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Cummings Study Guides
For the Great Works of World Literature

Including Guides for All the Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare
Tutorials With Plot Summaries, Themes, Imagery, Analysis, and Background Information

www.cummingsstudyguides.net
The Free Cummings Study Guides Are Maintained as a Public Service by Michael J. Cummings
June 2012

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Shakespeare Study Guide:.This site, called ShakeSphere, contains guides for every play and poem Shakespeare wrote, as well as literary works Shakespeare was reported to have written. This site also includes essays, glossaries, quotations, historical background, a complete description and history of the Globe Theatre, and other information related to Shakespeare. The December 15, 2011, issue of The New York Times recommended ShakeSphere.
Edgar Allan Poe Study Guide: A growing collection of study guides that analyze the works of Poe.
Other Free Cummings Literature Guides: Novels, plays (including Greek drama), poems, essays, glossaries, definitions.


Index of Study Guides: Plays, Novels, Poems, Essays, Definitions
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À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)..Marcel Proust
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn..Mark Twain
The Aeneid Virgil (Vergil)........................
Agamemnon..Aeschylus
The Age of Feudalism..Cummings
After Blenheim..Robert Southey
Ajax..Sophocles
L'Albatros (The Albatross)..Baudelaire
Alcestis..Euripides
All's Well That Ends Well..Shakespeare
Alone..Edgar Allan Poe
The Analects..Confucius
An American Tragedy..Dreiser
Animal Farm..Orwell
Annabel Lee..Poe
Anthem for Doomed Youth..Wilfred Owen
Antigone..Sophocles..
Antony and Cleopatra..Shakespeare
Apology (The Trial of Socrates)..Plato
Araby..James Joyce
Ars Poetica..Archibald MacLeish
Astrophel and Stella..Sir Philip Sidney
As You Like It..Shakespeare
The Assignation..Poe
The Atheist's Mass..Honoré de Balzac
The Awakening..Kate Chopin
Ballad of the Dead Ladies..Rossetti's Translation of Villon Poem
Ballade des dames du temps jadis..François Villon
Babbitt..Sinclair Lewis 
Bartleby the Scrivener..Herman Melville

The Battle of Blenheim..Robert Southey
Because I Could Not Stop for Death..Emily Dickinson
The Beggar..Chekhov
The Bells..Poe
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter..John Crowe Ransom
Beloved..Toni Morrison
Beowulf..Unknown Christian Poet
Berenice..Poe
Billy Budd..Melville
The Birthmark..Hawthorne
The Black Cat..Poe
The Blessed Damozel..Rossetti
Bleak House..Dickens
Brahma..Emerson
Break, Break, Break..Tennyson
Bridal Ballad..Poe
The Bridge of San Luis Rey..Thornton Wilder
By the Waters of Babylon..Stephen Vincent Benét
The Call of the Wild..Jack London
Candide..Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales..Chaucer
Cargoes..John Masefield
The Cask of Amontillado..Poe
Castles and Kings Cummings
The Catcher in the Rye..J.D. Salinger
The Cherry Orchard..Chekhov
Cherry-Ripe (There Is a Garden in Her Face)..Thomas Campion
The Cid (Le Cid)..Pierre Corneille
The City in the Sea..Poe
Civil Disobedience..Thoreau
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place..Hemingway
The Cloak (The Overcoat)..Nicholay Gogol
The Clouds..Aristophanes
The Coliseum..Poe
The Comedy of Errors..Shakespeare
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge..Wordsworth
Confucius..Study Guide
The Conqueror Worm..Poe
Corinna's Going a-Maying..Robert Herrick
Coriolanus..Shakespeare
Crime and Punishment..Dostoevsky
Cross..Langston Hughes
The Crucible..Arthur Miller
Le Cygnet (The Swan)..Charles Baudelaire
Cymbeline..Shakespeare
Cyrano de Bergerac..Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller..Henry James
The Darkling Thrush..Thomas Hardy
David Copperfield..Dickens..
The Dead Man Walking..Thomas Hardy
Death, Be Not Proud..John Donne
Death of a Salesman..Arthur Miller
Delight in Disorder..Robert Herrick
A Descent Into the Maelström..Poe
Désirée's Baby..Kate Chopin
Dirge in the Woods..George Meredith
The Divine Comedy..Dante
A Doll's House..Ibsen
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night..Dylan Thomas
Don Quixote de La Mancha..Cervantes..
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment..Hawthorne
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde..Stevenson
Dover Beach..Matthew Arnold
A Dream Within a Dream..Poe
Dreamers..Siegfried Sassoon
Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes (To Celia).Philostratus/Ben Jonson
Dulce et Decorum Est..Wilfred Owen
Echo and Narcissus..Ovid
Edward III..Shakespeare
Eldorado..Poe
Electra..Sophocles
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard..Thomas Gray.....
The Emperor of Ice Cream..Wallace Stevens
Enemy of the People..Ibsen
Epic of Gilgamesh
Ethan Brand..Hawthorne
Ethan Frome..Edith Wharton
Eulalie..Poe
Eumenides..Aeschylus
Eveline..James Joyce
Everyday Expressions From Shakespeare
Everyman..Anonymous
Expostulation and Reply..Wordsworth
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar..Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher..Poe
A Farewell to Arms..George Peele
Fathers and Sons..Turgenev
Fascinating Facts About Shakespeare
Faust..Goethe
Feudalism..Cummings
Figures of Speech
Fire and Ice..Robert Frost
Flowering Judas..Katherine Anne Porter
Folio and Quarto Texts of Shakespeare
Four Periods of Shakespeare
Frankenstein..Mary Shelley..
From the Flats..Sidney Lanier
The Frogs..Aristophanes
Gather Ye Rosebuds..Robert Herrick
Gawain and the Green Knight..Unknown Author
The Garden Party..Katherine Mansfield
Gettysburg Address..Abraham Lincoln
The Gift of the Magi..O. Henry
The Gilded Six-Bits..Zora Neale Hurston
The Gilgamesh Epic
The Glass Menagerie..Tennesse Williams
Globe Theatre of Shakespeare
Globe Theatre: Special Effects
The Gold-Bug..Poe
Go, Lovely Rose..Edmund Waller
A Good Man Is Hard to Find..Flannery O'Connor
The Grapes of Wrath..John Steinbeck
Grass..Carl Sandburg
Great Expectations..Dickens
The Great Gatsby..Fitzgerald
The Great Stone Face..Hawthorne
Greek Drama Glossary..Cummings
Greek Theater (Structure)..Cummings
The Guest..Albert Camus
Gulliver's Travels..Swift.........................
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark..Shakespeare
Hands..Sherwood Anderson
Harlem (A Dream Deferred)..Langston Hughes
A Haunted House..Virginia Woolf
The Haunted Palace..Poe
Heart of Darkness..Joseph Conrad
Hedda Gabler..Ibsen
Henry IV Part I..Shakespeare
Henry IV Part II..Shakespeare
Henry V..Shakespeare
Henry VI Part I..Shakespeare
Henry VI Part II..Shakespeare
Henry VI Part III..Shakespeare
Hills Like White Elephants..Hemingway
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling..Henry Fielding
Homer: Biography..Cummings
Homer, The Odyssey..Homer
Homer, The Iliad..Homer
The Horse Dealder's Daughter..D.H. Lawrence
The Hound of Heaven..Francis Thompson
Huckleberry Finn..Mark Twain
The Hunger Artist..Franz Kafka
The Hungry Stones..Rabindranath Tagore 
The Hypochondriac..Molière
The Iceman Cometh..Eugene O'Neill
The Iliad..Homer
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?..Emily Dickinson
Il Penseroso..John Milton
The Imaginary Invalid..Molière
Imitation..Poe
The Imp of the Perverse..Poe
Inferno..Dante
In Flanders Fields..John McCrae
Intimations of Immortality..Wordsworth
Invictus..William Ernest Henley 
Iphigenia at Aulis..Euripides
Israfel..Poe
Ivanhoe..Scott
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud..Wordsworth
Jane Eyre..Charlotte Brontë
The Japanese Quince..John Galsworthy
The Jew of Malta..Christopher Marlowe
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall..Katherine Anne Porter
Julius Caesar..Shakespeare
Kidnapped..Robert Louis Stevenson
The Killers..Hemingway
King John..Shakespeare
King Lear..Shakespeare
Kubla Khan..Coleridge
L'Allegro..John Milton
La Belle Dame Sans Merci..John Keats
The Lady of Shalott..Tennyson
The Lagoon..Joseph Conrad
The Lake Isle of Innisfree..William Butler Yeats
Lenore..Poe
L'hôte..Albert Camus
Libation Bearers..Aeschylus
Light Shining Out of Darkness..William Cowper
The Lily and the Rose..William Cowper
The Listeners..Walter de la Mare
Literary Terms..Cummings
The Libation Bearers (Choephori)..Aeschylus
Ligeia..Poe
Locksley Hall..Tennyson
Long Day's Journey Into Night..Eugene O'Neill
The Lord of the Flies..Golding
The Lottery..Shirley Jackson
The Lotus-Eaters..Tennyson
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock..T.S. Eliot
Loveliest of Trees..A.E. Housman
Love's Labour's Lost..Shakespeare
A Lover's Complaint..Shakespeare
Lui?..Guy de Maupassant
Lysistrata..Aristophanes
Macbeth..Shakespeare
Mac Flecknoe..Dryden
Machiavelli's Philosophy..Machiavelli
Madame Bovary..Flaubert
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg..Mark Twain

The Man Who Was Almost a Man..Richard Wright
Ms. (Manuscript) Found in a Bottle..Poe

The Maypole of Merry Mount..Hawthorne
The Masque of the Red Death..Poe
Measure for Measure..Shakespeare
Medea..Euripides
Medicine in Shakespeare's Plays .Cummings
Mending Wall..Robert Frost
The Merchant of Venice..Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor..Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis..Franz Kafka
Meter in Poetry and Verse: Iambic, Trochaic, etc.
Metzengerstein..Poe
A Midsummer Night's Dream..Shakespeare
The Minister's Black Veil..Hawthorne
Miniver Cheevy..Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mirror..Sylvia Plath
The Misanthrope..Molière
The Miser..Molière
Miss Julie..Strindberg
Mr. Flood's Party..Edwin Arlington Robinson
Moby Dick..Herman Melville........................
A Modest Proposal..Swift
The Monkey's Paw..W. W. Jabobs
Morella..Poe
The Most Dangerous Game..Richard Connell
The Moth..Walter de la Mare
Much Ado About Nothing..Shakespeare
The Murders in the Rue Morgue..Poe
My Kinsman, Major Molineux..Hawthorne
My Last Duchess..Robert Browning
Narcissus and Echo..Ovid
Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise)..Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The Necklace..Guy de Maupassant
The Negro Speaks of Rivers..Langston Hughes
Nicholas Nickleby..Dickens..
A Noiseless Patient Spider..Walt Whitman
Notes From the Underground..Dostoevsky
November (Alternate Title: No!)..Thomas Hood
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge..Ambrose Bierce
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College..Thomas Gray
Ode on a Grecian Urn..John Keats
Ode on Indolence..John Keats
Ode on Melancholy..John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale..John Keats
Ode to Psyche..John Keats
Ode to the West Wind..Shelley
The Odyssey..Homer 
Oedipus at Colonus..Sophocles..
Oedipus the King..Sophocles..
Oedipus: the Theban Plays..Sophocles..
The Old Man and the Sea..Hemingway
An Old Woman of the Roads..Pádraic Colum
Olympian 1..Pindar
On His Blindness..John Milton
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich..Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Open Boat..Stephen Crane
Opera Summaries..Information Provided by OperaGlass
The Oresteia..Aeschylus
Othello..Shakespeare
Our Town..Thornton Wilder
The Outcasts of Poker Flat.Bret Harte
The Oval Portrait..Poe
The Overcoat (The Cloak)..Nicholay Gogol
Ozymandias..Percy Bysshe Shelley
Pamela..Samuel Richardson
Paradise Lost..John Milton
Paradiso..Dante
A Passage to India..E. M. Forster
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love..Christopher Marlowe
Paul's Case..Willa Cather
Peace..George Herbert
Pericles, Prince of Tyre..Shakespeare
The Persians..Aeschylus
Phaedra (Phèdre) .Jean Baptiste Racine
Philoctetes..Sophocles
The Philosophy of Composition..Poe
The Phoenix and the Turtle..Shakespeare
The Picture of Dorian Gray..Wilde
Pied Beauty..Gerard Manley Hopkins
Pippa Passes (Song From)..Robert Browning
The Pit and the Pendulum..Poe
The Playboy of the Western World..Synge
Porphyria's Lover..Robert Browning
The Premature Burial..Poe
Pride and Prejudice..Jane Austen
The Prince..Machiavelli
Prometheus Bound..Aeschylus
Purgatorio..Dante
The Purloined Letter..Poe
Pygmalion..Ovid
Pyramus and Thisbe..Ovid
The Queen of Spades..Pushkin
Quotations for All Occasions..Shakespeare
A Raisin in the Sun..Lorraine Hansberry
The Rape of Lucrece..Shakespeare
The Rape of the Lock (annotated)..Alexander Pope
Rappaccini's Daughter..Hawthorne


The Raven..Poe
The Red Badge of Courage..Stephen Crane
Red, Red Rose..Robert Burns
A Remembrance of Things Past..Marcel Proust
Remords Posthume (The Remorse of the Dead)..Baudelaire
The Revolt of 'Mother'..Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Richard Cory..Edwin Arlington Robinson..........
Richard II..Shakespeare
Richard III..Shakespeare
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner..Coleridge
Rip Van Winkle..Washington Irving
The Road Not Taken..Robert Frost
Robinson Crusoe..Daniel Defoe
The Rocking-Horse Winner..D. H. Lawrence
Roman Fever..Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet..Shakespeare
Root Cellar..Theodore Roethke
A Rose for Emily..William Faulkner
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám..FitzGerald, Khayyám
Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers..Emily Dickinson
Sailing to Byzantium..William Butler Yeats
Sanatorium..W. Somerset Maugham
The Scarlet Letter..Hawthorne 
The School for Scandal..Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Sea Gull..Chekhov
Sea Fever..John Masefield
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty..James Thurber
Self-Reliance..Emerson
Shakespeare's Manuscripts: Preparation..Cummings
Shakespeare's Pronouns..Cummings
Shakespeare's Stage Directions..Glossary
Shakespeare Study Guide..Cummings
She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways..Wordsworth
She Stoops to Conquer..Goldsmith
She Walks in Beauty..Byron
Shooting an Elephant..Orwell
Siddhartha..Hermann Hesse
Signs and Symbols..Vladimir Nabokov
Silas Marner..George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Silent Snow, Secret Snow..Conrad Aiken
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight..Unknown Author
Sir Thomas More..Shakespeare and Others
Six Characters in Search of an Author..Luigi Pirandello 
The Sleeper..Poe
The Sniper..Liam O'Flaherty
Socrates..Cummings
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister..Robert Browning
The Song of the Shirt..Thomas Hood
Sonnet 22..Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet 43..Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets..Shakespeare
Sophocles..Cummings
The Sound and the Fury..Faulkner
Spoon River Anthology..Edgar Lee Masters
Spring..Thomas Carew
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening..Robert Frost
The Story of an Hour..Kate Chopin
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde..Stevenson
A Streetcar Named Desire..Tennesee Williams
Success Is Counted Sweetest..Emily Dickinson
The Sun Also Rises..Hemingway
Sweeney Among the Nightingales..T.S. Eliot
The Swimmer..John Cheever
Sympathy..("I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings") Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tartuffe..Molière
The Taming of the Shrew..Shakespeare
Tears, Idle Tears..Tennyson
The Tell-Tale Heart..Poe
The Tempest..Shakespeare
Tennessee's Partner..Bret Harte
The Terror..Guy de Maupassant
Tess of the d'Urbervilles..Thomas Hardy
The Tiger.William Blake......................
Those Winter Sundays.Robert Hayden
Timon of Athens..Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus..Shakespeare
To Althea, From Prison..Richard Lovelace
To an Athlete Dying Young..A.E. Housman
To Autumn..John Keats
To Celia.Philostratus and Ben Jonson
To Helen..Poe
To His Coy Mistress..Andrew Marvell
To Kill a Mockingbird.Harper Lee
To Lucasta, going to Wars..Richard Lovelace
To a Mouse..Robert Burns
To a Skylark..Shelley
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time..Robert Herrick
To a Waterfowl..William Cullen Bryant
Tom Jones..Henry Fielding
Trachiniae..Sophocles
Trackers..Sophocles
The Trial..Kafka
The Trial of Socrates..Plato
Trifles..Susan Glaspell
Troilus and Cressida..Shakespeare
The Trojan Women..Euripides
The Turn of the Screw..Henry James
Twelfth Night..Shakespeare
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl..Maxim Gorky
The Two Gentlemen of Verona..Shakespeare
The Two Noble Kinsmen..Shakespeare
Ulalume..Poe
Ulysses..James Joyce
Ulysses and the Siren..Samuel Daniel
Uncle Tom's Cabin..Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Vanya..Chekhov
The Unknown Citizen..W. H. Auden 
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning..John Donne
Venus and Adonis..Shakespeare
Waiting for Godot..Samuel Beckett
Walden..Thoreau
War and Peace..Tolstoy
The Way of the World..William Congreve
We Wear the Mask..Paul Laurence Dunbar
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer..Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd..Walt Whitman
Where Lies the Land to Which the Ship Would Go?..Arthur Hugh Clough
Whoso List to Hunt..Thomas Wyatt
Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?..Sir John Suckling
The Wild Duck..Ibsen
William Wilson..Poe
The Winter's Tale..Shakespeare
Women of Trachis..Sophocles
The World Is Too Much With Us..Wordsworth
A Worn Path..Eudora Welty
The Yellow Wallpaper..Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Young Goodman Brown..Hawthorne
Waltzing Matilda..A. B. (Banjo) Patterson
Wuthering Heights..Emily Brontë
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Edgar Allan Poe Study Guides


Alone
Annabel Lee
The Assignation
The Bells
The Black Cat
Berenice
Bridal Ballad
The Cask of Amontillado
The City in the Sea
The Conqueror Worm
The Coliseum
A Descent Into the Maelström
A Dream Within a Dream
Eldorado
Eulalie
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Gold-Bug
The Haunted Palace
Lenore
Ligeia
Imitation
The Imp of the Perverse
Israfel
Ms. (Manuscript) Found in a Bottle
The Masque of the Red Death
Metzengerstein
Morella
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Oval Portrait
The Philosophy of Composition..Annotated
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter
The Raven
The Sleeper
The Tell-Tale Heart
To Helen
Ulalume
William Wilson


.......This site is maintained as a free public service by Michael J. Cummings, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, USA. Cummings began his career as a public-school teacher in Muncy, Pennsylvania, in 1964 and taught English in Elmira, N.Y., from 1965 to 1968 at the Arthur W. Booth School and Elmira Free Academy. In 1968, he joined Grit Publishing Company in Williamsport, Pa., starting as a reporter and eventually becoming managing editor. In 1984, he became a freelance writer, specializing in feature writing and medical writing. In 1988, he became an adjunct English instructor at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport while also continuing his freelance writing. He has written five books and has compiled numerous definitions for a medical dictionary. Over the years, he has written more than 2,500 published articles on a variety of topics and has interviewed such well-known public figures and celebrities as former U.S. president George H. Bush, actors Dennis Weaver and Peter Ustinov, and the founder of Little League Baseball, Carl Stotz. Cummings welcomes feedback at [email protected].
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