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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Oscar Wilde, who aside from drama also, published short stories, essays, and poems in various magazines. Titles in this study guide include Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest.
As a collection of the late nineteenth-century, Wilde's work rebelled against many Victorian conventions...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Theodore Dresier's Sister Carrie, known by many to be the greatest of the American urban novels.
As a novel of the turn of the 20th Century, Sister Carrie moved away from Victorian era values and towards naturalism, realism, and instincts of human thought and behavior. Moreover, this first novel introduces readers to a common theme Dresier addresses: the individual...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, without a doubt, the most popular drama written, during the hundred years between 1700 and 1800.
As a comedy of the Restoration period of British drama, the humor in The Beggar's Opera serves as a medium for carrying the author's meaning, social satire, which is applicable in all countries at all times. Moreover, the basis of the play's...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, a novel that influenced many future authors with its unique storytelling and themes.
As a novel of nineteenth-century England, wealth determines power, and Dickens comments on how the former does not produce happiness. Dickens explores themes in this novel by commenting on the society of 19th century England. This Bright Notes...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Euripides, one of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. Titles in this study guide include Rhesus, Iphigenia In Aulis, Bacchae, Phoenissae, Orestes, Electra, Trojan Women, Helen, Iphigenia In Tauris, Ion, Suppliants, Hecuba, Heracles, Cyclops, A Satyr-Play, Andromache, Heracleidae, Hippolytus, Medea, and Alcestis.
As a Greek...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, one of Shakespeare's most moving and richest works.
As a tragedy of Roman and Egyptian history, Shakespeare reaches the pinnacle point of his poetic evolution as he transitions in works. Moreover, by the use of rhythm, images, figures, and verse, he makes every experience personally felt by the reader. This Bright Notes...
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A comprehensive study guide offering an in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for analyzing works of fiction, including the analysis of plot, theme, style, and tone.
As students of literature, understanding the tools, and methods for understanding fiction is critical to becoming better readers, writers, and thinkers. Knowledge of the components of fiction, the various structures of fiction writing, and the literary devices used, all enhance...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Anton Chekhov, who wrote as many as 600 to 800 tales in his lifetime. Titles in this study guide include Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, and Ivanov.
As a collection of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century fiction, Chekhov's work communicates a strict sense of realism he adamantly believed fiction should...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Inherit the Wind, a political play that fictionalized the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial.
As a play of the 1950's, Inherit the Wind defended intellectual freedom. Moreover, the play intended to denounce the state of McCarthyism at the time. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Lawrence and Lee's classic...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Herman Melville's Moby Dick, deemed by author Raymond Weaver as "indisputably the greatest whaling novel."
As an 1851 tragic epic, Moby Dick tells the story of a captain's expedition to track down and seek revenge on a whale from the point of view of one of the sailors. Moreover, Melville uses allusion, simile, and metaphor to showcase themes such as revenge,...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, published in 1859 and regarded as his best work.
As a philosophical novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel tells the story of an abusive father and his son who fell in love with a girl of a lower social class. Moreover, Meredith uses intellectualism, satire, and poetry to explore human motive and rationalization....
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, ranked number 11 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century.
As a novel of the mid-twentieth century, Under the Volcano is an almost autobiographical tale of self-destruction inspired by Lowry's real experiences. Moreover, the text is considered one of literature's most powerful...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Edmund Spenser, who earned a wide reputation as a poet among English and Irish nobility. Titles in this study guide include The Faerie Queene, The Shepheardes Calender, The Daphnaida, the Amoretti and Epithalamion, The Prothalamion, and Fowre Hymnes.
As a collection of Renaissance literature, Spenser's work contained characters based on historical...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the bestselling novels of all time, and heralded by readers, everywhere as The Great American Novel.
As a novel of the Great Depression era, Gone with the Wind is a coming-of-age story of a spoiled daughter of a plantation owner set during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Moreover, Mitchell...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, thought to be written as the author approached the middle of his career.
As a theatrical comedy of the late sixteenth century, Much Ado About Nothing poses the question of how love expresses itself. Moreover, it suggests to readers that people who get swept up into fits of passion do so because of everyday situations...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, a didactic play written with the purpose to teach the audience.
As a play of the early-twentieth century, its story and relevance continues to play out in modern movies, musicals, and movie musicals. Moreover, Pygmalion's success can be, attributed to its challenging of a universal truth that in the English-speaking world, there seems...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, a book that pioneered the feminist science fiction movement.
As a science-fiction, fantasy novel of the mid to late 1900s, The Left Hand of Darkness explores androgyny, tragedy, and love. Moreover, Le Guin's writing shows that in fantasy, journeys into outer space are often metaphors for journeys inward. This Bright...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by H. G. Wells, whose science fiction pioneered society's ideas of the future. Titles in this study guide include Time Machine, The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and Tono-Bungay.
As a chief literary spokesman of the liberal optimism that preceded World War I, Wells took the ideas and fears that haunted the minds of this age and gave them symbolic...
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English
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Thomas More's Utopia, originally written in Latin in 1516 and considered a great political and philosophical satire.
As a rhetorical work from the early 16th century, there has been much debate amongst scholars on what More's intentions were for writing. Moreover, Utopia makes a mirror so that readers may be able to see themselves more clearly and more realistically....
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A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, a literary classic due to Dostoyevsky's unique shifting writing styles and characterizations.
As a mid-nineteenth century European work, The Idiot aims to highlight perfection in an imperfect world as a major theme. Moreover, this classic will encourage students to think in a more philosophical manner and look for a deeper theme...
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