Sidney Crosby

any lover of poetry must consider a perverse and wrong-headed attack.’ Sidney identifies several charges which make up this ‘wrong-headed attack’; that there are ‘many other more fruitful knowledges’ than poetry, that poetry ‘is the mother of lies,’ and that poetry ‘is the nurse of abuse.’ These perceptions confronting literature were legitimate beliefs in Elizabethan England and serve as pretext for Sidney penning Defence. Sidney opposes these contemporary opinions by challenging the hierarchy…

The reason or theories behind Shakespeare focusing on topics of love, friendship and marriage in his sonnets “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s dream. (Goodreads). William Shakespeare’s works, especially his sonnets, namely sonnet 30, sonnet 55 and sonnet 116 included ideas of love, friendship and marriage. Topics of such, are important to Shakespeare because of what went on in…

Both Oscar Wilde and Christina Rossetti present the attractiveness of wrongdoing and fear of its consequences in both similar and different ways within An Ideal Husband and Rossetti’s Selected Poems. Rossetti and Wilde consider the attractiveness of wrongdoing under different themes. Wilde looks more at a political side of wrongdoing, whereas Rossetti considers wrongdoing in a religious sense. Mrs. Cheveley is a character that is very attracted to wrongdoing; this is evident in An Ideal…

A sonnet is a poem usually consisting of fourteen lines linked by a regular rhythm and one of two mayor rhyme schemes - that of either an Italian or Shakespearean sonnet (Prescott, 2010). Such forms will be analyzed in the works of two of the greatest poets of all time – John Donne and William Shakespeare. They are worthy canonical figures that are still acknowledged and studied today, were influenced by cultural and historical features of the era in which they wrote and included aesthetics…

The characters portrayed by Browning in his dramatic monologues are various and often rise from the world of the Italian Renaissance. From the artist Fra Lippo Lippi who has become a monk without his will, to Andrea del Sarto, a great painter who has subordinated his art to the demands of an exploitative wife, Browning manages to reveal the true value of art. The pictures of great artists blended with historical detail are embodied in his poems. Vasari’s Lives of the artistsis the source of the…

Self-knowledge is defined as the understanding of oneself or one’s own motives or characters. In the tragedy of King Lear, death is a common factor as is most tragedies written by Shakespeare. Throughout King Lear, many of the characters lacked self-knowledge when the play began. Due to the circumstances at large, many of the characters in the play either began to change for the chance of surviving, such like Edgar. Other characters like Lear began to change, but some characters remained “true…

The play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose should be read in schools. The play takes place during the 1950s, and is about a jury comprised of white males. In the trial, the defendant, a teenage boy, is on trial for murdering his father after he claims his father abused him. Like everyone, all the jurors have some prejudices about the defendant and opinions of the case before they begin to deliberate. While these twelve men try to reach a unanimous decision, some jurors are unwilling to change…

Standing up alone for what you believe is right is a hard thing for anyone to do, adults in a jury or teenagers in high school. Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose details the deliberation of a jury over the fate of a sixteen year old boy accused of killing his father. When the jury first attempts to take a vote on whether the verdict should be innocent guilty, the vote is eleven to one in favor of guilty with Juror Eight standing alone on the side of innocence. He then proceeds to prove to the…

The film 12 Angry Men is a dramatization of twelve men that serve as a jury in a trial for a teenage boy accused of murdering his father. The film explores the complications that may cloud the judgment of everyday men as they deliberate the guilt or exoneration of the defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt. The decision must be unanimous for a guilty verdict will result in a mandatory death sentence. The jury of twelve is tasked with the ethical responsibility of patiently reviewing the…

The human condition questions human morality, the capacity to communicate deceit and the capacity to feel which is manifested in the perception of authentic or deceptive relationships, reflection and realisation and the altering of an individual’s identity. Shakespeare’s King Lear explores the human condition through characters of the play which give insight of the aspects of humanity. Shakespeare’s universality of concepts of deceit, realisation and identity provides relevance to the modern era…