Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
"I Unsex'd My Dress": Lord Byron's Seduction Of Gender In "The Corsair", "Lara", And "Don Juan", Alexis Spiceland Lee
"I Unsex'd My Dress": Lord Byron's Seduction Of Gender In "The Corsair", "Lara", And "Don Juan", Alexis Spiceland Lee
Dissertations
The goal of this project is to posit a theory of how Byron’s texts, specifically through the development of his hero, construct gender and sexuality as styles of seduction that resist easy classification by binary systems. I propose that Byron’s works characterize gender through ironic performances of seduction that, because they reveal that binary structures lack a stable core, dissolve systemic differentiation and thus fatally complicate any attempt to force the individual into rigid categories of gender or sexual identity. Byron’s works deploy seduction as a tactic of ironic representation of both gender and sexual practice that is necessarily multiplicitous …
Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers
Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers
Theses and Dissertations
The paper examines Othello as metapoetry. Throughout the play, key points of comparison between Iago and Shakespeare's methodologies for employing allegory, symbolism, and mimetic plot and character construction shed light upon Shakespeare's self-reflexive use of poetry as an art of imitation. More specifically, the contrast between Shakespeare and Iago's poetry delineates between dynamic and reductive uses of allegory, emphasizes an Aristotelian model of mimesis that makes reason integral to plot and character formation, and underscores an ethical function to poetry generally. In consequence of the division between Iago and Shakespeare as unethical and ethical poets respectively, critical contention concerning the …
Un-Fairytales: Realism And Black Feminist Rhetoric In The Works Of Jessie Fauset, Danielle L. Tillman
Un-Fairytales: Realism And Black Feminist Rhetoric In The Works Of Jessie Fauset, Danielle L. Tillman
English Theses
I am baffled each time someone asks me, “Who is Jessie Fauset?” As I delved into critical work written on Fauset, I found her critics dismissed her work because they read them as bad fairytales that showcase the lives of middle-class Blacks. I respectfully disagree. It is true that her novels concentrate on the Black middle-class; they also focus on the realities of Black women, at a time when they were branching out of their homes and starting careers, not out of financial necessity but arising from their desire for working. They establish the start of what Patricia Hill Collins …
String Theory, Rachel A. Baird
String Theory, Rachel A. Baird
ETD Archive
DEE struggles to uphold her political ideals in the face of her very proper mother, THERESA, and her long-time, over-achieving friend, LEENA. She makes stands that shock and antagonize both women, including becoming a case worker for bad neighborhoods, and having lesbian romantic relationships rather than heterosexual ones. Her friend GABRIEL, a cynical gay man, is her one ally in these choices. When DEE falls in love with a man, however, these relationships are inverted, and GABRIEL feels betrayed by her cavalier attitude towards sexual orientation. GABRIEL stops speaking to DEE, and DEE and ALLEN get married. When ALLEN dies, …