Digital Commons Network^™

Oscar Wilde And The Invention Of A Life-Creating Fiction, Michael Lackey

English Publications

When discussing the origins, rise, and contemporary legitimization of biofiction, Oscar Wilde is a crucial figure. This is not just because he authored one of the first and most important reflections about the aesthetic form, but also because he became the subject of many biofictions, most notably Desmond Hall's I Give You Oscar Wilde: A Biographical Novel {1965), Peter Ackroyd's The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), Louis Edwards's Oscar Wilde Discovers America (2003), and Colm Toibin's The Master (2004). Some, of course, would question and challenge my decision to include Toibin's novel in this list, as many would say …

Physicality And Spirituality In Riddle 26, Corinne Mccumber

Honors Capstone Projects

Riddle 26, an otherwise-unnamed poem in the 10th-century Old English collection known as The Exeter Book, suggests tension and interplay between its physical form and its meaning. Scholars accept that the riddle’s speaker describes the creation of a religious manuscript, but while physical processes drive the poem’s narrative structure, the speaker ends by focusing on the knowledge that the described religious text contains. As John Hines summarizes, the Old English riddles “demonstrate a keen eye for and dramatically imaginative appreciation of the real world in which the authors and readers lived: both its natural and its manufactured components” (974). …

Writing Early Ireland: A Panel Discussion, Laura Steblay, Caroline Vodacek, Rachel Larsen, Corinne Mccumber, Bailey Kemp

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2019

In past decades, early Irish literature has received relatively little scholarly attention. However, works such as the Tain Bo Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), Edmund Spenser’s Book Five of The Faerie Queene, and Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland provide unique and important representations of early Irish culture. In this five-person panel, we will examine these works and our collective analyses of Irish cultural and literary representations within them. Specifically, we will critique problems of colonialism and portrayals of gender, and we will affirm the importance of the landscape and of literary intersections with archaeology and …

A Woman Wielding Words: The Role Of The Woman-Poet And Woman-Prophet Fedelm In The Táin Bó Cúailnge, Laura Steblay

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The character Fedelm is the only woman described as a poet in the early Irish epic the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and her prophecy which tells of the boy-hero Cúchulainn commences the tale. This paper examines Fedelm’s presence in the tale as a prophetic force in her role as a woman-poet and woman-prophet, as a literary reflection of Cúchulainn’s mentor Scathach, and as a visual parallel to Cúchulainn himself. Ultimately, it is not only Fedelm’s prediction that establishes the legendary Cúchulainn’s place in the narrative, but her very presence as a character provides a literary embodiment of her prophecy.

Fairy In The Faerie Queene: Making Elizabeth Irish, Sarah Severson

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Queen Elizabeth I defied the societal and political expectations of her time by remaining an unmarried, female monarch for the entirety of her rule. She was glorified by many, including Edmund Spenser, who dedicated his epic poem The Faerie Queene to her. Yet tensions surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s unmarried, powerful status infiltrate Spenser’s work through the repeated loss of female power, which seems in conflict with Spenser’s supposed idealization of his monarch. Curiously, various female figures in The Faerie Queene can be linked to Irish sovereignty goddesses, female figures who have power over Irish land and transfer this power to men …

A Giant Problem In Book Five Of The Faerie Queene, Corinne Mccumber

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

In Book Five of The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser has no qualms about killing giants, who appear at multiple points in the text. Spenser has his narrator explicitly call three foes giants: the Egalitarian “Gyant,” (V.ii.30.1), Geryoneo (V.xi.9.5), and Grantorto (V.xii.15.2). Other giants weave through the text, and all perish--though their deaths signal more than simple defeat in combat. Previous scholarly examinations have linked giants to classical and biblical usurpers of both God and the State. Yet giants are also, as I show, uniquely connected to Ireland. Because of this connection, I argue that the giants of Book Five are …

Bodies, Blood, And Manure: The Rhetoric Of Nutrient Cycling In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene And A View Of The State Of Ireland, Bailey Kemp

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Although the term “ecology” did not exist when Edmund Spenser was writing, forms of ecological understanding were present during Spenser’s time. Therefore, the modern phrase “nutrient cycling” provides a useful vocabulary with which to discuss two of Spenser’s most prominent works: The Faerie Queene and A View of the State of Ireland. Throughout these texts, Spenser exhibits an awareness of the cyclical patterns that govern the natural world, especially regarding the rich Irish soil. While emphasizing the fertility of the Irish landscape serves to advance his colonial agenda, Spenser’s apparent ecological awareness also poses a paradox: the valuable soil …

The Agency Aesthetics Of Biofiction In The Age Of Postmodern Confusion, Michael Lackey

English Publications

Olga Tokarczuk, Rosa Montero, Laurent Binet, Anchee Min, Colm Toibin, Colum McCann, Stephanus Muller, Emma Donoghue, David Ebershoff, Chika Unigwe, and Hannah Kent are just some of the global luminaries whose interviews are contained in this new book of conversations with contemporary biographical novelists, which Bloomsbury released on October 18th. Here is the introduction to the book, which should give a clear sense of the interviews.

Defining The Genre Of Environmental Literature, Liam Kiehne

Honors Capstone Projects

Environmentalists try to make the world a better place, each in their own way. This is particularly true of the arts, in which sculptors and painters and film enthusiasts try to capture modern struggles within their respective mediums. This is less obvious in written works of fiction, where anthropomorphic narratives are dominant; in fact, it’s difficult to imagine a novel that could be wholly dedicated to the natural world’s story. But writers still want to contribute to environmentalist causes in their medium. How can this be done? To find out, I decided to read four works of fiction which I …

When In Spain: Intercultural Competence In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Alexa Barta

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018

Ernest Hemingway, an iconic American writer of the Lost Generation, frequently traveled to Spain while living abroad as an expatriate. In fact, many of the fictitious accounts in his works are based on real events in the lives of Hemingway and his friends during their time in Spain. Despite the large number of American expatriates traveling and living abroad during the 1920s, the concept of intercultural competence likely did not exist; or at least not in the modern-day sense of the phrase. While much literature already exists on Hemingway’s connection to Spain, there is currently limited scholarship on the portrayal …

The Ethical Benefits And Challenges Of Biofiction For Children, Michael Lackey

English Publications

No abstract provided.

When In Spain: Intercultural Competence In Hemingway’S The Sun Also Rises, Alexa Barta

Honors Capstone Projects

An analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises through the lenses of modern-day intercultural competence studies.

Female Insanity: The Portrayal Of A Murderess In Alias Grace, Maria Medlyn

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

In this paper, I analyze Margaret Atwood’s biographical novel Alias Grace which is based on the life of Grace Marks, a servant who was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper. I use feminist and psychological perspectives to recount Atwood’s interpretation of the 1800s social hierarchy and the use of labels in controlling individuals. First, I explain the severe oppression of women in the 19^th century. For example, women in this era were financially controlled by men, held to high moral standards, expected to be chaste yet submissive, and restricted to domestic roles. Next, I describe the changing …

Unifying The Oppressed Through Biofiction, Cain Boney

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Why does Zora Neale Hurston combine the histories of African Americans and Hebrews in Moses, Man of the Mountain? For what reason does Colum McCann include Frederick Douglass and a Kenyan scholar in his Irish-focused novel TransAtlantic? Furthermore, why does Mario Vargas Llosa create a protagonist that repeatedly compares the oppressed conditions of the geographically disparate Irish, Congolese, and Peruvian peoples in Dream of the Celt ? All three of these biofiction authors close the gaps between cultures and continents in order to synthesize the experience of the oppressed on a global level. Moving beyond the genre capabilities …

Female Insanity: The Portrayal Of A Murderess In Alias Grace, Maria Medlyn

Honors Capstone Projects

In this paper, I analyze Margaret Atwood’s biographical novel Alias Grace which is based on the life of Grace Marks, a servant who was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper. I use feminist and psychological perspectives to recount Atwood’s interpretation of the 1800s social hierarchy and the use of labels in controlling individuals. First, I explain the severe oppression of women in the 19^th century. For example, women in this era were financially controlled by men, held to high moral standards, expected to be chaste yet submissive, and restricted to domestic roles. Next, I describe the changing …

The Prairie Connect 2016-2017, English Discipline, University Of Minnesota, Morris

The Prairie Connect (English Discipline Newsletter)

The Prairie Connect is the English discipline newsletter.

Featuring an introduction by Dr. Michael Lackey, Student profiles: Cain Boney and Kasha Wallace, Alumni profiles: Kim Ukura and Amber Whittemore, Feature story: "Poetry and Earth: a Q&A with Vicki Graham."

The Scandal Of Jewish Rage In William Styron's Sophie's Choice, Michael Lackey

English Publications

Scholars have suggested that William Styron’s Nathan in Sophie’s Choice is insane or depraved—a character whose motivations lack rationality at best and are unambiguously evil at worst. Elie Wiesel, the author of the famous Holocaust memoir Night, has been very critical of Styron’s novel. Ironically, by using the Yiddish version of Wiesel’s memoir Night, it is possible to demonstrate that Nathan’s behavior is more “logical” than scholars have previously understood. This approach offers us a new way of reading and interpreting Styron’s novel by clarifying how Nathan’s character functions within a well-established tradition of sociopolitical outrage about racial oppression, …

An Anthropological Exploration Of Latino Immigrant Identity In Contemporary Migration Literature, Laura Hoppe

Honors Capstone Projects

Immigration remains one of the hottest topics of debate in the United States. As a country constructed by immigrants and home to over one million newly admitted immigrants each year, the immigration phenomenon has contributed extensively to the multiculturalism seen in the United States today. While many immigrant groups have historically lived in marginalization, the 21st century has proven especially difficult for Latino immigrants--those from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. As the current largest immigrant group, Latinos have received a lot of backlash and discrimination in the U.S. Many of these immigrants, whether they immigrate to the U.S. temporarily or …

The Prairie Connect Spring 2016, English Discipline, University Of Minnesota, Morris

The Prairie Connect (English Discipline Newsletter)

The Prairie Connect is the bi-annual English discipline newsletter.

Featuring the Faculty Feature: The Publishing Process with Chrissy Kolaya, Creative Writing: "When, With Autumn Hands, We Dig" by Joshua Johnson, Student Profiles: Brittany Grady and Dan Nicla, Alumni Profiles: Jessie Hennen and Don Lifto, Feature Story: One Degree, Five Paths to Success, and Student, Alumni, and Faculty News

Prefacing Texts, Authorizing Authors, And Constructing Selves: The Preface As Autobiographical Space, Julie A. Eckerle

English Publications

The preface is a unique textual space, one that demands very particular kind of rhetoric because of its generic constraints and yet allows ample room for an author's manipulation and creativity. Perhaps the best articulation of the prefaces paradoxical nature appears in Barbara Johnson's playful response to Jacques Derrida's Dissemination. The autobiographical details summarized here paradoxically depict Speght as the heroic defender of all people and, simultaneously, a woman who clearly knows her place. In her work on French Renaissance women writers, Anne R. Larsen reveals the value of this kind of study: Early women writers exploited the prefaces marginality …

The Rise And Legitimization Of The American Biographical Novel, Michael Lackey

English Publications

No abstract provided.

'We Are All Greeks:' Sympathy And Proximity In Shelley‘S Hellas, Kyle J. Klausing

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The outbreak of the Greek Revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire animated the radical European intelligentsia in a way unseen since the French Revolution 30 years before. The British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley joined the chorus of philhellenes (meaning one who loves Greece) by extolling the Greek cause in his epic poem, Hellas. Scholarship has traditionally seen Shelley’s representation of the revolution either as an overly classicized literary indulgence or as a purely polemical defense of a political event. By identifying ways in which Shelley uses the classical past to engage the reader with the subject, I will …

A Time And Place For Premarital Desire: Positive Uses Of Lust In Edmund Spenser’S The Faerie Queene, Rachel Balzar

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Lust plays a large role in Edmund Spenser’s famous 1590 poem The Faerie Queene—this much Early Modern scholars can agree on. Surrounding the purpose lust serves in this didactic tale, however, there is a good deal of contention. Some academics argue that Spenser uses his lurid descriptions of lust to reveal to readers their own sinful preferences. Others claim that Spenser uses lust simply to attract an audience. The list of differing interpretations of the text goes on. But one overarching theme can be seen in all of these unique analyses of lust: each operates on the assumption that …

Introduction: Better Men, Bradley Deane

English Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Rise Of The American Biographical Novel, Michael Lackey

English Publications

No abstract provided.

Virginia Woolf And British Russophilia, Michael Lackey

English Publications

Roberta Rubenstein convincingly demonstrates that England was infatuated with all things Russian between the years 1912 and 1922. These were some of the most formative years in the development of Woolf ’s writing and thinking, and consequently, Rubenstein argues that prominent Russian writers heavily influenced Woolf the writer and Woolf the critic. Given the degree to which Russian writers influenced Woolf in particular and England more generally, Rubenstein suggests that the Russian influence had a decisive impact in determining the shape of British Modernism.

Intertextuality And The Collaborative Construction Of Narrative: J.M. Coetzee's Foe, Tisha Turk

English Publications

No abstract provided.

Imperial Boyhood: Piracy And The Play Ethic, Bradley Deane

English Publications

Representations of perpetual boyhood came to fascinate the late Victorians, partly because such images could naturalize a new spirit of imperial aggression and new policies of preserving power. This article traces the emergence of this fantasy through a series of stories about the relationship of the boy and the pirate, figures whose opposition in mid-Victorian literature was used to articulate the moral legitimacy of colonialism, but who became doubles rather than antitheses in later novels, such as R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Masculine worth needed no longer to be measured by reference to transcendent, …

Flarr Pages #67: The Understanding Of The Concept Fact In Modern English (The Research Is Based On The English-Language Textbooks), Roza Rokhvadze

FLARR Pages

Linguistics in a narrow sense is always interested in language. The language can be observed from different levels: level of text, sentence and word. These levels in their tern are considered from the viewpoint of pragmatics, semantics, cognitive meaning, syntax, grammar, etc. The word, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, is the smallest speech unit It seems to be nothing confusing with words, as their meanings are given in dictionaries and their syntactical functions are defined even by Aristotle. But we know that language has its dynamic process - it changes in all aspects. With the technical progress and cutting-edge society …

A.S. Byatt's "Morpho Eugenia": Prolegomena To Any Future Theory, Michael Lackey

English Publications

The traditional view holds that love and knowledge are only possible if a person can transcend the human—love is that which overcomes biological urges like lust, while knowledge is that which gets beyond self-interested perception. In the nineteenth century, when theories about anthropomorphism came to dominate, the traditional views of love and knowledge were exposed as incoherent. In "Morpho Eugenia," A.S. Byatt brilliantly dramatizes how these intellectual developments impacted the lives of a wide range of nineteenth-century characters—some sunk into nihilistic despair, some became dogmatic scientists, some became tortured existentialists, and some tried to build a new and more reasonable …