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“The Wonderful Improvement”: Landscape And Morals In Jane Austen’S Mansfield Park, Montanah Middleton
“The Wonderful Improvement”: Landscape And Morals In Jane Austen’S Mansfield Park, Montanah Middleton
Honors Theses
This thesis examines how Jane Austen uses depictions of landscapes and estates in her novel Mansfield Park to explore questions of morality, comment on society, and explore humanity's relationship with the natural world. While previous scholarship has analyzed Austen's symbolic use of places like Sotherton and Mansfield Park itself, this study provides a more comprehensive investigation by closely reading the descriptions and judgments passed on two other estates featured in the novel not analyzed by the scholarship explored. Developing a nuanced definition of "landscape,” the analysis is grounded in Austen's verbal depictions that imbue the physical settings with moral significance. …
Chaucer’S Lists And The Parson’S Priests: Heresy, Censorship, And The Parson's Tale, Samantha Burleson
Chaucer’S Lists And The Parson’S Priests: Heresy, Censorship, And The Parson's Tale, Samantha Burleson
Master's Theses
Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale is a sermon on penance told by a fictional late-fourteenth-century Parson in The Canterbury Tales. What the Parson preaches is incompletely aligned with Roman Catholic orthodox beliefs, as suggested both by accusations of Lollardy elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales and heterodox features of the sermon itself. The Parson’s soteriology—the theology of how to attain salvation—invites consideration of the sermon’s potential influence from the contemporary heretical movement known as Lollardy, including the theology of John Wyclif; this theology disagreed with orthodox Catholic penitential practices.
However, despite increasing anti-Wycliffite sentiment at the turn of the fifteenth century, Chaucer’s …
Religious Extremism And Female Autonomy: How Dystopian Literature Reflects Contemporary Issues, Jessica Briscoe
Religious Extremism And Female Autonomy: How Dystopian Literature Reflects Contemporary Issues, Jessica Briscoe
Honors Theses
This thesis analyzes two texts: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and When She Woke by Hillary Jordan. These two texts examine dystopian worlds in which the lines are blurred, or completely eradicated, between church and state. Christian fundamentalism and/or evangelicalism becomes intertwined with Christian extremism which results in a detrimental society for many minority groups. The purpose of this thesis is to specifically explore the ways women are mistreated in these societies.
Moreover, this thesis explains how America’s puritanical Christian roots have led to modern-day ideals of America as a “New Jerusalem”. America, like the dystopian societies, has intertwined …
Orientalism In Arthur Golden’S Memoirs Of A Geisha, Britany Castilaw
Orientalism In Arthur Golden’S Memoirs Of A Geisha, Britany Castilaw
Honors Theses
Memoirs of a Geisha is a 1997 historical fiction novel by Arthur Golden. It is told as the fictional memoirs of the late Sayuri Nitta, a famous former geisha who worked in Gion in the 1930s as one of the most successful geisha in history. Since its publication, Memoirs has been criticized for an Orientalist and historically inaccurate depiction of geisha—particularly by Mineko Iwasaki, a real former geisha whom Golden interviewed when writing the novel. The first chapter of this thesis is dedicated to an explanation of Orientalism as the problematic, stereotype-driven depictions of the East made by the West, …
Queer Representation: Revitilizing F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Place In The American Literary Canon, Olivia Wallace
Queer Representation: Revitilizing F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Place In The American Literary Canon, Olivia Wallace
Honors Theses
F. Scott Fitzgerald is colloquially known as one of the great American writers. His acclaim is most commonly attributed to his depiction of heterosexual romances set during the Jazz Age. However, under the surface, many of the male characters that he represents display queer behaviors that subvert this idea. The texts analyzed here include “The Rich Boy” (1926), Tender is the Night (1934), and The Great Gatsby (1925). These men commonly avoid perpetuating heteronormative culture, projecting a general air of cynicism towards the institution of marriage, and a subtle inclination towards feminine characteristics and queer love. Overall, the inclusion of …
Demigod And Delinquent: Percy Jackson And The American Teenager, Katie Weber
Demigod And Delinquent: Percy Jackson And The American Teenager, Katie Weber
Honors Theses
Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, the first novel in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, has achieved tremendous success with adolescent audiences nationwide since its original publication in 2005. Despite the widespread success of the books, the critical conversation about the novel and subsequent series remains fairly sparse. The existing critical literature on the series addresses its mythological aspects and adolescents’ reactions to the novel but does not analyze Percy’s status as an adolescent or what the novel suggests about adolescents as a whole through its portrayal of Percy. This thesis first provides an overview of the history of …
Coded: Dialect Diversity In The Secondary American Classroom, Madeline Dunn
Coded: Dialect Diversity In The Secondary American Classroom, Madeline Dunn
Honors Theses
This thesis explores the differences between dialects along racial, cultural, and ethnic lines with a specific focus on Black and Latine students inside the public secondary classrooms of America. The focus of the paper is on two linguistic tactics: “code-switching,” a linguistic practice which teaches students to separate their home language from the language they use in formal or professional settings, and “code-meshing,” a linguistic practice to teach students how to mesh together multiple dialects with which a student is familiar. Through the creation of a historical framework and an analysis of existing literature, theory, and pedagogical practices regarding the …
'As Vivid As Blood In A Sink': (Re)Reading Queerness And Repression In Teju Cole's Open City, Jack Hoda
'As Vivid As Blood In A Sink': (Re)Reading Queerness And Repression In Teju Cole's Open City, Jack Hoda
Master's Theses
Teju Cole’s Open City (2011) is an exemplar work of contemporary fiction. For its complex representation of subjectivity, hypnotic narrative tone, and global political scope, the novel has been praised by readers and critics alike. Julius, the text’s first-person narrator, guides us along seemingly innocent wanderings throughout New York City, ruminating on history, art, and politics while presenting himself as the enlightened, cosmopolitan ideal. However, the shocking penultimate revelation that Julius raped a young woman from his past alters our encounter with the text and its narrator. We come to realize that this meandering novel is, in reality, a carefully …
Problematic Advocacy And Victorian Public Health In Gatherings From Graveyards By Dr. George A. Walker, Olivia Ladner
Problematic Advocacy And Victorian Public Health In Gatherings From Graveyards By Dr. George A. Walker, Olivia Ladner
Honors Theses
This thesis focuses on the problematic advocacy of Dr. George A. Walker in his public health pamphlet, Gatherings from Graveyards. In his work, Walker calls for the removal of urban cemeteries from within London and other cities in Great Britain due to concerns about public health safety. He cites miasmatic theory as the reason for the spread of disease from rotting corpses and unkept cemeteries in the British metropolis. Though he blames Parliament for the state of urban cemeteries, he continuously cites poor communities and neighborhoods as the sole sources of disease and does not conduct investigations into the …
“Precios Perle Wythouten Spotte”: Accepting The Unknowable In Pearl, Jana Ishee
“Precios Perle Wythouten Spotte”: Accepting The Unknowable In Pearl, Jana Ishee
Master's Theses
The fourteenth-century Middle English poem Pearl, authored by the anonymous Pearl-poet, survives in a manuscript known as London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.x. This dream vision, narrated by a grieving father, tells the story of his journey to Paradise, where he encounters his infant daughter, now older, regal, and wise, proffering admonishments with the authority of God to her tearful father. meeting with her in Paradise. Drawing on Caroline Walker Bynum’s work on medieval European conceptions of death and resurrection, J. Stephen Russell’s work on the dream vision genre, and Karl Steel’s work on oysters as liminal figures, …
This Was The World And I Was King: Land And Identity In Scottish Children's Literature Of The Golden Age, Rodney Fierce
This Was The World And I Was King: Land And Identity In Scottish Children's Literature Of The Golden Age, Rodney Fierce
Dissertations
This dissertation focuses on Scottish cultural identity and its erasure in nineteenth-century British children’s literature as successful Scottish authors became known as British authors, and British children’s literature was canonized as the genre’s first Golden Age. Specifically, it explores the ways that Catherine Sinclair, George MacDonald, R. M. Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, and Helen Bannerman—six popular nineteenth-century Scottish authors—maintain a sense of Scottishness in their adventure fiction. By reading the texts in the historical context of the authors’ biographies, I demonstrate that the land in their works and the benevolent colonizers allowed to control it in some …
“I’Ll Make A Captain Among Ye, And Do Somewhat To Be Talk Of Forever After”: Female Civic Agency In Sir Thomas More’S Staged Insurrection, Heather Miller
“I’Ll Make A Captain Among Ye, And Do Somewhat To Be Talk Of Forever After”: Female Civic Agency In Sir Thomas More’S Staged Insurrection, Heather Miller
Master's Theses
Sir Thomas More is an English chronicle play that has received far less critical attention than generically similar histories written by Shakespeare. Doll Williamson, the play’s strongest female character, assumes a leadership position in initiating, as well as ultimately quelling, the Evil May Day riots, which provide the play’s initial dramatic impetus. Despite the critical tendency to overlook or diminish the seriousness of her dramatic role in the play, including in the staged insurrection scene, I argue in this thesis that we should take the concerns that Doll articulates and embodies seriously from a feminist perspective. Furthermore, I place Doll’s …
“An Oak In A Flower-Pot”: The Brontë Sisters’ Depictions Of Female Agency During The Victorian Era, Jessica Dunn
“An Oak In A Flower-Pot”: The Brontë Sisters’ Depictions Of Female Agency During The Victorian Era, Jessica Dunn
Honors Theses
This thesis discusses the most popular novels written by the Brontë sisters – Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – in the context of the overbearing patriarchal culture of the Victorian era, specifically through the characterization of feminine agency displayed in each novel. By engaging with the novels as a trinity, this thesis uniquely reveals the more nuanced aspects of the novels through the sisters’ respective depictions of female agency following the lives of their respective protagonists – Jane Eyre, Catherine Earnshaw, and Helen Graham. Additionally, this thesis seeks to engage in conversation …
Containing The Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference In The Old English Wonders Of The East, Jessica L. Carrell
Containing The Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference In The Old English Wonders Of The East, Jessica L. Carrell
Master's Theses
This thesis aims to illuminate early medieval anxieties about sex, procreation, and congenital physical difference by applying a lens of critical disability theory to the Old English Wonders of the East, primarily as it survives in the eleventh-century manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v. This thesis focuses on the textual and illustrative representation of one Wonder, the Blemmye—an approximately eight-foot-tall, eight-foot-wide androgynous humanoid, whose eyes and mouth are in their chest and who does not possess a head—as a historic embodiment of what disability meant in relation to the early medieval English worldview. This thesis considers the …
Oh, My Stars: A New Map Of The Universe In Paradise Lost, Michael R. Coats
Oh, My Stars: A New Map Of The Universe In Paradise Lost, Michael R. Coats
Master's Theses
Milton’s geographical descriptions in Paradise Lost are heavily influenced by his fascination with maps. Furthermore, his design of the universe in Paradise Lost follows a cartographic style that has led to several attempts at mapping it. These attempts, however, have followed the erroneous assumption that Earth centers the universe. As a result, cosmographical maps of Paradise Lost are inaccurate. I argue that Milton’s universe is Deocentric and provide a new map with a pyramid design that places God at the center of Milton’s universe.
The Typewriter And The Literary Sphere: An Analysis Of Turn-Of-The-Century Literature, Emma K. Holdbrooks
The Typewriter And The Literary Sphere: An Analysis Of Turn-Of-The-Century Literature, Emma K. Holdbrooks
Honors Theses
My thesis explores the typewriter’s impact on early 20th century American literature. By providing authors with the means to produce work accurately and effectively, the typewriter changed the process of writing. Typewriters also created job opportunities for women, who often served as typists. The typist became the foothold position that changed America’s perception of women in the work force and helped usher in a new social concept, “the New Woman.” To illustrate my claim, I show how the typewriter allowed poets like E. E. Cummings to experiment with spacing. Cummings made the typewriter’s standardization of text and spacing into …
“Part Of That (Man’S) World”: Analyzing “Cinderella” And “The Little Mermaid” Fairy Tale Variants Through A Feminist Lens, K. Morgan Mitchell
“Part Of That (Man’S) World”: Analyzing “Cinderella” And “The Little Mermaid” Fairy Tale Variants Through A Feminist Lens, K. Morgan Mitchell
Honors Theses
Fairy tales are often reduced to nothing more than the moral lesson that can be taught to children. However, when we move past the impulse to search for the simplified moral of the story, we can begin to ascertain the impact of fairy tales on different audiences. This thesis uses both impact theory, which yields a close reading of the textual and cinematic evidence, and reception research, which provides an opportunity to discuss the significance of the material by speculating about the message that readers receive. Under consideration are four variants each of the “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid” fairy …
A Psychoanalysis Of Rebecca West’S Unfinished Novel The Sentinel, Taylor Vesely
A Psychoanalysis Of Rebecca West’S Unfinished Novel The Sentinel, Taylor Vesely
Honors Theses
This thesis applies a psychoanalytic lens to a little-known and unfinished manuscript by Rebecca West. There is little scholarship on The Sentinel but a wealth of knowledge to be gained from it about the complicated psychological dilemmas the suffragists suffered. West was writing at a critical period in feminist history that is still relevant today, and this novel, which would have been her first, lays the groundwork for many of her future works. Her depictions of sexuality, violence, religion, and motherhood provide an excellent framework for both her protagonist’s self-suppression and a compelling psychoanalysis. This thesis argues that the many …
Madwomen And Resistance: Gender And Self-Harm In Romantic And Victorian Literature, Emily V. Rasch
Madwomen And Resistance: Gender And Self-Harm In Romantic And Victorian Literature, Emily V. Rasch
Honors Theses
Literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was concerned with madness. However, relatively little research has been done to indicate how supposed “madwomen” escaped patriarchal control. This thesis will analyze madwomen from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries and will argue that suicide appears in literature as the sole way that “mad” characters can resist patriarchal control. I examine the impact of self-harm and suicide in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria or the Wrongs of Woman; John Keats’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil”; and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I connect self-harm to the desire to escape patriarchal …
Andrew Marvell And Annie Finch: Different Views On Time And Modesty, Jessica Carrell
Andrew Marvell And Annie Finch: Different Views On Time And Modesty, Jessica Carrell
Coastlines
No abstract provided.
The Depressive Dr. Jekyll And Manic Mr. Hyde, Ashley Yount
The Depressive Dr. Jekyll And Manic Mr. Hyde, Ashley Yount
Coastlines
No abstract provided.
To Be Or Not To Be (Dangerous): Mental Instability In Branagh’S And Almereyda’S Film Adaptations Of *Hamlet*, Cory Joiner
To Be Or Not To Be (Dangerous): Mental Instability In Branagh’S And Almereyda’S Film Adaptations Of *Hamlet*, Cory Joiner
Coastlines
No abstract provided.
The Translation Of Family - A Sestina, Jonathan Rivera
The Translation Of Family - A Sestina, Jonathan Rivera
Coastlines
No abstract provided.
Pass Road Fury, Jonathan Rivera
I May Not Sleep, Judy Davies