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Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Honors Theses
In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …
The Literary Fairy: Celtic Folklore’S Influence On Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Joshua Dobbs
The Literary Fairy: Celtic Folklore’S Influence On Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Joshua Dobbs
Doctoral Dissertations
There is a dissonance between the folkloric fairies and those presented by pop-cultural institutions such as Disney which has effected modern literary criticism of nineteenth-century British literature. The Disnified fairy is feminine, small, capable of flight, often with insect-like wings, and equipped with a magic wand with which she does good deeds to help others. She is largely based on fairy tales and is the embodiment of the modern conceptualization of the fairy, but she bears little, if any, resemblance to the fearsome fairies of Celtic folklore. Although nineteenth-century literature is rife with folkloric fairy references, those references are frequently …
Supporting Characters: Prosthesis And Aesthetic Technologies Of Disability In The Victorian Novel, Rebecca L. Mccann
Supporting Characters: Prosthesis And Aesthetic Technologies Of Disability In The Victorian Novel, Rebecca L. Mccann
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the production of physical disability and the function of prosthesis in nineteenth-century British fiction. My intervention in disability studies readings of Victorian literature attends to the prosthetic object and prosthetic body not only as the dual products of medicine and art, but also as catalytic elements of fiction and culture. I read reciprocal developments in medical technology and disabled characterization in the Victorian novel to demonstrate how the artistic translation of the prosthetic object effected a set of criteria for defining people through both bodies and things and, in so doing, revealed the ways in which the …
"I Want To Melt Into Her Body": Sexual Empowerment And A Feminist Recentering Of The Female Characters In Dracula By Bram Stoker, Carmilla By J. Sheridan Lefanu, And Villette By Charlotte Bronte, Carson Leigh Pender
Graduate Theses
Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex, “The normal sexual act [of intercourse] effectively makes woman dependent on the male and the species. It is he–as for most animals– who has the aggressive role and she who submits to his embrace. . . coitus cannot take place without male consent, and male satisfaction is its natural end result” (385). Essentially, de Beauvoir argues that the act of sex cannot exist without the presence of man, but particularly for heterosexual women, the act of sex is dependent on the presence of, responsibility of, and response of men. However, despite the …
Þorn: A Novel Excerpt Exploring Giantesses, Their Relation To Women's Bodily Expectations, And Patriarchal Control In The Literature Of Early Modern Britain And Contemporary America., Brady P Alexander
College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses
This thesis will analyze examples of women of size in the literature of the British Isles throughout history, focusing predominantly upon the Early Modern Period, and will create a fiction piece in response to such attitudes. I argue that one of the most clear ways to dissect contemporary cultural attitudes about powerful women and women who occupy more space than men is to examine giantesses and other examples of women of size within this period of literature. From this, a novel excerpt will be written from the perspective of a time-traveling woman of size who engages with these texts and …
Visiting Jane: Jane Austen, Fan Culture, And Literary Tourism, Brianna Surratt
Visiting Jane: Jane Austen, Fan Culture, And Literary Tourism, Brianna Surratt
Senior Theses
People have been visiting sites associated with Jane Austen for two centuries now, and there have been fans of her work for even longer. Austen inspires unique devotion among her fans for an author about whose life we know very little. Furthermore, these fans have been fighting among themselves for as long as fans have existed over who loves her the right way – the academics or the amateurs? This work explores that unique fan culture in detail through the lens of literary tourism, going into detail about two sites in particular – Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England, and …
Dickens’S Changing Perspective Towards Capitalism And The Bourgeoisie, Christina Oliveira
Dickens’S Changing Perspective Towards Capitalism And The Bourgeoisie, Christina Oliveira
Honors Program Theses
Most scholars agree that author and social activist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) made keen observations on human behavior and societal problems through his works. However, scholars are divided over whether to categorize Dickens and his work as radically reformist or pro-bourgeoisie. Through an analysis of three of Dickens’s texts, A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1861), this thesis demonstrates that Dickens’s works carry contradictory ideologies. As time passes, Dickens becomes disillusioned with capitalism but continues to promote capitalist and bourgeois values and ideologies. The trajectory of Dickens’s views shows the difficulties in imagining different realities outside of …
Death, Discipline, And The Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric In Early Modern English Texts, Leslie Raybuck Malland
Death, Discipline, And The Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric In Early Modern English Texts, Leslie Raybuck Malland
Theses and Dissertations--English
Death, Discipline, and the Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric in Early Modern English Texts locates allusions to the biopolitical culture of Early Modern England within popular English texts. Through my examination of the period’s fascination with death—public executions, newly-authorized anatomies—and the ways in which death, as well as the treatment of the dead, was authorized by and supported the ideological aims of the state, my research identifies how those themes carry over into the most popular works of the day, reviewing instances of both verbal and nonverbal rhetoric across genres to find allusions to biopower — or, state control of the biological. …
How Apocalypse Now Adapts Heart Of Darkness’S Imperialist Critique To A New Medium And A Different Culture, Samuel Battle
How Apocalypse Now Adapts Heart Of Darkness’S Imperialist Critique To A New Medium And A Different Culture, Samuel Battle
Undergraduate Projects
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now affirms the key message of its source material, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, to suggest that the imperialist mindset continues to significantly affect international interactions even in modern times. While the original novella reflects and criticizes contemporary British imperialism in Africa, the adaptation shifts the setting to Vietnam in 1968 and primarily satirizes the American army’s actions during the war. While the subject of the story’s critique is different, Coppola preserves the core message of the novella – that all humans are capable of falling into their inner darkness and …
"And Gladly Wolde He Lerne": Facilitating Discussion Based Learning About Medieval And Regency Literature Through Interactive Technologies, Emma Vallandingham
"And Gladly Wolde He Lerne": Facilitating Discussion Based Learning About Medieval And Regency Literature Through Interactive Technologies, Emma Vallandingham
Honors Projects
A series of reading guides for Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Frankenstein, that utilize interactive technologies to facilitate student engagement with and discussion of the texts. Each reading guide consists of an overview of the text, relevant historical context, and reading and discussion questions for students to answer. Some reading guides also have corresponding answer guides that provides sample answers as well as hints and tips for answering the questions.
More, Pope, Swift: The Use Of English Satire Within The Intellectual Historical Narrative (1516 - 1726), Monica Barry
More, Pope, Swift: The Use Of English Satire Within The Intellectual Historical Narrative (1516 - 1726), Monica Barry
History | Senior Theses
This paper traces the use of satire as a literary form in England from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. By analyzing three major English satirical writings from the 16th through 18th centuries, this paper unites literature and intellectual history, illustrating how literary analysis provides deeper insight into the progressive relationship between these two major eras in intellectual history. The paper provides a literary criticism of the genre of satire; the use of irony, humor, and exaggeration to criticize one’s vices, often relating to politics. First, the paper explores major concepts and themes of satire during the Renaissance period. Thomas More’s …
The Roadmap: Exploring T.S. Eliot’S The Waste Land With World War One Literature, Matthew Bennett
The Roadmap: Exploring T.S. Eliot’S The Waste Land With World War One Literature, Matthew Bennett
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Through careful analysis paired with poetry, war memoirs, and novels from the same period, one can break down T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land to recognize the impact of The Great War on the world's modern memory while pondering the possibility of memory as a tool to overcome trauma.
The Unlimited Absorbs The Limits: Analyzing The Religious And Mystical Aspects Of Virginia Woolf's Work Through The Lens Of William James, Zachary J. Beck
The Unlimited Absorbs The Limits: Analyzing The Religious And Mystical Aspects Of Virginia Woolf's Work Through The Lens Of William James, Zachary J. Beck
MSU Graduate Theses
Commentators on the work of modernist author Virginia Woolf have frequently remarked upon the “religious” and “mystical” aspects that appear throughout Woolf’s oeuvre, but have found it difficult to reconcile these aspects of Woolf’s work with her self-expressed atheistic beliefs. For those who have sought to resolve the tension between the “religious” and “mystical” features of Woolf’s work and Woolf’s (lack of) personal religious beliefs, the work of American psychologist and philosopher William James has proven to be a starting point for investigations into selections of Woolf’s oeuvre that seem to exhibit “religious” and “mystical” characteristics. There continues to exist, …
Syncretic Immersion: Tolkien’S Languages As History, Artifacts, And Meta-Narratives, Stewart Raymond Zdrojowy
Syncretic Immersion: Tolkien’S Languages As History, Artifacts, And Meta-Narratives, Stewart Raymond Zdrojowy
Online Theses and Dissertations
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth has been dissected and researched by philologists, medievalists, and literary theorists for decades. Though his work with languages (both historical and invented) has garnered attention over the past few decades, few scholars have looked at his languages in terms of their rhetorical functions within the narrative (as history), with the narrative (as artifacts), and without (as cultural participation). Mark Wolf’s theories on immersion is applied to Tolkien’s legendarium and illuminates his works as uniquely fixated in several modes of immersion at once. Narrative immersion is utilized to understand Tolkien’s works as a furthering of cultural values, languages, …
Living Words; Dying Flesh: The Truth And Testimonies Of Desdemona In Othello And Pompilia In The Ring And The Book, Martha Clare Brinkman
Living Words; Dying Flesh: The Truth And Testimonies Of Desdemona In Othello And Pompilia In The Ring And The Book, Martha Clare Brinkman
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the ways in which Desdemona in William Shakespeare’s Othello (1603/4) and Pompilia in Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868) exemplify female characters whose testimonies highlight their souls’ salvation and demonstrate that they ultimately transcend their domestic roles. This thesis engages historical scholars who discuss the tensions between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and the state in early modern and Victorian England, and literary scholars who focus on Desdemona and Pompilia as either submissive or possessing agency. This thesis includes the work of developmental psychologist, Carol Gilligan, to show how Desdemona and Pompilia emphasize care …
Ambassador Between Two Nations: Shakespeare In American Ideology, Nicholas Jaroma
Ambassador Between Two Nations: Shakespeare In American Ideology, Nicholas Jaroma
Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview
The purpose of this thesis was to examine William Shakespeare’s role in American ideology. Utilizing the theoretical approaches of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, adaptation and appropriation theories, and Critical Race Theory, I argue that Shakespeare is an integral part of American history and culture by how his works factor into American ideologies, particularly within ideologies focusing on race and colonialism. Specific plays and Shakespeare’s texts are analyzed, and I also follow the literary history of Americans in response to these plays. My first chapter looks at the Revolutionary and early republic eras, with particular focus on John Adams, his son …
The Meaning In The Music: Music And The Prose Of Chopin, Joyce, Baldwin And Egan, Colin Perry
The Meaning In The Music: Music And The Prose Of Chopin, Joyce, Baldwin And Egan, Colin Perry
Senior Theses
Kate Chopin, James Joyce, James Baldwin, and Jennifer Egan are collectively gifted in the art of prose, yet each author also experiments with music in their literary works. An analysis of Chopin's The Awakening, Joyce's "The Dead," Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad reveals a trend of authors utilizing music to enrich their texts and convey major themes.
Cultivating A New Educator: Teacher And Students Sharing Growth, Megan Campbell
Cultivating A New Educator: Teacher And Students Sharing Growth, Megan Campbell
Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects
This is Megan Campell-Looney's final portfolio for her M.A. in English (with a specialization in teaching). It includes a reflective narrative and four revised pieces: "A Murderous Moral Tale: Depictions of the Ideal Victorian in Wilkie Collins' Jezebel's Daughter," "Critical Thinking and Counseling Through the Power of Literature," Developing an American Identity: Syllabus and Assignment Plan," and "Evolving and Adapting Rhetoric and Theory: Indigenous Theory Writing Back." The portfolio focuses on research and study that developed Looney's classroom pedagogy and philosophy. Students and educators both must write back to gain the agency needed for growth.
You Can Go Home Again: The Misunderstood Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder, Monica M. Krason
You Can Go Home Again: The Misunderstood Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder, Monica M. Krason
ETD Archive
Critics have frequently commented on the nostalgic tone of Brideshead Revisited. Their assessment has been largely negative, with most considering Brideshead too sentimental about England’s aristocratic past. This current characterization fails to recognize Waugh’s critiques of such thinking in Brideshead, wherein he upends the nostalgic tropes of popular Oxford novels, illustrates the dangers of both insulated upper class living and thoughtless presentism through his depictions of various characters, and proposes a greater metaphysical drama through memory is at play in the novel. Brideshead offers nostalgia as an enlivening force which allows Charles Ryder to maintain a vibrant understanding for who …
"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez
"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez
CMC Senior Theses
During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …
Where Literature And Philosophy Meet And Diverge, Clare C. Hagan
Where Literature And Philosophy Meet And Diverge, Clare C. Hagan
Undergraduate Theses
Many writers and philosophers have asked “What is art?” or “What is philosophy?” but it is difficult to encounter a text where these questions are set beside each other. Many works of philosophy appear very literary in form and content, just as there are many literary works that are very philosophical in nature. This essay examines the intersection of literature and philosophy, using Kant’s Critique of Judgement as a way into analyzing Plato’s Phaedo, as an example of literary philosophy; and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as an example of philosophical literature. The first section deals with literature and philosophy as texts, looking …
Novel Buildings: Architectural And Narrative Form In Victorian Fiction, Ashley R. Nadeau
Novel Buildings: Architectural And Narrative Form In Victorian Fiction, Ashley R. Nadeau
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation, “Novel Buildings: Architectural and Narrative Form in Victorian Fiction,” offers an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between the economic and social histories of built space and the Victorian literary imagination. At its most fundamental level, it claims that the spaces we inhabit shape the stories we tell. Reading Victorian literature through the architectural archive of the period, it argues that the nineteenth century’s rapidly evolving built environment resulted in a new set of narrative possibilities and laid the foundations for authorial innovations in genre, style, and form. Organized taxonomically around four architectural types reinvented in the nineteenth century—courthouses, …
I Hate It, But I Can't Stop: The Romanticization Of Intimate Partner Abuse In Young Adult Retellings Of Wuthering Heights, Brianna R. Zgodinski
I Hate It, But I Can't Stop: The Romanticization Of Intimate Partner Abuse In Young Adult Retellings Of Wuthering Heights, Brianna R. Zgodinski
ETD Archive
In recent years, there has been a trend in young adult adaptations of Wuthering Heights to amend the plot so that Catherine Earnshaw chooses to have a romantic relationship with Heathcliff, when in Bronte’s novel she decides against it. In the following study, I trace the factors that contribute to Catherine’s rejection of Heathcliff as a romantic partner in the original text. Many critics have argued that her motives are primarily Machiavellian since she chooses a suitor with more wealth and familial connections than Heathcliff. These are indeed factors; however, by engaging with contemporary research on adolescent development, I show …
"The Sudden Thrill Of That Change": Framing George Eliot's Social Vision, Cyrus Seaberry Frost
"The Sudden Thrill Of That Change": Framing George Eliot's Social Vision, Cyrus Seaberry Frost
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Although scholarly commentary of the last decade has engaged more intensively than ever with the content of George Eliot's ideas concerning nineteenth-century British culture, the devices and techniques Eliot employs in the transmission of those ideas remain less explored. Consequently, room exists for a study as attentive to the formal characteristics of Eliot's messages as recent scholars have been to the content of those messages. This dissertation seeks to elucidate the ways in which specific formal techniques that characterize Eliot's fictional work evince her engagement with the thinking of social theorists, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach. The project contends that Eliot internalizes …
Sketches, Impressions And Confessions: Literature As Experiment In The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Ragsdale Lallier
Sketches, Impressions And Confessions: Literature As Experiment In The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Ragsdale Lallier
Doctoral Dissertations
In this dissertation, I argue for the existence and critical relevance of a program of experimental literature in the long nineteenth century, developed in the aesthetics of German Romanticism and adapted in a set of texts by Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. My introduction positions this argument in context of larger debates concerning form, theory and literary capacity, provides points of connection between these authors, and outlines the most prominent features of experimental literature. In the first chapter, I present an unorthodox reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, accompanied by a brief account of the literary-critical …
Blind But Seeing: Post-Clinical Medicine In Jose Saramago's Blindness, Matthew J. Ftacek
Blind But Seeing: Post-Clinical Medicine In Jose Saramago's Blindness, Matthew J. Ftacek
All NMU Master's Theses
This project examines José Saramago’s Blindness (1996) in the context of two other narratives focused on plagues and epidemics – Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) – each written at different points in time during the development of clinical medicine as chronicled by Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic. The paper draws heavily upon Foucault’s work on clinical medicine, as well as a number of different theories of medical history, government policy, and cultural attitudes towards health and illness. The goal of the project is twofold: first, to examine how …
The Search For Authentic Travel In Early Twentieth-Century British Magazines, Christina Bertrand Firebaugh
The Search For Authentic Travel In Early Twentieth-Century British Magazines, Christina Bertrand Firebaugh
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Edwardian travel writing between roughly 1905 and 1914 serves as a bridge between the closing of the long Victorian period, the beginnings of modernism, and the changes to come in the twentieth century. The search for authentic experience characterizes travel writing in the Edwardian era. Significant cultural, technological, and social changes caused Edwardians to examine their perceptions about possibilities for authentic engagement with other places and people in their travels. As a result, Edwardian travel writers explore various methods by which to engage authentically with other cultures. Drawing on literary theory, anthropology, and cultural studies, this dissertation examines a number …
Intersectionality In Jane Eyre And Its Adaptations, Laurel Loh
Intersectionality In Jane Eyre And Its Adaptations, Laurel Loh
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
During the almost 170 years since Jane Eyre was published, there have been numerous adaptations in many different mediums and genres, such as plays, films, musicals, graphic novels, spin-off novels, and parodies. The novel has been read in many different critical traditions: liberal humanist, historicist, feminist, and postcolonial approaches dealing with topics such as the problem of female authorship and consciousness. In addition, it has been read in terms of an ideological struggle based on race, class, and gender; xenophobia and imperialism; female labor politics; and genre issues, to just name a few. As literary critics have explored numerous themes …
The Wisdom In Folly: An Examination Of William Shakespeare's Fools In Twelfth Night And King Lear, Siri M. Brudevold
The Wisdom In Folly: An Examination Of William Shakespeare's Fools In Twelfth Night And King Lear, Siri M. Brudevold
Scripps Senior Theses
This thesis explores the complexities to be found in the characters of Lear's Fool from King Lear and Feste from Twelfth Night. It begins with an investigation of the history behind the taxonomy of fools that William Shakespeare created in his works. The rest of the thesis is devoted to examining the many facets of the two aforementioned fools, with the goal of discovering just how important and influential they are to their respective plots and to the world of literature. Finally, there is a brief coda that explores the other striking similarities that the two plays have in …
Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow
Honors Theses
How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.