Digital Commons Network^™

Agreeable Despair: Modernism And Melancholy, Derrick James Gentry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study considers a group of distinctly modernist philosophers for whom aesthetic and reflective practices represented a way out of the paralysis of a culture dominated by narrowly conceived philosophical values. These modernist philosophers, I argue, helped to give birth to mode of experimental writing that Robert Musil called "essayism." I begin in Chapter One with an account of Walter Benjamin's experimental concept of melancholy and its intersection with the avant-garde practices of French Surrealism. Chapter One begins to contrast Benjamin's concept of melancholy with Friedrich Nietzsche's therapeutic efforts to transform and overcome melancholy on both a personal and a …

Cathy Trask, Monstrosity, And Gender-Based Fears In John Steinbeck’S East Of Eden, Claire Warnick

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the concept of monstrosity has received renewed attention by literary critics. Much of this criticism has focused on horror texts and other texts that depict supernatural monsters. However, the way that monster theory explores the connection between specific cultures and their monsters illuminates not only our understanding of horror texts, but also our understanding of any significant cultural artwork. Applying monster theory to non-horror texts is a useful and productive way to more fully understand the cultural fears of a society. One text that is particularly fruitful to explore in this context is John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, …

Japan And The Ancient Western Classics: The Role Of Divine Intervention In Greek Roman And Japanese Literature, Christian Garcia

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the reasons for divine intervention in Greek, Roman, and Japanese literature and how it impacts the cultures and traditions of ancient Greece,Rome, and Japan. In the first chapter, I discuss the main motivations of divine intervention in human affairs in Homer’s Iliad. In the second chapter, I examine the lack of divine intervention in Lucan’s Bellum Civile and the changing attitudes toward the role of divinities. In the third chapter, I examine divine intervention in both the ancient mythology and contemporary folklore of Japan, and ask whether or not we can find its impact on traditional values …

The Succubus And The Suckers: The Soul-Siphoning Leeches In The Stories Of Modernist Text., Victoria Bonilla

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the various relationships found in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire," Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night." The exploration of each demonstrates the common theme of parasitic relations and the toll this dynamic takes on the persons involved.

Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, Ambika Subramaniam

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The following thesis examines the work of Ambika Subramaniam, in particular her thesis installation Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, for the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis. Based within a discussion of semiotics, the thesis researches furniture signification and tracks its evolution through traditional form, ergonomic function, and consumed product. Major points include the ways in which objects are capable of collapsing and retaining the semiotic divide between a sign and referent, and how that signification relates to contemporary design-oriented products. Using the chair as the exemplifying object, the thesis installation questions how objects have …

The Talent Thief, Kate Olson Nesheim

Theses and Dissertations

The Talent Thief narrates an amateur con artist's philanthropic efforts in Windhoek, Namibia, and her psychological struggle with the guilt of a past crime. Guided by a literalistic interpretation of the Biblical "Parable of the Talents," Callie Donne works to redeem herself and restore her mother's reputation with a high-profile charity fundraising event. The novel's plot echoes elements of the United States' involvement in the economic and political development of the African continent. In its themes and settings, it also offers a point of contact between the Lutheran tradition and post-colonial cultural scholarship for contemporary American readers.

The Heart Is A Hollow Muscle, Aviva Englander Cristy

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of poetry explores the relationship of between self and body by way of form and language. Through syntax and poetic forms, especially the sonnet, these poems investigate the interchange between the physical and the linguistics. The manuscript incorporates found text through the collage process, relying heavily on the medical texts of the seventeenth century anatomist William Harvey. The medicalized body becomes the means through which the speakers of these poems experience and express identity, considering the physical body as the body in pain, the queered body, and the body of the beloved.

The Dakini Project, Kimberley Harris Idol

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation merges creative writing with scholarship using the novel, The Dakini Project, to provide the subject matter to which the criticism applies. It will focus on the source of mystery format as that codified by Edgar Allan Poe that is later taken in hand by his fellows Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (as novelists), authors of the hard-boiled American style, and it will use Chaos theory to assess to idea of catastrophe in terms of emergence rather than disintegration. Though the format comes from American beginnings, the scope of the stories discussed here are tangled around …

Funny Or French: How Humor Varies Across Cultures, Audrey Mefford

Honors Theses

This paper examines the works of four cartoonists (Saul Steinberg, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Roz Chast, and Claire Bretécher) in order to determine similarities and differences between French humor and American humor. It incorporates compiled data from each of the above artist's lifetime works, as well as knowledge from the fields of cartoons and comics, sociology, and cross-cultural psychology, to answer the question "What is funny?" in each of these two disparate cultures.

The Ordinary Trip: Heteronormativity And Homophobia In Young Adult Literature From 1969 To 2009, Laurie Barth Walczak

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines books published for and marketed toward teen readers as cultural products and artifacts with the potential and the power to help shape young readers' ideas and understandings of the world, culture, and society around them in order to identify and investigate hegemonic forces or ideological apparatuses at play in young adult literature. From among the earliest young adult novels with characters who depict diverse gender and sexual identities, such as John Donovan's I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth Trip. in 1969, to the most contemporary, including Nick Burd's The Vast Fields of Ordinary in 2009, the …

Reflective Tales : Tracing Fairy Tales In Popular Culture Through The Depiction Of Maternity In Three “Snow White” Variants., Alexandra O'Keefe

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

La Muerte, La Memoria Y La Filosofía Existencial En La Literatura Testimonial Pos-Dictatorial De Primo Levi, Jorge Semprún Y Jacobo Timerman, Andrew Mcnair

Senior Theses and Projects

What effect does the ubiquity of death in a traumatic experience have on an individual's memory and soul, and how is this manifested in one's written testimony? Through the analysis of their philosophical introspection, the testimonies of Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved, Jorge Semprún's Literature or Life, and Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number meditate on the atrocities they experienced during Levi and Semprún's incarceration under the Nazi regime in Europe between 1942 and 1945, and Timerman's imprisonment under the regime of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. The …

Urban Hermitage In Literature Of The City, Mark Ryan Mengel

Open Access Theses

Since Aristotle, theory and literature concerning the city has centered around the participant--those citizens who operate within the city system in more or less recognizable ways (i.e. politicians, police, rioters, workers, etc.). This thesis adds to that body of work by investigating the emergence and significance not of the participant, but rather of the nonparticipant who exists within the city system but is denied interaction within that system. I term this figure the hermit.

Chapter 1 focuses on establishing a theoretical framework for the hermit's emergence, using primarily Michel De Certeau's notions of city participation from his book The Practice …

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Artisan Of Violent Feminine Agency, Carolina Galdiz

Senior Theses and Projects

For decades, scholars have understood Edna St Vincent Millay in two fairly distinctive patterns as either a classical romanticist or ephemeral rebel. This dual reputation has been crafted from the obvious presence of natural imagery, sexual dynamism, feminine voice, and romantic yearning in her work. What critics have failed to see in her poetry are the potent sinister undertones that claim violence as a means to power. I will argue that Millay narrates the gendered struggle that takes place in this violence, in order to ultimately assert feminine agency in the process of forming a cultural identity. Thus, rather than …

I Get A Thrill From Punishment: Lou Reed's Adaptations And The Pain They Cause, Jonathan B. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores two adaptations by rock musician Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground and Metal Machine Music fame. Reed has always been a complicated and controversial figure, but two of his albums—The Raven (2003), a collaborative theater piece; and Lulu (2011), a collaboration with heavy metal band Metallica—have inspired confusion and vitriol among both fans and critics. However, both adaptations, rich in intertextual references, at once show Reed to be what music historian Simon Reynolds calls a portal figure—offering a map of references to other texts for fans, indicating his own indebtedness to prior art—and to also be an …

Unmasking The Protester: The Meanings And Myths Of Collective Civil Resistance Movements In African American And Polish Postresistance Prose Fiction, Agnieszka Herra

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My contention is that the narrative framework of social movements, especially the ones deemed “successful” such as the American Civil Rights Movement and the Polish Solidarity Movement, reflects unity and collectivity within collective memory. During the period of the movements’ duration, this provides a clear rhetorical purpose: to give the appearance of unity in order to give effective voice to the demands. I argue that the voices that did not fit into the collective movements emerge subsequently to question this monologic language in literary form. This dissertation uses Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic language to argue that novels in the postresistance …

The Evolution Of Indifference: Locating Stoic Influence In Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly's "Du Dandysme Et De Georges Brummell" And Charles Baudelaire's "Le Peintre De La Vie Moderne", Aurie Zeran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis surveys the relationship between late Roman Stoicism and nineteenth century dandyism. This correlation is based on comments within the Barbeyan and Baudelairean dandyist theories as expanded in “Du dandysme et de Georges Brummell” (1845) and “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” (1863) respectively. In both of these texts, several references are made to dandies as Stoics or possessing stoic qualities, primarily an attitude of indifference. Though Stoic influence is a recurring theme throughout dandy practice and theory, both nominally and performatively, few literary critics have addressed the dandy’s particularly modern use of ancient Stoic doctrine. This thesis argues …

Anxious Seas: Reading Affect In Dazai And Murdoch, Joseph B. Lubitz

Honors Papers

This paper advances a re-reading of psychoanalytic “anxiety” as it is constructed through the modern novel, invoking contemporary affect theory, and finding an origin in the Heideggerian notions of Stimmung, Unheimlich and Angst. Looking at two works at the margins of the period and genre of the 20th Century modern novel that both share a fascination with introspective male protagonists--a Japanese “I-novel” called No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) by Dazai Osamu, and The Sea, The Sea, by British writer Iris Murdoch--reveals a peculiar aesthetic questioning of subject and object specific to these works’ varied usages of ekphrasis and fascination with …

The Lord Of The Rings And The Weight Of Two Worlds: An Exploration Of Faith In Fantasy, Danielle Myers

Honors Projects

This project is two-fold. The first section attempts to determine what it is that makes Tolkien’s writing, specifically within The Lord of the Rings, stand out against other Christian fantasy, particularly within modern evangelical culture. The purpose of this is to determine how he uses faith within his fantasy differently, and makes that faith-based writing meaningful to his readers without leaving them feeling preached-at. The second section is an excerpt of my own novel, The Weight of Two Worlds, in which I have attempted to use Tolkien’s methods to incorporate faith in my fantasy writing.

Scandalous Deception In The Castle: An Examination Of The Gender Performance Through The Bedtrick Trope In Arthurian Literature, Abby Louise Daniel

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The bedtrick – mistaken identity in a sexual encounter – is a comic motif employed by medieval, renaissance and modern storytellers. While modern readers tend to recognize this motif as (at best) a disturbing sexual escapade and (at worst) rape, the scholarship on mistaken identity in medieval literature still generally glosses over the bedtrick as a moment of comedy. My thesis examines the literary trope of the bedtrick through the critical lens of Judith Butler’s performativity theory, and the motives behind this form of deception and the modern implications. Furthermore, the bedtrick trope is explored in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Shakespeare: The Mirror Of The Human Soul, Sarah Lynnette Davis

Honors Theses

Shakespeare is one of the most popular playwrights of all time. Even during his own life time, Shakespeare experienced tremendous popularity that has lasted hundreds of years. Perhaps no one has said it better than Shakespeare's own contemporary Ben Johnson:

He was not of an age, but for all time! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, …

Seeking Vita Contemplativa: A Search For Contemplation In A Secular World, Rosette Marie Cirillo

Senior Projects Spring 2014

Senior Project submitted to The Divisions of Languages and Literature and Social Studies of Bard College

The Evolution Of Japanese Utopianism And How Akutagawa's Dystopian Novella, Kappa Was Born Out Of Chinese And Western Utopian Writings But Was Uniquely Japanese, Yoko Inagi

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Mad Love And Narrative Uncertainty In The Twentieth Century: A Study Of The Good Soldier And Le Ravissement De Lol V. Stein, Rose Ducharme

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines narrative uncertainty in the twentieth century novel as it relates to madness, adultery, and the convention of the unreliable narrator. The unreliable narratives of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier and Marguerite Duras’ Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein expose their characters’ investment in illusions, the doubling of the narrators’ and readers’ desires to interpret, the transfer of madness through narrative, and the possibility that a void of meaning underlies the text.

Literatura Sobre La Frontera Norte Mexicana: Comparación Y Análisis Del Discurso Pragmático, Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

En este trabajo se comparan cuatro novelas que incluyen a la frontera del norte de México entre sus páginas. El punto de diferencia del cual la comparación parte es el origen de los autores. Lo anterior se debe a que en la tradición del trabajo crítico que ha intentado entender y definir la literatura de la zona, uno de los principales puntos de debate refiere al cuestionamiento de si importa la pertenencia de los escritores al lugar narrado. Mientras hay críticos y académicos que afirman que las obras de la literatura norfronteriza mexicana son únicamente aquéllas escritas por autores de …

Creating A New Literature: Shimazaki Toson's Poetry And The Japanese Literary Reform Movement, Grace E. Yon

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This research project shows how the poetry of writer Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943) influenced Japanese literary and language reform movements during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although Tōson's fiction has often been the focus of critical studies and research, the impact his poetry had on these reform movements and on the shape of modern Japanese literature tends to be overlooked. In this paper, I show the importance of these overlooked works by examining a wide range of Tōson's poems and focusing on the way that they blend classical Japanese natural themes and rhythm, most commonly a 5-7-5 or related …

The Reality Of Utopian And Dystopian Fiction: Thomas More's Utopia And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Casey Holliday

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to explore the different methods that Thomas More's Utopia and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale utilize to create a compliant population, while also situating each in their appropriate historical context to draw on the authorial intentions. Different commonalities of the various definitions of utopia and dystopia are explored to form a framework to work within, and the two works are analyzed in relation to political theories set forth by Michel Foucault: the power over life and death in Utopia and the deployment of sexuality in The Handmaid's Tale. Both are used to enforce subjugation, …

The Myth Continues In Percy Jackson: A Look Into Mythology And Its Persistence Today, Maia Anne Swanson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

El Wavering Imaginativo Y La Conciencia Imaginante En Los Cuentos De Marvel Moreno Y Angela Carter, Alejandra Olarte

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In this dissertation, I explore the short stories of Colombian writer Marvel Moreno and English writer Angela Carter. I propose that the authors' works share a dual conceptualization of the notion of imagination -- imaginative wavering and imagining consciousness. These conceptualizations constitute interpretative frameworks to comparatively examine textual strategies and themes within the authors' works of fiction. A fundamental characteristic of both imaginative wavering and imagining consciousness is movement. With the former, movement implies a constant oscillation between intradiegetic reality and rational thinking, as exposed in the stories. With the latter, movement entails the act of grasping the reality that …

Feminicidios En Cd. Juárez: Sombras Del Evanescente Olvido; Luces De Lucha, Fuerza Y Resistencia, Amber Ramirez

Honors Theses

Desde principios de los años noventa, mujeres y niñas en Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México han sido raptadas de día y de noche mientras se dirigen al trabajo, a sus casas, o a la escuela. Después de días, semanas y a veces hasta años, muchas han sido encontradas brutalmente asesinadas, calcinadas, mutiladas, violadas y torturadas; sus cuerpos han sido abandonados para luego ser localizados completamente desnudos o parcialmente vestidos, en completo estado de descomposición o solamente en huesos en las calles en las zonas desérticas de Cd. Juárez. El paradero de muchas otras mujeres y niñas aún se desconoce y a …