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How To Live: Lessons From Old English And Old Norse/Icelandic Wisdom Literature, Rhys Frazier May 2019

How To Live: Lessons From Old English And Old Norse/Icelandic Wisdom Literature, Rhys Frazier

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Medieval wisdom literature is a genre that is difficult to define and it has not been extensively studied. Scholarship is typically concerned with translation and manuscript emendation concerns and with identification of sources in addition to an analysis of religious influences. There has not yet been any scholarship concerned with the ways in which religious themes and concerns about life after death are meant to influence the behaviors and attitudes of the living reader. The present study seeks to analyze the ways in which the Old English poems “Maxims I,” “The Gifts of Men,” and “The Fortunes of Men,” as …


See And Be Seen: Young Adult Refugee Literature In The High School Curriculum, Patrice Splan May 2019

See And Be Seen: Young Adult Refugee Literature In The High School Curriculum, Patrice Splan

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are more than 25 million refugees in the world today, over half of whom are under the age of 18. As these young people adapt to new schools and communities, it is essential that all students have opportunities to see themselves represented in literature and to develop understandings of the experiences of others. This project provides an analysis of young adult refugee literature with a unit plan for application of texts in a ninth-grade Virginia English classroom, stressing the importance of education as a tool for awareness, reflection, and empathy.


Anne Brontë The Universalist: Religion And Patriarchal Subversion In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall And Agnes Grey, Ardyn Tennyson May 2019

Anne Brontë The Universalist: Religion And Patriarchal Subversion In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall And Agnes Grey, Ardyn Tennyson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Anne Brontë (1820-1849) was an English novelist and religious poet, the youngest of the literary Brontë siblings. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë wrote some of the most esteemed novels of the Victorian canon. Children of an Anglican minister, the Brontës were accustomed to clerical life and the conventions of nineteenth-century religious observance. Anne’s faith, however, was unique and radical, an unorthodox form of Christianity called Universalism, which held that all human beings would be saved, not just those chosen by God. This thesis examines her two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in the context of …


Of The Silmarils And The Ring: J. R. R. Tolkien's Fiction And The Importance Of Creation And Art, Michael Hartinger May 2018

Of The Silmarils And The Ring: J. R. R. Tolkien's Fiction And The Importance Of Creation And Art, Michael Hartinger

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

J. R. R. Tolkien embodies the opposing ideals of Enchantment and the Machine in the Silmarils and the One Ring respectively. These created objects oppose each other just as Tolkien’s ideals of art do. Enchantment is art’s ideal, it's purpose is to glorify and enrich the beauty of reality through subcreation. The Silmarils exhibit the delight of making and perceiving beauty. Whereas the Machine is art’s shadowy reflection that utilizes apparatuses or devices rather than personal talent in order to coerce others and reality itself. Overall Tolkien's aesthetic theories reflect many fears surrounding modern attitudes toward weaponizing art. Tolkien supplies …


Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh May 2018

Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is an archival study of the displaced children of families formerly living in the Shenandoah National Park which spans from Strasburg to Waynesboro, Virginia. The study looks at interviews, from the JMU Special Collections archives, of these children in the 1970-80s, nearly fifty years after their forced migration from the 197,438 acres that comprised the park. Change and pressure during the 1930s-40s combined with national policy began the nostalgic preservation and veneration of the culture of these people of the Blue Ridge Mountains; through the archives, a clear and diverse picture of the perspectives and lifestyles of people …


The Mythological Perspective Of Modern Media: Cross-Cultural Consciousness And Modern Myths, Rebecca E. Evans May 2018

The Mythological Perspective Of Modern Media: Cross-Cultural Consciousness And Modern Myths, Rebecca E. Evans

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This piece assesses the cultural implications of modern narratives that incorporate classical mythology, specifically focusing on the hero’s journey. When the similarities of different myths across different cultures are analyzed, it becomes clear that there are modern analogs that incorporate mythic qualities and cultural values. These mythic foundations are analyzed here in popular works like Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Legend of Zelda, where the hero’s journey becomes an almost universal experience that inspires cross-cultural consciousness. The hero’s journey has evolved from a simple literary tool into a cross-cultural touchstone that shapes narratives into familiar works of cultural significance across …


The Founding Farce, Or, The Lost Debates Of The Constitutional Convention: Being An Account Of The Discovery Of An Overlooked Document, And The Loss Again, And Rediscovery Of Said Document, Wherein Is Written Unheard Proceedings In The Crafting Of The Glorious Constitution Of These 13 Colonies (Which Has Lately Been Misplaced), Alexander W. Pickens May 2017

The Founding Farce, Or, The Lost Debates Of The Constitutional Convention: Being An Account Of The Discovery Of An Overlooked Document, And The Loss Again, And Rediscovery Of Said Document, Wherein Is Written Unheard Proceedings In The Crafting Of The Glorious Constitution Of These 13 Colonies (Which Has Lately Been Misplaced), Alexander W. Pickens

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Constitutional Convention was shrouded in mystery, yet America has been confidently given a narrative of what went on behind closed doors in Philadelphia. Though most of our authentic records of what went on were written by men assumed to be reliable, the deeper one reads into history the more unreliable they become, recent evidence even suggesting that James Madison altered his notes on the Convention years after it was concluded. What if our perception of history is flawed and the Convention was not the glorious meeting of intellectual giants but instead a town hall full of immature behemoths who …


Gender In Eliot's The Mill On The Floss And Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd, Rachel C. Nelson May 2017

Gender In Eliot's The Mill On The Floss And Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd, Rachel C. Nelson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This text explores the characters of Maggie and Tom Tulliver from George Eliot’s 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss and the characters of Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak from Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd. It connects the two novels by way of the relationships between these main characters. In both cases, the female character struggles with the confines of Victorian societal limits for women based on their gender. In The Mill, Maggie constantly struggles against the wishes of her older brother, and while Tom is arguably an antagonistic force in the novel, this …


Empire State Of Being: Modern Women And The Literary Streets Of New York City, Kristen A. Greiner May 2017

Empire State Of Being: Modern Women And The Literary Streets Of New York City, Kristen A. Greiner

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project is an analysis of the portrayal of modern women in the 1920s American literature written by ethnic female authors. It focuses on the stories of women in New York City, honing in on those from the neighborhoods of the Lower East Side and Harlem. These ethnic female authors offer incredibly different interpretations of the early twentieth century woman when compared to their male counterparts, as they present them as more authoritative and strong characters, while displaying how the influence of space in New York City affects the identity of the characters on the page. Using the texts, Salome …


I, A Saint; I, A Sinner: Rereading Female Sanctity In Chaucer’S “Lyfe Of Seinte Cecile” And Kate Horsley’S Confessions Of A Pagan Nun, Lillian Constance May 2017

I, A Saint; I, A Sinner: Rereading Female Sanctity In Chaucer’S “Lyfe Of Seinte Cecile” And Kate Horsley’S Confessions Of A Pagan Nun, Lillian Constance

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This thesis compares a medieval and modern text, Chaucer’s “Lyfe of Seinte Cecile” and Kate Horsley’s Confessions of a Pagan Nun," to explore female spirituality. Horsley writes in the twenty-first century, a time of significantly more opportunity for women compared to the fourteenth-century world of Chaucer. The latter belongs to the virgin martyr sub-genre of medieval hagiography, a genre Horsley mimics. These differences aside, both texts are revealing of Christianity's ability both to empower and to oppress women. A comparison of Horsley’stwenty-first century rendition of the life of a medieval woman with Chaucer’s fourteenth-century version exposes the problems …


The Family Gothic: Identity And Kinship In The American Gothic Tradition, Meagan Elizabeth Riley May 2016

The Family Gothic: Identity And Kinship In The American Gothic Tradition, Meagan Elizabeth Riley

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

American Gothic literature contains many stories of families under duress, or individuals struggling to reconcile their family identity with their national identity. These stories often coincide directly with the anxieties of the American nation. Through the works of three authors, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, I will study how the families of their works represent the concerns of the entire nation, and how Gothic terms catapult these stories into the American canon.


A Dickensian Utilitarianism, Zachary Allentuck May 2016

A Dickensian Utilitarianism, Zachary Allentuck

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper argues that Charles Dickens' political and world views were in sympathy with Utilitarianism, as defined by Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarianism Dickens attacked in A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit was not real utilitarianism; it was utilitarianism appropriated by England's middle-class.


Fairy Tales And Adaptations: A Unit Of Study For High School Seniors, Angelica P. Babauta May 2016

Fairy Tales And Adaptations: A Unit Of Study For High School Seniors, Angelica P. Babauta

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project is a unit of study designed for high school seniors in an advanced English class. The topic is fairy tales and adaptations, and through these twelve complete lesson plans, students will be led to examine the way fairy tales and society influence one another based on how a classic fairy tale is adapted over time. Students will study Jeanne Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast," the Brothers Grimm's "Brier Rose," and Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" as the original fairy tales. The adaptations paired with these texts are Alex Flinn's Beastly, James Finn Gardner's "Sleeping …


Insomniac Of The Soil: A Collection Of Poetry And Essays, Sarah E. Golibart May 2015

Insomniac Of The Soil: A Collection Of Poetry And Essays, Sarah E. Golibart

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

“Insomniac of the Soil” is a homage to a landscape that has deeply informed Sarah Golibart's life and her artistic voice – the tidewater flatlands of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay peninsula where her family lives and where Golibart has worked on farms since high school. Both her poems and essays are earthy, imagistic, and grounded – quite literally – in the soil as well as in a sensibility of ecological ethics and sustainability. “Insomniac of the Soil” is also a love song to the fervent and fallow cycles of the soil.