Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 is a very deep, complex, and demanding novel, requiring the wide breadth of knowledge. One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is Pynchon's choice -- or rather, invention -- of the names he gives the characters and organizations described in the novel. These names function as metaphors for the people and things they represent, thus enabling us to understand the hidden meaning of the novel. The protagonist of The Crying of Lot 49 is a woman named Oedipa Maas. Oedipa's first name, obviously, derives from Oedipus, the hero of Soph...

• Word Count: 2590
• Approx Pages: 10

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

The "Revolution" in Literature During the 19th/20th Centuries An influential English Modernist Virginia Woolf once said, "On or about December 1910, the world changed". This statement is regarding the drastic change in the culture of society with the beginning of exploration of the meaning of life and the patterns that society are prone to following. This brought about curiosity and the religious affiliated explanations were no longer sufficient. The dissatisfaction for many, and believing mindlessly in something with no real evidence was intolerable. Society's ...

• Word Count: 3767
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate