Reading literature through the looking glass of theory.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Endgame is considered by many to be Samuel Beckett's greatest play. It has four main characters: Hamm, who is blind and can't stand up; Clov, who can stand all he wants but can't sit; and Nagg...
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
In the 14th century, the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a book called The Decameron, which was pretty much the equivalent of a blockbuster action movie but with a Renaissance flair. A grou...
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
This is a book that hypes itself up starting from the title. Charles Dickens' Great Expectations tells the story of the orphan Pip, detailing his childhood, his sudden surprise gift of a...
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
What does a normal group of kids do when they find themselves stranded on a desert island? Build rafts? Ferment coconuts? Look for The Others? In the case of William Golding's novel The Lord of the...
"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
So that's nice about all those structures that make the baggy monsters we think of as novels seem like they fit some sort of pattern. But how about poetry? Let's look at a sonnet by Gerard Manley H...