Civil Unrest in Eden: Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” and the Country House Poem

Ben Jonson strived to imitate the style of the classical Roman and Greek poets, finding himself a major figure in the Neoclassical Literature style. One of his more famous poems was “To Penshurst,” a country house poem written for the Sidney family, of Sir Robert Sidney and his son Sir Philip Sidney, who owned the Penshurst estate. According to “The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics,” the definition of a country house poem is a poem that “celebrates the home of a patron, friend, or model of the poet, treating the house and its landscape as an instance of civility and culture” (Hibbard). There are many other notable poems from this sub-genre of Renaissance literature, such as Aemilia Lanyer’s “Description of Cookeham” and Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House,” but the most famous is probably Jonson’s “To Penshurst.” “To Penshurst” was originally a part of a group of nonepigrammatic poems entitled “The Forest.” It is a 102 lined poem consisting of rhyming couplets that seem to be influenced by the poems of the Roman poets Horace (65-8 b.c.e.) and Martial (40-103 c.e.) (Budra). However, even though the poem is a great example of the country house poem sub-genre, it also doubles as a satirical poem. My argument is that “To Penshurst” is Jonson’s way of slyly offering his social criticism of the state of England’s social order in the 1600’s by disguising it within what is typically just a poem of praise and embellishment.

Teen Idols and Idolized Teens: Novel to Film Comparison of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Using literature as inspiration for film has been a tactic used by filmmakers since the beginning era of film. The genres of detective fiction, horror, romance, and even Shakespearean plays have had their fair share of adaptations. In more recent years, the inspiration for many movies has come from the realm of Young Adult Fiction. Movies such as Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars were all contracted from their novel counterparts, have all been very successful in the box office, and have created large, loyal fan bases. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a novel-film combination that fits into this category, but in the adaptation there are multiple differences in characters, themes, and plot. Chbosky is both the author of the novel and the director of the film, a combination not frequently seen in film, and in my essay I want to explore the dynamic of how he uses the different mediums of novel and film to express the same story and why he makes the changes he does for the film adaptation.

Les Femmes: Portrayal of Women in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress

The entire life of a character, in both novel and film, is at the mercy of the one who creates them. The job of a film adaptation is to realize and shape the characters of the original work on-screen in a believable, enjoyable, and successful way. In the novels The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum,  The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress, the main female characters, Katharina Blum, Vivian Rutledge, and Daphne Monet, respectively, are each depicted in a specific way by the authors and all are significantly reshaped in their film counterparts. Through each character change in both development and personality of these female characters, the themes from novel to adaptation are diluted.

Are You There God? It’s Me, John: Symbolism and Metaphor in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet #14

The metaphysical poets of seventeenth century England are characterized by their use of conceit, or extended metaphor, and their common themes of love, religion, and death. John Donne is considered by many to be one of the most predominant figures of the metaphysical poetry movement. He wrote in many different forms and styles over the course of his life, but all of his works flow with his signature sensual style. Even after he became a cleric for the Church of England, his religious poetry and prose still included puns, paradoxes, and unlikely metaphors. The Holy Sonnet #14, alternatively titled “Batter my heart” is one of Donne’s most famous sonnets. Through conceit and form, Donne successfully executes an unlikely comparison between religious or holy love and common, earthly love and the violent metaphors within the sonnet ultimately comment on the extreme need for willpower in faith.

In The End: Dysfunctional Relationships and Film Endings in Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer, and Brokeback Mountain

The tragedy is typically characterized as a form of drama that involves human suffering, fatal flaws, and death. The plays Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer and the short story “Brokeback Mountain” all include tragic elements that mostly revolve around the dysfunctional relationships portrayed in each work. Their film adaptations, which all share the same name, have changed the endings of the works in different ways, but each ending seems to be more positive than their written counterparts. I want to argue that by changing the dynamic of particular relationships in the film adaptations, the endings are also affected in positive ways.

Who is the Movie For?: The Audience’s Role in the Film Adaptations of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square

When a director decides to adapt a literary work into film, there are many things for them to consider: structure, character, setting, plot, and the audience. One of the most important aspects of turning a literary work into a film is attracting a wide audience. The attraction to film adaptations of literature is because people like to see books visualized or see famous actors play recognizable characters. However, because of the limitations of film, the director must make decisions on what aspects of the original work stay or are cut, resulting in adaptations that can be categorized by least to most faithful: loose, intermediate, and close. In the case of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square, the changes between the literary source and the film adaptation were made by the directors, writers, and all the other film crew were chosen in order to broaden the appeal of the adaptation to not only the original fan base of the literary work, but to a wider audience.

Masked Love: The Metaphor Behind “Love” in Wyatt’s “Farewell, Love” and Sidney’s “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot”

The typical life of a courtier living during sixteenth century England, also known as theTudor period, was not as glamourous as those involved with it may have liked. The court was the center of power but was also the center of cultural influence, with holds in fashion, art, theater, and poetry, and whatever was popular in the courts shaped the entire country’s thoughts about culture. However, despite the court being a place for advancement when it came to politics, wealth, and influence, it was also a dangerous place for those in close proximity to the King/Queen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature directly states that “the courtiers were torn between the need to protect themselves and the equally pressing need to display themselves” (533), meaning that putting oneself into the public sphere also puts one into the spotlight where secrets and faults could potentially be exposed to all of the court, which could ruin someone’s life, and even get them killed. Since both Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542) and Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586) were not only courtiers but influential courtiers and poets, they had to be especially careful when it came to expressing their true thoughts and feelings since their works would be most likely widely distributed and read by all. Wyatt’s sonnet “Farewell, Love” and the second sonnet of Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, titled “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot” are both about the hardships of being in love but they have a common feature: within both poems, the word “love” is capitalized, which not only personifies the concept, but also creates an extended metaphor where “Love” represents not only love itself but the person whom the poem is really about.