Shakespeare Put to Music
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A 5 page paper which examines the whether or not the musical works of Verdi's 'Macbeth' and 'Otello' ('Othello'), Mendelssohn's incidental music for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture and incidental music for 'Hamlet,' and Cole Porter's 1948 musical, 'Kiss Me, Kate' (based on 'The Taming of the Shrew') capture the quality and mood of the Shakespeare plays which inspired them, or merely echo their plots. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Filename: TGmusic.rtf

The “Vile Body” and the Grotesque
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An eight page paper looking at the relationship between our fascination with the grotesque and our dissatisfaction with our own bodies. Supplementary sources discussed include Mary Russo’s “The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The writer also touched on Mary Pipher’s “Reviving Ophelia,” and the theories of Carl Jung. Bibliography lists six sources.
Filename: KBgrotes.wps

Salvation and Nature in Crane and Bierce
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A 5 page paper looking at the degree to which the salvation of a character is dependent upon whether he adapts to his natural surroundings. The paper specifically discusses Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” No additional sources.
Filename: KBcrane.wps

Mill, Carlyle & Victorian Society
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A 7 page paper showing how Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill influenced the Victorian age as much as they were influenced by it. It shows how their philosophies informed the age they lived in, and how their influence stretched into the twentieth century as well. Bibliography contains two sources.
Filename: Millcar.wps

Modernism in Marx, Freud, Nietzsche -- and Eliot
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A seven page paper analyzing the way the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche influenced the development of modernism in general and the works of T.S. Eliot in particular. Works mentioned are Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Waste Land,” and “Tradition and the Individual Talent”; Marx’ letters; Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents”; and Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Bibliography lists four sources.
Filename: KBmodern.wps

“Gawain” and “Cei”
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A ten page paper looking at these two characters of Arthurian romance -- one from Chretien de Troyes’ “Erec and Enide” and “Lancelot,” and the other from Rosemary Sutcliff’s contemporary novel “Sword at Sunset.” The paper points out that Gawain is demeaned in Chretien’s works because he needed a more distinctively Gallic hero, while Sutcliff needed to make Cei more warrior-like to fit with her own setting. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Filename: KBgawain.wps

Questioning Authority In Renaissance Drama
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A 6 page paper looking at Shakespeare's King Lear, The Tempest, and Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna in terms of the degree to which they permit characters to question and flout authority. The paper argues that this has a great deal to do with the medieval view of government as a God-given hierarchy, and only as humanism began to take hold could authority be questioned. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Filename: Devega.wps

A Freudian Approach to Understanding Plath's The Bell Jar
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A 5 page analysis of Sigmund Freud's Civilization and its Discontents and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The writer argues that a possible explanation for the depression of Plath's protagonist, Esther, may be found in Freud's work. No additional sources cited.
Filename: 90beljar.rtf

The Timelessness of Medea and Blood Wedding
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A 5 page, analytical discussion of how the themes into literary landmarks -- from two different cultures -- (Spanish and Ancient Greek) have withstood the 'tests of time' and still maintain an appeal for contemporary audiences. The two works discussed are Euripides' 'Medea' and Garcia Lorca's 'Blood Wedding' -- two thematically similar tales. No Bibliography.
Filename: Mdeablod.wps

A Comparison Of Antigone, Medea & Nora
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This 3 page paper provides an overview of the similarities of three of the best-known female protagonists is theater -- Nora of Ibsen's 'The Doll House,' Medea in 'Medea' by Euripides, and Antigone in Sophocles' play of the same name. Bibliography lists 3 additional sources.
Filename: 3women.rtf

Free Will in Four Works of Western Literature
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A six page paper looking at the issue of free will as it is developed in Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex'; Christopher Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus'; Shakespeare's 'King Lear'; Walter Mosley's 'Devil in a Blue Dress'. Each author argues that the protagonist's free will is in fact tempered by social or cultural factors that make his free will not so free. Bibliography lists two sources.
Filename: KBfrewil.wps

Oedipus And Othello: Protagonists As Tragic Figures
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5 pages in length. As protagonists, both Oedipus and Othello ultimately ended up as tragic figures as a direct result of their inability to alter the course of their lives. Defining this particular concept calls for one's close interpretation of what the protagonist's role truly represents; with that, it becomes quite simple to understand how the lead characters can so easily slip into the tragic state they eventually inhabit. Through their difficult and sometimes life-changing experiences, both Oedipus and Othello come to recognize what it is their own self-knowledge has gained through their struggles. When assessing the integral components that comprised each character, it is important to determine just how much of their actions were motivated by fate or free will; summation of all applicable elements will likely lead one to conclude that determinism played a more significant role. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Filename: TLCoedip.wps

Hemingway vs. Joyce / 'Just Representations of Nature'
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A 5 page paper examining Samuel Johnson's opinion that no literature will endure the test of time except that which reveals and explores situations and characteristics that are recognizable, that most of us share, and that are common to people across the boundaries of time and space. The paper compares Ernest Hemingway's 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' and James Joyce's 'Araby' in view of Johnson's dictum, arguing that Hemingway's story fulfills the requirement better than Joyce's because its theme is more easily accessible to the general reader. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Filename: Hemjoyce.wps

Self-Realization in Three War Novels
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A 6 page paper which discusses the quest for a deeper sense of self as depicted in three novels: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, Timothy Findley's The Wars, and Joy Kogawa's Obasan . The paper observes that while a major life-crisis is not necessary in order to spur on this important personal journey, it is nonetheless true that most of us go through life without doing any particular self-analysis until a crisis strikes -- and then self-analysis becomes necessary for psychic survival. Bibliography lists three sources.
Filename: Warnovel.wps

The Great Gatsby Vs. The Sun Also Rises
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5 pages in length. A common thread between F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is the strong sexual orientation theme. Nearly all of the main characters are caught up in one carnal crises or another, without the least bit of concern for those who ultimately become the victims of their passions. The writer compares and contrasts the attitudes and actions of the characters with regard to how their sexual orientation affects the outcome of the story. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Filename: Gatsun.wps

Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Daniel Defoe And Harriet Beecher Stowe: Influences Past And Present
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5 pages in length. Vastly different in their pursuits, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Daniel Defoe and Harriet Beecher Stowe all contributed something unique to the worlds of art and literature. The writer notes that to discuss each individual's influences in both his or her own era as well as in contemporary society requires only that one become a part of the artistic rendering and relish the distinctive singularity enveloped within their respective works. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Filename: TLCvinci.wps

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: A Dialogue on Western Civilization
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A four page paper analyzing the degree to which Nietzsche and Dostoevsky are in agreement about the decline of Western Civilization. The paper concludes that although both men considered that nihilism -- the denial of values -- was at the root of what was wrong with European civilization in the nineteenth century, they simply attributed this nihilism to different causes. No additional sources.
Filename: KBphilos.wps