Hamlet and Don Quixote According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, renaissance means "a revival of intellectual or artistic achievement and vigor, the revival of learning and culture, a rebirth, a spiritual enlightenment causing a person to lead a new life (Renaissance pp). Hamlet and Don Quixote are not Renaissance men in the same sense as other notable figures such as Leonardo da Vinci. They were not artists

After Hamlet has killed Polonius and Laertes has returned from Paris demanding satisfaction, Hamlet justly observes "by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his." It is the contrasts between these three characters which give significance to the parallelisms. The intelligent, sensitive Hamlet and the hot-headed Machiavellian Laertes perish on the same poisoned foil, leaving the kingdom to the cool-headed Norwegian, who has been a shrewder contriver

This contrasts the identification process of medieval works, in which the reader was encouraged to identify with a hero's inhuman qualities -- inhuman virtue in the case of books of chivalry. In those works the reader was called to identify himself with a god -- or even God proper -- but in Hamlet the reader is called only to identify himself with another, equally flawed man. Finally, in the question

Even in Catholic France, the Protestant sentiment that God's grace alone can save His fallen, human creation was evident in the humanist king, Francis I's sister, Margaret, Queen of Navarre's novel when she wrote: "We must humble ourselves, for God does not bestow his graces on men because they are noble or rich; but, according as it pleases his goodness, which regards not the appearance of persons, he chooses

One of the best examples in the play is that of the name of Ernest, with which both Gwendolyn and Cecily seem to fall in love in the most superficial manner. Wilde ironically points out that his age is one of ideals, but to this Gwendolyn gives her commentary about the importance of names: We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact

Anarchy in the 19th Century An Analysis of Merriman's Dynamite Club and Anarchy in the 19th Century John Merriman makes the point early in the Dynamite Club that there exists "a gossamer thread connecting…Islamist fundamentalists and Emile Henry's circle." Merriman goes on to define that connection as being one of "social inequalities." But more to the heart of the matter, however, is the difference in ideologies -- ideologies that transcended the economic, political,