Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Iarwain Ben-Adar On The Road To Faerie: Tom Bombadil's Recovery Of Premodern Fantasy Values, Greta Rogers

Masters Theses

This thesis project discusses J. R. R. Tolkien's character Tom Bombadil as an agent of recovery of premodern fantasy values. Several premodern fantasy works espouse a sense of harmony with the world as God’s created order, a value that is missing from some postmodern fantasy works. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil is examined as a means to recover that acceptance of the created order.

Will Artificial Intelligence Have Free-Will?, Guadalupe Rodriguez

Frankenstein @ 200: Student Posters

Will Artificial Intelligence have free will the way the Creature did?

Discourses On Fantasy: A Narrative Allegory, Reuben Dendinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project, though officially designated by the English Department as a creative thesis, is really a hybrid work that combines creative writing with literary criticism. The work is structured as a "dream vision," a literary genre popular in the Middle Ages in which a narrator receives some form of instruction or wisdom through an allegorical dream. Examples include The Pearl, The Romance of the Rose, and Chaucer's House of Fame. In this thesis, the allegorical space of the dream vision provides a platform for a series of essays structured as dialogues. These dialogues explore the aesthetics and …

Review Of Stephen Mitchell, Beowulf, Carol A. Leibiger

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Epistemology Of Observation: Performance, Power, And The Regulation Of Female Sexuality In The Duchess Of Malfi And The Changeling, Sarah Claudia Bonanno

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

How And Where To Make A Fortune: Mapping The Fictions Of Economic Mobility Through Work In British Literature, 1719–1809, Heather Zuber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the literary history of a particular plotline in eighteenth-century British Literature—that of a poor individual who climbs the economic ladder through hard work (as opposed to marriage or inheritance). This plot features prominently in the earliest novels (written by Daniel Defoe) but quickly fades from that genre, only to reappear in others such as children’s literature and life-writing. This dissertation collects for the first time the wide variety of eighteenth-century texts that contain this economic mobility through work plot and analyzes them using a variety of methodologies, including single author studies, genre studies, multi-genre studies, engagement with …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

The Presentation Of Postmodern Sexuality In Short Fiction, Allie J. Kapus

Senior Honors Theses

Shifting norms in twentieth century western society, coupled with emerging postmodern thought in the 1960s, radically changed the ways in which people viewed sexuality, gender roles, and the institutions of marriage and the family. The literature of the postmodern era, namely short fiction, also reflects such ideological shifts. Literature is a powerful communicator of the human condition as well as a crucial means for reflecting the customs, beliefs, and norms of a society at the time of its writing. Such evolving differences as were occurring in the realm of sexuality came to be represented in postmodern literature. This thesis aims …

Symbols Purely Mechanical: Language, Modernity, And The Rise Of The Algorithm, 1605–1862, Jeffrey M. Binder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, scholars in both Digital Humanities and Critical Media Studies have encountered a disconnect between algorithms and what are typically thought of as “cultural” concerns. In Digital Humanities, researchers employing algorithmic methods in the study of literature have faced what Alan Liu has called a “meaning problem”—a difficulty in reconciling computational results with traditional forms of interpretation. Conversely, in Critical Media Studies, some thinkers have questioned the adequacy of interpretive methods as means of understanding computational systems. This dissertation offers a historical account of how this disconnect came into being by examining the attitudes toward algorithms that existed …

“Community In Solitude”: The Solitary Self, Social Critique, And Utopian Longing, Colin S. Macdonald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that the discourse of solitude in early modern English literature was used to construct a fantasy of resistance to political and social corruption and internecine conflict. Furthermore, the rhetoric of solitude and the positioning of oneself as an outsider, as “uniquely separate from society,” in Andrew Bennett’s terms, led to the development of an early modern authorial identity in opposition to the world, opening a space that allowed social critique and utopian desire to flourish. The notion of disengaged resistance, or what we might call disengaged engagement, is the key component of the rhetoric and practice of …

Reading Charlotte Bronte Reading, Madhumita Gupta

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This essay considers the significance of undirected childhood reading on an author’s mind and the reason some authors reference specific real books in their fiction. I argue that independent reading (as against schooling or formal education), and the direct and indirect references to certain books in Jane Eyre^[1] were deliberate, well-thought-out inclusions for specific purposes at different points in the story. When a title pointedly says Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, it is probable that a significant part of the author’s life has seeped into her creation which makes it essential to consider the relevant parts of her life to …

Darwin's Failures: Childless Women In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel, Rose P. O'Malley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses feminist neo-materialist and evolutionary theory to examine non-maternal relations among childless female characters in nineteenth-century British novels. In both the nineteenth century and the present day there is a tendency to use the authority of evolutionary biology to define women as essentially reproductive beings; their entire physical and intellectual organization is seen as geared toward childbearing and childrearing. Reading childless female characters with this tradition in mind, as well as the more open-minded counter-narrative of feminist engagements with evolution, opens up new questions about their meaning: Are they truly biological failures, or not? What avenues of physical …

Newspeak Warrants New Thought: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four And Linguistic Determinism In Nazi Language, Barry Rogenmoser

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

No abstract provided.

Connected Spirits: Adolescent Females And Animal Agents, Elizabeth A. Parrish

English Department Theses

The novels The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies create a unique opportunity to investigate human and animal relationships given the similarity of their time frames and main characters. Both novels feature adolescent females struggling to resolve their identities against the backdrop of WWII. Frankie Addams in The Member of the Wedding and Esther Evans in The Welsh Girl share the additional characteristics of deceased mothers, distant fathers, and contacts with animals. Because these books are bildungsromans, they permit a comparative analysis as separate experiments in feminine growth with attention …

"A Crack In The Ice": Attachment And Insanity In Pink Floyd's The Wall, Margaret E. Geddy

Honors College Theses

Pink Floyd’s concept album The Wall follows a musician named Pink from adolescence to adulthood as he struggles to maintain his sanity while searching for a genuine connection "on the thin ice of modern life." This paper analyzes several aspects of the album to trace the character’s break with reality and what he comes to realize, such as all of the lyrics, the track-listing and the side each song appears on, and any non-musical background noise. Through the lens of Attachment Theory, a type of developmental psychology, the inevitability of Pink’s descent into madness is shown, as is how his …

Satyrs, Syphilis, And Sailors: The Influence Of Gaius Petronius’ Satyricon Liber On Samuel Taylor Coleridge’S “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”, Spencer Fugate

English Honors Projects

For generations, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” has befuddled readers. This project argues that many of its apparent puzzles disappear once we recognize its base text as the Satyricon Liber, Gaius Petronius’ first-century vulgar comedy. Attending to Coleridge’s broader literary corpus alongside images of sexual dysfunction in “The Rime” itself to justify this foundational claim, I then explore how a comic source transforms the reader’s experience of “The Rime” and its criticism. “The Rime” refutes cohesive readings as a horror-poem because it was never intended as pure horror: rather, the poem is Coleridge’s attempt to modernize …

A Frame More Beautiful Than The Picture: How The Frame Story Dominates The Narrative In “Habent Sua Fata Libelli.”, Matt Cowden

Modernist Short Story Project

A frame story is a popular literary technique used by modernist authors such as Joseph Conrad and P.G. Wodehouse. Despite this, there as been relatively little scholarly attention given to the function of the frame story on the narrative. Telling a story within a frame can completely change the emotion and themes of a story, and as such should be considered an any analysis of these stories. An example of a story where the frame completely changes the story is “Habent Sua Fata Libelli,” told by a man who claims to have been wrongfully accused of forging a Greek vase, …

The Master Of Time, Rachel Aedo

Modernist Short Story Project

“The Master of Time”

Norman Lindsay’s work in The London Aphrodite spanned more than a single short story in a single issue. His contribution to this periodical was due to more than his relationship with the editor—Jack Lindsay, creator of The London Aphrodite, was his son—rather, Norman Lindsay’s writing adhered strongly to the premise of the journal. The self-proclaimed cultural journal was set in defiance to the critical literary trends of the day, specifically in opposition to The London Mercury. “The Master of Time” appeared in the third volume of the Aphrodite. Thematically, Lindsay is addressing a distrust …

Serving Two Masters: The Paralysis Of Early 20th-Century Women In A. E. Coppard’S “The Hurly-Burly”, Juliana Avery

Modernist Short Story Project

The theme of paralysis is evident throughout early twentieth-century British literature. Consider Joyce’s “Eveline,” in which a young woman cannot make up her mind about whether to go with her lover to South America or stay behind with her father. Eventually she stays behind, not of her own volition but rather because she is paralyzed by not knowing what her duty is, and so she cannot take the decisive step onto the boat. Joyce’s language shows this paralysis: “She stood among the swaying crowd” (15). Everyone can move but Eveline As Frank calls out to her from behind the barrier, …

E.M Forster: Discovering Connection In “Mr. Andrews”, Janelle A. Benny

Modernist Short Story Project

E.M. Forster was well accomplished in his career for his novels and their accomplishments. His writing career started early in life and found great success, yet, often his short stories went unnoticed. Dominic Head explains that critics found his stories to be “lack luster” in comparison to his novels (Head 77). However, this exact quality is what makes Forster’s stories memorable. Head argues that Forster’s short stories approach modernism different from his novels and other writers of the time (77). One such forgotten story is called “Mr. Andrews.” Found in the illustrated magazine The Open Window, Forster’s short story …