Americká literatura
Hughes, Langston. "Dream Variations".
Summary and Analysis
A rhymed poem. Its short lines give a fragmentary impression which is in a perfect accordance with the quality of the described dream. There are recurrent motifs of colour: "white day",...
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Hughes, Langston. "Morning After".
Summary and Analysis
(from American Literature II Lectures)
A poem written in a playful blues stanza: i.e. rhymed AAa BBb, with any number of stanzas, and much improvisation. The common themes presented in...
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Hughes, Langston. "Mother to Son".
Summary and Analysis
An unrhymed poem in black English dialect. The poem is a piece of advice from a mother to her son. Formally it frequently employs anaphoric "and" to introduce lines with the list of...
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Hughes, Langston. "Mulatto".
Summary and Analysis
An unrhymed experimental poem. Intermingles images of night and fragmented utterances in italics. The latter supports the subject of the poem and provides additional information concerning...
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Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers".
Summary and Analysis
(from American Literature II Lectures)
An unrhymed poem with a rhetorical structure and an anaphoric opening: "I've known rivers". The phrase is repeated differently in the beginning of...
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Hurston, Zora Neale. "How it Feels to be Colored Me".
Summary and Analysis
The essay explains Hurston's concept of the colour modelled on the examples from her own life as a coloured person. The essay sparkles with humour, but her witty remarks do not degrade the...
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Inge, William. Come Back, Little Sheba.
Summary & Analysis
Act One, Scene One
The stage is empty. The downstairs of an old house in a semi-respectable neighbourhood in a Midwestern city. A kitchen and a living room. All littered and dirty....
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Irving, Washington. "Christmas Eve".
Summary
The story is introduced by a poem by Cartwright which prays for the blessing of the house.
The first person narrator and his companion Bracebridge arrive at the mansion of the companion's father. It is...
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Irving, Washington. "Peter the Headstrong".
Summary
"In which the Troubles of New Amsterdam Appear to Thicken, Showing the Bravery, in Time of Peril, of a People who Defend themselves by Resolution"
New Amsterdam is in danger. People gather to seek...
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Irving, Washington. "Rip Van Winkle".
Summary
The story is introduced by a poem by Cartwright which celebrates the importance of truth.
It is set in the Catskill Mountains. The protagonist Rip Van Winkle is a simple, good-natured, but lazy man. He...
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Irving, Washington. "The Author's Account of Himself".
Summary
The story is introduced by Lyly's Euphues, saying that the traveller is forced to alter his mansion with his manners and to live where he can, not where he would.
The first person narrator explains...
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Irving, Washington. "Westminster Abbey".
Summary
The story is introduced by a poem from Christolero's Epigrams, by T.B., realizing that life is vanity and death is the proof thereof.
The first person narrator gives an account of a melancholy autumn...
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James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle".
Introduction
(by Quentin Anderson)
- James's style of narrative defeats reader's expectations (the character of May Bartram) and so establishes a struggle with the reader
- the author creates his own system of...
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James, Henry. "The Real Thing".
Summary
A remarkable couple appears in the studio of the nameless first person narrator. Mr and Mrs Monarch are respectable, smart, and very shy. After Major Monarch's retirement from army, they have lost...
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James, Henry. "The Story of It".
Summary
Maud Blessingbourne spends a stormy May day reading a modern French book. Her company is Mrs Dyott, a middle-aged lady, who unlike the younger woman never reads. Maud believes that Mrs Dyott does not...
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