Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Beowulf: A Study In Comparitive Translation, Collin J. Pierlott

Undergraduate Research

In this article the translations of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien, E. Talbot Donaldson, and Seamus Heaney are compared, in order to shed light on different approaches in translation. Tolkien approaches the task with a philological perspective, retaining archaic diction and syntax; Donaldson seeks to convey simplicity in his translation, trying to remain as transparent as possible; Heaney provides his Irish prospective, and his own reading of the peom "raised to the power of verse." As part of the study, I have done my own translation, which I also discuss in the paper. The document includes both my analysis and my …

Theatrical Weddings And Pious Frauds: Performance And Law In Victorian Marriage Plots, Adrianne A. Wojcik

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how key Victorian novelists, such as Anne and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, emphasize performativity in their critiques of marriage. Given the performative nature of wedding ceremonies, this project focuses on wedding descriptions in select novels by the aforementioned authors. Such a focus highlights an interesting dilemma. Although we often think of Victorian novels as overwhelmingly concerned with marriage, the few wedding descriptions found in Victorian fiction are aborted, unusually short or announced after the fact. Those Victorian novelists who do feature weddings often describe them …

The Third Gender And Ælfric's Lives Of Saints, Rhonda L. Mcdaniel

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

In The Third Gender, McDaniel addresses the idea of the "third gender" in early hagiography and Latin treatises on virginity and then examines Ælfric's treatment of gender in his translations of Latin monastic Lives for his non-monastic audiences. She first investigates patristic ideas about a "third gender" by describing this concept within the theoretical frameworks of monasticism provided by the four Latin Doctors and illustrated in the early Latin Lives of Roman martyrs, revealing the importance of memory in the construction of the monastic "third gender." In the second section McDaniel turns to creating a historical and theological cultural …

Spenser’S Narrative Figuration Of Women In The Faerie Queene, Judith H. Anderson

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Concentrating on major figures of women in The Faerie Queene, together with the figures constellated around them, Anderson's Narrative Figuration explores the contribution of Spenser's epic romance to an appreciation of women's plights and possibilities in the age of Elizabeth. The figures she highlights encompass the idealization of Una, humanized by parody; the historicized fixation of Belphoebe; the cross-dressed complexity of Britomart; and the psychological misery of Serena, a throwback to Amoret. They range from cartoons to a fullness sharing numerous features with the Shakespearean women salient in recent debates about character. The critical lens most revealing for each …

Turning “Bad Jews Into Worse Christians”: Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This paper explores how sermons contributed to Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. I begin with a rhetorical analysis of sermons preached on behalf of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the largest and best known missionary organization of its kind. I then examine a collection of sermons in which Hermann Adler, then rabbi of London’s Bayswater Synagogue and later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, pushes back against their efforts, offering the “true explanations” of passages which, in his view, had been improperly employed by Christian preachers. Finally, I trace a kind of “feedback loop” in which …

Romola: The Failure Of A Husband And Triumph Of A Wife, Ryan Harding

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

George Eliot’s fifteenth century romance Romola follows the coming of age and independence of the titular character, an Italian noblewoman during the Renaissance. This essay examines the development of the relationship between Romola and her husband Tito’s common law wife, Tessa, specifically through the impact of Tito’s personal failures on both women. Throughout the novel, Romola struggles with her failed marriage, her need for personal connection, and Tito’s poor treatment of Tessa. Using the knowledge gained from her experiences and Tito’s poor behavior as an example, Romola transforms herself into the proper husband figure for Tessa: a provider, protector, and …

Buddhism In Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, And Zen Sickness In The English Romantics, Logan M. Rohde

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the philosophical similarity between English Romanticism and Buddhism from a Zen Buddhist perspective. In contrast to scholars such as Mark Lussier and John G. Rudy, who have focused on the similarity between Romantic and Buddhist philosophy, I explore their differences. I argue that Romanticism represents a “Buddhism in progress”: both philosophies seek to overcome “the self,” but do so through different means. Lacking direct access to Buddhist teachings, the authors considered in this study (Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Shelley, and Keats) developed their own practice of self-transcendence through writing, often prompted by experiences of ecstatic intoxication that …

Parallels Of Morality: Wilde And Nietzsche’S Challenge To Social Obligation, Amzie A. Dunekacke

Honors Theses

This thesis explores Irish author Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in relation to a selection of texts by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. To demonstrate the similarities between Wilde and Nietzsche’s challenges to European morality, this work considers these themes, which are present in the ideologies of both Wilde and Nietzsche: the body and sensual pleasure, social construction, and the hypocrisy of altruism. Both radical thinkers castigate Platonic notions of the body as ignoble and weak, and they mock European propriety’s shyness of the body. In addition, Wilde and Nietzsche offer similar criticisms of social laws, adopting a …

Selected Essays On Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy, Patrick Scott, Elizabeth A. Sudduth, Jo Durant

Patrick Scott

"Christen It With Thy Dagger's Point": Maternal Mistreatment In Shakespeare's Roman Plays, Anne Mcilhaney

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

"She May Strew Dangerous Conjectures": The Political Sedition And Social Potency Of _Hamlet_'S Ophelia, Christina M. Luiggi

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Sadomasochistic Cyclicality: Appropriations Of Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" Sonnets In Dickens's _Great Expectations_, Daniel G. Lauby

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Young Shakespeare: Culture, Patrons, And Connections, David George

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Hubert's Encounters With The Succession In Shakespeare's King John, Marcia Eppich-Harris

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Encountering Shakespeare's Cleopatra: The Subversion Of The Occident's Threat Of Objectification, Amany El-Sawy

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Emily Isaacson

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Language As Communication Vs. Language As Art: J.R.R. Tolkien And Early 20th-Century Radical Linguistic Experimentation, Dimitra Fimi

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article situates Tolkien’s “A Secret Vice” (and its accompanying notes and papers) within the cultural and intellectual milieu of the early 20th century. It claims that at the heart of Tolkien’s exploration in this material is the question of language as communication vs. language as art. It argues that Tolkien’s language invention navigates the (perceived) binary between a utilitarian aim for language invention (contemporary International Auxiliary Languages) vs. an aesthetic linguistic pursuit (contemporary Modernist and other avant-garde linguistic experimentation), by choosing a third (middle) way. It examines Tolkien's linguistic invention alongside the work of Sapir, Jespersen, Joyce, Stein, and …

Women’S Literacy In Early Modern Spain And The New World, Ed. By Anne J. Cruz And Rosilie Hernández, Kirsten Schultz

Kirsten Schultz

No abstract provided.

Preface, Patrick Scott

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A brief introduction to Ross Roy's Selected Essays with a note on editorial procedure

Robert Burns: A Self-Portrait, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

An essay looking at Burns as he portrays himself in his letters, notable for looking at how different correspondents bring out different aspects of his character.