Spark covers ideas like the psychology of people and how they react to situations that impact their life negatively. ... Patrick does not recognize laws, morality or dogmas; instead, he goes through life dreaming, reciting poetry, and living without any responsibility as if he is still a child. ... Although Patrick lives a life similar to an adolescent life, he is exceptionally clever. ... Either way, in the end, he affects the lives of others and his own life as well. ... Wanda's paranoia and madness was so severe that it lead her to take her own life. ...

• Word Count: 2565
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In the mid-1980s, just as the new historicists, with their invocation of "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history," were transforming the way readers understood the English Renaissance, Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose became both a critical success and a bestseller. (1983) Widely celebrated as a postmodern historical novel, this dazzling mixture of thick historical research and popular detective fiction invited its readers to view historical fiction as an academically respectable genre and a vehicle for recovering and reimagining the past in unconventional ways...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate