The three books J.R.R. Tolkien has written about his imaginary world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, have a common element. In all thre& books, he presents the characters and their adventures within an historical framework which he has structured according to the four principles of Christian history: periodization, universality, apocalypse, and providence. While this historical perspective serves to give his fantasized world "an inner consistence of reality," it also frames one of the main themes of his stories: the relationship between Divine Providence and free will in a world containing good and evil forces. Although there is no mention of a creator in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien does provide countless allusions to the presence of providence. Furthermore, Gandalf, the wizard, is an agent of providence and influences other characters and events to a certain extent. he does not have total control over anyone or anything, however, for Tolkien has taken great care to establish the free will of Frodo and the other characters. And while the theme of providence revolves around Gandalf, the theme of free will centers upon the Ring of Power that the evil Sauron wishes to use to destroy or enslave all of the creatures of Middle-earth. To prevent Sauron from achieving his ends, Frodo must destroy the hing, and his will is consequently put to the test, a test which he ultimately fails. It is this do-or-die situation on which Tolkien focuses the full light of both themes, and it is the resulting happy ending in which Tolkien achieves what he believes to be the aesthetic mark of excellence, "eucatastrophe," for a fairy story.

Although many critics have dealt with their general impressions of the character of Eve or have traced specific passages concerning her to the Bible or to rabbinical tradition, no one critic has made a detailed study of the way in which Milton portrays Eve from prelapsarian innocence through the fall to her ultimate reconciliation with Adam and with God. This study is concerned with Milton's complete portrait of Eve and with the way in which he uses the themes of women's inferiority, of the hierarchy of nature, and of the virtue of reason over passion to explain the fall of man. These three themes are reflected in certain images with which Milton consistently surrounds Eve and which are used with variations to illustrate her weaknesses and to foreshadow the fall and its aftermath. The method of this study has been to trace Milton's use of these images and themes throughout Paradise Lost and to support observations with contemporary scholarship.

In the consideration of most critics and scholars. Middlemarch by George Eliot is a catalog of the Victorian era, depicting with clarity the concerns of the period as they appeared in all levels of social, economic, and political life. Although the form of the book is that of the novel, dealing primarily with the development of characters and their relationships, the author includes a sufficient number of references to contemporary political events to merit in-depth study of the purpose of these references. This paper locates and explains the references to contemporary political events in Middlemarch, it discusses the ways in which Eliot works the various references into the overall work and their contribution to the action and characterizations, and it draws some conclusions regarding the view of Middlemarch as a representative political or historical novel of the period. Any study of Victorian literature must include some discussion of the background provided by the times. In a paper dealing with the political elements of a novel. this aspect of research is particularly important. To aid the reader in understanding Eliot's use of politics. Chapter 1 explains the political set-up in effect during the years covered by the action of Middlemarch and the events generated either by that situation or by efforts to alter the arrangement. The novel itself provides the point of focus in Chapter II in determining Eliot's purpose for using political events. Each reference is studied to find what contribution it makes to the development of the story. Several events, such as the Reform Bill of 1832 and Catholic Emancipation, are referred to repeatedly; these running allusions are examined to see how they pertain to the overall idea of the novel. Various critical and scholarly works on Middlemarch, George Eliot, and the Victorian period are utilized in Chapter III to reach a conclusion regarding the novel's right to be considered a valid political or historical novel of the times. This determination rests on other factors, including comparison with other political and historical literature of the period, both by George Eliot and by other authors.

An examination of Conrad's life will provide one with insight into the revelation of his women characters. The following novels and short stories, investigated in this study, will reveal Conrad's portrayal of the woman, her characteristics and associated imagery, and her role in his works to unveil his all-encompassing philosophy of life: Almayer's Folly, The Arrow of Gold, Chance, Lord Jim, Nostromo, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rescue, The Rover, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, Victory, "Amy Foster," "The Brute," "The End of the Tether," "Freya of the Seven Isle," "The Heart of Darkness," "The Idiots," "The Planter of Malata," "The Return," "A Smile of Fortune," and "Tomorrow.

In reading or seeing Antony and Cleopatra, several clear dualities emerge. The first is the polarity between Egypt and Rome as different settings for the action. Rome is cold, mechanical, rational, and businesslike, whereas Egypt is lush, erotic, exotic, and langourous. Antony is torn between the two worlds, and this split of loyalty and interest helps to make the second duality of the play, that of the personalities and attitudes of the main characters. Antony and Cleopatra are both seen in double perspective--as lustful, self-gratifying sinners and as lovers in a truly transcendent sense of love. Both perspectives are important to the play, and the tension between them is never entirely resolved. Finally, the tone of the play is neither purely tragic nor purely comic, but is a mixture of both. Antony and Cleopatra was written just before the period of the great tragi-comic romances, and may be seen as the first of these, or a transition piece between tragedy and tragi-comedy, rather than as a pure tragedy. These three polarities, Rome-Egypt, Antony and Cleopatra as lustful epicures vs. Antony and Cleopatra the world's greatest lovers, and the mixture of tragedy and comedy, form the framework of Antony and Cleopatra and make it one of the richest and most varied of plays.

Concepts of reason and imagination and their expressions through literature

No description available.

Revenge on the English stage has long been associated with Elizabethan and Renaissance revenge tragedies, and has been all but ignored in Restoration theater history. While the shortage of scholarly work on revenge in Restoration drama might seem to indicate that revenge is not a vital part of Restoration drama, I argue that revenge on stage in the Restoration is connected with important late seventeenth-century anxieties about monarchy and political subjecthood in the period. This dissertation examines how Restoration tragic drama staged during Charles II’s reign (1660-1685) depicts revenge as a representation of an unrestrained passion that contributes to the ‘seditious roaring of a troubled nation’ of which Thomas Hobbes writes in Leviathan. This dissertation suggests that we need to assess Restoration tragic drama’s employment of acts of vengeance in order to better understand how tragic drama of the period narrates crises of kinship, kingship, and political subjecthood. In chapters addressing blood revenge, rape, female passion, and personal ambition, I examine revenge in a number of Restoration tragic dramas written for the stage between 1660 and 1685. This project shows that characters’ claims to redress wrongs committed against the civil notion of justice collapse into private, individual desires that are pathological and destructive of the state. This project on revenge has the potential to shape the way we think about revenge on stage by calling attention to revenge as a sign of self-interest at the end of the seventeenth century, an age in which a shift in thinking about monarchy and personhood was taking place. Just as Hobbes warns against the “excessive desire of Revenge,” this dissertation shows how playwrights stage revenge as a warning about the potentially destructive consequences of revenge: revenge puts not only private bodies in danger but also the public well being of the state.

Oscar Wilde redefined the relationship between Life and Art, and attempted to live in the style of the characters in his works: pursuing Beauty. His view of Life as imitating Art played a crucial role in his definition of Individualism. In his works, he explored how one develops one's personality and Individuality, and society's role in suppressing the Individual. He firmly believed that Life and ugliness were inextricably intertwined, and that society's moral structure was to blame. Popular in his time as an artist, he made it a point in his writing and in his work to stand apart from society. Ultimately, society cast him out; while in prison, he experienced an aspect of Life that he had been avoiding his entire life as an aesthete, and thus altered and expanded his ideal of the Individual. In falling from grace and in being forced to live in the ugliest of realities, he developed a fuller idea of what it means to live beautifully.

In these novels, Woolf demonstrates the ways in which wartime trauma affects post-war life, from the societal trauma of losing an entire generation in Jacob’s Room, to the continuation of wartime beyond the end of the war for traumatized soldiers and anyone whose lives they touch in Mrs. Dalloway, to recovery through the creation of art and family ties in To the Lighthouse, to the question of futurity inherent in wartime trauma in The Years.