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The Renaissance clearly witnessed a revitalization of human's worldview towards education, the arts, and critical thinking. In the midst of this social, cultural and political transformation, a renewed perspective was held on the subjects of euthanasia and suicide. Philosophy began to struggle free from the fetters of Christianity and to redefine its targets as the production of free and intellectual citizens. Many well-known figures of Renaissance philosophy put forward theses that were reckoned at the time to be harshly iconoclastic, such as the permissibility of suicide. Shakespeare, the chief figure of the English renaissance, in line with anti-religious discourses of his time, employs characters who radically pertain to suicidal ideologies of the ancients. The dominant theme of suicide pervading his works demonstrates how the Renaissance man mirrored the Greek and Roman ideologies and how the process of secularization exposed him with a sort of absurdity as a result of which suicide could be tolerated or even more admired. The present paper, aims, on the one hand, to defy many contemporary arguments which ill-foundedly endeavor to introduce Shakespeare as an anti-suicide figure. On the other hand, the authors show how Shakespeare was heavily influenced by the religious, humanistic, artistic and scientific discourses of his time in his exposure to the theme of suicide. The paper's main discussion is preceded by an overview so as to introduce the fluctuation of attitudes towards suicide through history until the Renaissance. The study may be reckoned as a great stride towards a new-historicist study of Shakespeare and the idea of suicide.

Dreams, as reflections of the subconscious, seem to be an essential ingredient of Nerval's and Keats's poetry. The two poets show that poetry is an apt place to explore the blurred boundary and continuity between dream and reality. This idea seems to be in close relation with both poets' search for identity and inner self. The female figure that, also, appears in many of the two poets' poms is closely related with the poets' obsession with dreams in which they seek to ward off depression and find proof for imagination. Nerval and Keats use poetry to understand their dreams and give them shape and meaning. They create mysterious worlds in their poems where dreams and reality are intermingled. In both Nerval and Keats, the significance of dream lies in the fact that it plays the role of a safe haven for the poet who is afraid of the unstable reality and identity. Both seem to seek refuge in dream where a stable identity and a permanent beauty may be found.

Utopia is a universal concept, as manifested by the fact that it has attracted readers of five centuries and has influenced numerous writers. It is obvious that people, recognizing the abundant stupidities, corruptions, and injustice prevalent in their society, should attempt to plan a better system for living together. Whether they can reach such a society or not is the fundamental question found in most Vonnegut's works. The utopian schemes in Vonnegut's works such as the settlement of San Lorenzo in Cat's Cradle, almost always backfire, often bringing about more problems than they promise to solve. Therefore, in this paper, it is aimed to emphasize Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle regarding the concepts of utopia and dystopia as well as apocalyptical notions. Apocalypse can be investigated in Cat's Cradle and it gives a serious quality to Vonnegut's work. The emptiness of mere survival is painfully described in Cat's Cradle, in which the earth is locked in frozen death.

The present study discussed the influence of one of the eighteenth-century British women of color, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, on William Blake. By adopting a biographical and also a comparative approach, the authors tried to highlight the influences of Wollstonecraft's personal life, character, and career, chiefly her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), on one of William Blake's less-referred-to poems Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793). The study will help readers to both know Wollstonecraft's prominence and also to grasp more of William Blake and his poetry. The authors also attempted to show that William Blake was part of the early feminism of the late eighteenth century.

Coleridge's radical and colonial interests can be explored in his 1790 poems as sites of power and resistance. As a product of the complex discursive web of the 18th century, the Orientalist Coleridge could not act out of such historical forces as colonialism that had gone into shaping him and his poetry. Although he attacked European corruption and desired a revolutionary figure such as Mahomet to make a return to Abyssinia as home to true Christianity, Coleridge perpetuated the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam. Disillusioned by the French Revolution, Coleridge created Mahomet to replace Napoleon to pave the way to Abyssinia where true Christianity began. This study is an attempt to show that Coleridge's radical interpretation of Mahomet, and desire for the Abyssinian maid and a Pantisocratic setting are all ideologically-shaped discursive practices within the context of 18th century colonialism. With such political elements as colonization in mind, a better historically-engaged understanding of Coleridge can be achieved.

From an Orientalist viewpoint, Coleridge and his poems were shaped by the discursive web of the 18th century culture, and he was not free from the worldliness of historical forces. However, it is not difficult to see resistance towards dominant ideologies in his poems. One example is Coleridge's sentiment towards the systematically-misrepresented Islam and its prophet. Coleridge's radical interpretation of Islam in the 1790s made him feel the need, with Southey, for a model of moral regeneration after observing European corruption and having lost his radical interest in the millennial politics of the French Revolution. The radical act of composing "Mahomet" signifies Coleridge's endeavor to change the distorted image of Mahomet and Islam that to him was the beginning of the Unitarian revolution and the symbol of the revolutionary France. However, he perpetuates the prejudice of Christianity's superiority over Islam as a deviation of the true religion introduced by Christ. Coleridge's approach is imaginative reconciliation of Christo-Islamic inspirations to offer his political thoughts and avoid identification with English Unitarianism.