Kidnapped: Robert Louis Stevenson

There is a very good reason why Robert Louis Stevenson's books are still made into movies. Take, for example, the Disney animated hit Treasure Planet, which was based on Stevenson's Treasure Island. The book is just as rousing an adventure now as it was more than a hundred years ago, and has therefore been the subject of many movie adaptations and the inspiration for countless other children's novels since then.

Although somewhat lesser known, Stevenson's Kidnapped is no less timeless. Following the death of his father, David Balfour finds that he has wealthy kinsmen in a nearby town, and that his father's wish was that he would seek them out. Upon his arrival at his uncle's house, David discovers that he is unwelcome, and slowly the truth of his identity begins to unravel.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain is often thought of as the great cynic in American literature. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is perhaps one of the most cynical of his works. In this amusing story, Twain takes an American entrepreneur from his own day and age, and thrusts him back through time to King Arthur's reign.

The Golden Age Gone Medieval: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The novel is therefore about how a nineteen-century American--blinded by the Industrial Age and what Mark Twain himself called the Golden Age--might act if he found himself in medieval England. Mark Twain sees the Golden Age as a rabid attempt to exploit everyone and everything. And, that's exactly what Hank Morgan, also known as the Boss, does when he gets to Camelot.

Death & Rebirth in The Waste Land

The waste land is composed of many cities and the poem is built upon the remains of many poems. In order to give it a form and order, Eliot has taken recourse to anthropology and exploration of ancient myths. Anthropology and psychology out together have produced themost fundamental revolutions in controversary thought and belief.

“The Golden Bough” has greatlu assisted him in finding a unifying factor for his poem. In 1920s also appeared Jessie Weston’s “From Ritual to Romace” abd a reading of this could help Eliot to give shape to his intricate material. He had learnt from this book the concept of “rebirth” of the year. From the fertility myths if the rebirth of the poetency of man, the christian story of resurrection and the Grail Legend of purification.

The course sourse of all these myths lies in the fundamental rhythm of nature: the season, that of death and rebirth of the year. Such knowledge and knowledge of psychology point to the close union in all these myths of the physical and spiritual, to the fact that their symbolism is basically sexual. It indicates the fundamental relation between sex and religion.

These are surface differences only which tend to mask profound resemblances and the reslut is both a feeling and sanctions wither. The purity if the Grails Legend loses itself in the symbols of generative significance. He could shape his material when he come to read Jessie weston’s work and of the mystery of death and rebirth by the story of the kingdom where the ruler has become weak and impotent by sickness, war and old age, the land becomes the waste and the task of the hero iis to dedicate himself to the uplift of the country and the nation. He must sacrifice his whole self for the regeneration of the people and the country: “Da” standing for Datta.

Wycliff and Lollard Movment

The most famous and important of the anti-clerical agitators was John Wycliff who originally began his career as a doctor of divinity at Oxford in the 1360's and speculated on such abstruse questions as the nature of universals. He soon, however, developed strong critiques of the church and eventually assumed in the late 1370's a revolutionary stance towards the church. He rejected all church hierarchy and declared that the Christian consisted of the people who had faith but did not consist of the church hierarchy (this would eventually become the "priesthood of all believers" in Martin Luther). He rejected transubstantiation as a legitimate doctrine (the idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist actually change into the body and blood of Christ), arguing that there is no Scriptural authority for this. He also argued that the Bible should be translated into vernacular languages, that it does no good to read from the Bible in a language that most Christians can't understand. To this end, he produced the first English Bible. 

Death Be Not Proud

In Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther explores the process of death: discovery, fighting, living on, and then dying. The process becomes just a little bit easier, as humor, human kindness and courage all are woven in. More than just about dying, this memoir becomes a study of living. Gunther asked himself the larger questions: "Why was Johnny being subjected to this merciless experience?" And, then he says, "suffering is an inevitable part of most lives." He wanted to believe there was some greater purpose, like the works of art that came out of Milton's blindness and Beethoven's deafness. He says, "perhaps the entire harrowing episode would make his brain even finer, subtler, and more sensitive than it was."

The Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison

There are many great writers whose reputations rest on one superlative masterpiece, whether they’ve written several works or whether they’ve produced just one unforgettable and unavoidable magnum opus. Because it’s the only book that he was able to spend any serious time on, The Great Gatsby puts F. Scott Fitzgerald in the former category, which makes readers and critics wonder what else he’d have been capable of had he not led such a chaotic life.