For Evans, the blind beggar represents a picture of physical decay. ... Evans provides a detailed overview of the beggar's physical ailments, and then interjects, Medically this is a complex picture, and the blindness appears to be no more than one symptom among many .Generations of literary critics have mocked Homais' attempts to cure the beggar with a diet and ointments, but no one, to my knowledge, has reflected on the fact that for the pharamacist, the diagnosis is not amaurosis, but scrofula. ... These references emphasize Flaubert's realistic, unflinching description o...

• Word Count: 1106
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This physician comments on the importance of revealing one's sins in order to accept the blame and rid of a burden that may cause physical damage. ... Therefore, Hawthorne's depiction evidences an evolution in character with this simile referring to his searching in the darkness, adhering a menacing and evil characteristic to his traits as a character, giving a tailspin to his role in the novel. ...

• Word Count: 699
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He is an intelligent investigator who is able to solve difficult crimes by rational deduction rather than physical investigation. ... When talk of the murders comes up, Porfiry observes the way Raskolnikov is instantly thrown into a fit of mental and physical torment. ... Her face, and her whole figure indeed, had another peculiar characteristic. ...

• Word Count: 1225
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the first of the relationships treated in the novel, Tom Brangwen doesn't quite have the identification with the land characteristic of his ancestors but he has similar roots and has few intellectual abilities. ... Its main weakness is due to Tom's imbalance which prevents him achieving anything other than a physical contact with Lydia. ... He thus loses her respect and she is the one who seeks contact with an otherness beyond their physical relationship. ...

• Word Count: 1985
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The angel is poised above Orlando and her daughter, resplendent and androgynous, pealing out the ecstasy of being "neither a woman nor a man," its exuberance inviting the audience to celebrate the eradication of chronology, distance and gendered characteristics. ... Her long look at his face and his smile, and the physical similarity (especially around the eyes) between Billy Zane and Charlotte Valandrey, encourage the viewer to imagine Orlando thinking back through that founding love affair, exploring the likeness between Sasha and Shelmerdine. ...

• Word Count: 1793
• Approx Pages: 7
• 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