Study guides - Page 7 | Just Great DataBase
A magnificent tragedy “King Lear” by William Shakespeare laid grounds for many great theatre plays, movies, and stories. There have been numerous adaptations and interpretations for the play, but its original version remains the most popular among the readers. The main character of the play is a British monarch of the same name. He is old and wants to hand over the reigns of the...
One of the most scandalous novels of its age, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” couldn’t be published openly without censorship. The author was blamed for graphically depicting sex scenes and disrupting the morals of the society. Unexpurgated version wasn’t printed in the United Kingdom until 1960, when the norms were loosened a bit. Was it really so obscene and vulgar...
Le Morte d’Arthur is now one of the most famous interpretations of the legends about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It accurately interprets all the known legends about the knights, adding some that Sir Thomas Malory wrote by himself. Translating and compilating all the legends he could find and proved to be original, Sir Thomas Malory created the fullest book of these...
Le Pere Goriot or Father Goriot is a novel by Honoré de Balzac that tells the story of an old man, who struggles to provide his daughters with enough money to have a better life than his own. This book is considered one of the best and more serious novels by Balzac that is praised for its complex characters and unusual plotline. The main character though isn’t Goriot himself, but a...
Leaves of Grass is a poetry book of Walt Whitman that is considered the golden classic of modern poetry. It is the most important work of all the life of the author. Whitman revised it for all his life, adding, replacing and switching different poems, until their quantity exceeded four hundred. Whitman is considered the father of the truly American spirit. While most of the poetry at his time...
“Les Miserables” is an epic novel of a French writer Victor Hugo, published in 1862. There are many reasons why it was widely acclaimed by different critics and literature connoisseurs as Hugo’s main work and one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Over a thousand pages of text separated into two parts, the story of the book is centered around critical concepts for the...
“Life of Pi” is an amazing adventure book that was written by Yann Martel. It is much more than just a fantasy book. It is a novel-confession, revelation, parable where the fight with yourself becomes the meaning of whole life. The story unfolds around an Indian boy who got his nickname of Pi Patel after a Parisian swimming club Piscine Molitor. He is a student in Toronto who is fond...
Light in August by William Faulkner is considered to be an American gothic novel. The author explores the themes of race, class, religion and status on American South. All the characters are for some reason outcasts in the society. They are different people with different backstories, but the fact that they are individuals standing against the bigoted and faceless crowd unites them. The gothic...
Laura Esquivel wrote “Life Water for Chocolate” in 1989. It is a typical Mexican novel, full of passion, love, family duties, poor choices and suffering. It is in this book that we discover an old family tradition in Latin countries where the youngest daughters don’t marry in order to focus on caring for their mothers until they die. The novel follows the relationship inside...
The plot that is known to everybody, “Lolita” is more than just a book about perversion and child abuse. It is no Romeo and Juliette, but a touching classic about a controversial relationship of an English language professor Humbert with his neighbor’s daughter. The name of the girl is Dolores Haze, and soon she will even become his stepdaughter. Humbert undisguised obsession...
Eugene O’Neill wrote a text that later became one of the best-acclaimed and most popular plays in the USA. “Long Day’s Journey into Night” was first played in 1956 and has won the author numerous prestigious awards ever since. Eugene O’Neill has been called the greatest drama writer for years and is still one of the favorite play authors among English-speaking...
John Green wrote “Looking for Alaska” in 2005. Some might say that this is another book about ordinary American teenagers, spoiled and vulgar. But the American Library Association and New York Times think otherwise ranking it high in their prize and bestseller lists. “Looking for Alaska” is a book about death and life, it teaches the readers that time heals...
Lord Jim is a romantic adventure novel by Joseph Conrad that even shares some traits with Gothic novels. Despite the exotic setting and the extraordinary events that puts the story far into the territory of historical fiction, the themes raised in it are very close to everyone of us. The life of a romantic person, who has to face the harsh reality with all the unfairness of life and inability to...
”Lord Of The Flies” is the main reason why society should be grateful that William Golding didn’t pursue natural science career at Oxford. English literature acquired a great diamond and a Nobel Prize winner when he switched his major to follow the passion that had been brewing since he was 12 years old. What would you do if found yourself in a completely new environment? No...
Yet another Shakespeare’s masterpiece, “Macbeth” is one of the most famous works of the writer. It is easy to understand and is also one of the shortest books he has written, also known to be one with the most bloody events put into it. Its complexity lies in the emotional tensions that hold the reader tight until the very end of the story. The play is a tragedy written during...
Gustave Flaubert spent a lot of time writing his first novel entitled “Madame Bovary”. It is a story about a woman trying to escape the dullness of the provincial life and unimaginative surrounding. When the text first saw the world, it was accused of obscenity. But it was because of the trial process that followed, that the story became famous and is still well known nowadays. &ldquo...
Main Street is a satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis that shows us the futility of the idealism and progressive ideas about equality and cultural growth when the environment and society aren’t ready to accept it. But the other side of the satire is not the indifference of the people of the town of Gopher Prairie. It is the excessive idealism of the protagonist of the story, Carol Milford...
“Mansfield Park” is an educational novel by Jane Austen, where she with a touch of irony reveals the vices of high society. The events take place at the beginning of the 16th century in England. In the estate of Mansfield Park, where Fanny Price is being raised, there is widespread disagreement and misunderstanding. Selfishness motivates the actions of people here. Relatives do not...
A poem or historical romance in verse “Marmion” by Walter Scott is the largest in volume poem among poetic works. “Marmion” brought the author to the top of his poetic glory. Scott undoubtedly considered himself to be the successor of the creative traditions of the ancient Scottish bards, as he speaks in the epistles to the six songs of the poem “Marmion.&rdquo...