LIFE AND LITERATURE

                                                        CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS                    Right to Liberty: `         The right to liberty can be traced back to the English Magna Charta (1215) and the United States Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789). Even though the Magna Charta only guaranteed rights to a limited group of people, namely feudal noblemen, it nevertheless required that arrest or detention be lawful, and protected the individual against the excesses of his/her ruler. Protection against arbitrary arrest and detention as one of the main dimensions of the right to the liberty of the person was further established in the 17th century Bill of Rights (1689) and Habeas Corpus Acts (1640, 1679). The right was further developed and its ...

                                              THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE                                                                             -CHARLES LAMB  Summary        Elia opens by addressing the reader, asking if on her way from the bank to the "Flower Pot," she ever noticed a magnificent but decrepit old building with a brick and stone edifice. This, says Ellia, is a former house of trade, and he describes its decorations elaborately, with stately porticos and a map of Panama. This building was the South-Sea House, home of a historic and infamous bubble. Elia explains that he worked there 40 years ago.       He talks of dust a...

                                                                KUBLA KHAN                                                                                    -COLERIDGE  Summary       The speaker describes the “stately pleasure-dome” built-in Xanadu according to the decree of Kubla Khan, in the place where Alph, the sacred river, ran “through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.” Walls and towers were raised around “twice five miles of fertile ground,” filled with beautiful gardens and forests. A “deep romantic chasm” slanted down a green hill, occasionally spewing forth a violent an...

                                           ODE ON THE INTIMATION OF IMMORALITY                                                                                                           -WORDSWORTH  Summary       In the first stanza, the speaker says wistfully that there was a time when all of nature seemed dreamlike to him, “apparelled in celestial light,” and that that time is past; “the things I have seen I can see no more.” In the second stanza, he says that he still sees the rainbow and that the rose is still lovely; the moon looks around the sky with delight, and starlight and sunshine are...