Diana Bianchi and Catia Nannoni present an intriguing discovery of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber in their article, “Back to the Future: The Journey of The Bloody Chamber in Italy and France.” Within it, they reveal intricacies and challenges involved in translating literature into foreign languages, explaining that it requires the synergy of “the source…
Category: Critical Analyses
Comparative Manifestations of Chaos in the Dynamic Narratives of To the Lighthouse and The Sound and The Fury
In his 1907 autobiographical narrative, The Education of Henry Adams, Adams observes an emergent scientific and philosophical tenet growing in popularity among his contemporary generation of scholars.1 In his own summation, it claims “Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man” (Adams xxxi). Imbedded in this statement is a notion that…
Critical Article Response: Padma’s Role in the Adaptations of Midnight’s Children
Ana Cristina Mendes, from the University of Lisbon in Portugal, presents a fascinating argument on the diverse media adaptations of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Her article, published in 2016 and titled “Padma or No Padma: Audience in the Adaptations of Midnight’s Children,” opens with Rushdie’s opinion of adaptation. Mendes explains that he sees it necessary…
Quasi-Symmetry in A Passage To India
There are moments in literature when the portrayed symmetry is perfect and complete, revealing an ideal image or message to the world. Yet there are others, invariably, when symmetry is only partial and images appear merely quasi-symmetric, revealing a message of its own. In these moments, where there is an evident aim toward perfection, but…
Protestant and Catholic Providence in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
William Shakespeare possessed a remarkable ability to vigilantly observe conflict, comprehending the eminent pain on every side of it, and express multiple perspectives through his interpretation. He demonstrates this empathetic perspective within each of his tragic plays so that the audience can experience the agony of the protagonists, and at the same time, completely understand…
Unpleasant Imagery and Voice in Jonathan Edwards’ Sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Jonathan Edwards was a man of deep religious conviction. His theological and philosophical opinions display in him a desire to offer the world controversy and a depth of insight uncommon at the time. This desire is particularly evident in his work, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This text was originally presented as…
Symmetry and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw
Symmetry is a difficult term to justly define when dealing with subjects other than physical imagery and visual experience. In such examples, it is merely the matching of one image to another close beside. However, in literature, philosophy, and thought, it becomes a much more complicated subject to identify. Such is the case with the…
Distorted and Distant Hope: Denial versus Acceptance in Tennyson’s “Mariana” and “Tears, Idle Tears”
In the wake of his closest friend, Arthur Hallam’s passing and even prior to it, Alfred, Lord Tennyson created many literary works that either centered on a theme of loss and grief or that held hints of it subtly beneath their surfaces. From this textual focal point, Tennyson demonstrated not just a struggle to accept…
Lady Bertilak’s Temptations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Temptation is evidently a common theme that appears throughout medieval writing. Reasons for this frequency likely reside in the influence of the Christian church—the clergy’s emphasis on humanity’s sin and shortcomings to create for the church dependency and revenue through indulgences. It could also be representative of the value system at the time. Knights were…
Edenic Marriage Bonds in Frankenstein
There is a longstanding conception, although deformed and reformed many times throughout history, that woman is the completion of man, the fairer, gentler part, without which mankind would only be half of what it was made to be. John Milton’s Paradise Lost expounds on the biblical creation of humanity, underlining within the text that God…