Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

“We Could Do With A Bit More Queerness In These Parts”: An Analysis Of The Queer Against The Peculiar, The Odd, And The Strange In The Lord Of The Rings, Yvette Kisor

Journal of Tolkien Research

As developed in The Lord of the Rings, “queer” is a special term, one uniquely associated with the Hobbits, and Tolkien crafts a very specific set of resonances that embed it in provincial mistrust, a sense of real outside threat, and places within the ancient natural world that appear foundationally opposed to the ordinary realm of civilization. While Tolkien cannot be said to use the word “queer” in its more modern sense of “homosexual” or nonnormative sexual and/or gender identity, he included an owning and even embracing of the term that follows a similar pattern.

A Case For Tolkien As Master Of The Sublime, Graham A.C. Scheper

Journal of Tolkien Research

The present article aims to reconcile Tolkien with the Literary Critics through an exploration of Tolkien's use of the sublime. First, an explanation of the sublime is given, with a summary of its evolution over the past two millennia. Subsequently, three key thrusts of the sublime's manifestation in Tolkien's work are identified: his use of depth and incompleteness, his use of vastness and grandeur, and his usage of shadows and death. Investigating Tolkien's usage of these devices in turn illuminates his skill as an artist and as an author.

Acts Of Disruption In The Eighteenth-Century Archives: Cooperative Critical Bibliography And The Ballitore Project, Danielle Spratt, Deena Al-Halabieh, Stephen Martinez, Quill Sang, Joseph Sweetnam, Stephanie Guerrero, Rachael Scarborough King

Criticism

This essay outlines a method of intersectional feminist book history that we call “cooperative critical bibliography,” a practice of engaging faculty and students at different ranks and at different institutions in the act of collaboratively transcribing and digitizing historical archives of understudied communities, often those that comprise the quotidian and domestic daily lives of everyday people. Cooperative critical bibliography’s non-hierarchical method centers the shared expertise and scholarship of students as they participate in broadening the accessibility of historical knowledge and revising standards of the historical literary canon through transcription, digitization, and shared reflection. By creating a pedagogical space that resituates …

Surface Reading Paper As Feminist Bibliography, Georgina Wilson

Criticism

This article models a mode of feminist bibliography by “surface reading” paper. Taking Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall (1605) as a case study, this article reads watermarks as reminders of paper’s three-dimensional materiality, whose surfaces and depths model the more and less legible forms of labor which contribute to paper’s making. Watermarks here become a creative and critical prompt to recover the interventions of John Spilman (the papermaker whose output was used for Sejanus), Spilman’s workers, and especially his female ragpickers. This article fuses close reading of literary texts and archival sources with bibliography and theory to demonstrate fresh …

Craftivism And Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork Of Greta Hall”, Helen Williams

Criticism

Edith Southey, Edith May Southey, and Sara Coleridge Jr. covered Robert Southey’s books in vibrantly printed dress fabrics, creating a collection that came to be called “the Cottonian Library.” This article is a manifesto for Cottonian bookbinding to be studied as feminist literary activism. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the book trades to the domestic and unremunerated ways in which women contributed to Romantic period book design, suggesting that the new feminist Craftivism can prompt us to historicize and to acknowledge the significance of Cottonian bookbinding as a practice that cannot be omitted from any history of …

Novela Negra Y Rol: Adaptación Del Género Hacia Nuevas Narrativas, Daniel Romero Benguigui

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

En sus orígenes, la novela negra llegó a presentarse como una experiencia lúdica, donde se invitó a los participantes a resolver el caso antes de finalizar la velada. De igual manera, los juegos de rol también proponen un desafío para los jugadores, también mediante un conjunto de reglas que aseguran el juego limpio.

Además, estos han demostrado su vinculación a lo literario al adaptar diferentes géneros a los sistemas empleados para el juego, ya fuera la fantasía épica (Dungeons and Dragons, Anima: Beyond Fantasy), el terror cósmico (Llamada de Cthulhu, Rastro de Cthulhu) o …

Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The mythical city of Troy functioned as an imagined point of origin for many medieval nations, providing a tangible connection to the legendary past and nation-building tools useful for the ruling class. Troy provided a convenient foundation narrative upon which ideas of collective identity could be built for these nations, and England, where construction of a homogeneous past was difficult due to frequent ruptures in its development of communal identity, was an eager producer and consumer of such a legitimizing device. However, the trauma of war and destruction intrinsic in Troy narratives also generates potent political anxiety about the reanimated …

Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Muscling Through” reconstructs an overlooked history of strong female bodies in the nineteenth century. It argues that popular representations of athletic women introduced a new category of identity that was distinct from women’s traditional relational and social roles. The project’s central figure is the hyper-able “Sportswoman,” who bridges the gap between two familiar versions of the Victorian woman’s body: the mid-century ideal of docile, domesticated femininity and the sturdy, capable women who enter universities, professions, and public spaces en masse just before the turn of the century. Representationally, the Sportswoman figures a range of attitudes, from anxious to aspirational, toward …

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

Review Of Inklings Of Heaven: C. S. Lewis And Eschatology, P. H. Brazier

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Sean Connolly, Inklings of Heaven: C. S. Lewis and Eschatology (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2007). 324 pages. $35.00. ISBN: 9780852446591.

Review Of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives Of The Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Joel D. Heck

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). 644 pages. $17.00. ISBN 9780374536251.

Review Of Beren And Luthien, Jonthan B. Himes

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of J. R. R. Tolkien, Beren and Luthien, ed. by Christopher Tolkien (New York: HarperCollins, 2017). 288 pages. $30.00. ISBN 9781328791825.

Review Of The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale, Tiffany Brooke Martin

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of George MacDonald, The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016). 136 pages, including “Afterward” and “Illustrator’s Note.” $16.00. ISBN 9780802854568.

Review Of C. S. Lewis And The Art Of Writing: What The Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us About The Life And Craft Of Writing, Kevin Belmonte

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Corey Latta, C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing: What the Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us about the Life and Craft of Writing (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2016). ix + 239 pages. $24.00. ISBN 9781498225342.

Review Of Jack Lewis And His American Cousin, Nat Hawthorne: A Study Of Instructive Affinities, John Stanifer

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of D. G. Kehl, Jack Lewis and His American Cousin, Nat Hawthorne: A Study of Instructive Affinities (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013). ix + 247 pages. $29.00. ISBN 9781610978361.

Review Of A Well Of Wonder: Essays On C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, And The Inklings, Corey Latta

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Clyde S. Kilby, A Well of Wonder: Essays on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings, ed. by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2016). vii + 348 pages, including “A Tribute to Clyde S. Kilby.” $28.99. ISBN 9781612618623.

Review Of High Towers And Strong Places: A Political History Of Middle- Earth, Dominic J. Nardi

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Timothy R. Furnish, High Towers and Strong Places: A Political History of Middle- earth (Toronto: Oloris Publishing, 2016). 166 pages. $35.00. ISBN 9781940992518.

Review Of The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien And Their Circle, Matthew Carey Jordan

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Colin Duriez, The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle (Oxford: Lion Hudson Books, 2015). 296 pages, including full-color photograph inserts, “An Inklings Gallery,” and “A Select Inklings Chronology.” $16.95. ISBN 9780745956343.

“Evil Enchantment” Versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, And The Weight Of Glory, Jason Baxter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

C. S. Lewis was convinced that, in the modern world, goodness often strikes us as bland and diluted, a kind of spiritual neutral. What we need, especially in the modern world, he thought, is a positive vision of the good, a vision of beauties that “pierce like swords or burn like cold iron,” as he once said of Tolkien’s work. We need a positive picture and we need to have positive desire, as opposed to thinking of goodness primarily in negative terms, as “not being bad.” Lewis thought we need to have a sense of the gravity and heaviness and, …