White Rose of Avalon

Literary Love

  • Oberon: Faerie King

    Happy Summer Solstice readers!    For today’s holiday post I have decided to take on the subject of Oberon!   In many tales there are faerie kings, as well as queens.   The name of a faerie king is most often Oberon, and this is likely based in older folk tales across Britain.   Most…

  • Living in My Own World

    Living in my own world is how I phrase my personal outlook on life.    I have my own internal world that is quite a unique, and imaginative place!   I have a deeply complex imagination, and my personal loves and desires are very much things that influence everything I do.    My imagination allows…

  • Fantasy Places

    Many writers throughout times have written about fictional places.    Today I want to talk about some of my favorite fantasy places from literature!     I will focus on children’s or young adult literary places, in order to keep this post from getting ridiculously long! I have always adored Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and…

  • My Ranking of the Bridgerton Siblings

    I have recently been reading the Bridgerton books by Julia Quinn.    I have already seen the first season of the Netflix series as well.    This has led me to want to make a list of my favorite Bridgerton siblings!   So this post will count down all eight siblings. Number 8: Francesca ~Francesca…

  • Death and the Maiden Motif

    The Death and the Maiden Motif is a classic motif in art and literature.    It all goes back to the ancient Greek myth of Hades and Persephone.    The motif is centered on a beautiful young woman being pursued (and loved by) a man who is death incarnate.    The male side of the…

  • The Difference Between Romantic, Dark Romantic, and Gothic

    All three of these literary movements are connected and entwined.   They have small differences among them, and that is what this blog post will discuss.   The Romantic literary movement had its roots in a rebellion against the industrial revolution.    Romantic literature and art desired to focus on feeling instead of on rational…

  • Immortality: Gift or Curse?

    Poe, Dickinson, Polidori, Stoker, Shelley, and Le Fanu.    All of these authors have written about immortality, both as a gift and as a curse.   The nineteenth century was a big time for supernatural tales, as a reaction to all of the technological advancements. The curse of immortality has been used in literature featuring…

  • Idealizing Mortality: Doomed Women in Gothic Fiction

    Women in Gothic fiction in the nineteenth century are known for being doomed.   Poe himself said that nothing was as poetic as a dying woman.   It is a very interesting concept of the romanticism of death.   Death and beauty are linked, and this is shown in the Death and the Maiden motif…

  • Who Really Wrote the Plays and Poems of Shakespeare?

    Have you ever heard the terms “Anti-Stratfordian” or “Oxfordian”?   Both of these terms refer to the belief held by a group of people that contend that there is evidence that the man from Stratford did not write the plays and poems attributed to him!   There are many people that could possibly be the…

  • The Green Ribbon

    For today’s post I would like to discuss the short story The Green Ribbon, which is found in the children’s story collection In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories.   The Green Ribbon is the only truly scary tale in the whole collection, which was written by the same author of the Scary…