Category: Literary Criticism

Aristotle in his famous book ‘Poetics’ describes the traits needed to complete the tragedy. As in accordance to Aristotle, any tragedy is a perfect tragedy when the action has soberness, expansive, and ideal in it. Some of the important factors of a perfect tragedy are Peripeteia, Anagnorisis, and catharsis. King Oedipus of Greek mythology owns…

Literature is an art that allows an author to exhibit the undesired primal aspects of humanity. The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde is a prime example of this. Published in London in 1890, the gothic literature carries heavy themes of aestheticism, the superficiality of beauty, homosexual undertones, and hedonism which directly attacked…

Oedipus’ determination, in this case, to rule, can be seen as one of the main reasons for his downfall. In the story, The Sphinx presented the following riddle for those who sought to rule Thebes: ‘What is it that walks on 4 feet and 2 feet and 3 feet and has only one voice, when…

Much ado about nothing’ is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1598 over 400 years ago. The play explores the message and the theme of love and how it can be complicated, which is still true today. There are three types of love in this play, Claudio and Hero show an example of romantic…

When comparing whether family or authority holds a higher status to Sophocles, it becomes clear that the aspect of the family has greater value. Although many of the characters believe that a strong authority prevents chaos, the need for authority was taken too far and resulted in their downfall. Even though certain characters were facing…

Sophocles’ The Three Theban Plays explores the faults in one’s character that triggers irrational and unlawful behavior. A specific fault seems to recur throughout the plays and pushes characters to commit the greatest crimes. To find this fault, it is vital to retrace the motivation of each character’s actions. The root of all their actions…

Brilliantly interesting and convincingly demystifying was Joseph Campbell’s revelation of the hero monomyth. This revelation is detailed in his prominent work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which Campbell stresses the significance of the hero monomyth present in all heroic myths. And because the monomyth can be identified in any work presenting a hero,…

Quote: ‘just because everything’s different doesn’t mean anything has changed’ – Irene Peters Young people often make irrational decisions that determine the outcome of their lives. William Shakespeare’s Dramatic Tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1895) explores love and how characters can hold more responsibility than fortune does. Irene Peter’s quote, ‘Just because everything is different doesn’t…

The transition between childhood and adulthood is a time of growing independence along with constant questioning, especially when being exposed to the cultural norms of society, some of which are divisive and not always driven by pure motivation. When becoming adults, our personal world is shaped around what we have been taught and through our…

Wilde was actually looking to ridicule the rigid aristocratic lifestyle by observing their snob-ism through a tale of romantic webs and dual identities. Being an aristocrat himself, Wilde had other feelings as to what an aristocrat should really be: not superficial or materialistic, but more intelligent, well-educated, and passionate about true life morality, and ethics.…