Recurring Themes and Concerns in Prose and Poetry that Reshaped the Character of Australia

Recurring Themes and Concerns that Reshaped the Character of Australia From the earlier ballads and poems written in the 19th Century through to the novels of the early 20th Century there has been a change in the focus, attitude and images that these works have presented. This essay will examine some examples of these writings and determine if there are any common recurring themes and concerns within these works, by comparing how the content reflects the lifestyle of Australians. Themes such a masculinity, feminism, antiauthoritarianism and mateship are typically found in these writings, some in isolation and others a combination woven together as a comparison of ideas. This essay will view a collection of themes and concerns of the writers, showing how mateship and the oppression of women they can be related to gender and national culture. Current affairs provided earlier poets a solid base from which to build their ballads and poems. Taken from life as seen through the eyes of the writer, these works are not an historic record but rather a method of earning a living as an entertainer. Writers used news and social lifestyle as content with artistic licence to tell a story. To determine the themes of these articles, knowledge of the history can explain the use of the subject or content. With a male majority population, most of the authors were men, and the subjects they

  • Word count: 1848
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Imagination in Heroics of Odysseus and Don Quixote. Both the authors draw different characteristics of what it means to be a hero in different ways.

Imagination in Heroics of Odysseus and Don Quixote Quazi Mohammad Faisal The most respected and venerated social group in ancient times and middle ages were that of the heroic warriors, knights, and kings. The view of what it is to be a hero is winning honor through combat and in a competitive situation. A hero would be someone who has great fighting skill and would even dare to risk death to have honor. The heroes were the people who would lead their armies or fellow knights into battle and won accolades for their courage displayed on the battlefield. On the other hand, the cowardly were subjected to strong prejudice. Their existence was considered a burden on the earth and they were ignored and ridiculed by everyone. This noble characteristic is evident in the Odyssey by Homer and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Both the authors draw different characteristics of what it means to be a hero in different ways. In the Odyssey, mere fighting skill does not necessarily mean that Odysseus was the hero. Rather, we see a man who is very shrewd and cunning. Although he is a brilliant fighter, he also shows restraint and mercy. On the other hand, Don Quixote was not a born hero like Odysseus. He is deluded by chivalric ideas of heroism and valor and sets out to reform the world along with his sensible companion Sancho Panza. Both the heroes are from two very different times of

  • Word count: 2675
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Masculine Dominance of Australianness in Australian Literature

Masculine Dominance of Australianness in Australian Literature Throughout the history of Australian writing, traditional stories and verses created images of Australia capturing the culture and the lifestyle like a photograph. Being a new settlement, Australia was at the time without cultural limitations to determine its direction. This freedom provided the authors a clean slate from which to build their stories and poems opposed to the traditions and conventions or viewpoints inherited from Britain. Without any predetermined direction or structured government influence, written media provided the conduit for the development of Australian culture. This essay will examine the images created in early literary works primarily through character analysis as much of the true essence of the culture could is reflected in their personality. This paper will argue that images and constructions of antiauthoritarianism, mateship and larrikinism found in these literary works provide a link to the development of an Australian image. Examination of these three themes in respect to gender will show that masculinity continued to dominate the context of early poetry and prose and later novels with very little feminine influence. This essay will show that the image of Australianness is fundamentally masculine with little or no recognition of a feminine equivalent developed by a traditionally

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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'Emily Dickinson tears the comforting Victorian blanket of language and exposes to us her stark, distinct, jewel-like world.' How adequate do you find this as a description of the effect of Emily Dickinson's verse?

'Emily Dickinson tears the comforting Victorian blanket of language and exposes to us her stark, distinct, jewel-like world.' How adequate do you find this as a description of the effect of Emily Dickinson's verse? Emily Dickinson's poetry can be described as ambiguous and enigmatic. The description given in the question is much like Dickinson's poetry, and hence, itself requires some interpretaion. The main subjective part of the question is the 'jewel-like world', which I will adress later. But, more prominently is the fact that Dickinson's poetry is the anthetis of any 'Victorian blanket' whether it be the language of morals or society: Despair is the central theme running through most of Dickinson's poems. She portrays a wholly differnet view of the expression of emotions than was apparent in the Victorian Period which was was esentially that emotions were to be kept secluded behind a facade of happiness and contentment with life, espeially for women. Yet her poems are continually concerned with the quality of pain and suffering (she seldom supplies the source), and she seems to dwell in her misery; E.g 'I like a look of Agony' And 'There is a pain - so utter- It swallows substance up'- This trait of Dickinson's litters her poetry with a curious mixture of pleasure and pain, the two being so deeply interwoven at times creates the effect that they become the

  • Word count: 1376
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Symbolic Use of Rivers Towards Enlightenment in The Divine Comedy and Siddhartha

Nicholas Rivera June 20, 2008 The Symbolic Use of Rivers Towards Enlightenment in The Divine Comedy and Siddhartha In literature, authors use symbolism to relay messages to the reader throughout a story. Rivers can portray many themes in a unique manner. In The Divine Comedy and Siddhartha, the protagonists cross rivers towards their goal of Enlightenment. Dante crosses five rivers throughout his journey hell to paradise. Siddhartha crosses one river multiple times. Passage through rivers in both works has a profound effect on character growth towards Enlightenment for the protagonists. As Dante crosses a river, he learns something new; an aspect which he needs to progress in his journey. Dante and Virgil reach the River Acheron and observe countless souls boarding the ferry, rowed by Charon the ferryman. "Master, I long to know what souls these are, and what strange usage makes them as eager to cross as they seem to be in this infected light."1 "Divine Justice transforms and spurs them so their dread turns wish: they yearn for what they fear."2 Dante is at the beginning of his path and knows nothing of what he needs to reach his destination. Dante must experience fear for himself, and not refrain from it. Dante asks Virgil what he needs from this river, and Virgil tells him what he needs to do as he crosses the first river. As they cross the river, Dante begins to

  • Word count: 1686
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Critical Review of 2 articles

Dissertation Critical Review The first article that I discovered by using the MLA Database was "Teaching Shakespeare in the Context of Renaissance Women's Culture", by Jane Donawerth.1 Jane Donawerth is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she teaches Renaissance literature, history of rhetorical theory, and science fiction and utopias by women. In this particular article she explores the issues around teaching the subject of Shakespeare and the frameworks in which it is taught. Donawerth wants to "build a course from a feminist standpoint in which students possess such authority."2 Donawerth describes the content of her course and how she taught it, "I organized the content of the course in concentric circles of kinds of knowledge, rather than in linear fashion, and I limited to four the number of plays all students read."3 The idea of using only four plays to focus on relates to my dissertation topic, as I intend on only using a small number of plays to analyse and explore my topic, therefore enabling a greater depth of research than as if I was to study more plays. Also, the idea of the concentric circles as a method of teaching and studying would be a very constructive approach to use for the dissertation, as it will help break themes down into certain categories, making it easier to look at and more straightforward to

  • Word count: 1481
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba: Visual and Aural Cues Contributing to an Appreciation of Interaction

James S. Bowling Professor Leonard MALS 775 29 March 2005 Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba: Visual and Aural Cues Contributing to an Appreciation of Interaction "She... died a virgin. Do you hear me? !Silencio!, !Silencio!, I said. !Silencio!"-Bernarda Alba, The House of Bernarda Alba Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) belongs to that class of Spanish poets and artists (e.g., Dali, Picasso) that came to prominence in the inter-war period.¹ If their antecedents in the latter years of the 19th century retain a sometimes wry perspective of the human condition - Ibsen plays, even in their darkest moments, retain an element of whimsy - Lorca's so-called "rural" trilogy most assuredly do not.2 Arguably, the massive number of military and civilian casualties incurred during World War I, combined with the social and political upheavals such a disaster fosters, can produce a type of self-destructive nihilism within the human psyche.3 Unlike Ibsen, in Lorca that destructive impulse does not so much arise out of the actions - however innocent - of others, but rather, manifests itself sui generis, an implacable, chthonic urge to reorder the human condition into something it naturally is not. In Lorca's grimly claustrophobic drama, The House of Bernarda Alba, for example, the protagonist is determined to organize her progeny into an enclosed society at variance from normative

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The years preceding the American Civil War were rife with tensions between the South and the North. The abolitionist movement was gaining popularity, and slaveholders were being increasingly criticised. A number of slaves who had managed to escape their masters were writing autobiographies, denouncing the treatment to which they were submitted. One of them was Frederick Douglass, who published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave - Written by Himself in May 1845, seven years after his escape to the North. The passage I will discuss in this essay is taken from Chapter IX. In his Narrative, Frederick Douglass takes a look back on his life in slavery. He begins by writing about his birth and goes on to tell the reader about his life, in a chronological order. He writes mostly in the first person, and sometimes uses 'we': 'We seldom called him "master"...'. In Chapter IX, Douglass is approximately fifteen years old and is still held captive as a slave. Obviously, using 'they' would not have been correct: the group of slaves he is referring to included him. Douglass, even though he is now emancipated, does not distance himself from the slaves he once worked with. He uses 'we' as a solidarity marker. As mentioned above, Douglass was not the only escaped slave writing an autobiography. Other slave narratives include the Narrative of Henry Watson, a

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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The Development of the Character David Lurie in John Maxwell Coetzees Novel Disgrace.

The Development of the Character David Lurie in John Maxwell Coetzee's Novel Disgrace. "All of Coetzee's writings are similar in that they often center on a solitary character. No direct moral is ever given, but rather situations are set up for the reader to think about. Coetzee's aim is not to provide solutions, but to highlight problems and have the reader form their own conclusions." (Price, Jonathan, the Postcolonial Studies Website, English Department, Emory University, 2000) I could not agree more. J. M. Coetzee's main character David Lurie, in the novel "Disgrace", is a complex character in a way that one does not know whether he is a bad person or a good person. One does not know whether one should sympathize with him or not. He is difficult to understand and one can interpret him in many ways. At the beginning of the novel one learns that he is a man who has been divorced twice, and who has found pleasure in women his whole life. On chapter two, in the book, he states: "Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it" When he begins an affair with his student Melanie, half his age, the pleasure he finds sharing her beauty, soon comes to lead to his personal downfall, his disgrace. Lurie acknowledges his guilt before a Hearing, but is unwilling to express regret and

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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On balance, does The Two Gentlemen of Verona sustain or undermine the idealisation of male-male friendship that lies at the heart of the male friendship tradition?

On balance, does The Two Gentlemen of Verona sustain or undermine the idealisation of male-male friendship that lies at the heart of the male friendship tradition? 'One of the most enduring Renaissance debates was the discussion of whether the love of woman was a sentiment more noble than the platonic friendship that might exist between men' (Lee, 2008 p23) For that reason there is no doubt that it was a common theme in literature throughout this era, for e.g. Ben Jonson Bartholomew Fair (1614), and Spenser's book 4 of the Faerie Queen both dealt with male friendship; this theme is also incorporated in The Two Gentlemen Of Verona. Shakespeare seemed to of got this intense male friendship theme from Titus and Gisuppus told in Elyot's book Named the Governour. But the male-male friendship in Titus and Gisuppus play goes beyond anything else as not only does Gisuppus give away his lover Sophronia to Titus, Titus repays him back by sacrificing his life for Gisuppus; showing that the bond between them works both ways, not one way as it seems to be in TGOV. The names of the two leading males suggest ideas of how the characters are going to be throughout the play. Shakespeare clearly wanted the audience to take notice of the names as in the first speech between Valentine and Proteus as he states both their names twice. 'The names suggest, Proteus is unable to find his identity,

  • Word count: 2392
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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