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Articles 1 - 23 of 23
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Fealty And Free Will: Catholicism And The Master/Servant Relationship In The Lord Of The Rings, Emily Bytheway
Fealty And Free Will: Catholicism And The Master/Servant Relationship In The Lord Of The Rings, Emily Bytheway
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis asserts that one aspect of The Lord of the Rings which has been previously overlooked is the hierarchical nature of the master/servant relationship, which mirrors in many ways the hierarchical nature of the Catholic church. Through the various master/servant relationships that Tolkien portrays, he reflects not only the ideal of master and servant working together for good, but also the ways in which this intimate relationship can go horribly wrong. Aragorn represents an ideal master, one who is wise and good, and his servants are either rewarded or punished according to their loyalty to him. In the stories …
Lake Salt: A Creative Thesis, Erica Lindsay Plummer
Lake Salt: A Creative Thesis, Erica Lindsay Plummer
Theses and Dissertations
This collection of short stories explores the different ways in which women experience suffering. The narrative focuses on the daily lives of women who have undergone some type of heartbreak. While the stories occasionally include the incident which leads to despair, the collection is more concerned with the way women function after a personal tragedy. The stories show the grace of people who continue to move forward when their lives are filled with suffering. Sexuality enters the stories and exposes both the triumph and destructive nature of sexuality. A critical introduction which explains how complication and beauty amplify story proceeds …
The Life And Origins Of Paul Bunyan: Part One, Michael Ryan Croker
The Life And Origins Of Paul Bunyan: Part One, Michael Ryan Croker
Theses and Dissertations
Master of Fine Arts This novel is a chronicle of the early days of Paul Bunyan, an important figure in American folk culture. While Paul Bunyan is a central figure in the tale, the story itself is told through the eyes of Clay Filinger, a young man from the backwoods of Kentucky who leaves his home on a journey of American exploration. Clay reaches Boston, where he hires on to work for John Patrick, a wealthy merchant headed to Maine in search of pirate treasure. John is travelling with his nephew, Randolph Bunyan. Along with them are two more hired …
Feathers: A Creative Thesis, M. Shayne Clarke
Feathers: A Creative Thesis, M. Shayne Clarke
Theses and Dissertations
Feathers is a young adult novel about two knucklehead boys and a summer of mischief they share. Boots and Gopher, the two principal characters in Feathers, are twelve-year old boys who are fascinated by a loft of racing pigeons kept by a peculiar man living on the edge of their small town. The fascination leads them to steal a few pairs of pigeons in hopes of generating their own loft. Their plan is to release the adult pigeons back to the man's loft while Boots and Gopher keep the babies. In stealing the pigeons, they discover the man also houses …
The Covenant: How The Tension And Interpretation Within Puritan Covenant Doctrine Pushes Toward More Equality In English Marriage, Maren H. Miyasaki
The Covenant: How The Tension And Interpretation Within Puritan Covenant Doctrine Pushes Toward More Equality In English Marriage, Maren H. Miyasaki
Theses and Dissertations
The Puritans constituted a very vocal influential minority during the time of Shakespeare. One of their more interesting ideas was the doctrine of the covenant, which explained why a transcendent God would care for fallen human beings. God, for Puritans, voluntarily bound himself in a covenant to man. The interrelations of elements of grace and works make it difficult to interpret what a covenant should be like: more like a modern contract or more like a feudalistic promise system? Unlike a contract, God never ends the covenant even when humans disregard their commitment, but instead helps humans fulfill their obligations …
Ancient Superstitions Steeped In The Human Heart: Rumors Of The Supernatural As Resistance Narrative In The House Of The Seven Gables, Marie E. Horne
Ancient Superstitions Steeped In The Human Heart: Rumors Of The Supernatural As Resistance Narrative In The House Of The Seven Gables, Marie E. Horne
Theses and Dissertations
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables continuously plays with the idea of narrative authority to explore concepts of class and power within the novel. Since these concepts of class and power are also a central focus of Subaltern Studies, applying some of this body of scholarship to the novel brings into focus these concepts and sheds light on the motivations and types of resistance in the novel. The upper class characters, including the Pyncheons, construct and maintain a narrative based on the declarations of professionals and officials of the state and church. It discusses only the most noble …
Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West
Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West
Theses and Dissertations
This creative thesis includes five short stories that explore paradoxical ways in which people can feel alone, even if they are together. Although a combination of isolation and intimacy can occur in any human relationship, the stories in this collection spend much of their time with family circles in particular, considering the way that our closest, most permanent relationships can simultaneously prove the most intimate and the most isolating. The critical introduction that precedes the collection examines each story individually, discussing strategies and subject matter in terms of the collection's guiding concept. The introduction discusses the binary of intimacy and …
Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding
Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding
Theses and Dissertations
While McCarthy studies have emphasized elements of the sacred in his writing, this thesis adds a new historical perspective and synthesis to reading paradigms of Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing combines the patterns of the ancient pre-Hebraic genre of the desert sublime with the basic formula of the American Western genre to interrogate McCarthy's question of whether in the postmodern moment one can still divest oneself in the desert and find access to the sublime. In an era of an invisible or absent God where post-humanist thought erases the anthropocentric supremacy of human over animal and the earth itself, the one …
Negotiating Identity: Culturally Situated Epideictic In The Victorian Travel Narratives Of Isabella Bird, Katherine Reilly Robinson
Negotiating Identity: Culturally Situated Epideictic In The Victorian Travel Narratives Of Isabella Bird, Katherine Reilly Robinson
Theses and Dissertations
Epideictic rhetoric, one of the classical modes of persuasion described by Aristotle, has faced some criticism concerning its value in the realm of rhetoric. Though attitudes have been shifting over the last several decades, there is still a tendency to undervalue epideictic, falling back on the Aristotelian system of ceremonial oratory. However, its “praise and blame” style of persuasion employs of the type of rhetor / audience identification described by Kenneth Burke. Epideictic rhetoric is a major component of virtually any communication, as the speaker or writer seeks to create a bond with that audience so as to persuade them …
The Tractarian Penny Post'S Early Years (1851–1852): An Upper-Class Effort "To Triumph In The Working Man's Home", Kellyanne Ure
The Tractarian Penny Post'S Early Years (1851–1852): An Upper-Class Effort "To Triumph In The Working Man's Home", Kellyanne Ure
Theses and Dissertations
The Penny Post (1851–1896), a religious working-class magazine, was published following a critical time for the Oxford Movement, a High Church movement in the Church of England. The Oxford Movement's ideas were leaving the academic atmosphere of Oxford and traveling throughout the local parishes, where the ideals of Tractarian teachings met the harsh realities of practice and the motivations and beliefs of the working-class parishioners. The upper-class paternalistic ideologies of the Oxford Movement were not reflected in the parishes, and the working-classes felt distanced from their place in religious worship. The Penny Post was published and written by Tractarian clergymen …
Beyond Eden: Revising Myth, Revising Allegory In Steinbeck's "Big Book", Jeremy S. Leatham
Beyond Eden: Revising Myth, Revising Allegory In Steinbeck's "Big Book", Jeremy S. Leatham
Theses and Dissertations
Steinbeck's use of allegory in East of Eden has caused much critical resistance, but recent work in allegory theory offers ways of rereading the novel that help mediate much of this criticism. The approach to allegory forwarded here, which allows for multiple bodies of referents and fluidity between text and referents, empowers readers with greater autonomy and individual authorship. In the case of East of Eden such an approach moves the novel beyond a simple retelling of the Cain-Abel narrative to establish a flexible mythic framework for use in an ever-changing world. By challenging dualistic thinking, narrow vision, and cultural …
Standing In The Center Of The World: The Ethical Intentionality Of Autoethnography, Nicole Wilkes
Standing In The Center Of The World: The Ethical Intentionality Of Autoethnography, Nicole Wilkes
Theses and Dissertations
Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of ipseity and alterity has permeated Western thought for more than forty years. In the social sciences and the humanities, the recognition of the Other and focus on difference, alterity, has influenced the way we ethically approach peoples and arts from different cultures. Because focus on the ego, ipseity, limits our ethical obligations, focusing on the Other does, according to Levinas, bring us closer to an ethical life. Furthermore, the self maintains responsibility for the Other and must work within Levinas's ethical system to become truly responsible. Therefore, the interaction between self and Other is Levinas's …
Adjusting The Rearview Mirror: Higher Level Reflection Strategies In First-Year Composition, Jessica Ann Green
Adjusting The Rearview Mirror: Higher Level Reflection Strategies In First-Year Composition, Jessica Ann Green
Theses and Dissertations
Part of the curriculum in many composition classrooms contains a reflection component where students are required to think back over their writing and discuss strengths and weaknesses. Yet many of the reflections that students write fall short of the purpose of reflection when students fail to analyze their writing practices or to make future goals for themselves, a problem that occurs when higher level reflection strategies are not taught and practiced in the classroom. When students are taught to use reflection as a way to critically evaluate their writing, to make connections between class assignments and course objectives, and to …
American Totalitarianism In Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead And The Armies Of The Night, Benjamin E. Onofrio
American Totalitarianism In Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead And The Armies Of The Night, Benjamin E. Onofrio
Theses and Dissertations
Norman Mailer's seminal works The Naked and the Dead and The Armies of the Night both outline Mailers distaste for oppression. The Naked and the Dead's bleak reprisal of oppressive leadership tactics offers little in the way of a solution to fight this power. However, twenty years later, The Armies of the Night names personal expression of political views as the answer to oppressive force within the American government. Mailer met the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad while oppressing one's own citizens by encouraging personal expression and flaunting the "rules" of the novel. In the end, Mailer surmises …
The Culture Of Habits And Dispositions: Associationist Psychology And Unitarian Education In Gaskell's Wives And Daughters, Lori Ann Dickson
The Culture Of Habits And Dispositions: Associationist Psychology And Unitarian Education In Gaskell's Wives And Daughters, Lori Ann Dickson
Theses and Dissertations
Although Victorian psychology has been the subject of much recent scholarship, Elizabeth Gaskell's work has not been considered in relation to nineteenth-century theories of mind. In this thesis, I argue that Gaskell's final novel, Wives and Daughters, deals with associationism, an early branch of psychology that played a key role in public debates over cognition that took place throughout the century. Gaskell was exposed to associationism through her Unitarian faith, and Unitarian educators in particular articulated associationist principles in their writings about cognitive development. Gaskell was preoccupied with a similar model of learning throughout her fiction, and I read …
Literary Case Histories And Medical Narratives In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Travis Wade Austin
Literary Case Histories And Medical Narratives In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Travis Wade Austin
Theses and Dissertations
Literature and medicine are not usually seen as related disciplines, but scholars have already begun producing fruitful scholarship regarding historical and aesthetic interactions between them. This thesis adds to that scholarship by examining medicine and literature in nineteenth-century Britain. More specifically, Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both use nineteenth-century medical case conventions to tell their stories. Furthermore, because both works deal with addiction, divided selves, and the power that physical substances can have on morality and character, these two works provide an excellent comparison coming …
Shootin Up The Past: Terministic Frontiers In Angle Of Repose And High Noon, James C. Dalrymple
Shootin Up The Past: Terministic Frontiers In Angle Of Repose And High Noon, James C. Dalrymple
Theses and Dissertations
The West has long been an important geographic and symbolic space for the United States. In the 19th and 20th centuries that space became the subject of numerous popular works of fiction, first in print and later in the cinema. These texts eventually formed a specialized genre, the Western, which had its own conventions, styles, and themes. Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose and Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, both seminal western texts from the mid-twentieth century, seek to reinterpret those conventions. While the Western is often characterized as a genre of violent masculinity and rugged individualism, these two texts employ conventional …
A Poem, A Fervid Lyric, In An Unknown Tongue: Translation, Multilingualism, And Communication In Charlotte Brontë'S Shirley, Amanda Bishop Erdmann
A Poem, A Fervid Lyric, In An Unknown Tongue: Translation, Multilingualism, And Communication In Charlotte Brontë'S Shirley, Amanda Bishop Erdmann
Theses and Dissertations
In this essay, I will argue that looking at translation and multilingualism both as a mode of storytelling and as a theme of Brontë's second published novel Shirley can help to uncover previously untapped moments of connection and understanding in the novel. Brontë's exploration of translation and use of multilingualism reveals a sincere urge to connect in spite of tremendous difficulties—connect her characters to each other, connect her narrator to her readers. It is an ambitious, over-reaching goal, which Brontë did not ultimately attain. Yet, for Brontë, her (especially female) characters, and her narrator, translation in all its forms represents …
An Irresistible Invitation: Enhancing Academic Publication In Rhetoric And Composition By Inviting Online Peer Commentary, Sarah L. Cutler
An Irresistible Invitation: Enhancing Academic Publication In Rhetoric And Composition By Inviting Online Peer Commentary, Sarah L. Cutler
Theses and Dissertations
In many ways the current publishing system in rhetoric and composition, which centers on the peer-reviewed journal, undermines core values we hold for ideal scholarly communication. These values include collaboration, dialogue, participation, and public engagement. Though the current system's methods of preserving, distributing, and maintaining quality control of scholarly work contradict our values, technological developments have made possible alternative publishing models that could better uphold our values. Developing a preprint archive where scholars develop and share ideas before submitting them for publication in traditional peer-reviewed journals would bring our publishing process closer to our ideals.
Speaking Of Myself: Independence, Self-Representation, And The Speeches Of Rudyard Kipling, Jacob M. Wilkes
Speaking Of Myself: Independence, Self-Representation, And The Speeches Of Rudyard Kipling, Jacob M. Wilkes
Theses and Dissertations
Rudyard Kipling is a man of immense diversity. He successfully managed to write for over half a century in a variety of genres: short story, travelogue, ballad, personal narrative, and news reporting, to name only a few. While doing so, Kipling readily interacted with a range of subjects and created a multitude of ideas. Likewise, on a personal level, Kipling led an immensely diverse life. He could easily claim four separate continents as home, living variously in India, the United States, England, and South Africa. By profession he was a writer, but as an observer he was so skilled that …
Theatrical Ideology: Toward A Rhetoric Theatricality, Jacob L. Robertson
Theatrical Ideology: Toward A Rhetoric Theatricality, Jacob L. Robertson
Theses and Dissertations
When used in common vernacular, the terminology of the medium of theatre—"theatricality," "drama," "performance," "acting," "scene," etc."”form a vocabulary of "ideographs" as defined by Michael Calvin McGee. My analysis reveals that common usage of theatrical terms is more than merely metaphorical; the "theatre," rather, is a fundamental orienting concept for defining lived experience—it is ideology. By viewing the use of theatrical language as ideological, and analyzing how such terms define situations rhetorically, we begin to reveal the underlying ideology upon which the medium of theatre operates, and which it unconsciously conveys. I demonstrate this claim by analyzing the argument made …
Reinventing Virtue: Sensibility And Sentiment In The Works Of Maria Edgeworth, Octavia Cathryn Sawyer
Reinventing Virtue: Sensibility And Sentiment In The Works Of Maria Edgeworth, Octavia Cathryn Sawyer
Theses and Dissertations
While literary scholars have written extensively about sensibility in the past two decades, most of the studies have treated either the history of sensibility itself or how it interacted with a particular aspect of English culture and literature, such as sexuality or politics. My project instead examines how a single author, Maria Edgeworth, used sensibility in her writing over the course of her career. I analyze the use of sensibility in three of her novels: Belinda (1801), her first full-length novel; The Absentee (1812), her influential Irish national tale, written at the height of her popularity in the middle years …
Public Environmental Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Fashioning Of Civic Responsibility, Maggie Ngar Dik Hong
Public Environmental Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Fashioning Of Civic Responsibility, Maggie Ngar Dik Hong
Theses and Dissertations
Environmental rhetoric has the capacity to render private citizens a concerned public. In doing so, it can prompt in individual practices of what, in classical rhetoric, was described as civic virtue and engage them in activities of responsible citizenship that work toward practical change. Within the recent tradition of environmental public discourse in the United States, Rachel Carson and Al Gore have each realized this capacity in their use of environmental rhetoric, by addressing, respectively, the issues of pesticide pollution and global warming in ways that galvanized citizens as an active public. This thesis examines the reasons behind this effectiveness. …