This idea is initially established through the presence of an unusual epigraph. An epigraph is traditionally used as an insight into a book's general essence; a short introductory element in order to make it simpler for the reader to apprehend the author's intentions. Stoker, however, uses his epigraph as a way of creating doubt and confusion in the reader's mind before the novel has even begun; he presents his story as a serious account of real-life experience... The epigraph appears to be an assertion of the exactitude of the documents presented and is representative of the e...

• Word Count: 1779
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In John Donne's epigraph, "No Man is an Island": "No Man is an island; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of main." ... In his epigraph, he not only expresses the importance of community, but also emphasizes that all people are connected together, that one man's death can diminish him. ...

• Word Count: 1341
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Response Immediately, the epigraph emulates Eliot's view of the withering world through his referral to the Satyricon; the Sibyl of Cumae was once a beautiful woman, who was granted near immortality but had forgotten to ask to retain her youth, and in turn she grew old and decayed with the ability only to 'wish to die'. ...

• Word Count: 1365
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Samuel Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem in which an "ancient mariner" accosts one of three men on their way to a wedding, and recounts a tale of his voyage to him. In the tale, the mariner kills an albatross and, by this crime, is subject to a slew of punishments which come in t...

• Word Count: 1986
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. The term also encompasses cenotaphs, these are empty tombs, tomb-like monuments which do not contain human remains; and communal memorials to the dead, such as war memorials, which may or may not contain human remains. Funerary art may serve many cultural functions. It can play a role in burial rites, serve as an article for use by the dead in the afterlife, and celebrate the life and accomplishments of the dead, whether as part of kinship-centered practices of ancestor veneration or as a publicly...

• Word Count: 2259
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Since the eighteenth century, when the first rudimentary beginning was made in the study of religion in a scientific manner, scholars have been confronted by the problem of definition, which became more complicated with the rise of a philosophical humanism in Western Europe that denied the notion of the supernatural, (Harrison, 2006:1). Few seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between religious and secular institutions, yet there is widespread discrepancy regarding what "religion" actually means. In fact, some go so far as to question whether there is anything at all distincti...

• Word Count: 2282
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate