The book has to main themes, "Remembering the Past" and "Reinventing the Present.... In "Remembering the Past," Iyunolu Osagie studies the Amistad story as a literary trope in African American prose, poetry, and drama, and as an historical event that influenced the political and racial landscape of the United States. ... In "Reinventing the Present," Iyunolu Osagie connects the collective literary and cultural memory of Diaspora African in drama and art as an representation into the politics of identity and the reconstruction of black identity in the African Diaspora and Sierra ...

• Word Count: 725
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Wheatley is known for writing poetry with a dominant influence of religious and moral themes. ... Robert Hayden uses his extensive knowledge of literature to make a new genre of slave poetry, but all of them recognized the effectiveness of irony as a literary device. ...

• Word Count: 846
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Aphra Behn is a complicated figure within English theatrical history. As the first woman in England to classify herself as a professional writer and playwright, she wrote to support herself and to prove a point during a time when women were deemed subordinate to men. She was a commoner among royals, revolting against the societal norms of her time with her vulgar, yet ingeniously crafty works. Behn's influence extends far beyond being just a writer of her time period; rather, she left a mark as a pillar of English literature. She was an adventurist, an abolitionist, feminist, and civil r...

• Word Count: 2238
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Having been portrayed in literary criticism as a giant fish, a grotesque monster, an American Indian, an African slave, his incarnation changes from "a savage and a deformed slave" to the "quintessential colonial victim". ...

• Word Count: 2369
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The novel, Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe and first published in 1719, is an important literary piece of the Enlightenment period, as it expresses the Enlightenment themes of individualism, exploration and the rejection of authority. ...

• Word Count: 2166
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate