The Squire's Tale Essay

In the 19th century, the Southern Gothic genre quickly became popular after Edgar Allen Poe poems in the 18th century. Most writings were formed around the Civil War era, which plays an enormous part in the tone and setting in Southern Gothic writing styles. (O’Connell 63) Southern Gothic writing elements consist of “horror, romance and psychological and domestic dramas” (63). The setting of Southern Gothic was always dingy and dark which explains the tone of most southern states at this time. Southern Gothic writing styles were known to be grotesque, violent and gloomy with dark psychological twists that were to be carried on into the 20th century. There can also be other ways to exercise Southern Gothic styles like including strange events, paranormal elements and representing history in an almost comical approach. (63) There are some authors who have written very influential Southern Gothic style literature, such as A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People by Flannery O’Conner.

A traumatic event will never define a person’s identity, it will never prove character, or show weaknesses. A person is defined by much more than a single life event. Natasha Trethewey uses her confusion and hurt that she experienced as pieces for an artwork that has yet to be finished. By writing Native Guard, Trethewey recreates herself like a disjointed collage. Using gut-wrenching poetry as her medium, Trethewey uses her words to represent a self portrait of her struggles. Giving the reader a chance to immerse themselves completely within “Native Guard”, her audience is a key element throughout the book. You, as the reader, become an empty shell for Trethewey to build herself anew; a skeleton structure for a new identity.

Mark Strand’s poem, “Poor North” depicts the life of a married couple facing countless struggles during a harsh winter. It tells of a man working in an unsuccessful store while his wife sits at home, wishing for her old life back. The way the wife copes with her sadness is both intriguing and perplexing. She misses her old life, even though it is described to have not been special; however, the wife may be a person who never feels satisfied or fulfilled by the external world due to internal conflict. Despite the wife’s obvious misery, she stays by her husband’s side and they stroll in the cold together, bracing the wind. As a means of escape from life, she peers into her past in order to find hope in the present.

The Anglo-Saxons believed that when a man was injured or killed wrongfully, he should be avenged by his kinsmen. One form of atonement for a wrongful death was the wer-gild, which means “man gold” where the family of the deceased was paid a sum to compensate them. Given that the Anglo-Saxons believed heavily in honor and leaving a legacy, since they had no afterlife, not paying the wer-gild was an extremely disrespectful action. This is displayed in Beowolf narrated as “…long against Hrothgar / Grendel struggled: his grudges he cherished, / murderous malice, many a winter, / strife unremitting, and peacefully wished he / life-woe to lift from no liegeman at all of the men of / the Dane-folk, for money to settle, / no counsellor needed count for a moment / on handsome amends at the hands of the murderer;” (Beowolf), meaning that Grendel was brutally murdering Hrothgar’s men for many winters and would give no money to settle the wer-gild, bringing dishonor to the lord’s name.

The Knight and the Miller's Tale both represented each of their characters and personalities of the social class in which they occupied. The Knight's Tale describes an act of courtly love, or fin' amors, which only a truly dignified person could experience. This act of love was a way of living life to its fullest. Someone who is refined and worthy of feeling this love would do anything or give anything to not let that love go unrequited It is something that is truly cherished: "Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan,

In his essay, “Horse and Gentlemen,” T.H. Breen describes the cultural significance of gambling, specifically in relation to the quarter-horse races, in late 17th century Virginia. Breen primarily argues that the three main aspects of gambling – competitiveness, materialism, and individualism – reflected and reinforced the socio-economic structure of Virginia in this period. The high stakes wagers of the affluent planters reinforced their dominant status in the social structure and the gentry’s right to rule over this colony. Breen’s argument to this effect is supported by letters, court transcripts, documentation of wagers, and other written first-hand accounts. Breen’s case for the cultural significance of gambling has persuasive arguments for its representation of competitiveness and materialism. However, his argument for individualism has contrary elements and his essay would have been improved with the inclusion of women’s role in the gambling culture.

Subject Matter: ‘The Wholly Innocent’ describes the emotions a foetus would have, from its point of view about the mother’s plan to get it aborted. The poem explains thoroughly how the foetus feels with detail that makes us feel empathic towards it. The summary of the poem in the last stanza is concluding the life the foetus had, before it was aborted, ending it in a tragic way. The poem does not mention anything about the mother’s point of view, mainly because the mother would only make excuses, which makes no difference to the foetus.

Alex Kershaw and the Bedford boys is a story from a little town of only 3000 in Bedford Virginia. It 's a small town that never recovered from the Great Depression. Effect of this is most of the young men in Bedford joined the towns armory National Guard unit. Alpha company was one of many company 's threw out Virginia numbering around 7500 guardsmen. In the days to come, it would be decided that the 29th infantry division the "Blue and grey" would land on the Normandy beaches to start the invasion. Alpha company and the boys from Bedford would soon be breaking threw the defenses at "Dog one “Omaha beach.

An abundance of the literary world’s best and most engaging poems or stories took place during the very fictional reign of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, who most famously, resided in Camelot. The poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, written during the medieval period, is without a doubt one of the best fictional stories to ever come from this era. I found it especially interesting that both Christianity and Paganism intertwine during this heroic story. This encourages whoever is reading it to have a contrasting mindset because the story has not only Christian elements, but many pagan themes as well; it makes you wonder what type of story this really is. Many people speculate, however, whether the Gawain author could

In the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it was Christmastime at Camelot in King Arthur’s court celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, known as a manifestation or appearance of a divine or superhuman being and also known as the biggest holiday of the year. This time of year is significant to the poem since this holiday is filled with feasting, magic, and strange happenings and explains the timing by Morgan’s (King Arthur’s half- sister and a fairy) trickery upon King Arthur in creating the Green Knight and the game he challenges to the knights, “So at Christmas in this court I lay down a challenge: if a person here present … is big or bold or red-blooded enough to strike me and be struck in return, I shall give him as a gift this cleaver

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer tells “The Knight’s Tale”, a story of the two knights Palamon and Arcite who fall deeply in love with Princess Emily, a member of Theseus’ kingdom. Even though both knights are imprisoned within a tower, each finds a way to escape jail and try to win Emily. Ultimately, this leads to a duel between the two knights for which the prize is the hand of Emily. Chaucer uses the knights to reflect the very male-oriented time period through the strong chivalry and courtly love displayed towards Emily, when in reality, he was trying to expose the flaws of the chivalric code, which led to the deadly feud between two fellow knights. Essentially, Chaucer is holding up a magnifying glass to what people of the

Geoffrey Chaucer’s romantic poem “The Knight’s Tale” chronicles the adventures of two ancient Greek knights and their quest to win the affection of Emily, a beautiful noblewoman. Bound to uphold the chivalric code of loyalty and honor of the time, Palamon and Arcite discover themselves at odds with their noble ideals as they battle one another in pursuit of love. Unable to reconcile the knight’s oath of honor with their obsessive and selfish desires, the actions of Chaucer’s main characters fail to uphold the basic principles of chivalry.

Poetry is a reduced dialect that communicates complex emotions. To comprehend the numerous implications of a ballad, perusers must analyze its words and expressing from the points of view of beat, sound, pictures, clear importance, and suggested meaning. Perusers then need to sort out reactions to the verse into a consistent, point-by-point clarification. Poetry utilizes structures and traditions to propose differential translation to words, or to summon emotive reactions. Gadgets, for example, sound similarity, similar sounding word usage, likeness in sound and cadence are at times used to accomplish musical or incantatory impacts.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” declared by an influential leader Martin Luther King Jr. As a soldier againsts unfairness, King strongly states that people should fight for freedom. Driven by human nature, humans are always chasing freedom. In “A Century Later,” the Pakistan-born British poet Imtiaz Dharker uses the poetic devices of symbolism, diction, and allusion to explore how perseverance drives freedom.

“Ballad of the Landlord” is a poem by Langston Hughes that shows the struggles of a black man in a white society. There are opposing forces that make this black man suffer and he gets no retribution or any justice for the things that the people accuse him of. Through each of these voices the poem is thoroughly explained and can be analysed in such a way. The forces in this poem is the tenant, landlord, police, and the press. Each one of these forces shows the racial struggles of an innocent black man.