Writing Essays - A Guide For Students in English and the Humanities
For many students, 'essay* and 'nightmare' are virtual synonyms. That blank computer screen . . . the struggle for an idea . . . those first words! Perhaps the walls arc closing in on you right now just thinking about it. But help is at hand. The written assignment is not an arcane branch of metaphysics, or an art that only the lucky few can master. Far from it. So long as a couple of rules are observed, much of the pain can be removed from the entire process of essay composition.
William Shakespeare lived at a remarkable time—a period we now recognize as the first phase of the Scientific Revolution. New ideas were transforming Western thought, the medieval was giving way to the modern, and the work of a few key figures hinted at the brave new world to come: the methodical and rational Galileo, the skeptical Montaigne, and—as Falk convincingly argues—Shakespeare, who observed human nature just as intently as the astronomers who studied the night sky.
A Grief Observed is an exploration of C.S. Lewis’s thoughts and questions brought about by the grief at the passing of his wife. The book is written sporadically, suggesting short bursts of thought, in a stream of consciousness style of writing. Some trains of thought are constantly revisited while others seem to be more fleeting. The book was first published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk as Lewis wished to avoid identification as the author. The book is compiled from the four notebooks which Lewis used to vent and explore his grief. It helped inspire a 1985 television movie Shadowlands, as well as a 1993 film of the same name.
