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"I Need To Write About What I Believe": Journaling And Afrofuturism In Octavia E. Butler's Parable Of The Sower And Parable Of The Talents, Shlana E. Sims
"I Need To Write About What I Believe": Journaling And Afrofuturism In Octavia E. Butler's Parable Of The Sower And Parable Of The Talents, Shlana E. Sims
ETD Archive
Butler’s choice of using the diary of a young Black girl and of making that Black girl a leader is directly paralleled in real history via diaries, such as The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells. Butler’s use of the journaling technique via a Black woman ties the future to the past as the diaries of these influential Black women are read by later generations giving a glimpse of what dreams, hopes, and goals the women had for the Black Community. She further gives cautionary tales of “if-this-continues to-go-on” as a warning for the community to be on its guard, …
Tracing The Origins Of The Eighteenth-And Nineteenth-Century Rake Character To Depictions Of The Modern Monster, Courtney A. Conrad
Tracing The Origins Of The Eighteenth-And Nineteenth-Century Rake Character To Depictions Of The Modern Monster, Courtney A. Conrad
ETD Archive
While critics and authors alike have deemed the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary rake figure as a “monster” and a “devil,” scholars have rarely drawn the same connections between monsters to rakes. Even as critics have decidedly characterized iconic monsters like Victor Frankenstein and Dracula as rapists or seducers, they oftentimes do not make the distinction that these literary monsters originated from the image of the rake. However, the rake and the monster share overarching characteristics, particularly in the inherent qualities their respective authors attribute to them, which shape the way they treat women and offspring. A side-by-side comparison between the …
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 …
Truth And The Language Of War, Kelly O'Melia
Truth And The Language Of War, Kelly O'Melia
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According to modernist Friedrich Nietzsche in On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, language is a constructed system which fails to represent reality because of its inherent metaphorical nature. Modernist writer Virginia Woolf and postmodernist writer Tim O’Brien implicitly address Nietzsche’s belief as they warn against and represent the horrors of war in the novels Jacob’s Room and The Things They Carried. Nietzsche and Woolf develop new modernist styles, forsaking the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. O’Brien pays homage to high modernism and to Woolf in his novel through direct reference and through the modernist strategies utilized to present the …
First Person Plural: Short Stories, Justin R. Lazor
First Person Plural: Short Stories, Justin R. Lazor
ETD Archive
I decided to title this collection First Person Plural after observing that one of the most prominent motifs common among these stories concerns the instability and multiplicity of identity. Horror is one of the traditions that most influences my writing, particularly the claustrophobic psychological horror of writers like Edgar Allen Poe. I mainly deploy the tropes of horror in an effort to destabilize my characters’ inner and outer realities. Another important influence on my writing has been that brand of fiction which exists within the liminal space between horror and realism, such as Dan Chaon’s collection Stay Awake, Bringing Out …
The Sting In The Green City, Nicole Tsakoumagos
The Sting In The Green City, Nicole Tsakoumagos
ETD Archive
In an irradiated, alternate earth, where a mysterious supernatural phenomenon caused a near-apocalypse, the human race is back on it’s feet. Four major cities dominate the landscape: New Sparta, The Mel, The Nocturn and Oz. In the first installment of “The Sting” series, explore the emerald, Greene Mob run metropolis, Oz. Gun-slinging, Ex-mercenary Kyra `The Sting’ Lee is living quietly in the outer part of the city with her dog, Doogie. The only family she has are the Castellanoses, a Greek four-part ensemble that own Kyra’s favorite greasy spoon diner. Maria Castellanos is Kyra’s best friend and her seemingly unobtainable …
Contradictionary Lies: A Play Not About Kurt Cobain, Katie R. Wallace
Contradictionary Lies: A Play Not About Kurt Cobain, Katie R. Wallace
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Contradictionary Lies: A Play Not About Kurt Cobain is a one-act play that follows failed rocker Jimbo as he deals with aging, his divorce, and disappointment. As he and his estranged wife Kelly divvy up their belongings and ultimately their memories, Jimbo is visited by his guardian angel, the ghost of dead rock star Kurt Cobain. Part dark comedy, part docudrama, this play shows how closely man emulates their heroes, and how in the void of depression, music serves an escape.
“The Deepest Blush”: Bodily States Of Emotions In Jane Austen’S Novels, Nadya Abdelfattah
“The Deepest Blush”: Bodily States Of Emotions In Jane Austen’S Novels, Nadya Abdelfattah
ETD Archive
During the eighteenth-century, philosophers gave primacy to rationality specifying that reason could and should control emotions; they observed a friction between thought and feeling, rational and irrational, emotion and cognition, mind and body, which competed and united in a way that influenced the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century thought and experience on many sides. As an early nineteenth-century novelist, Jane Austen explores the relationship between emotion and cognition. I argue that Austen shows the importance of bodily experience of emotion in moral development. Deploying affect theory will illuminate Austen’s depiction of emotions as a mode of understanding of how the body becomes …
Notes On Survival, Despite, Jason Harris
Notes On Survival, Despite, Jason Harris
ETD Archive
In this collection of poems, the issue of damage-based thinking and desire-based thinking is being examined. It is being examined through the use of several different types of poetry techniques. Within the poems, the past, the present, and the future are examined and asks a larger question: How can we, as people take the daily violence that we encounter and find – and/or work our way to – joy.
Wharton's Library: For Born Readers Only, Christine Primisch
Wharton's Library: For Born Readers Only, Christine Primisch
ETD Archive
Edith Wharton is known for her depictions of the changing New York aristocracy and marriage market in the early twentieth-century. Critics have previously examined Wharton’s views on upper-class New York society and social climbers attempting to insert themselves into that society. What has not been studied as extensively in existing criticism is the way in which the exponential increases in the size of the reading public and the type of literature available at the time Wharton was publishing negatively impacted Wharton’s perception of the lower-class and nouveau riche readers and caused insecurities over her literary legacy. These insecurities influence her …
“Only A Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula As A Tale Of Mad Science And Faustian Redemption, Leah Christiana Davydov
“Only A Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula As A Tale Of Mad Science And Faustian Redemption, Leah Christiana Davydov
ETD Archive
While present Dracula scholarship has made an extensive examination of the ways in which the novel reflects apprehensions about late Victorian scientific advances, little work to date has been done to link these anxieties to fin de siecle fiction involving mad scientists or to Bram Stoker’s lifelong interest in the story of Dr. Faustus. In this work, I argue that the primary menace within Dracula is not actually the threat posed by the novel’s vampires but rather the threat posed by the biologically determined, materialist, and potentially “mad” science practiced by the characters of Dr. John Seward and his patient, …
Male Laguna Cultural Infulence In The Restoration Of Tayo, Peter Lee Parry
Male Laguna Cultural Infulence In The Restoration Of Tayo, Peter Lee Parry
ETD Archive
Scholars have understood Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony as a journey to restoration for her protagonist Tayo. The scholarly discussion focuses predominately on the female side of Silko’s novel. Yet Silko balances between the male and female side of Laguna Cutlture which has not been acknowledged enough by scholars. Silko uses three male characters, Robert, Ku’oosh, and Betonie to guide Tayo back to Laguna Culture, which is feminine. I intend to show importance of Silko’s male characters. Silko also intended to use her male characters to present a line that ranges from the family (Robert) to the community (Ku’oosh) to the …
Writing Through The Lower Frequencies: Interpreting The Unnaming And Naming Process Within Richard Wright's Native Son And Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Sarah M. Lacy
ETD Archive
The search for identity within Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man has long been analyzed, yet the fact that each protagonist’s search for self is brought to a point of crisis during an intimate interaction with a white woman has often been neglected. Here, I analyze each author’s strategic use of a nameless narrator by utilizing the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, arguing that the act of “literary unnaming” is used to critique the development of black American identity during the time of Jim Crow. The use of a nameless narrator is explored through …
"Tale As Old As Time": The "Beauty And The Beast" Narrative As Vehicle For Social Resistance, Monica Williams
"Tale As Old As Time": The "Beauty And The Beast" Narrative As Vehicle For Social Resistance, Monica Williams
ETD Archive
While current criticism has discussed various versions of the “Beauty and the Beast” tale individually, none have traced any particular trends that have emerged within the tale as it has been revised over the centuries. One particular trend began in the eighteenth century, when Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont streamlined the tale from the oral tradition in order to utilize it for the moral education of young French girls. Along with this pedagogical goal, Beaumont also managed to critique Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and the abuse Pamela often suffered at the hands of Mr. B by revising her Beast character to act …
Sympathy, Skepticism And Conversation In Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy And Henry Mackenzie's The Man Of Feeling, Ahoud Turki Al Ghmiz
Sympathy, Skepticism And Conversation In Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy And Henry Mackenzie's The Man Of Feeling, Ahoud Turki Al Ghmiz
ETD Archive
While Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling have received continuous literary attention, few has been done in reading the skeptical and sentimental aspects of the two novels. This thesis glances through “conversation”, a reader-author conversation may be defined as a dialogue with a reader which is mediated by text. Both Sterne and Mackenzie engage in a conversation with readers by making them laugh, question, criticize, sympathize, and reflect on the deeper meaning of the novels. Moreover, this author-reader conversation is impossible without the wide use of conversations in both novels, through which characters convey their emotions and thoughts. Both …
Eldritch Horrors: The Modernist Liminality Of H.P. Lovecraft's Weird Fiction, Dale Allen Crowley
Eldritch Horrors: The Modernist Liminality Of H.P. Lovecraft's Weird Fiction, Dale Allen Crowley
ETD Archive
In the early part of the twentieth century, the Modernist literary movement was moving into what was arguably its peak, and authors we would now unquestioningly consider part of the Western literary canon were creating some of their greatest works. Coinciding with the more mainstream Modernist movement, there emerged a unique sub- genre of fiction on the pages of magazines with titles like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. While modernist writers; including Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, and T.S. Elliot – among others – were achieving acclaim for their works; in …
Feminist Pedagogies In The Creative Writing Classroom: Possibilities And Reflections, Angela Lagrotteria
Feminist Pedagogies In The Creative Writing Classroom: Possibilities And Reflections, Angela Lagrotteria
ETD Archive
As a first-time student in a creative writing course and a long-time instructor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, I see possible paths that instructors in both fields could take in order to integrate creative writing and feminist pedagogy in ways that might increase students’ desire to write and to share their writing while at the same time helping students undertake feminist analyses. In the creative nonfiction writing class I took with Professor Lardner in the fall of 2015, I saw how many students (myself included) were writing about transformative personal experiences, but in this class, we never discussed these …
Shriekers, Jessica Leigh Johnson
Shriekers, Jessica Leigh Johnson
ETD Archive
In every horror sub-genre, there is a fear that the narrative exploits. In ghost stories, the fear is that of the unknown; in alien movies, it is the fear of the other; and in stories involving the undead we are confronted with the nature of living itself. In using creatures that were once human but now act only on instinct, we are forced to examine ourselves. Further, most stories involving zombies are set in a world where society is crumbling or has crumbled, and humans are forced to make difficult decisions, which brings us to question the nature of survival.
Towards A Synthesis: Tracing The Evolution Of Masculinity In The Eighteenth-Century Novel, Anthony Necastro Necastro
Towards A Synthesis: Tracing The Evolution Of Masculinity In The Eighteenth-Century Novel, Anthony Necastro Necastro
ETD Archive
Studies of eighteenth-century British novels are typically centered on the alleged “rise” of the novel; that is, the formation of the novel as a genre distinguished from the epics, dramas, romances, and satires of past centuries. These new novels betray the critical trajectory of masculinity throughout the politically turbulent long British eighteenth century (1688-1815). While critics have studied individual constructions of masculinity within particular novels, or masculinity presented by a single author’s corpus, this paper tracks the various constructions of masculinity and demonstrates the relationship between masculinity and political change. The novel’s century-long “rise” presents the reflection of the English …
The Creation Of Space For Engaged Reading And Creative Interpretation In The Collected Works Of Wallace Stevens, Lauren Cannavino
The Creation Of Space For Engaged Reading And Creative Interpretation In The Collected Works Of Wallace Stevens, Lauren Cannavino
ETD Archive
Wallace Stevens presents a creative space in his poems, opening the role of the reader and inviting active participation. This defies ready interpretation and instead encourages creative reading and interpretive freedom. Wallace Stevens chooses to write from a removed space that allows him to invite the reader in as the original observer. Stevens directly observes and his words, through his stance, create a level of active involvement for the reader. This highlights a focus on nature, nostalgia, removal and his place in between reverie and action. This position builds the body of his poems through much more than simple imagery.
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 …
Cultural Criticisms Within Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Holly Rose Litwin
Cultural Criticisms Within Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Holly Rose Litwin
ETD Archive
To understand fully Thomas Hardy’s cultural criticisms within his 1891 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, one must look simultaneously at the full range of these cultural criticisms. The novel is a scathing condemnation of capitalism, Victorian beliefs about women, church doctrine, the shortcomings of the educational and judicial systems, and the destructive forces that industrialization and mechanization bring to the natural world in rural agrarian England. Within the past twenty years, scholars have explicated this text in ever-more specific, detailed, and narrow areas of focus, often coming up with fascinating and meticulously researched individual topics. However, I believe that …
Fe/Male Mother Of Two: Gender And Motherhood In Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, Amy B. Smialek
Fe/Male Mother Of Two: Gender And Motherhood In Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, Amy B. Smialek
ETD Archive
There are critical reviews regarding Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin that discuss many controversial topics in the novel. Of these reviews, most critics limit their arguments to the taboo topics of American school shootings and Eva’s character as an ostensibly ambivalent mother. Unfortunately, there is little academic criticism on Shriver’s most recognized novel and, among such analyses, two of Shriver’s most crucial depictions are overlooked. Firstly, readers must acknowledge the impact that contemporary American society has on females and mothers. This novel shows how much a culture relies on societal “rules” that govern human expectations. Secondly, Shriver’s …
Secret History In Contemporary America: Re-Reading All The King's Men And Primary Colors, Megan Nicole Petraska
Secret History In Contemporary America: Re-Reading All The King's Men And Primary Colors, Megan Nicole Petraska
ETD Archive
There exists a little known connection between the seventeenth-century genre of secret history and contemporary political novels. Secret histories such as Procopius’ The Secret History of the Court of Justinian, Sebastien Bremond’s Hattige or the Amours of the King of Tamaran, and Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister have in common three defining structural characteristics of the genre: active narrators, narrative layers, and unusual character names. Two contemporary texts which have long resisted categorizing, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and Joe Klein’s Primary Colors, also contain these characteristics. Re-reading these texts …
Six Stories, James Silver
Six Stories, James Silver
ETD Archive
The six stories contained in this thesis were created during my graduate studies at Cleveland State University. All six stories resulted from different class writing prompts, and each exercise encouraged a new idea that was then work shopped and revised. Still, there is a common thread running through these stories: the writer. My interest in communicating and entertaining has always been present and well nurtured. I have had the good fortune to be in constant contact with that inner voice, both professionally and personally. These six stories represent a brief hesitation in sixty years of accumulated feelings, insights and beliefs. …
The Discourse Of Female Mental Illness In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Elise M. Collman
The Discourse Of Female Mental Illness In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Elise M. Collman
ETD Archive
This study addresses the consequences that befell Edna Pontellier for seeking an identity apart and outside of the roles of wife and mother. In particular, it focuses on the correlation made by the male characters in the novel between rejecting motherhood and marriage and perceived mental illness. Edna’s onset of contradictory behavior causes Leonce and Dr. Mandelet to hypothesize the cause of her new behavior. In an attempt to understand and cure Edna, they take a diagnostic approach towards her awakening. Their misunderstanding of her awakening reveals the misinformed societal dogma that linked women’s desire for autonomy to mental instability. …
The Black Death And Giovanni Bocaccio's The Decameron's Portrayal Of Merchant Mentality, Rachel D. Rickel
The Black Death And Giovanni Bocaccio's The Decameron's Portrayal Of Merchant Mentality, Rachel D. Rickel
ETD Archive
Giovanni Boccaccio was a contemporary witness to the effects of the Black Death pandemic, the Yersinia pestis bacterial pandemic in Europe between the years 1346-53, causing 75 million to 200 million deaths across the continent alone. In The Decameron, Boccaccio depicts the outbreak’s high-mortality rates and how that was a catalyst for many social and cultural changes within fourteenth-century Europe. He also goes on to portray the devastating effects of death on, not only the physical bodies of people and animals, but also on their mental, emotional, and spiritual states, and how this accelerated their acceptance of the rising …
Contextualizing Chester Himes's Trajectory Of Violence Within The Harlem Detective Cycle, Bailey A. Capelle
Contextualizing Chester Himes's Trajectory Of Violence Within The Harlem Detective Cycle, Bailey A. Capelle
ETD Archive
Long Civil Rights Movement scholars have begun to reconstruct a more accurate representation of the literary left, filling in the gap in scholarship that previously existed between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. With the aid of the backdrop set up by the "Long Movement" scholars, this study aims to add to the understanding of those authors who lives and works have yet to be fully explored because of the ramifications of the McCarthy era. This discussion focuses on Chester Himes, for his work is as influential as both Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison's, yet Himes has only …
The Liquid Nature Of Self In Maxine Kingston's Autobiographical Story The Woman Warrior, Evelyn Jablonski
The Liquid Nature Of Self In Maxine Kingston's Autobiographical Story The Woman Warrior, Evelyn Jablonski
ETD Archive
This work examines the notion of self in the autobiographical narrative of Maxine Hong Kingston. Self-writing is constructing a discursive body, and Kingston presents the reader with a unique articulation of her identity. Conventional autobiographical narratives tend to define a self as an opposition to the other. In such texts the literary discourse is intended to secure the integrity of the self. This image of the self can be called conventional. While the conventional narrative self claims to demonstrate developmental stages of an individual that acquires his or her maturity by the end of the quest, the constantly changing self …
Making Waves: Bacon, Manley, And The Shifting Rhetorics Of Opulent At(A)Lantis, Alex Cahill Nielsen
Making Waves: Bacon, Manley, And The Shifting Rhetorics Of Opulent At(A)Lantis, Alex Cahill Nielsen
ETD Archive
In the modern critical environment, there has been a renewed interest in the role that proto-feminist and feminist satires have played in the development of cultural commentary and the modern novel. Lesser-studied works have seen several new approaches applied by critics such as Rachel Carnell, Rebecca Bullard, and Ruth Herman, who have focused on the role of the genre of "secret history" in the popular growth of the novel as a form for political dissent. Secret history, which can offer revelatory glimpses into the contemporary scandals and governance of the female authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a …