experience on the battlefield, they will leave a different person having experience first hand the horrors and destructions of war. Others will enter from a draft; they will not want to fight for their country. Instead they want to make it out alive. Seeing the horror invokes the savagery in man for the one goal of survival. Different reasons for entering the war results in…

improve society. During the romanticism period, artists, authors, etc. took a different route, then how it was in the Neoclassical era. Artists chose to go in a more emotional, creative style for their creations. These artists also chose to display more symbolic and exotic subjects (i.e. paintings, books, poems). One piece of art that displays these characteristics is The Lady of Shalott, created by John William Waterhouse. John William Waterhouse was an Italian artist who painted mainly…

In the poem, “Ulysses,” author Lord Tennyson writes about the king of Ithaca, Ulysses, who had fought in the Trojan War, and had so deeply enjoyed his many travels that he is bored of ruling over his island home, and once again yearns to explore the world. Tennyson writes this poem in the form of a dramatic monologue, and by using this technique the reader is told details of the main characters life and personality through his speech. This is also accomplished through the way the poem itself is…

Poetry is a journey into a new world of language that leaves readers fascinated. Poets take their time to intermingle different forms of figurative language to present their topic in a way that takes time to understand. By using rhetorical devices a poet is capable of taking short stanzas and making them into a work of art that can leave the reader guessing the intended meaning for generations. Well written poems contain various types of rhetorical devices such as imagery, metaphors, similes,…

The Lady of Shalott: Tantalus’s Daughter Alfred Lord Tennyson is a Victorian poet who seldom strays out of narrative territory. His poems are stories, and “The Lady of Shalott” is no exception. The Lady of Shalott, for whom the poem is titled after, is a heartbreaking heroine who spends most of her life locked away in a tower, only to finally emerge and softly depart from the world. In the short span of four parts, her tale spans the themes of dreams, imprisonment, misogyny, and death. Not only…