Digital Commons Network^™

Cavalier Reading: Examining The Problematic Nature Of Signifiers, Monique Nichelle Branscumb

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Genesis B From Ms Junius 11 And Paradise Lost: Possible Connections, Alicia D. Arnold

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at the ongoing debate concerning John Milton's potential use of Genesis B from MS Junius II when creating Paradise Lost. Much of the thesis looks at the probability of John Milton's ability to access or know Genesis B. Included is an annotated translation of "Satan in Hell" from Genesis B. The last chapter looks at the given translation and Paradise Lost to see if there are similarities in dialect, theme, and word-choices, or if Paradise Lost has Old English markers. The conclusion is that the debate must continue as there is currently not enough evidence to prove …

Hanging The Servant Girl To Hunting The Ripper: The Victorian Birth Of The True Crime Genre, Jonathan G. Brown

Masters Theses

More definitive answers about the creation and form of the modern True Crime genre narrative can be found by exploring, not the creators of True Crime narratives, but by following reader expectations and examining the social situation from which True Crime narratives were able to arise. Theorists in the genre field such as Lloyd Bitzer Carolyn Miller and Amy Devitt have introduced and refined the view of genre as a social action. In this view, genre does not come about as a set of rules imposed upon types of literature to bring order, but as a societally accepted creation constructed …

The Problem Of Love And Codes Of Conduct For The Younger Courtiers In King Lear, Debora L. Pfeiffer

Masters Theses

The courtiers Edmund and Edgar are critical to the action of King Lear, yet there has been little scholarship which has treated these characters in depth. I argue that one way to comprehend them and their significance in the play's action is to analyze their behavior according to the standards of the Renaissance conduct books that were circulating in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the play was written. Baldassare Castigligone's The Book of the Courtier, Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, and Desiderius Erasmus's The Education of a Christian Prince each sheds light on important themes …

Queering The Sublime: Virginia Woolf, Sexology, And Sexuality, Emily Whitmore

Masters Theses

Using Virginia Woolf's novels, The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando, I begin to explore moments where the characters experience the sublime as defined by Edmund Burke. Woolf uses the traditional sublime, but complicates the concept beyond its initial intention. The moments that mimic the sublime, but include the body, the natural world, and artistic creativity grows into what I will call the "queer sublime," which is new for both Woolf scholarship and for the sublime. Woolf's experimentation with the term and part of the "queer sublime" also helps to create a different …

Pubs, Temperance, And The Construction Of Irishness In James Joyce's Ulysses, Leslie Sweet Myrick

Masters Theses

Ulysses can be read as a bar crawl; three episodes and part of a fourth are set in public houses, while various characters walk to and from drinking activities and establishments throughout the day. However, Ulysses' main character, Leopold Bloom, is an extremely moderate drinker and not considered "a regular" patron at any public house. His practicing of temperance is one example of how Bloom does not embody the typical Irish masculinity. However, the drinking culture in Ulysses has not been fully explored in context of the temperance movement which was an ongoing cause in 1904 Dublin despite Guinness's Brewery …

Framing Jane: Film Adaptation And Jane Eyre, 1934-2006, Joy Wohlman Boyce

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Mermaid's Dress: Marriage And Empire In The Voyage Out And Mrs Dalloway, Melissa Wharton-Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how socio-historical influences shape the protagonists of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925)-- Rachel Vinrace and Clarissa Dalloway. During the writing of these two novels, attitudes about roles for women before and after World War I shifted as pre-war domestic strife was replaced by a post-war push to return to normalcy. Throughout the period, imperialist ideology demanded that women conform to traditional gender roles by marrying and reproducing. Woolf depicts this pressure as it affects her two protagonists.

In The Voyage Out, the British Empire's imposing presence is exhibited through the setting of …

Facade Of A Romantic: Benjamin Disraeli And Coningsby Or The New Generation, Sybil Or The Two Nations, And Tancred Or The New Crusade, Peggy Pope

Masters Theses

Dismissed by contemporary critics as a second-rate writer, Benjamin Disraeli has been undervalued for over a hundred and fifty years. Writing in 1979, D.R. Schwarz rued that no recent full-length study of his novels had been undertaken, while other, even more minor novelists have been regularly exhumed. A substantial reassessment may be underway, as Paul Smith notes, particularly in the area of Disraeli's Jewishness. Bernard Glassman's volume, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (2003), and Disraeli's Jewishness (2002), by Todd Endelman and Tony Kushner, attest to this new interest. A recent general study, Disraeli (2000), by Edgar …

Delight, Subversion And Truth In The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Talking Birds, Terri Benson Blair

Masters Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer mentions birds over 240 times throughout The Canterbury Tales (Tatlock and Kennedy). This frequent allusion to birds is significant, especially since three of his twenty-four tales are actually about birds. What makes these three tales particularly fascinating is that their bird protagonists have the gift of speech. This study examines Chaucer's use of bird imagery in The Canterbury Tales, in particular, his use of talking birds in "The Squire's Tale," "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and "The Manciple's Tale." My theory is that Chaucer uses bird imagery and talking birds to question the sovereign power of the fourteenth-century …

Victorian Philosophies Of Useless Work Versus Work For The Mind: Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, And Marx, Marlaina Easton

Masters Theses

In my Thesis, I will investigate the dominant perceptions of work that spanned the Victorian Period. One of the most important authors of criticism dealing with work in the early part of the Victorian Period was Thomas Carlyle (1845). John Ruskin then became a counterpoint to Carlyle throughout the middle of the century (1862). And although he agreed with much of what Carlyle said, he brings new notions of work to the Victorian Period. William Morris then offered a completely different point of view on the issue of work at the latter part of the Victorian Period (1885). I will …

"I Am No Mean Player Myself": Games And Recreation In Irish Mythology, Julie Lynn Perenchio

Masters Theses

Superhuman heroics in myth certainly succeed in capturing our immediate attention, but it takes a more human touch of talent and fallibility to make heroes personally appealing to readers. In Irish mythology, immortals and humans engage in a marvelous variety of recreational activities, and show universally-felt emotions and tendencies, like competitive spirits, creativity, and tenacity. Far from being idle entertainment, play makes significant impacts on the lives of Irish heroes, individually, socially, and culturally. For example, chess games, even between complete strangers, can cause the upheaval of one's lifestyle and test not only the intellectual powers of players, but also …

The Noble Survivor And The Sublime Victim: A Study Of Two Hardy Heroines, Elizabeth-Jane And Tess, Wei Gao

Masters Theses

In his novel-writing career, Thomas Hardy created a host of female characters struggling to survive in nineteenth-century England. Whether center stage or in the background, these women embody Hardy's insights into the conditions of the female sex--their frailties, strength, miseries, dreams, and finally, their destinies. Throughout his career as a novelist, Hardy's representation of women has not been consistent. His earlier heroines--heroines in the novels preceding The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)--are generally depicted as faulty characters eventually subdued or destroyed. In contrast, the later heroines are portrayed with increasing emphasis on their intellectual or mental traits and moral superiority. This …

Reanimating The Creature: The Last Man As A Sequel To Frankenstein, Shannon Phillips

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I explore how Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) continues a critique of Romanticism that she began in her more well-known novel Frankenstein. Although Frankenstein has been read many different ways through a variety of critical methodologies, one of the central questions continually asked about the novel is whether (and to what extent) Frankenstein challenges or extends the romanticism of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others in the Byron-Shelley circle. Another way to investigate this lingering question is through a comparative study of The Last Man. My preliminary thesis is that a comparative study reveals not …

Are They Fact Or Are They Fiction? The Sadeian Women Of Angela Carter, Catherine Gall

Masters Theses

Angela Carter is well-known for her gothic twists on fairy tales and the use of magical realism in creating alternate worlds and monstrous creatures that exist within our own. The meaningful "twists" that her tales take often have to do with gender, reversing traditional roles and transcending barriers. In her fiction, Carter creates characters and scenes that often include "traditional" roles, displaying an awareness of the sexual stereotypes that have been in place for centuries. Her female characters offer a complex commentary on the patriarchal standard that suggests that a woman's value is dependent upon her virginity.

Her book The …

‘Two Are Better Than One;’ Adam And Eve's Symbiotic Marriage In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Jeffrey Paul Pietruszynski

Masters Theses

Although much has been written on the roles of Adam and Eve created by John Milton in Paradise Lost, the critics, oddly enough, overlook the dependency created by the roles. This paper extends these roles further, explaining that Milton wanted to show that the roles of man and woman, husband and wife, combine to create a unit dependent on one another other for survival. As Adam himself states, when they are separated, husband and wife are vulnerable to the dangers of evil. However, together, they form a single unit, able to accomplish any task, epitomizing the symbolic relationship described in …

William Butler Yeats And The Cuchulain Cycle, Zhibo Wang

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Speaking Of The Raj: Kipling, Forster, And Scott On The English Language In British India, Victoria K. Tatko

Masters Theses

In my thesis I examine how language, particularly the English language, participated in the Raj, as depicted thematically in Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901), E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (1924), and Paul Scott'sThe Raj Quartet (1966-1975): The Jewel in the Crown (1966), The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971), and A Division of the Spoils (1975). I show that all three authors portray language as central to British colonialism in India; the connection between the English language and the Empire grows increasingly problematic as the linguistic situation becomes a metaphor for the state of …

"That Gentil Text Kan I Wel Understonde": Textual Authority In Chaucer’S The Wife Of Bath’S Prologue, Emilie Roy

Masters Theses

It has become a critical commonplace to note that Chaucer created the character of the Wife of Bath out of an anti-feminist textual tradition that condemns just the kind of strong-voiced proto-feminist woman that she is. The anti-feminist tradition is deeply embedded in the western cultural framework. Established and perpetuated by a male clergy, it was an integral part of the institutionalized religious structure that controlled education, literacy, and thus access to texts of all kinds. The tradition assumed that woman—viewed as a collective entity—was portrayed as either a moral ideal or a wicked sinner, with little possibility for nuances …

A Woman Alone And Writing: Anti-Ideology And Artistic Irony In Writings Of Mary Shelley, Delores Archaimbault

Masters Theses

This study focuses upon the letters, journals and selected fiction of Mary Shelley and reveals that Shelley engages in the processes of anti-ideology and artistic irony to help her explore gender identity. To show her consistent use of these processes, I juxtapose excerpts from her letters and journals with excerpts from her fiction. The fiction selections are narrowed to three: Frankenstein, Mathilda and The Last Man. In addition, I examine her writing and her use of anti-ideology and artistic irony relative to the influences of her significant others: her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, her father William Godwin and her …

Chaucer's Use Of The Absalom Archetype In The Knight's Tale And In The Miller's Tale, Sharon Hardin

Masters Theses

Although Chaucer did not write The Canterbury Tales until after the death of Edward III, Chaucer's youth was spent in the company (albeit on the fringes) of the war-like king and his war-like sons. Surely, as the young Chaucer performed his duties and perhaps read stories or listened to the gossip spread by servants and courtiers, such as the account of Edward's having ravished a defenseless woman, impressions formed in Chaucer's mind. Perhaps such rumors as that Edward's son Lancaster had designs on his father's throne added to and solidified those impressions into opinion, and a character type was born, …

Geoffrey Chaucer's House Of Fame: From Authority To Experience, Victoria Frantseva

Masters Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame is one of the most provocative dream-vision poems written in the fourteenth century. In many ways, it continues to present a serious problem of interpretation to students of medieval poetry. Many critics have tried to arrive at a singular cohesive theory explaining meaning and defining the genre of the House of Fame. However, these attempts have failed and the poem's enigma endures, probably for all time.

The House of Fame seems to elicit many different responses from its readers. While opinions of the poem may vary, the points of argument generally concern the following areas: …

Transforming A Legend: Significance Of The Wandering Jew In Shelley's Work, Matthew D. Landrus

Masters Theses

Although Percy Bysshe Shelley has been recognized for his use of the Wandering Jew, critics have failed to produce a definitive work examining how this biblical legend figures into an understanding of the poet's changing world views. Since a comprehensive analysis was lacking, I studied Shelley's treatment of the Wandering Jew in each work that included the character to determine whether or not a relationship existed between Shelley's management of the figure and the poet's world beliefs. This thesis records the results of that study.

In his earliest works involving the Wandering Jew--those written between 1810-1812--Shelley's treatment of the Wandering …

An Analysis Of Personal Pronouns In Middle English Literary Texts, Melissa Jill Bennett

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of personal pronouns from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, with a particular focus upon the southern literary dialects of that era. The baseline text for this analysis is the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, although Bright's paradigm of Anglo-Saxon pronouns is also employed. The Owl and the Nightingale (circa 1200), The Fox and the Wolf (circa 1275), Piers Plowman (circa 1375), and Parliament of Fowls (circa 1375) are used to illustrate the changes in the forms of the pronouns over four centuries, Chaucer's Parliament serving to represent the emerging London standard. …

From Innocence To Experience In William Blake's The Book Of Thel And The Visions Of The Daughters Of Albion, Ann B. Moutray

Masters Theses

My thesis focuses on William Blake's challenge of the conventional Christianity of his time and his questioning of what he perceived as the hypocritical moral codes of the Church of England. Blake blames these codes for dominating and imprisoning humanity by preventing individuals from acting through their use of the imagination. For Blake, the imagination does not simply imply a creation of the imaginative faculty; instead, it refers to an imagination that is transforming and that becomes a measure of salvation and deliverance from the man-made codes that imprison humanity. These codes, while originating from and propagated by the Church …

The Feminine Other: A Study Of The Women In Shakespeare's Major Tragedies, Kurt E. Wilamowski

Masters Theses

The central examination of this thesis concentrates on the essential contributions of the female characters in Shakespeare's major tragedies--Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Without the women's conflict with the patriarchal order, the males would be unable to recognize and combat the corrupt elements in their society. The awareness of the female characters allows them to perceive the tainted patriarchal atmosphere they dwell in and operate within it as best as they can.

In short, each woman's individual field of awareness allows her to act as the executor of the dénoucement in the tragedy. Even …

The Transformation Of Immanence: From The Augustinian Faith Of Henry Vaughan To The Rationalist Faith Of S.T. Coleridge, Tristum M. Ryan

Masters Theses

The present study focuses on the conception of immanence and the manner in which it evolved from the seventeenth century, as represented in Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans, to the nineteenth century, as represented in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's nature poetry and his collection of letters, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Vaughan's conception of a basic immanence of reflected divinity in nature evolved, over the course of two hundred years, into Coleridge's version of an immanence based on reason. These two different conceptions of immanence in part formed the basis of the respective faiths of Vaughan and Coleridge. Vaughan's traditional Augustinian faith …

The Allegorical And Symbolic Modes Of Representation In W. Wordsworth's Poems Of The Fancy And Poems Of The Imagination, Irena Nikolova Nikolova

Masters Theses

The present study focuses on the controversial issue concerning the differentiation of Fancy and Imagination in the context of S. T. Coleridge's and W. Wordsworth's Romantic aesthetics. Wordsworth's theoretical and poetic discourses lead to an indeterminacy in the attempts to distinguish between the "lower" poetic faculty of Fancy and the "higher" poetic faculty of the Imagination. The present investigation proceeds from the assumption that the two poetic modes can only be defined accurately as complementary rather than distinct. They engender an unstable perspective upon the external world which allows for transmutations of the visible into the visionary, of the act …

Chaucer's "Nether Ye": A Study Of Chaucer's Use Of Scatology In The Canterbury Tales, Brook Wilson

Masters Theses

Chaucer's use of scatology throughout the Canterbury Tales offers a new frontier for Chaucerian research. To this date, no book-length work dealing exclusively with the scatological elements found in his works exists. Too often, the serious and artistic effects of scatology become lost in the great comedy the device generates. Furthermore, many readers and scholars seem to find themselves somewhat "squaymous" when confronted with the "nether ye" of Chaucer. While Chaucer employs scatology perhaps less frequently than Swift or Rabelais, his mastery of this device remains unquestionable.

Recognizing that the uses for scatology extend far beyond creating humor, Chaucer instead …

Tolkien's Unnamed Deity Orchestrating The Lord Of The Rings, Lisa Hillis

Masters Theses

The epic world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is one in which secular and religious elements are intertwined and the relationship between the two is intentionally kept vague. Within this created world, known as Middle Earth, good and evil are apparent, but the standard by which they are determined remains undefined. The free creatures living in Tolkien's world appear to have an intuitive ability to discern between good and evil, and each being generally exercises its free will in pursuit of one or the other though some personalities do combine the qualities. This innate …