The opening sentences interlace the governmental strands of patriarchy, property and empire: "He- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it- was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him". ... But this fairytale-esque happy ending ...

• Word Count: 1793
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Throughout the ages, literature has revolved around the personal relationships between people. The relationships between women have evolved throughout the ages possibly as a result of the transformations of society as these texts explore; The Shakespearean era where only men were allowed to act, the Victorian era in which everything must be prim and proper and women should still do their work as a mother and wife to the Post Modern era in which women are free to express themselves in the same way that men are. All three chosen texts explore these relationships differently; Jane Eyre's cl...

• Word Count: 3018
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the mid-1980s, just as the new historicists, with their invocation of "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history," were transforming the way readers understood the English Renaissance, Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose became both a critical success and a bestseller. (1983) Widely celebrated as a postmodern historical novel, this dazzling mixture of thick historical research and popular detective fiction invited its readers to view historical fiction as an academically respectable genre and a vehicle for recovering and reimagining the past in unconventional ways...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate