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English Language and Literature

Masters Theses

2008

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Citizens (Or Citoyennes) Of The World: Women’S Citizenship And Exile In The French Revolutionary Years 1789-1793, Lisa Michelle Christian Dec 2008

Citizens (Or Citoyennes) Of The World: Women’S Citizenship And Exile In The French Revolutionary Years 1789-1793, Lisa Michelle Christian

Masters Theses

This study examines the fluid definitions of citizenship during the French Revolution, especially citizenship’s relationship to exile. I assert that citizenship was always defined by who could not be citizens. Furthermore, this study focuses upon women’s experience of citizenship and exile for their especial vulnerability to exclusion from public and political affairs. In particular, I address the political actions of Parisian common women, and the political actions and writings of the English exiles Helen Maria Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft. Essentially, this study has three distinct parts that demonstrate the development of women’s citizenship during the Revolution and the causes of …


A Migration Of Tastes: New York City And American Naturalism, 1890-1925, Tyler James Weseman Dec 2008

A Migration Of Tastes: New York City And American Naturalism, 1890-1925, Tyler James Weseman

Masters Theses

Changes in the literary evaluation/reception of American Naturalism are related to changes in both literary criticism and American publishing. Naturalism responded to vigorous cultural issues of the time, but its chief focus was on the role of biology, class, and environment in the development of the individual. As a result, the response to Naturalism by American criticism was as much a response to these issues as it was to the literature itself, and the tenor of the responses near the turn of the century often reflected the differing values of criticism originating either in New York or Boston. By looking …


Embodied Vision: Sublimity And Mystery In The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Andrew Patrick Hicks Aug 2008

Embodied Vision: Sublimity And Mystery In The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Andrew Patrick Hicks

Masters Theses

This thesis serves as a study of representative pieces of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction alongside three particular theories of the sublime, and offers an exploration of the ways in which O’Connor employs and modifies and aesthetics of sublimity throughout her fiction. Three particular theories of the sublime are considered throughout this study: Edmund Burke’s empiricist sublime, Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern sublime, and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt’s theological sublime. Burke’s theory is considered alongside both the early O’Connor story “The Turkey” and the later “Greenleaf,” while the story “Parker’s Back” is read in light of Lyotard’s theory and the novel The Violent Bear It …


Pulling The Moon Card, Gabrielle Lea Kindell Aug 2008

Pulling The Moon Card, Gabrielle Lea Kindell

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to creatively explore emotionally intense and transformative moments in the author’s life through the use of poetry. The intention was to create poetry that served as a means for creative expression. The poetry here functions both to document the author’s life, to express the author’s feelings and thoughts of her life, and as art that should provide readers with the feeling that they have suddenly entered the mind, heart and experience of another person.

While much of the poetry is specific to the author’s life, some of the poems, especially those in the “Justice …


Abject Horror And The Renaissance Imagination: Plotting The Intersection Of Human And Monster In Book I Of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, Melissa Joy Rack Aug 2008

Abject Horror And The Renaissance Imagination: Plotting The Intersection Of Human And Monster In Book I Of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, Melissa Joy Rack

Masters Theses

The 16th century marked an explosion of interest in “true” accounts of monsters and monstrous births in early modern England. The fascination with grotesqueries and objects of wonder was a curious preoccupation of the learned elite of the Elizabethan court. The influence of early modern medical texts that anatomized such creatures, and historical chronicles that attempted to explain the “unnatural” aspects of the natural world, can be traced in Book I of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. This thesis is concerned with the way Spenser revises the characteristic tropes of these early modern texts to present monstrosity in his …


Love And Privacy: Three Stories, Alexandra Staunton Zinke Aug 2008

Love And Privacy: Three Stories, Alexandra Staunton Zinke

Masters Theses

This thesis is compiled of stories written and revised while the author was a Master‟s candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Accompanying these stories is a brief introduction in which the author considers elements of craft in fiction.


Methodism And Moral Character: The Function Of Methodist Satire In Henry Fielding’S Novels, Caitlin Lee Kelly Aug 2008

Methodism And Moral Character: The Function Of Methodist Satire In Henry Fielding’S Novels, Caitlin Lee Kelly

Masters Theses

This thesis explores Henry Fielding’s satiric representations of Methodism and Methodists in his novels Shamela, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia. By examining these Methodist representations and by using them to chart a progression across Fielding’s career as a novelist, Methodism emerges as a point of intersection with his larger concern about the effects of moral character on the stability of society. Fielding reveals the problem surrounding moral character through the villainy of hypocrites, which requires a shrewd observer to overcome. In an effort to provide a solution to this problem, Fielding asserts in “An Essay on the Knowledge …


Experiencing The Modern American City And Addressing The Slum In The United States And Brazil: 1890-1933, Nathaniel Z. Heggins Bryant May 2008

Experiencing The Modern American City And Addressing The Slum In The United States And Brazil: 1890-1933, Nathaniel Z. Heggins Bryant

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the treatment of slum spaces in the US and Brazil spanning the period 1890-1933, seeking to understand better the ethics of representation regarding the slum as well as the varying aesthetic agendas and political engagements of four novelists. The works under consideration are A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) by William Dean Howells, The Slum (1890) by Aluísio Azevedo, Manhattan Transfer (1925) by John Dos Passos, and Industrial Park (1933), by Patrícia Galvão. I chart the varying methods of representation associated with each novel, from Howell’s critical realism to Azevedo’s unique version of naturalism to the fragmented …


Negotiating A Feminist Consciousness: Textual Interactions In The Women’S Penny Paper, Emily M. Disher May 2008

Negotiating A Feminist Consciousness: Textual Interactions In The Women’S Penny Paper, Emily M. Disher

Masters Theses

This thesis examines both the heteroglossia and intertextuality of three important sections of the Victorian Women’s Penny Paper—the correspondence columns, “Out and About” advice column, and advertising pages. A study of each section in conversation with the others reveals the ways in which the paper built upon the shared interests of its readers to create a community that fostered a feminist consciousness. Ultimately, the intersection of consumer culture and feminist ideals both echoed and shaped by the pages of the WPP highlights the ways late nineteenth-century feminists negotiated their feminist identities amidst complex and conflicting influences.


Telling War Stories, Michael Ernest Warren May 2008

Telling War Stories, Michael Ernest Warren

Masters Theses

Telling war stories reveal the truth of soldiering from the eyes of soldiers. This thesis is a project that aims to make that statement a reality for the soldier of today who has endured a different sort of war. This project consists primarily of a proposal addressed to the writing committee and English Department faculty of the United States Military Academy which seeks to establish a new curriculum allowing cadets to correspond with deployed Soldiers or veterans of the Global War on Terror, and assist them in the writing of their telling war stories. The sections which follow the proposal …


The Dial And The Transcendentalist Theory Of Reading, Emily A. Cope May 2008

The Dial And The Transcendentalist Theory Of Reading, Emily A. Cope

Masters Theses

The two major anthologies of Transcendentalism, Perry Miller’s The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (1950) and Joel Myerson’s Transcendentalism: A Reader (2000), illustrate the scholarly divide over whether the movement was primarily religious or social and political in nature. Where Miller’s volume prioritizes the Transcendentalists’ theological radicalism, Myerson’s emphasizes their interest in social and political reform. This paper presents a third alternative: that the Transcendentalists be understood primarily as a community of readers invested in reimagining how and why antebellum Americans read, a concern we can see clearly in the pages of the Dial. Margaret Fuller’s article “A Short Essay on …


The Other Half Of California, Jesse W. Goolsby May 2008

The Other Half Of California, Jesse W. Goolsby

Masters Theses

In The Other Half of California, a Creative Writing Graduate Thesis for the University of Tennessee, Jesse W. Goolsby has collected a series of short stories that examines how different modes of power influence relationships. He has chosen Northern California as his setting, and the geography of the region plays a key role as the characters endeavor to find their way in, out, and through the landscape, often colliding with each other along the way.


The Back Road To Murfreesboro, Ashley Scott Moser May 2008

The Back Road To Murfreesboro, Ashley Scott Moser

Masters Theses

This project was conceived as a multi-form, multi-media piece in which each work of fiction, poetry, or photography is fully intended to both stand on its own and contribute to an overall feeling for the entire collection. It is in the juxtaposition of these various works that the audience can gain a greater appreciation for the entire collection as well as for each individual piece contained within.

This collection explores the dissatisfaction and alienation of contemporary life, and depicts characters, objects, and settings that are all in some way disconnected or empty. The overall stance is negative, of frustrated desire, …


Expanding Composition's Scope: Community-Based Literacy And Second-Language Writing, Carolina Pelaez-Morales Jan 2008

Expanding Composition's Scope: Community-Based Literacy And Second-Language Writing, Carolina Pelaez-Morales

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Warriors, Lovers, Mothers: Women's Physical Powers In The Irish Sagas, Jessica L. Powell-Pickering Jan 2008

Warriors, Lovers, Mothers: Women's Physical Powers In The Irish Sagas, Jessica L. Powell-Pickering

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


The Bearded Man, Scott Lutz Jan 2008

The Bearded Man, Scott Lutz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Female Freedom Fighters: The Impact Of Kate Chopin's The Awakening And Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth On The American Suicide Discourse From 1870-1900, Jenny Cortez Jan 2008

Female Freedom Fighters: The Impact Of Kate Chopin's The Awakening And Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth On The American Suicide Discourse From 1870-1900, Jenny Cortez

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


What Comes Next, Mario Podeschi Jan 2008

What Comes Next, Mario Podeschi

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Cyber Tribe: The Rhetorical Implications Of The Daily Kos Political Filter Blog Community, Rachel Lutz Jan 2008

Cyber Tribe: The Rhetorical Implications Of The Daily Kos Political Filter Blog Community, Rachel Lutz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


A Song And A Slogan: Regional Influences On Carl Sandburg And Edgar Lee Masters, Amanda Dunlavey Jan 2008

A Song And A Slogan: Regional Influences On Carl Sandburg And Edgar Lee Masters, Amanda Dunlavey

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


The Grim Word: 'Home' In Fiction By Graham Greene, Geoff Cowgill Jan 2008

The Grim Word: 'Home' In Fiction By Graham Greene, Geoff Cowgill

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Passage Through The Ocean: The Female Heroic Journey In The Novels Of Anita Desai, Jaime Pedigo Hendrix Jan 2008

Passage Through The Ocean: The Female Heroic Journey In The Novels Of Anita Desai, Jaime Pedigo Hendrix

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Driven To Distraction, Carissa Renee Hayden Jan 2008

Driven To Distraction, Carissa Renee Hayden

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Hannah Dustan: A Seventeenth-Century Text Still In Progress, Janice Derr Jan 2008

Hannah Dustan: A Seventeenth-Century Text Still In Progress, Janice Derr

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Textual Selves, Tasha Dunaway Jan 2008

Textual Selves, Tasha Dunaway

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


The Beauty Of Her Survival: Being Black And Female In Meridian, The Salt Eaters, Kindred, And The Bluest Eye, Loretta N. Ullrich-Ferguson Jan 2008

The Beauty Of Her Survival: Being Black And Female In Meridian, The Salt Eaters, Kindred, And The Bluest Eye, Loretta N. Ullrich-Ferguson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.


Cutting Back The Mask: Character And Coiffure In Fiction By F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, And Robert Penn Warren, Lisa Anne Powell Jan 2008

Cutting Back The Mask: Character And Coiffure In Fiction By F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, And Robert Penn Warren, Lisa Anne Powell

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.