Author Archives: maximumsparrow

The story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson has many qualities and themes that would be beneficial to be taught to students, especially to a higher grade like 11th or 12th, or even to college students in an English class. Some of the themes that I think areContinue reading “The Teaching of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde””

The Victorian era of literature spawned many different literary movements. Two of the major literary movements that came out of this era were realism and, to oppose this movement, anti-realism. While realism inserts aspects of day-to-day life of an ordinary person at this time into the setting and characters with thorough descriptions of landscaping andContinue reading “Anti-Realism in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde””

In the novel Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Austen parodies Gothic fiction in the Romantic era of literature. At the beginning of the novel, nothing hints to the readers about a potential villain or villainess that will seek to use or to oppose our “Gothic heroine” Catherine. She seems to go about her days asContinue reading “Who’s The Villain in Northanger Abbey?”

William Wordsworth, from the preface of his piece Lyrical Ballads from 1800 and 1802, defines a few different things that are essential to poetry, including poetry itself. Besides poetry, Wordsworth also defines the use of common language versus poetic diction, the principal object of poetry, and the balance of metre and emotion in a poem.Continue reading “‘Lyrical Ballads’ in the Age of Romanticism”