Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Prater Violet and Eagleton's Literary Theory
Often, when writing a literary work, authors are focused so much on their personal views and intentions with the story that no literary theory comes to mind. Furthermore, writers are seldom concerned with adhering to or promoting any specific theory. Nevertheless, it is the nature of readers and critics to want to impose theories upon literary works. Much like life, literary works present themselves in an unstructured way. It is human nature, especially on the side of critics and readers, to wish to impose order where no such order is apparent. Indeed, this is the nature of critical reading and even human life in general. In Prater Violet by Isherwood (2001), for example, one might imposed various paths towards the literary theories explicated by Eagleton (2008), as followed...
According to this theory, all the reader needs to analyze the text presented, without any concern with the historical, social, or personal context involved.
One good example of a character that can be analyzed in this way is Sandy Ashmeade, the story editor (p. 21-22). Sandy is graceful, and also known as the "poet," being a star of the Marlowe Society. All these elements give specific clues about the character without any concern about how the author might feel about the existing social or political context of his writing. Sandy is a perfectly English gentleman, with romanticism and semiotics presented as his main reasons for living. His "slim" and "perfectly rolled" umbrella, for example, offers him as a perfectly sculpted character for the context of the novel itself, without any concern for the author's specific personal or social context.
Hence, to analyze this character, the New Criticism adherent would have to sever him from both author and reader.…
References
Eagleton, T. (2008). Using Literary Theory. An Introduction. Minnesota Press.
Isherwood, C. (2001). Prater Violet. Minnesota Press.
Literary Devices in "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" recounts how Death follows the narrator along her final journey and though the title insinuates that the narrator does not have time to see what her gentleman caller wants, he is patient and is in no rush to complete his task. In the poem, Dickinson personifies Death and makes it clear that
The poem is musical in how it reads. The rhyming is easy and, overall, the poem reads well. Clearly, the poet wanted to emphasize the beauty of the poem through song but he wanted to keep it simple. Wordsworth also utilizes several literary devices in the poem. For example, Wordsworth sets the mood and tone of the poem by describing a girl is in a field singing alone. Connotation includes
Because Celie idolizes Shug Avery she wants to make her a special quilt, out of affection. At the start of this endeavor Celie writes, more fluently now to God: Me and Sofia work on the quilt. Got it frame up on the porch. Shug Avery donate her old yellow dress for scrap, and I work in a piece every chance I get. it's a nice pattern called Sister's Choice. If the quilt
.....space below to complete this section. Include the number and first sentence of the prompt you chose from the list of prompts.) Prompt 2: 'In some stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in which they live.' For this literary assignment, I have chosen Prompt 2, which explains that the characters of some tales enter into discord with their surrounding culture. Usually, a character may feel estranged and different from the
William Wells Brown The Work(s) of William Wells Brown; Clotel: or, the President's Daughter One of the most discussed and controversial topics during the 18th and early 19th centuries were on slavery and slaves' trade. The American continent was one of the major participants in the trade. Being an American native, William Wells Brown is one of the African-Americans who endured the bitter fruits of slavery. Born into slavery within Lexington-Kentucky
African-American Duality of Identity: Literary Criticism of the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin James Baldwin's face, with its piercing eyes and craggy forehead, is a frequently depicted image upon anthologies and volumes of African-American literature and criticism, particularly post-colonial criticism that emphasizes the alienated sense of self and national identity frequently experienced by Blacks in America during the 1960's when Baldwin wrote some of his greatest works, including the short