Edna Ferber

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was an American poet and playwright who was best known for her feminist activism and her controversial views on love and sex. Millay’s open views regarding sexuality provide readers with insight when analyzing the tone of her Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now). Edna St. Vincent Millay’s use of powerful diction, exemplified by her choice of the words suffer and treacherous, add to her melancholy and lamenting tone in the sestet, and aid in the understanding

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a poet who was conventional in her execution of poems using the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but her words are powerful. She wrote of love and loss that resonate with readers to this day. A poem illustrating her choice of words is “If I should learn, in some quite casual way.” St. Vincent Millay writes of the speaker thinking of how he or she will react calmly if in some tragic way he or she discover a lover is dead. It is a poem that hits a reader hard with its sadness

Ambition: The Real Villain Edna Ferber, an American novelist, comments, “Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little” (Ferber). The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Stevenson and Macbeth by William Shakespeare both illustrate this idea. In Stevenson’s novel, a scientist named Henry Jekyll experiments with the phenomenon of separating one’s dual nature, which unfortunately kills him because he is not able to take control of his evil side. In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, a

American literature has been established for centuries. From the cave paintings of the Native Americans, to the novels documenting the events of World War II, time periods have greatly influenced the literature produced. The writings of the Puritans focused on God and their faith and the writings of the revolutionaries focused on achieving freedom from Great Britain. As history continued, the writings of each time period remained relevant and inspired by that time period. In the 1920s, women were

American short stories. The first short story, “Brothers”, by Sherman Anderson, tells the story of four characters struggling to find a purpose in their lives’ and desperately seeking out a companion. The second short story, “The Gay Old Dog”, by Edna Ferber, explores the main character’s feeling of isolation and helplessness in his family and personal life. In both short stories, the development of the characters and how they feel and act within the story are similar. Here, the characters feel as if

On December 27, 1927 when the premiere of Show Boat opened in the spectacular new Ziegfeld Theater, producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. had brought something new to Broadway. As Katherine Leigh Axtell writes, the show was “neither an operetta nor a musical comedy, neither a vaudeville nor a revue.” For the first time, composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II seamlessly integrated plot, character, music, and dance into a modern musical production -- starting a new genre of musical, which

Further, Kern’s innovations in music also consisted of experimenting with different types of songs and new instrument usage. “As early as 1913 he suggested to his orchestrator, Frank Saddler (or acquiesced in Saddler's suggestion), that saxophones be used in the pit band for “Oh, I Say!” Although recent musical research has identified these instruments as the smaller European variety rather than the standard American jazz instrument, this use of the saxophone was new” (Bordman). He also experimented

In the story Giant by Edna Ferber, Leslie Lynnton, a young society belle from Virginia, meets and marries Jordan "Bick" Benedict, a land-rich cattleman from Texas. Suddenly, she is swept away to the vast land of Texas, where she must adjust to a very different way of life, while simultaneously trying to get along with Bick's overbearing sister, Luz. As the story progresses, Leslie witnesses both the wonderful customs of the Texan people and their often inhumane treatment of the Mexicans who live

Media constantly surrounds our everyday lives whether we like to admit it or not. In some cases, it is an advertisement flashing on the T.V. or listening to the newest hit on the radio. Although we think we can control what we watch and explore, sometimes we are exposed involuntary to certain topics. Our life styles, preference, and individuality all influence what we each choose to consume and not consume. In totality, media subjects us to both involuntary and voluntary consumption and elicits a

entertainment. Musical theater transformed from blackface minstrel shows with gag productions into pieces of reputable theater. One of the most influential productions in making that turn into sophistication is Showboat. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber Showboat was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (Smith 627). Showboat was premiered in the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927 (Smith 627). The 1926 novel chronicled the lives of a musical and racially