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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for William Shakespeare's The Tempest, speculated to be one of the last plays he ever wrote as well as the most compressed.
As a dramatic work of the early seventeenth century, it has heavy elements of masque, which includes singing, dancing, supernatural machinery, and a general feeling of unreality. Moreover, The Tempest covers themes regarding the soul and the...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by John Dryden, England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. Titles in this study guide include Annus Mirabilis, Upon The Death Of Lord Hastings, Absalom And Achitophel, The Medal, Religio Laici, The Hind And The Panther, To Anne Killigrew, A Song For St. Cecilia's Day, Alexander's Feast, The Wild Gallant, The Rival Ladies, and The Indian Queen.
As a poet...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for William Shakespear's As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's "great" or "middle" comedies.
As a satirical tale of pastoral romance, As You Like It examines the cruelties and corruption of court life and love. Moreover, Shakespeare amusingly weaves a tale of love manifested in varied forms but targets the main theme of "love at first sight" through his playful imagery...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Aeschylus, the ancient greek playwright. Titles in this study guide include The Suppliant Maids, The Persians, The Oresteia, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, The Eumenides, and The Libation Bearers.
As the world's first great dramatist, Aeschylus became, known as "the father of tragedy." Aeschylus greatly influenced Greek tragedies by expanding...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Christopher Marlowe, the foremost Elizabethian tragedian of his day. Titles in this study guide include Faustus, Tamburlaine, Jew of Malta, and Edward II.
As Shakespeare's most important predecessor and influencer of English drama, Marlowe's plays are most known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. Moreover, Marlowe...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Willa Cather. Titles in this study guide include My Antonia, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, One Of Ours, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.
As an author of twentieth-century literature, Cather wrote about pioneer farming and post-World War I pessimism. Moreover, her work had a characteristic style and contained themes like idealism and closeness...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Herman Melville's Moby Dick, deemed by author Raymond Weaver as "indisputably the greatest whaling novel."
As an 1851 tragic epic, Moby Dick tells the story of a captain's expedition to track down and seek revenge on a whale from the point of view of one of the sailors. Moreover, Melville uses allusion, simile, and metaphor to showcase themes such as revenge,...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, published in 1859 and regarded as his best work.
As a philosophical novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel tells the story of an abusive father and his son who fell in love with a girl of a lower social class. Moreover, Meredith uses intellectualism, satire, and poetry to explore human motive and rationalization....
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Edward Everett Hale's The Man Without a Country, a short story written during the Civil War.
As a work of patriotic literature, The Man Without a Country bolstered support across the U.S. for the Union in the North. Moreover, Hale uses irony, mystery, and realism to tell the gripping story of a man who feels seemingly no patriotism or connection to his country...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Henry James, a renowned American-British author. Titles in this study guide include The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller.
As an author of the nineteenth-century, James's writing bridged the gap between, literary realism and literary modernism. Moreover, James is considered a master of ghost stories, and the Turn of the Screw remains one of the...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Herbert Marcuse, a famous western philosopher. Titles in this study guide include A Critique of Pure Tolerance, An Essay on Liberation, Counterrevolution and Revolt, Eros and Civilization, and One Dimensional Man. As a sociologist, philosopher, and political theorist of the twentieth-century, his theories launched the New Left movement in the Western...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Theodore Dresier's Sister Carrie, known by many to be the greatest of the American urban novels.
As a novel of the turn of the 20th Century, Sister Carrie moved away from Victorian era values and towards naturalism, realism, and instincts of human thought and behavior. Moreover, this first novel introduces readers to a common theme Dresier addresses: the individual...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, a novel that influenced many future authors with its unique storytelling and themes.
As a novel of nineteenth-century England, wealth determines power, and Dickens comments on how the former does not produce happiness. Dickens explores themes in this novel by commenting on the society of 19th century England. This Bright Notes...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Aristophanes, is popularly, known as the Father of Comedy. Titles in this study guide include Plutus, The Ecclesiazusae, The Frogs, The Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, The Birds, Peace, The Clouds, The Wasps, The Knights, and The Acharnians.
As a playwright of Old Comedy, his work, explores the limits of comedy. Moreover, his work was pivotal in the...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Titles in this study guide include The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The State of Siege, The Misunderstanding, The Just Assassins, Requiem for a Nun, The Possessed, The First Man, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, The Plague, Caligula, Summer, Betwixt and Between, Nuptials,...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Euripides, one of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. Titles in this study guide include Rhesus, Iphigenia In Aulis, Bacchae, Phoenissae, Orestes, Electra, Trojan Women, Helen, Iphigenia In Tauris, Ion, Suppliants, Hecuba, Heracles, Cyclops, A Satyr-Play, Andromache, Heracleidae, Hippolytus, Medea, and Alcestis.
As a Greek...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, with adaptations in film, radio, theatre, opera, and rock music.
As a work of 1869 historical fiction, War and Peace showcases a Russia before, during, and after the invasion by Napoleon. Moreover, Tolstoy writes of the glory of epic struggle, the horror of man-to-man combat, and the loveliness of peace. This Bright Notes Study Guide...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Tennessee Williams. Titles in this study guide include, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire.
As an author of southern gothic and memory literature, Williams had a significant impact on theater and has been, established as one of America's most successful playwrights. Moreover, he brought symbolism and poetic language to the stage as...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Virgil, ancient Roman poet. Titles in this study guide include The Aeneid.
As a poet of the Augustan period, his poems are, regarded as one of the most important poems in Latin literature. Moreover, The Aeneid, captures the personal qualities of Romans and what life in Rome looked like. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history...
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Günter Grass's The Tin Drum, the most widely read postwar German novel.
As a novel, The Tin Drum is a memoir of a man living in an insane asylum with supernatural powers who grew up in Nazi Germany. Moreover, Grass uses allusion and metaphor to comment on modern society, history, the individual, and the government. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context...