[Along] comes Orson Welles, with his finest sherry-selling voice, and he messes about arrogantly with the medium and one somehow doesn't mind. This is partly, of course, because he has taken fake, deception, fraud or what you will as his br...
F. R. Leavis is widely considered the most important literary critic of the twentieth century. He is identified with the consolidation of English as a university subject and with the production of an influential map of the English literary...
Study Pack: 1 Biography, 1 Summary, 1 Essay, 21 Criticisms
The poet, political activist, and constitutional theorist Francis Reginald Scott (1899-1985) was a catalyst in the struggle for Canadian political, legal, and literary independence; for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Canada; and ...
Study Pack: 2 Biographies, 1 Summary, 9 Criticisms
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer very much of his own time. As Malcolm Cowley once put it, he lived in a room full of clocks and calendars. The years ticked away while he noted the songs, the shows, the books, the quarterbacks. His own car...
On reading Soldiers Bathing, E. M. Forster claimed it was one of the three most outstanding books to have appeared in England in 1954. In general, however, knowledge of the work of F.T. Prince has been confined to other poets, the best of ...
The scholarship already accumulated on the subject of F. O. Matthiessen may be larger than that on any other American scholar born in the twentieth century. As the collective reminiscences published in the Monthly Review shortly after his ...
SOURCE: Bassett, John E. “A Fable: Faulkner's Revision of Filial Conflict.” Renascence 40, no. 1 (fall 1987): 15-29. In the following essay, Bassett examines the role of A Fable in Faulkner's canon. A Fable is a troublesome work. Writte...
SOURCE: Goldsmith, M. M. “Mandeville's Pernicious System.” In Mandeville and Augustan Ideas: New Essays, edited by Charles W. A. Prior, pp. 71-84. Victoria, Canada: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 2000. In the followin...
[The Fabulous Riverboat] is the second volume of Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" trilogy. Death is apparently only a temporary indisposition. Cadavers find themselves reincarnated as hale youngsters somewhere along the banks of The River...
["The Face of Another"] is an intricately contrived fantasy, somewhat wanting in dramatic confrontation of characters, but replete with symbolic devices having to do with the fate of modern man. The story, told in a series of letters and jo...
[The Face of Trespass] is the story of Gray, a failed writer and nearly alienated man, sick with infatuation for a corrupt, rich, married girl, whom he dare not see for fear of her terrible demands. Ruth Rendell conveys the derelict half-dr...
Ingmar Bergman's most personal work and one of his most profound and provocative efforts, Face to Face is probably also the Swedish artist's greatest film. A striking synthesis of his previous work and rich in images and themes, the movie w...
SOURCE: Sun, William H. and Faye C. Fei. “Masks of Faces Re-Visited: A Study of Four Theatrical Works Concerning Cultural Identity.” Drama Review 38, no. 4 (winter 1994): 120-32. In the following excerpt, Sun and Fei provide a mixed ass...
[Faces] is, I think, a great and courageous film in which Cassavetes has dared more than any American director in recent memory, and it is important to understand the nature of what he has done. (p. 217) [Several] qualities have led to a fe...
SOURCE: Fagan, Cary. Review of The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Other Stories, by Yann Martel. Quill & Quire 59, no. 4 (April 1993): 22. In the following review of The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, Fagan offers praise ...
Facundo by Domingo F. Sarmiento Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was a man of extremes. During his lifetime, he would be both an exile from his own country (in the 1840s, when he wrote Facundo) and president of the Argentine Republic (from 1868 t...
The poem, "The Faerie Queene", is a story about a courageous knight who goes through great trials and fights monsters. This in itself is entertaining but, it also has many allegorical references to Christianity. Many times Spenser talks a...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 3 Biographies, 2 Summaries, 1 Essay, 23 Criticisms, 1 eBook
In the book Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, the author has added the effect of parallelism of today's society and his fictional society in which Guy Montag, the main character, lives. There are both similarities and differences to ...
Study Pack: 2 Study Guides, 4 Biographies, 2 Summaries, 38 Essays, 13 Criticisms, 1 Quotes
François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 isn't a very good movie but the idea—which is rather dumb but in a way brilliant—has an almost irresistible appeal: people want to see it and then want to talk about how it should have been worked out...
The publication of Falconer, with its shockingly new milieu and its unusually violent language, is only the most dramatic proof that Cheever is not afraid to push off from past accomplishments and to work with previously untried materials. ...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 5 Biographies, 1 Summary, 1 Criticism
"The Fall of the House of Usher," by Edgar Allan Poe, has baffled readers and critics. Some may see it as an attempt to create a horror story which frightens its readers, while others may focus on the more figurative meanings of ...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 8 Biographies, 1 Summary, 8 Essays, 26 Criticisms
SOURCE: Stevens, Penny. Review of The Fallen Man, by Tony Hillerman. School Library Journal 43, no. 4 (April 1997): 166. In the following review, Stevens argues that The Fallen Man includes vivid descriptions of Native American mythology an...
SOURCE: Review of Falling Up, by Shel Silverstein. Publishers Weekly 243, no. 18 (29 April 1996): 73. In the following review, the reviewer recommends Silverstein's poetry volume Falling Up as an appealing book for children and comments on ...
Harry Berger, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz Throughout the two Henry IV plays, from his first appearance in the second scene of Part 1, Falstaff knowingly collaborates with Harry on the scenario entitled "The Rejection of Falsta...
Nowadays, there is no such thing as a typical British family. We have all heard of the nuclear or cereal packet family, which usually consists of an adult man, an adult woman and dependant children- usually a girl and boy, at the breakfast ...
Study Pack: 10 Summaries, 3 Essays, 9 Criticisms, 1 Quotes
SOURCE: Langley, Lee. “Grim Home Thoughts from Abroad.” Spectator 288, no. 9060 (30 March 2002): 41. In the following review of Family Matters, Langley praises Mistry as a writer who effectively weaves tragedy and vivid descriptions of ...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 1 Summary, 4 Criticisms
Though less pretentious and preposterous than Torn Curtain and Topaz, less ludicrous than Marnie, and less offensive than Frenzy, [Family Plot] is still late Hitchcock, and not very good. (p. 84) There are moments of inventiveness, here and...
The Famished Road by Ben Okri Ben Okri is a Nigerian-born author known for juxtaposing incisive social critique and African mythological tradition. His Booker Prize-winning third novel, The Famished Road, exemplifies this duality through it...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 2 Biographies, 2 Summaries, 2 Criticisms
The English novelist and diarist Fanny Burney (1752-1840) was one of the most popular novelists of the late 18th century. She was also an important chronicler of English manners, morals, and society. Fanny Burney, originally named Frances,...
Study Pack: 2 Biographies, 1 Summary, 6 Criticisms, 2 Quotes
One of America's first woman newspaper columnists. Sara Payson Willis, using the name Fanny Fern, wrote weekly from 1851 to 1872, primarily for the New York Ledger. Her columns were widely reprinted, and several of her ten books of essays ...
Study Pack: 3 Biographies, 1 Summary, 8 Criticisms
SOURCE: "The Old Last Act: Some Observations on Fanny Hill," in Encounter, Vol. XXI, No. 4, October 1963, pp. 69-77. In the following essay, Hollander asserts that Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Fanny Hill observes the conventions necess...
[A Fan's Notes is] a work of depth and seriousness—a moving, richly humorous record of humiliation and perseverance. Perhaps only in tightrope America, where to trip once is to die more than a little, can one immediately recognise lonelin...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 1 Biography, 1 Summary, 4 Criticisms
The Fantastic Four is a comic book published by Marvel Comics since 1961. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four are a family of superheroes—Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl (re-named the Invisible Woman in 1985), t...
The fantasy genre consists of many interesting features that allow the reader to float into an imaginary world were you can have an unthinkable adventure through walls and misty mountains or across a new un explored world that is protected ...
Study Pack: 2 Summaries, 2 Essays, 10 Criticisms, 1 Quotes
SOURCE: Apter, T. E. “Introduction: Fantasy and Psychoanalysis.” In Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality, pp. 1-11. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982. In the following essay, Apter explores the role and significanc...
SOURCE: Shore, Robert. “Prophecy off the Back of the Lorry.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5099 (22 December 2000): 18. In the following review, Shore expresses his disappointment with Churchill's Far Away, describing the play as incoh...
There is contrast between Gabriel Oak's first encounter with Bathsheba Everdene and his short meeting with Fanny Robin in Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. In the encounter with Bathsheba, "a woman, young and attractive" (Far From...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 5 Biographies, 1 Summary, 1 Essay, 19 Criticisms
The Far Pavilions follows M. M. Kaye's two highly successful historical novels Shadows of the Moon and Trade Wind; all three set in the second half of the nineteenth century in lands bordering the Indian Ocean, and all three evidence of the...
In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway introduces to the reader a character by the name of Frederick Henry. Henry had a goal to become a hero, and throughout the novel I feel that he proved he was. Henry also started out not having a rel...
Study Pack: 2 Study Guides, 6 Biographies, 2 Summaries, 16 Essays, 20 Criticisms
In order to gain a piece of his father-in-law's fortune, a financially desperate husband (William H. Macy) hires two hitmen (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to fake a kidnapping of his wife in Joel and Ethan Coen's 1996 noi...
Farley Mowat is considered by many to be "Canada's most famous author of nature lore," according to John Bemrose writing in Maclean's. With nearly forty published books and fourteen million copies of his works printed in thirty-five langua...
Study Pack: 3 Biographies, 1 Summary, 21 Criticisms
SOURCE: A review of The Farming of Bones, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 245, No. 23, June 8, 1998. The following review offers a positive assessment of The Farming of Bones. The almost dreamlike pace of Danticat's second novel (Breath, Eyes, M...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 1 Biography, 1 Summary, 5 Criticisms
There are many different dictionary definitions of the word fashion. For example, manner, mode, and way, but what is your personal style and how would you define it? Is this a topic of great importance to you or are you just in the dark w...
SOURCE: Perrot, Phillipe. “The Imperatives of Propriety.” In Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Richard Bienvenu, pp. 87-123. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. In...
Perhaps because the action opens in a women's fashionable house, and certainly because its two dominant figures are women, [The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)] has an obsessively feminine quality that sets it apart. Each of the principal women i...
Fat City is a work of art. This is the movie John Huston had under his skin for years to justify all the premature applause…. Allowing for the dreary level of consciousness conveyed by characters who live in the basement of themselves, th...
Werner Herzog's [Fata Morgana] takes the reductio ad absurdum narrative patterns of his other films to their logical conclusion by dispensing with narrative altogether…. Individually, many of the shots have a great formal beauty; and the ...
One trouble with Joe McGinniss's true-crime anatomy, Fatal Vision …, is that it's 663 pages long. If the prose is a little wooden and the insights less than electric, that's like forever. This isn't the Rosenberg case. The book's great le...
["Fate is the Hunter"] is a documentary about the pre-war days of commercial flying, first in the United States and, after, during the war, in South America and all over the world. It is an evocation from the point of view of the men in the...
Study Pack: 1 Study Guide, 1 Summary, 2 Criticisms
SOURCE: “Impasse in the Middle East,” in The Progressive, Vol. 48, No. 6, June, 1984, pp. 40-1. In the following review, Steif offers positive evaluation of The Fateful Triangle, which he praises as “a powerful and thoroughly document...
