Essays on Poems

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a very strong critique of the medieval Catholic Church. The characters that are introduced in the “General Prologue” are seemingly very different and bring forth varying opinions and views on topics like the medieval Catholic Church. However, these characters all have to common goal to make the pilgrimage to Canterbury...

The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is a satirical piece written for the purpose of the betterment of the people. Chaucer saw much corruption around him, specifically in the church. He took all these people and wrote stories about them without using their real names and wrote about all that they had done wrong....

American writer Edgar Allan Poe is one of the world’s greatest crime and horror authors. His tormented stories reflect his tormented life. Poe created some of the most distinctive female characters in the history of fiction. According to him “the most melancholic and poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman....

Often times the personality of a character is not initially revealed by the poet to the fullest extent in order to add to the storyline in the poem. Chaucer manifests this idea in The Canterbury Tales, specifically through the life of the Merchant. Through the displaying of the intricate personality and physical traits of the...

The Odyssey is a complex text that introduces new challenges and ideas each time it is read. As Suzuki stated from Carnevale’s book, How Many Books are in The Odyssey, each book is translated by different people who “wrote it in their own language as well as by their own understanding of the original story.”...

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” was first published in the year 1845 and serves as one of the poet’s most popular works. The poem is highly renowned for its stylized language, trochaic octameter writing, and supernatural atmosphere that relays the poet’s message. The poem is a narrative about a talking raven’s mysterious encounter with a...

As a Romantic poet in the world following industrialisation, Wordsworth’s poetry heavily concentrated on the landscape and its effects on the mind, soul and emotions. In the poems selected by Seaumus Heaney, Wordsworth’s poetry demonstrates that Nature and its manifestations provide both joy and sorrow. Positive emotions and a sense of serenity along with the...

William Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Macbeth’ captures the titular character’s progressive isolation as his power grows, highlighted through the deterioration of his relationships with trusted allies, Lady Macbeth and his secluded death. Whilst eleventh-century Scotland is a virtuous realm of honour, Macbeth’s betrayal of the chain of being is a ruinous act of brutality which results in...

The concept addressed in Macbeth was the more power you acquire, the more immoral acts you will undertake to control it. Initially, Macbeth, a loyal and courageous hero of the war, experiences a transition into darkness. What possessed him to do a series of horrific occurrences, that will not only render him as king but...

Powerful ideas are at the heart of every novel, as shown in Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce Et Decorum and Seamus Heaney’s poem Requiem for the croppies. Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce Et Decorum Est talks about the deadly use of gas bomb and the soldiers desperately putting on their masks other wise they would die a...