Classics – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Immanuel Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘What is Enlightenment?’, full title ‘Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). As the longer title suggests, Kant’s essay is a response to a question (posed by a clergyman, Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner) concerning the nature of philosophical enlightenment.

What is enlightenment, and how best might it be achieved in a civilised society? These are the key questions Kant addresses, and poses answers to, in his essay, which can be read in full here. Below, we summarise the main points of his argument and offer an analysis of Kant’s position.

A Summary and Analysis of John Steinbeck’s ‘Breakfast’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Breakfast’ is a short story by John Steinbeck (1902-68), the shortest piece to be included in his collection The Long Valley. The story first appeared in The Pacific Weekly in 1936 before being reprinted in The Long Valley two years later. Although it’s often classified as a short story, ‘Breakfast’ had its origins in notes Steinbeck made while working on his novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

A Summary and Analysis of ‘The Ebony Horse’ from the Arabian Nights

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Ebony Horse’ is one of the most exciting and enchanting story from the Arabian Nights, also known as the One Thousand and One Nights. Indeed, the tale is interesting because it even borders on being ‘science fiction’ before the genre existed. It sees a cunning inventor design an ebony horse which is capable of flying. A prince uses the horse to travel to other lands, where he falls in love with a princess.

A Summary and Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Widow and the Parrot’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Widow and the Parrot’ is not one of Virginia Woolf’s best-known works. But then how many people familiar with The Waves or Mrs Dalloway are even aware that Woolf wrote a short story for children? Woolf wrote ‘The Widow and the Parrot’ in the early 1920s for the family newspaper edited by her nephews Quentin and Julian Bell (who, amazingly, nearly rejected it for publication because of its strong ‘Victorian’ moral message).

A Summary and Analysis of Raymond Carver’s ‘Fat’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Fat’ is a short story by the American writer Raymond Carver. In just a few pages, Carver’s narrator recounts the day she served a very large man who came into the diner where she works as a waitress. Seeing this man inspires a number of feelings in the narrator, although their significance requires careful analysis in order to be fully understood.