Best known for his Father Brown detective stories, and most admired as a thinker for his fulllength books, of which he wrote almost fifty, G. K. Chesterton is numbered among the great essayists of the English language. His essays so far co...

SOURCE: Shargel, Raphael. “Gender and Genre Bending.” New Leader 80, no. 15 (22 September 1997): 20-1. In the following review, Shargel faults G.I. Jane for paying lip-service to a strong female protagonist, while the film's overall ton...

Broad-minded, ambitious, well-read, and socially inept, Gabriel Harvey was probably one of the most visible literary personalities of his day. Out of a prosperous middle-class background, he carved a multiform personal and public career. H...

French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) described man's place in the world in terms of such fundamental human experiences as relationships, love, fidelity, hope, and faith. His brand of existentialism was said to be largely unknown i...

In 1945 novelist Gabrielle Roy helped create a new direction for francophone literature in Canada with Bonheur d'occasion (translated as The Tin Flute, 1947), a frank and uncompromising examination of urban misery. Her subsequent works of ...

SOURCE: "Drama and Intrigue in Emerging Japan," in The Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 1993, p. 13. In the following review of Gai-jin, Scherer provides a mixed assessment of the novel, lamenting the often stereotyped characters but prai...

SOURCE: "More Human Than Human," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 18, 1995, pp. 3, 12. Eder is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American critic. In the following positive review, he discusses characterization and theme in Galatea 2.2, stating...

Galway Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1948 and an M.A. from the University of Rochester in 1949. Kinnell served in the U.S. Navy in 1945-1946. He married Ines Delgado de Torre...

Magical realism has been categorized to include literature in which hope, or change for the better fails. However this generalization is short cited and does not apply to all works of magical realism. In magical realism there is usually a ...

SOURCE: Ker, W. P. “The Old French Epic (Chansons de geste.)” In Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature, pp. 287-320. London: Macmillan, 1922. In the following excerpt, originally published in 1896, Ker compares Garin le Lohera...

"I was mediocre journalist, a mediocre musician, a mediocre actor, a mediocre athlete. I had to find something I could do well."1 A surprising beginning for a man who, on the night of January 28, 1979, had created the three toprated shows ...

Actor, director, dramatist, and screenwriter, as well as author of several novels and memoirs, Garson Kanin is remembered today primarily for a single play, Born Yesterday (1946), the first and most successful of his works for the stage. B...

Gary Soto is at heart a poet; everything he writes is overflowing with the vivid details of everyday life. Soto takes joy in the little things--remembered smells, voices in the distance, the pull of muscle when working. Growing up in a wor...

SOURCE: Vitiello, Justin. “Gaspara Stampa: The Ambiguities of Martyrdom.” Modern Language Notes 90, no. 1 (1975): 58-71. In the following essay, Vitiello examines Rime d'amore to show how Stampa's literary and cultural heritage influenc...

SOURCE: “The Prophet” in The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1961, pp. 33-61. In the essay that follows, Zaehner offers an overview of Zoroaster's life and his spiritual doctrines, as outlined in the Gathas. Th...

Though not one of the best-known of contemporary black writers, Gayl Jones can claim distinction as the teller of the most intense tales. Her stories are powerful depictions of madness and violence in the lives of black people, especially ...

Do boys and girls absorb their differing behavior from parental and social influence, or are there traits and attitudes hardwired into our genes? Could a boy or girl raised in an appropriate environment adopt a personality that we normally ...

Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) has two loves: his locomotive The General and Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). As the Civil War begins, both The General and Annabelle are captured by Union spies and taken north across enemy lines. Johnnie follows...

SOURCE: Shaw, Donald L. “Origins and Definitions.” In The Generation of 1898 in Spain, pp. 1-16. London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1975. In the following essay, Shaw traces the origins of the Generation of 1898 and provides a definition of the ...

On the face of it, the story [of A Generation] appears to be fairly stereotyped. At the centre there is a character with the required hallmarks of the "positive hero": high-minded, uncompromising, dogged, with all the mandatory virtues and ...

Genesis 18 is the story of Abraham and his three mysterious visitors. This one of the many complicated text in the Bible. Many faiths and researchers have different interpretations of this passage. However, the question, which we must ask,...

Though Laura Hobson, who wrote "Gentleman's Agreement," is undoubtedly a celebrity in her own right, there is nothing autobiographical in ["The Celebrity"], her fourth—and perhaps her best—novel. The story centers on the selection of "T...

Perhaps we must first realize what a curious phenomenon it is that Geoffrey Chaucer became the first English author. It would have been surprising in the fourteenth century for anyone to think of writing in his native tongue, and this was ...

Geoffrey Hill is a poet with a capacity for paradox. He combines the two opposing tendencies of British verse in the postwar period, displaying an excellent formal control, like the Movement poets of the 1950s, and an awareness of the viol...

The English pseudohistorian Geoffrey of Monmouth (ca. 1100-1155) is known for his "History of the Kings of Britain," through which he contributed greatly to the dissemination of the Arthurian legend throughout Europe. Geoffrey was born in ...