Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

Global Ecologies And The Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches Edited By Elizabeth Deloughrey, Jill Didur, And Anthony Carrigan, Joshua Bartlett

The Goose

Review of Elizabeth Deloughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan's Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches.

Blind But Seeing: Post-Clinical Medicine In Jose Saramago's Blindness, Matthew J. Ftacek

All NMU Master's Theses

This project examines José Saramago’s Blindness (1996) in the context of two other narratives focused on plagues and epidemics – Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) – each written at different points in time during the development of clinical medicine as chronicled by Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic. The paper draws heavily upon Foucault’s work on clinical medicine, as well as a number of different theories of medical history, government policy, and cultural attitudes towards health and illness. The goal of the project is twofold: first, to examine ...

'Those Who Cling In Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues And Memories Of An Elder Day': J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns And Elves, Andrew Scott Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Abstract

Those Who Cling in Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues and Memories of an Elder Day' J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns and Elves

Dr. Andrew Higgins

In this paper I will explore how several historic, literary and mythic associations of the Finnish people with elements of magic, the supernatural and the 'other' influenced J.R.R. Tolkien in imbuing the character and language of his own Elves with a similar quality of magic and 'arresting strangeness'.I will explore several characterisations of the Finns, the People of Kalevala, Tolkien would have encountered in his early study of the Kalevala ...

Norse "Loki" As Praxonym, William Sayers

Journal of Literary Onomastics

The still debated Old Norse theonym Loki is projected against the wide semantic field of the ON verb lúka "to close", not, as current scholarship would have it, as relevant to Ragnarǫk and the closing down of the divine world but in its judicial applications to successfull negotiated outcomes. The ingenious Loki, the bearer of a praxonym, would then be the inventive Fixer. While this aspect is well illustrated in tales of Loki's ruses and expedients, a more archaic figure emerges when Loki is associated with the reconstructed Indo-European verbal root *lok- "to accuse, blame, prohibit" (cf. Old Frisian ...

“The City Was Named After An Herb Called Mesas In Ancient Spanish”: Rabbi Yosef Mesas’ Testimony Concerning His Surname, Abraham Ofir Shemesh

Journal of Literary Onomastics

Yosef Mesas (1892–1974), a renowned Jewish Rabbi, claimed that the origin of his surname is the ancient city Mesas near Madrid, named for a medicinal herb common there. He assumes that "Mesas" became a common name in Morocco after the Jews were exiled from Spain in 1492. Mesas suggests that the herb is "Masasa" in Moroccan Arabic (Darija dialect). In the 12th century, Maimonides stated that Moroccans call the genus Plantago "Masasa". This fact refutes Mesas' assumption that the name was brought to Morocco after the Alhambra Decree.

"Mesas" apparently originates from the Spanish term "mesa", meaning "tableland" or ...

Junot Díaz’S The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao And Its Punishment Of Failed Gender Performances, Bruno Yupanqui Tovar

Masters Theses

Junot Díaz’s renowned novel, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Oscar Wao), presents the brief and wondrous life of its main character, Oscar Wao, but also describes the exceptional lives of Lola and Belicia, his sister and mother, respectively. While the story’s title asserts an enthusiastic tone to the lives of Oscar—and the females in his family—the story actually reveals the victimization and demise of these characters. Though Díaz offers the spell of Fukú americanus, a Dominican superstition, Feminist Theorist Judith Butler provides a more advantageous, concrete explanation for the subjugation of these characters. Butler ...

"The Bride Of His Country": Love, Marriage, And The Imperialist Paradox In The Indian Fiction Of Sara Jeannette Duncan And Rudyard Kipling, Teresa Hubel

Teresa Hubel

Introduction:

For many literary scholars and general readers, the expression 'Kipling's India' neatly delineates the imperialist society that existed on the Indian subcontinent in the late nineteenth century. The phrase, however, is deceptive in its simplicity. It does not reveal, or even imply, the internal workings behind what is certainly a vast imaginative construct, a construct that involves a specific political ideology, various cultural myths, and an extraordinary emotional investment. In the words of one critic, Kipling was "a mythmaker for a culture under protracted stress" (Wurgaft xx). He voiced the bewilderment and memorialized the tragic — and sometimes pathetic ...

"My Village My Mind": Prafulla Mohanti's Internal Landscape, Geoffrey Kain

Geoffrey Kain

“Toward the end of my 1998 interview with Prafulla Mohanti, I asked the rather innocuous question, ‘How would you like to be remembered?’ a question whose context implied an answer of either ‘as a painter’ or ‘as a writer’…”

R.K. Narayan: Straddling Metropole And Malgudi, Geoffrey Kain

Geoffrey Kain

“In her essay ‘Resistance through Sub/Mission in the Novels of R. K. Narayan,’ Hyacinth Cynthia Wyatt argues that ‘among Indian authors writing in English, R. K. Narayan was among the first to resist Western cultural dominance’…”

Talkative Man: R.K. Narayan's Consummate Performance Of Narayan, Geoffrey Kain

Geoffrey Kain

“There is evidence that after publication of The Dark Room (1938) R.K. Narayan planned a literary excursion in another direction, but the novel set outside of Malgudi was simply never written…”

The Library Under The Sun: Knowledge And Vanity In Umberto Eco’S The Name Of The Rose, Elizabeth Lamont

Masters Theses

Umberto Eco’s debut novel The Name of the Rose is so saturated with theoretical conversations and allusions that it can be read as a work of critical theory almost as much as it can be read as the wonderful detective novel that so many people have enjoyed. This thesis approaches the novel accordingly, engaging with the theoretical questions and ideas presented in the novel and evaluating them based on a biblical worldview. The central theoretical questions in the novel revolve around what can be known and how. Many critics have argued that the novel answers these questions of epistemology ...

To Build A Better Textbook: Developing A Literature Curriculum For Today’S Christian Schooling, Abby L. Cockrell

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the educational philosophy and the creative process behind the creation of a new textbook and curriculum. The goal of this new textbook and curriculum is to help persuade high school students to view literature as an avenue of life-long learning. The plan to develop this textbook and curriculum is built on five objectives: a recognition of the need for holistic education, the implementation of differentiated teaching methods, the cultivation of student interest, the reflection of diversity within classrooms, and the integration of modern technology. This plan will be proposed in the creation of a textbook for use ...

Regimes Of Prestige And Power: Transnational Authorship And International Acclaim In Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, Kyle Eveleth

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This essay will examine the reception of Rutu Modan’s international-award-winning graphic novel Exit Wounds (2007) in the massive cultural centers of the United States and France by situating its success within the inter/transnational dynamics of the contemporary comics market, or what James English would term an “economy of prestige.” My essay reconsiders Exit Wounds beyond its popular status as an international phenomenon—that is, one that crosses national borders but which maintains distinctions between those nations it enters and its home state—by considering it a transnational work—one which blurs the lines between nation-states in its form ...

At Home In The Free-Market World: The Neoliberal Cosmopolitan Man In Salman Rushdie's Fury, Mary J. Nitsch

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article offers an exploration of the concept of cosmopolitanism in Salman Rushdie's novel, Fury. Through both Rushdie's and his protagonist's cosmopolitanism, the ambivalence of the position is revealed in particular through the latter's (un)easy access to global commodities and problematic exploitation of women. The economic and gender exploitations oddly converge in Solanka's latest creative project, the success of which glosses over the problematics of class and gender privilege. Ultimately, the protagonist’s cosmopolitanism truly impedes any critique cosmopolitanism might afford: he is readily swept up in the rising tide of the 90s financial ...

Readers In Pursuit Of Popular Justice: Unraveling Conflicting Frameworks In Lolita, Innesa Ranchpar

English Theses

This thesis examines the competing frameworks in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—the fictional Foreword written by John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and the manuscript written by Humbert Humbert—in order to understand to what extent the construction manipulates the rhetorical appeal. While previous scholarship isolates the two narrators or focuses on their unreliability, my examination concentrates on the interplay of the frameworks and how their conflicting objectives can be problematic for readers. By drawing upon various theories by Michel Foucault from Power/Knowledge and Louis Althusser’s “On Ideology,” I look into how John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and Humbert ...

The Adventure Of The Immortal Detective: Adaptation And Audience Investment In The Cases Of Sherlock Holmes, Corey Hayes

Masters Theses

In the last ten years, popular culture has seen a number of visual interpretations of the character and cases of Sherlock Holmes. From the films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law to the BBC show Sherlock and the CBS show Elementary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective is currently at the forefront of the public mind. However, these new on-screen interpretations of the character represent merely the tip of the Holmes iceberg, and the dedication of their fans is just a continuation of the intense popularity that Doyle’s detective has enjoyed since his earliest appearances in print ...

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the ...

Rewriting Rebellions: The Manichean Allegory And Imperial Ideology In The Works Of H.G. De Lisser, Rachael Mackenzie Maclean

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

A Passage From Brooklyn To Ithaca: The Sea, The City And The Body In The Poetics Of Walt Whitman And C. P. Cavafy, Michael P. Skafidas

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This treatise is the first extensive comparative study of Walt Whitman and C. P. Cavafy. Despite the abundant scholarship dealing with the work and life of each, until now no critic has put the two poets together. Whitman’s poetry celebrates birth, youth, the self and the world as seen for the first time, while Cavafy’s diverts from the active present to resurrect a world whose key, in Eliot’s terms, is memory. Yet, I see the two poets conversing in the crossroads of the fin de siècle; the American Whitman and the Greek Cavafy embody the antithesis of ...

An Exploration On The Image Of The Jungle: Experiential Perspective In The Imagined Spaces Of Heart Of Darkness And The Emperor Jones, Noah Isaac Keyishian

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.