Herman Melville

Poe’s works are influential today as they are studied all over the world and used as the basis for the subgenre of the Dark Romantics and what the era of stories and poems really represented. Not only Edgar Allan Poe, but Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville were the main writers during this century that focused works madness, humanity, and nature. Poe seemed to embrace the genre and type of storyline the best as his works always created a similar feeling or impression on the reader. Poe…

Hey guys! Diana here, and today I want to discuss the importance of representation. Only in recent years have queer characters and relationship wiggled onto the big screen. After decades of the queer community being shoved aside for straight story lines, we are finally starting to see our own blossoming in the limelight. But it isn't all sunshine and rainbows (pardon the pun). As a community, we still face a lot of problems when it comes to media, primarily not being represented at all, and when…

The Enlightenment may have brought us the ideas of democracy, and the Industrial Revolution may have eventually led to the technological marvel that is the cell phone, but equally important is the movement sparked in their opposition. Through the minds of Locke, Montesquieu, Whitney and Watt, the modern ages of government and technology were born, but not all at the time were completely in favor of these ideas. In fact, there was an artistic movement that began as a response to these glorious…

“The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood” (“John Brown’s Last Prophecy”). “I have only a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for” (“John Brown Quotes”). John Brown was known for two things in his lifetime. Brown is known for his passion to end slavery, but also the violent way that he did it (“John Brown Biography”). Coming from a large family himself, Brown…

of justice? What if this very issue escalates to arguments between groups? Or between nations? It then becomes apparent that our sense of justice is rather moot. In fact, this is exemplified well in a nineteenth century novel, Billy Budd, by Herman Melville, where the personification of innocence,…

Greenleaf Whittier James Fenimore Cooper Washington Irving William Cullen Bryant New England Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Margaret Fuller High Romanticism Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville Edgar Allan Poe Early romantic writers Washington Irving (1783-1859) The first American writer internationally acclaimed, most famous for his book The Sketch Book (1819-1820) including - “Rip Van Winkle” - “The Legend of…

One of America’s major writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His most notorious ancestor was John Hathorne, a judge at the Salem Witch trials in 1692, which adds to the understanding of the tragic fate present in Hawthorne’s short stories. The “w” in his last name, obviously not present in his ancestor’s, was not established until he began publishing. But in his childhood, Hawthorne suffered a leg injury leaving him immobile, sparking his interest in…

When considering the relationship between law and literature, one might come to the conclusion that the intersection between the disciplines is one of interrogation. Literature enables man to ask questions of the letter of the law without endangering himself. If this scenario were to happen, how would this be handled legally? Is the legal decision just and/or moral? It enables man to venture into the psyche of the legally accused and say, “Is this man guilty? Does guilt imply evil? What if I…

The inferiority of black people was one of Hawthorne’s presumptions that were indisputable to him just as, after several years of living abroad, he satisfactorily confirms and is comforted by an anti-Semitic repugnance he had always felt for black people. He once wrote down his opinion for the New England Magazine in 1835, ''performing their moderate share of the labors of life without being harassed by its cares.'' (Historical Journal of Massachusetts) In 1836 for the American Magazine of…

The Civil War was a pivotal moment in the United States’s history being a high point in a sectional discord that’s affects have continued to be evident in several issues in today’s society. As most wars, there’s at least two decidedly divided and biased sides to the story. With two perspectives coming from one country America had to decide how they wanted to remember this war. Being such a complex dispute with two very distinct viewpoints, each side had their personal view on the reasons for the…