Literary consonance

Compare and Contrast The two stories A Secret Sorrow by Karen Van der Zee and A Sorrowful Woman by Gail Godwin can be seen to have contrasting qualities. Primarily, A Secret Sorrow conveys a cliché love story of a woman, Faye; who can’t have kids and is scared of being a disappointment to her soon to be husband, Kai. However, they work out their issues, adopt kids, and live happily ever, “in the low white ranch house under the blue skies of Texas…” (Zee 37). Second, A Sorrowful Woman is…

critical lens to the schools of criticism that he does not agree with. For example, he states “By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary- Marx’s, Freud’s, Foucault’s, Derrida’s, or whoever’s- to describe and to judge a work of literary art” (1). Using the formalist school of criticism, he is trying to denounce the importance of intertextual school of criticism. He does not want people to criticize reading, but it is still a part of the education system, and that it would…

When I took the AP Language and Composition course my junior year of high school, I scored a three on the exam. As a student who always enjoyed English and did well in the subject, this was a low point, but . However, I still loved literature and knewI still wanted to become an English major at college. That is how I ended up in Dr. Clermont-Ferrand’s “Introduction to English Studies” class. Looking back at my work throughout this course, I noticed that I have a slight preference in applying…

There are many literary devices writers throughout history have utilized. One of the most powerful, yet complicated literary device is irony. Irony occurs when what a reader expects to happen is the complete opposite of the actual outcome. Irony helps illustrate humor especially in the works “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor. “Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a framed narrative that tells the tale of Jim Smiley…

detached. It is as if it is the only way the narrator can deal with the tragedy is to become distant from what is happening. Frost uses many literary devices to make this poem striking. Immediately, allusion can be found in the title of the poem itself. Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea. Allusion is often taken from literary…

In literature, authors usually depict flat characters by using indirect or direct characterizations and don’t give them conflict. Rather depict the characters as uncomplex or simply uninteresting. However, flat characters can often be glimpsed over, but serves as a “magic casement” which reveals their true purpose in the main conflict of the story. These magic casements are revealed, specifically in Chinua Achebe’s contemporary novel, Things Fall Apart, follows the story of a headstrong clan…

The pathos and ethos of cultures are often discernable in literary narratives as expressions of the sentiment of approval or disapproval. Thus, the impact of literary narratives on cultures cannot be understated; the arts do impact and influence culture in both positive and negative ways. This is not a new phenomenon and can be observed in cultures as early as 6 Century B.C. and can be traced throughout human history. An example of this can be seen in Homer’s Odyssey, in which there are certain…

1.1 A Postcolonial Aesthetic? This thesis seeks to contribute to the dialogue on the postcolonial aesthetic, by using concepts raised in Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text (1975) as a frame, through which to interrogate the ostensibly thorny issue of aesthetics in postcolonial writing. The idea behind this thesis stems from a reading of Elleke Boehmer’s essay “A Postcolonial Aesthetic” (2010), in which she questions the viability of approaching postcolonial fiction through its “aesthetic,…

Is the use of a hand worth the loss of a life? In the poem “Out, Out--” by Robert Frost the speaker tells of a boy who uses a saw to cut stove length sticks of wood for a living. The boy ran his hand into a saw and instead of taking precautions to save his life he demanded that his hand be saved. As a result of these demands the boy not only loses his hand but also dies. Frost uses key imagery, foreshadowing, diction, and irony, to show that in certain circumstances holding onto something can…

In his article “The Resistance of Theory,” Paul de Man argues that literary theory is fundamentally resistant by exploring ideas around history, philosophy science, and aesthetics. He also uses the functions of language, both grammatically and semantically, to support his claim. Unlike previous theorists, de Man’s argument is more generally concerned with the reading of literary theory, rather than a theory that can be applied to a piece of literature. Despite his divergence from convention, de…