What Chekhov's gun principle says — if a gun appears in Act 1, it must fire by Act 3

What Chekhov's plays pioneer — drama where nothing dramatic happens, the tension is in what people cannot say

Chekhov pioneered "subtlety in drama," focusing on unspoken tension

What Nabokov's Lolita forces the reader to confront — seductive prose in the service of a monster's self-justification

Lolita's narrative compels readers to grapple with the moral ambiguity of aestheticized immorality

What Macbeth's 'tomorrow and tomorrow' soliloquy reveals — life as a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing

Macbeth's soliloquy reflects life's futility and meaninglessness

What the play-within-a-play in Hamlet reveals — art as a mirror to expose hidden truth

The play-within-a-play in Hamlet reveals art's power to uncover concealed realities

What the New Critics argued — the poem is an autonomous object, ignore the author's biography and intentions

New Critics emphasized the poem's self-contained meaning, disregarding authorial context

What Blake's prophetic books create — an entire mythology to explain the fall and redemption of the human imagination

Blake's prophetic books construct a mythology for human imagination's fall and redemption