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À Rebours and The Picture of Dorian Gray reject the strict mimesis of the naturalist and realist schools while their protagonists function as cautionary figures against the moral idolization of the artwork.

Although Marjane in Persepolis narrates her own historical story in a way that Art in Maus does not, both works represent childhood by selectively detailing certain historical events that they did not personally witness, imbuing literal and metaphorical childlike imagery into their illustrations, and exploring the nuances of parent-child relationships once the latter are also adults.

The coded concepts of influence, collaboration, and Hellenism within The Picture of Dorian Gray and “Collaboration” shed light on this socially problematic passion, otherwise presented opaquely.

In The Princess of Cleves and Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, Lafayette and Richardson construct morally ambiguous situations in which the heroines demonstrate their autonomy. In so doing, they ultimately configure the distinction between moral principle and emotional desire as a false binary.

What do written criticisms of The Monk reveal about the political, moral, and religious attitudes of England in the late 1790s? I will contend that there was much more at stake than the literary merit of a popular novel: anti-Lewis rhetoricians used the novel to advance social critiques that chastised irreligion, moral depravity, and the corruption of the aristocracy within the context of a conservative reaction to the French Revolution in England. 

Dancer from the Dance is a tragic novel, in part because of Malone’s condition as a doomed queen. He is unable to exit the circuit, slow down, and “grow up” because he finds it irreconcilable to live in the heteronormative world of production and stability, and the world of queer hedonism, at two different speeds.

The Conjuring reveals its true horror: the idea that women are the conduits of evil, and men have been right to try to save them from themselves for centuries. 

When Edna finds herself in nature she is taken back through memory to her childhood, a time in which she was free of external pressure and could be most genuinely herself. It is this journey that highlights Edna’s driving motivation throughout the novel: to preserve her basic sense of self.

“The End” likewise portrays an account of old age marked by infirmity and decay; however, Beckett’s modernist aesthetic suggests that decay has revelatory functions, and therefore, old age uncovers existential truths, which otherwise remain concealed.