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Revisiting "Hapworth": The Catharsis Of Buddy Glass, Brian Mctague Dec 2011

Revisiting "Hapworth": The Catharsis Of Buddy Glass, Brian Mctague

Theses and Dissertations

J.D. Salinger's "Hapworth 16, 1924," his last published work, is notorious for the initial critical silence it received, as well as the subsequent general consensus that it was a text to revile if not avoid. This thesis proposes that while "Hapworth" is a difficult and perplexing piece, there is a good deal about it that deserves if not outright praise, then a close critical re-examination. Assuming the "author" of the story is not the seven-year-old version of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" suicide Seymour Glass, as the story purports, but his grieving younger brother Buddy, who has spent the years …


Shaken And Stirred: Tactile Imagery And Narrative Immediacy In J. D. Salinger's "Blue Melody," "A Girl I Knew," And "Just Before The War With The Eskimos", Angelica Bega-Hart Aug 2011

Shaken And Stirred: Tactile Imagery And Narrative Immediacy In J. D. Salinger's "Blue Melody," "A Girl I Knew," And "Just Before The War With The Eskimos", Angelica Bega-Hart

Theses and Dissertations

J.D. Salinger’s ‘A Girl I Knew,’ ‘Just Before the War with the Eskimos,’ and ‘Blue Melody,’ contain key thematic and narratological elements that contribute to the development of character through repeated reference to tactile imagery and through each character’s reaction to the sensations associated with tactile images. Salinger’s descriptions of tactile interaction allow readers to see his characters connected in ways that were increasingly difficult in the 1950’s, where widespread cultural changes contributed to increasing physical and emotional distancing. Critics have argued that “vision” is at the heart of many of Salinger’s characters’ struggles, since they “seek” a level of …


Salinger And The Phases Of War, Johnson Elizabeth Downing Apr 2011

Salinger And The Phases Of War, Johnson Elizabeth Downing

Theses and Dissertations

A study of the phases of war present in Salinger's stories - "The Hang of It," "Personal Notes of an Infantryman," "Soft Boiled Sergeant," "Last Day of the Last Furlough," "Once a Week Won't Kill You," A Boy in France," "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise," "The Stranger," "A Young Girl in 1941 With No Waist at All," "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," "A Girl I Knew," "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," and "For Esme - With Love and Squalor." The role of war in each of these stories follows a cycle that reflects Salinger's own war experience, as well as the …


Speaking Subjects: Beckett’S Not I, Rushdie’S The Satanic Verses, And Coetzee’S Foe, Jake Khoury Apr 2011

Speaking Subjects: Beckett’S Not I, Rushdie’S The Satanic Verses, And Coetzee’S Foe, Jake Khoury

Theses and Dissertations

In repositioning Beckett’s Not I in relation to Rushdie and Coetzee, I show that The Satanic Verses and Foe suggest approaches to language similar to Beckett’s play, insofar as each text interrogates the ability of the marginalized speaking subject to maintain control of his or her voice, finding that the speaking subject’s voice is constantly infused with the voices of others. Additionally, I demonstrate Beckett’s relevance to the postcolonial environment and delineate convergences and divergences in how Rushdie and Coetzee formulate the voices, bodies, and identities of marginalized and postcolonial speaking subjects.


Judging The Rational And The Dead: Ann Radcliffe And Feminist Theology, Garland Beasley Apr 2011

Judging The Rational And The Dead: Ann Radcliffe And Feminist Theology, Garland Beasley

Theses and Dissertations

“Judging the Rational and the Dead: Ann Radcliffe and Feminist Theology” argues Radcliffe’s first three novels, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790), and The Romance of the Forest (1791), show a progression of feminist theology informed by the late eighteenth-century British religious movement of Rational Dissent. The thesis attempts to complicate and extend Radcliffe scholarship by moving away from fractured critical discourses and into more cohesive readings of Radcliffe that include feminist and theological interpretations of her work. Of particular interest to the project are Radcliffe’s views on the circumscribed nature of women’s existence within …


Rethinking Success: A Person-Based Approach To Service Learning, Ryan Cales Apr 2011

Rethinking Success: A Person-Based Approach To Service Learning, Ryan Cales

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the nature of service learning projects that are structured to make interventions in rhetorical spheres and seek to achieve social change on a smaller scale rather striving for grander, or even systemic, change. In structuring community projects that include inherently limited interventions and equally limited goals, I argue that such projects should be open to immediate adjustments within themselves –to abandon any particular form or goal—to satisfy the immediate needs of the individuals served. I draw upon my work with a reintegration program for ex-offenders in Richmond, Virginia called Working with Conviction to help demonstrate that service …


The Rhetoric Of Second Chance: The Invention Of Ethos For An Ex-Offender, Modu Fofana-Kamara Apr 2011

The Rhetoric Of Second Chance: The Invention Of Ethos For An Ex-Offender, Modu Fofana-Kamara

Theses and Dissertations

For many, literacy is reading and writing- a critical tool for ethos construction. But for a marginalized group of ex-offenders, former prison inmates, who were not accustomed to reading and writing as an agent for character invention, the ability to employ literacy and to construct ethos was a challenging and almost unsuccessful attempt. I discuss in this thesis a community-writing project I designed as a graduate student and my partnership with Boaz & Ruth, a local faith-based non-profit organization working with ex-offenders. Through the collaboration I facilitated writing skills workshop, which objective was to have the ex-offenders to write personal …


Signifying Ruins: The Wreck And Rebirth Of Modernity, Language, And Representation, Audrey Farley Apr 2011

Signifying Ruins: The Wreck And Rebirth Of Modernity, Language, And Representation, Audrey Farley

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores formal and thematic representations of ruins in twentieth century literary texts, including James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” Analyzing these texts and concepts of ruins in the theoretical work of Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva, I argue that ruins underscore the arbitrariness—and, thus, the fragility—of symbolic systems of signification. Ruins, by virtue of their fragmentation, invite nostalgic projections of totality only to betray totality as an illusion. Thus, the imagination of wholeness that the ruin incites allows—only to disallow—meaning. Modernity and …


“That I Should Always Listen To My Body And Love It”: Finding The Mind-Body Connection In Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Slave Texts, Emily Stuart Watkins Apr 2011

“That I Should Always Listen To My Body And Love It”: Finding The Mind-Body Connection In Nineteenth- And Twentieth-Century Slave Texts, Emily Stuart Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the presence of the movement theories of Irmgard Bartenieff, Peggy Hackney, and Rudolf Von Laban in the following texts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself (1845), The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (1831), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Linda Brent (1861), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). The terms and phrases of movement theory will be introduced to the contemporary critical discussion already surrounding the texts, both furthering and challenging existing arguments.