Origins of “Hamlet”
Shakespeare, with the exception of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “The Tempest,” borrowed concepts and storylines for his plays from other works, including folk tales, mythologies and histories.
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Background on Hawthorne and “The Scarlet Letter” publication
Nathaniel Hawthorne (or, as he was known at birth, Nathaniel Hathorne) was born in Salem in 1804, bearing a heavy legacy. His great-great-great-grandfather was ...
During the 1700’s, the Enlightenment, a philosophical and literary movement emphasizing reason and science, took root in Europe, permanently altering European views on religion, art and philosophy. While the movement inspired soc...
Date of conception and composition
“Beowulf” is incomplete. Archaeologists have never managed to find more than the 3,182 lines of “Beowulf” that survived in the form of a single copy, which withstood the dissolutio...
Background
Arthur Miller largely wrote “The Crucible” in response to the paranoid politics of the 1950’s, namely the practices of Senator Joseph McCarthy and a debacle involving the House on Un-American Activities Co...
