Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature

Virgil wrote his epic during a period of civil war and political and moral chaos in Rome after the fall of the Republic. Accordi ...

deaths of the two lovers apparently induced. Despite the role of fortuity in the tragic outcome, the more defining accountabilit ...

which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and i ...

ick Douglass’s personal freedom and, second, a restriction on the positive freedom for education. Since freedom must correspond ...

road; London, Jack: caLL oF the wiLd, the; Morrison, Toni: beLoved; Mukherjee, Bharati: MiddLeMan and other stories, the; Paine, ...

beth (1603) and Carson McCullers’s The heart is a LoneLy hunter (1940). Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is a journey by the aud ...

in Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit. As a result, noth- ing is seen as futile in the end; there are salvation and hope that every sin ...

authority figures, is an act of choosing to perform a gender. One of her most controversial theories is that individuals only pe ...

control of women’s sexuality. For example, Othello believes Iago’s lies about his wife Desdemona’s chas- tity because Othello is ...

———. Sex and Destiny. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porte ...

general, most agree that the opening stage is one of denial, followed by a period of anger, followed by some kind of depression ...

of the theme itself by acting, as a form of therapy to readers who might be in mourning themselves. See also Chaucer, Geoffrey: ...

then the guilt we feel due to original sin is com- pounded by our need to repay Jesus for his sacrifice. Indeed, religion has hi ...

after he is blinded by the fire at Thornfeld Hall. His guilt stems from his locking away Bertha, as well as from his deception o ...

human ability. Nietzsche, a 19th-century German philosopher, wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) that in the modern world, Go ...

“A&P,” Sammy, the supermarket cashier who tells the story, abruptly quits his job when his manager is disrespectful to three ...

of how a worldview can shape one’s actions, often in profound and life-affirming ways. In Greek mythology, “Hope” is part of the ...

grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one’s moves accordingly” (11). The Czech playwright and essayist Václav Havel defi ...

sense of hopelessness, on the other hand, makes it nearly impossible—and seemingly pointless—for groups or individuals to contin ...

Rebecca Harding: LiFe in the iron MiLLs; Dickens, Charles: Great expectations; Frank, Anne: anne Frank: diary oF a younG GirL; H ...