One of the most widely discussed and renowned twentieth-century authors, D. H. Lawrence remains intriguing and problematic in terms of his biography, his writings, and his prophetic role. In his relatively short life, he was a prolific aut...

D. M. Thomas is widely known for his novel The White Hotel, which quickly rose to the top of the best-seller lists after its American publication in the spring of 1981. Yet, he is also an accomplished poet. In his poetry, as well as in his...

SOURCE: Fulton, Helen. “The Love Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym.” Aumla, no. 49 (May 1978): 22-37. In the following essay, Fulton compares and contrasts the poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym to that of Chaucer, suggesting that while both are creat...

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as myster...

The "Alley" [in Damnation Alley] is the post-holocaust road from L.A. to Boston and one that has never been run alive until the last of the Hell's Angels is forced to try it. Boston is down with the plague and only L.A. has the antidote. Th...

The kind of analogy which Visconti draws in [The Damned] between the history of the von Essenbecks and the rise of Nazism is by no means without precedent in literature. As artists, Visconti and Mann [particularly in his novel Buddenbrooks]...

SOURCE: “In the Steps of a Japanese Gumshoe,” in Chicago Tribune Books, January 2, 1994, p. 6. In the following review, Markey outlines the central themes of Dance, Dance, Dance. Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance is a mystery that r...

SOURCE: Brantley, Ben. “To Stay Alive, Snipe, Snipe.” The New York Times (October 12, 2001): section E, page 1. Below, Brantley presents a review of the production of The Dance of Death at the Broadhurst Theater, New York, directed by S...

[In Alice Munro's vision there] are those of "the world," of society, of the accepted norms, and those "from the other country" …, people such as Miss Marsalles [in the title story of The Dance of the Happy Shades], whose innocence has ma...

Dancers in Mourning, like The Case of the Late Pig published in 1937, was the author's finest achievement up to that time, and it remains a classic of the genre. A superlatively subtle book, fraught with complicated tensions and crowded wit...

Mankind has a constant desire to become more knowledgeable. With new knowledge, it is almost certain that new technology will soon follow. New technology serves as either a new luxury or a new disaster waiting to happen. Many good things h...

Hailed as the "king of alternative comics" by Newsweek contributor Sarah van Boven, Daniel Clowes has fashioned a retro, tongue-in-cheek look at 1950s and '60s culture. In his graphic novels, all of which are compilations of issues of his ...

SOURCE: “Nations and Novels: Disraeli, George Eliot, and Orientalism,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, Spring, 1992, pp. 255-75. In the following essay, Brantlinger discusses the ways in which George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and Ben...

Daniel Hoffman was born in New York City. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946 and was decorated with the Legion of Merit. He was educated at Columbia University, receiving his B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1947, his M.A. in 1...

SOURCE: Ganz, Margaret. “Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Ilness: Art Proscribed.” In Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature and Film, edited by Maurice Charney and Joseph Reppen, pp. 37-58. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Pres...

SOURCE: Rossel, Sven H. “Ole Hyltoft and the Neorealistic Trends in Contemporary Danish Literature.” World Literature Today 57, no. 1 (winter 1983): 17-21. In the following essay, Rossell argues that the poetry of Ole Hyltoft is marked ...

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) wrote "The Divine Comedy," the greatest poetic composition of the Christian Middle Ages and the first masterpiece of world literature written in a modern European vernacular. Dante lived in a re...

Danzy Senna , ( 1970 - ) is an American novelist. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is the daughter of the author Carl Senna ( The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights, ) an Afro-Mexican poet, and Fanny Howe [1] , an Irish...

Any biographical note on Daphne Marlatt seems especially slight because her published work gives so much of herself. Marlatt's reader will find not only the vital statistics, for example that her son Christopher Alan (Kit) was born 3 May 1...

It is possible to know what makes a good play. Above all, a writer must follow the logic of his material relentlessly, no matter where it leads. Once situations are established and characters alive, they must develop in a world of their own...

[I was] unable to finish Philip Farmer's Dark Is The Sun. Its 400+ pages grew stiff beneath my despairing gaze and would not turn…. My problem is I'm unable to read fast enough and carelessly enough to enter the hypnagogic state demanded ...

Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon is one of the twentieth century's most famous fictional accounts of a historical reality. Koestler's novel depicts the Communist Revolution and the changes that took place after Stalin and the "new" genera...

SOURCE: “Love and the Indian Immigrant in Bharati Mukherjee's Short Fiction,” in Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993, pp. 197-211. In the following discussion of themes common to the short stories in...

A writer of absolute competence is Marion Zimmer Bradley, who should be more widely read. Her "Darkover Landfall" Marion Zimmer Bradley 1930– Photograph by Modern Art. Courtesy of Marion Zimmer Bradley… is both literate and exciting, wi...

In March 1928, just after Dashiell Hammett had submitted his first novel for publication, he wrote to his editor, Blanche Knopf, that unlike most moderately literate people, he took detective fiction seriously: "Some day somebody's going t...