Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories,
2023
Georgia Southern University
Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
After World War II, spiritual and emotional healing was needed in America, despite a dependence upon materialism and conspicuous consumption for success. J.D. Salinger’s short-story cycle, Nine Stories (1953), explores what loss and trauma look like from all sides of war—mother, child, soldier, lover—all are harmed by war. Nine Stories emphasizes the need for nationwide spiritual healing and suggests that mothers offer the necessary antidote to consumeristic America. In fact, eight of Salinger’s Nine Stories employ one of three types of mothers: the self-serving and ineffectual mother; the spiritual, often surrogate maternal guide; and the ideal mother. While the ineffectual …
Nothing About Us: Three Models Of Disability In Three Works Of Literary Fiction,
2023
Cal Poly Humboldt
Nothing About Us: Three Models Of Disability In Three Works Of Literary Fiction, Mary Lipiec
Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects
This project explores how the three umbrella models of disability (medical, functional, and social) are shown in several disabled characters from three novels published after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum. Through the utilization of literary analysis from a cultural studies perspective, this project shows that the models of disability, despite the various flaws in their respective designs, prove to be useful lenses to see disability through, both in these novels and in real life, …
Reading In Place: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wendell Berry, And Post Critique,
2023
Missouri State University
Reading In Place: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wendell Berry, And Post Critique, Calvin L. Coon
MSU Graduate Theses
The twenty-first century, marked by neoliberalism and suspicious, visibly violent far-Right politics, has presented new challenges to critical and literary theorists. In response, some theorists advocate for a postcritical turn, challenging both the surface/depth picture of language and the privileged status of suspicion in interpretation in order to explore alternative pictures of language and reading that can better address the challenges of our own day. In this thesis, I connect one of these alternatives, Toril Moi’s use of Ordinary Language Philosophy in literary studies, to Wendell Berry’s prioritization of place in environmentalist activism. In connecting these two thinkers, I contend …
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society,
2023
Missouri State University
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen
MSU Graduate Theses
By critically analyzing Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, I was able to conclude that the transgressive portrayal of hyperrealized consumerism warranted a close examination into the value American society places on an individual’s ability to replace authenticity for consumer obedience. Palahniuk’s dangerous representation of the body throughout the novel serves to highlight numerous ways in which a consumer transgresses against their own physical and mental well-being to achieve happiness constructed by capitalistic agendas. By using French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality in connection with gender, disability, and feminist theory and ecocriticism, I attempt to deconstruct the neoliberal ideology to which …
“What Do Any Of Us Really Know About Love:” A Discussion Of Irony Within Raymond Carver’S Short Story Cycle What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,
2023
Georgia Southern University
“What Do Any Of Us Really Know About Love:” A Discussion Of Irony Within Raymond Carver’S Short Story Cycle What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Niyonna Johnson
Honors College Theses
With minimalist technique, Raymond Carver manages to accurately depict a depressed working-class America. Current contemporary criticism has focused on the main themes of Carver’s work such as the struggle with identity, alcoholism, disconnection, and domesticity hardships; the one ideal that has seemed to be missing is the irony that lies within the lives of the characters. This paper will analyze, in depth, short stories from a short story cycle of Raymond Carver and detail how their current situations are directly juxtaposed by their occupations and how this benefits the currently discussed themes of his work.
Ruptures In Indentures In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And Unaccustomed Earth,
2023
Georgia Southern University
Ruptures In Indentures In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And Unaccustomed Earth, Prabal D. Gupta
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) is one of the prominent American writers of Bengali descent, contributing mainly to diaspora literature to depict the nuanced aspects of Bengalis in their immigrant lives. Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008) illustrate the challenges of the Bengali diaspora due to their indentured identity, which I have used to refer to the Bengali people’s culturally-rooted identity. This study investigates how the diaspora’s native cultural identity fluctuates in connection with the host culture. The research renders a reconfigured image of “home” because the concept of home changes for these people after migration in …
Silent Horror: The Complexity, Monstrosity, And Ubiquity Of Evil In Faulkner’S Sanctuary,
2022
Liberty University
Silent Horror: The Complexity, Monstrosity, And Ubiquity Of Evil In Faulkner’S Sanctuary, Bronwyn M. Gray
Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal
In a culture of moral relativism, Faulkner's novel Sanctuary shocks us with an ancient perspective on the nature of man. Not only is the villain Popeye evil, the "good guy" is infected as well, and this is seen through Faulkner's comparison of our hero Horace with Popeye, parallels drawn between Horace's festering desire for his stepdaughter and Popeye's lust for his rape victim Temple Drake. But it is not only the adult men who are at fault. Temple Drake herself is shown to be in the throes between childlike innocence (temple) and evil desire (drake, meaning dragon or serpent). Perhaps …
Biopower, Biopolitics And Pandemic Vulnerabilities: Reading The Covid Chronicles Comics,
2022
University of Hyderabad, India
Biopower, Biopolitics And Pandemic Vulnerabilities: Reading The Covid Chronicles Comics, Pramod K. Nayar Ph.D.
Critical Humanities
This essay examines Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology from the perspective of biopower and biopolitics. It contends that, on the one hand, the comics capture individual suffering and collective trauma of the pandemic; on the other hand, these comics draw attention to the role the state plays in regulating bodies to be monitored, governed and, in some cases, deemed disposable.
Stories,
2022
University of Alberta, Augustana
Stories, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Roxanne Harde , Editor
Zea E-Books Collection
Today, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) is best known for a handful of her novels: The Gates Ajar (1868), The Silent Partner (1871), and The Story of Avis (1877). During her life, however, the short story was a hugely popular genre in which she was fully invested and where she made a good deal of her living. Stories were her earliest and latest publications, and they were work that she both enjoyed and employed to greater ends. From 1864 to her death in 1911, she published almost one hundred and fifty short stories in the leading periodicals of the day. This …
“The Ugly Truth”: Examining War Trauma And Therapeutic Storytelling Through The Works Of Tim O’Brien,
2022
Grand Valley State University
“The Ugly Truth”: Examining War Trauma And Therapeutic Storytelling Through The Works Of Tim O’Brien, Meredith Ivy Fedewa
Masters Theses
Within this work, a close study on the relationship between trauma and storytelling is examined through three of Tim O’Brien’s works: The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and In the Lake of the Woods. Through the application of psychoanalysis, specifically the work of Jacques Lacan, and modern trauma theory, the relationship between individual identity and the traumatizing encounter of the Real is examined through O’Brien’s concepts of Story Truth versus Happening Truth, as well as how those concepts work together to navigate one’s trauma story. Through weaving the aforementioned theory with each text, O’Brien is seen …
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth,
2022
Duquesne University
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Since the 1938 introduction of Superman, superheroes have been ever-present in American popular culture. Indeed, with the modern preponderance of comic book movies dominating the American cinematic box-office, superhero fantasy is arguably the most important genre of fiction being produced in the contemporary moment. Peter Coogan, Kurt Busiek and many other scholars have discussed the prominence and relevance of the superhero fantasy as a genre. Still others, including Umberto Eco and Marco Arnaudo, have asserted that the superhero is not so much a genre and as it is the evolution of mythology. In Sex and the Superman, I argue …
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism,
2022
Clemson University
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism, John Gorton
All Theses
In his 1986 book America, Baudrillard noted that “the most banal suburb…is more at the centre of the world than any of the cultural manifestations of old Europe.” My thesis argues that this monumental shift from the suburbs as enclaves at the outer edges of cultural urban centers to “the centre of the world” is at the heart of Richard Ford’s realist project in his Pulitzer Prize winning Bascombe series starting with The Sportswriter in 1986. Emergent twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature scholars have been interested in the schism between the fictionalized representation and the lived experience of suburbia — while …
The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead,
2022
Bucknell University
The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead, Ted Hamilton
Faculty Journal Articles
This article describes how the law inflects the narration of environmental conflict in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass (2015) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). By focusing on the legal common sense of settler colonialism—its emphasis on private property in land and its subjugation of Indigenous peoples to the guardianship of the state—the article explores the ways in which Vollmann’s and Silko’s novels present counternarratives to the law’s story of justified conquest. Combining a law and literature approach with ecocriticism, this article highlights the importance of the legal imagination in defining human-land relations in the United States. …
Hawthorne’S Human Nature And Sin: Criticisms Of Puritanism And Progressivism,
2022
Texas A&M International University
Hawthorne’S Human Nature And Sin: Criticisms Of Puritanism And Progressivism, Oscar Martinez
Theses and Dissertations
One of America’s greatest authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in a time of rapid scientific, material, and intellectual advancement. However, unlike many of his peers who went all-in on utopian reform movements, Hawthorne took a cautious and reserved approach to progress even though he supported the idea abstractly. Using six tales written acrossHawthorne’s career, this work will examine what each has to say about Hawthorne’s belief in human nature and why he takes such a skeptical position against movements aiming to fundamentally reshape people and society. The tales from the 1830s, “The Gentle Boy,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Minister’s Black …
Heroine Of The Peripheral: An Exploration Of Feminism And Anti-Feminism In The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath,
2022
Augsburg College
Heroine Of The Peripheral: An Exploration Of Feminism And Anti-Feminism In The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath, Devoney Looser
Augsburg Honors Review
Recognizing that there are many legitimate ways to view Plath's work, this study doesn't claim a definitive reading or even a glimpse into the 'real' Sylvia Plath. Instead, the following exploration will focus on feminist and anti-feminist renderings of motherhood in Plath's Crosstng the Water, Ariel, and Winter Trees. This study doesn't set out to prove or disprove these labels as they relate to Plath either. My intention is not to make value judgments about various aspects of the poetry but rather to highlight the contradictions and the co-existence of feminist and anti-feminist qualities in the text.
Hopes And Dreams Of Liturgical Renewal: 3 Books From My Shelf,
2022
The University of Notre Dame Australia
Hopes And Dreams Of Liturgical Renewal: 3 Books From My Shelf, Chris Kan
Pastoral Liturgy
No abstract provided.
Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History Of The World’S Greatest Hero By Roy Schwartz,
2022
Independent Scholar
Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History Of The World’S Greatest Hero By Roy Schwartz, Gabriel C. Salter
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
In Is Superman Circumcised?, Russell Schwartz provides a historical overview of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation of the comic book character Superman, arguing that Siegel and Shuster's backgrounds in Jewish immigrants gives a particularly Jewish subtext to their character. Schwartz builds on this argument with a larger historical overview of American comic book publishing, showing how Judaism and Jewish-American immigrant experiences have informed that industry from its earliest days.
History In The Margins: Epigraphs And Negative Space In Robin Hobb’S Assassin’S Apprentice,
2022
Campbellsville University
History In The Margins: Epigraphs And Negative Space In Robin Hobb’S Assassin’S Apprentice, Matthew Oliver
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice demonstrates a significant effect of epic fantasy’s conventions for creating the history of a fictional world. By prefacing each chapter with an epigraph from an official in-world historical text before giving a first-person personal narrative, the novel blurs the boundaries between text and paratext, public and private, official history and personal myth-making. This structure raises questions about what is central and marginal in history, suggesting the extent to which historical narrative is constructed in the imagination by taking the facts surrounding a central event from which the historian is absent—a process much like negative space drawing …
Witness, Justice, And The Silent Confessional,
2022
University of Nebraska, Kearney
Witness, Justice, And The Silent Confessional, Kortney Sebben
Graduate Review
Stories depicting injustice are inherently complicated by the limitations of language. Jacques Derrida’s “Circonfession” uses deconstructionist theory to describe the flawed nature of the confession in that proximity becomes problematic: those who experience are unable to authentically deliver the truth of that experience. Language also becomes an imperfect channel through which to deliver the truth; the truth lies in both a person’s ability to bring meaning to individual experience, but also, in an audience’s ability to interpret that experience; however, both sides of the conversation are challenged through an imperfect channel of communication. Therefore, silence of human behavior may very …
The Fall Of The House Of Usher, And The Rise Of The Civil War,
2022
Eastern Washington University
The Fall Of The House Of Usher, And The Rise Of The Civil War, Richard E. Campbell Ii
2022 Symposium
Poe may have died before the Civil War began, but he was close to the politics of his time. He was also an astute observer of people. His writings often explore deep aspects of the human condition. Using his in depth understanding of people and his close proximity and personal interest it would make sense that he could see how the wheels were turning. In the end it is possible that Poe would predict and hide clues of his observations within this writings, specifically The Fall of the House of Usher.
