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Literature in English, British Isles
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
- Keyword
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- Gothic (3)
- Women (3)
- Biopolitics (2)
- Fiction (2)
- Gender (2)
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- Literature (2)
- Modernism (2)
- Ottoman Empire (2)
- Shakespeare (2)
- Victorian (2)
- A Christian Turn'd Turk (1)
- Affect (1)
- Alizia (1)
- Apostata (1)
- Arabian Nights (1)
- Authorship (1)
- Ballads (1)
- Barbary (1)
- Bernadette Andrea (1)
- Biography (1)
- Body (1)
- British (1)
- Broadside (1)
- Bronte (1)
- Brooks (1)
- Capital (1)
- Captive women (1)
- Captivity Narratives (1)
- Celebrity (1)
- Character (1)
Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Transcorporeal Habitus: Adapting Sociological Embodiment To The Self-Conscious Anthropocene, Trevor Bleick
Transcorporeal Habitus: Adapting Sociological Embodiment To The Self-Conscious Anthropocene, Trevor Bleick
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The knowledge that humans have become a geological force necessitates a reimagining of what it means to be human. This thesis explores the ways in which bodies (both human and nonhuman) are represented within the self-conscious Anthropocene. This tripartite analysis, synthesized in the term ‘transcorporeal habitus,’ presents a framework through which we can better understand the ways bodies are entangled within a greater ecosystem. By drawing on the works of scholars in the fields of sociology, ecocriticism, and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) this thesis provides the groundwork for reimaging humanness in a period of immense change. Pierre Bourdieu and Stacy …
The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer
The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Biographers of George Eliot, when writing about her childhood, have focused on her close and complicated relationships with two of the most important men in her life, her father Robert Evans and brother Isaac Evans. Less discussed are Eliot’s relationships with her immediate female family members, her mother Christiana Pearson Evans and her sister Christiana (Chrissey) Evans Clarke. This thesis reviews the predominant interpretations of Eliot’s relations with her father and brother. It also pulls together the known information about Christiana and Chrissey from several major biographies and adds new insights from Eliot's letters in combination with two of her …
The Ungovernable Novel: Towards A New Political Imaginary, Joseph Turner
The Ungovernable Novel: Towards A New Political Imaginary, Joseph Turner
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The primary objective of my thesis is to provide an initial definition of what we could call the “ungovernable novel.” I borrow the concept of the “ungovernable” from the field of political theory, and I apply it to the theory of the novel by way of an engagement of Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Georg Lukács’ theories of the novel. Building on this theoretical foundation, I argue that our contemporary political imagination has reached a historical juncture: we must abandon the dystopian framework that we have inherited from the Cold War, and we must move in the direction of the ungovernable novel. …
From Erotic Conquest To The Ravishing Other: Imperial Intercourse In Shakespeare's Drama And Anglo-Spanish Rivalry, Eder Jaramillo
From Erotic Conquest To The Ravishing Other: Imperial Intercourse In Shakespeare's Drama And Anglo-Spanish Rivalry, Eder Jaramillo
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This dissertation examines how shifts in Anglo-Spanish relations from attraction to fear fashioned early modern cross-cultural encounters in imperialist terms. In discussion with recent inter-imperial studies of Mediterranean rivalries, I argue that as Anglo-Spanish relations engaged in what I refer to as imperial intercourse, one country’s expansionist ambitions become a double-edged sword, namely as said country is subsequently haunted by the threat of invasion from other rivals. This dissertation focuses on dramatic and colonialist texts representing the threat of invasion in the trope of the ravishing Other—a term with a play on words that illustrates the shift in …
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
“Aspects of Character” uses quantitative evidence to trace new timelines in the literary history of characterization. The guiding premise of this work is that digital libraries and mathematical perspectives can shed new light on the practices used to configure fictional people. Using texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, this dissertation analyzes how different aspects of characters have transformed throughout history, coordinating quantitative experiments with the critical perspectives of literary scholars. This project begins by analyzing the characterization used in works of fiction that were reviewed by prestigious publications. This first experiment pushes back on a historical truism about “well-crafted” …
The Meaning Of Peace: William Faulkner, Modernism, And Perpetual Civil War, Jason Luke Folk
The Meaning Of Peace: William Faulkner, Modernism, And Perpetual Civil War, Jason Luke Folk
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Much of scholarship regarding the presence of war in literary modernism has foregrounded psychic trauma endured by veterans of World War I. The returning soldier is often figured as representative of the war’s infiltration of the homefront. The common argument claims that the erosion of the distinction between war and peace (as well as private and public) is a mirror image of the veteran’s wounded psyche. This thesis, however, argues that peace and war in the West have always been indistinct. The body politic is, in actuality, constituted by a perpetual civil war. Furthermore, the novels of William Faulkner, because …
"You Have Witchcraft In Your Lips": Sensory Witchcraft In Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra And Macbeth, Hannah Kanninen
"You Have Witchcraft In Your Lips": Sensory Witchcraft In Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra And Macbeth, Hannah Kanninen
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Scholarship on witches and witchcraft within Shakespeare’s plays has been a popular subject for many scholars. But one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters has not yet been integrated into this scholarship: Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra. Although scholars have often noted her “witchiness,” none have argued for an interpretation of Cleopatra as a witch. This is because traditional definitions of witchcraft have not been able to include Cleopatra. In comparison, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth has often been cited as the fourth witch in the play. But this interpretation relies upon examining Lady Macbeth’s perceived masculinity, which subsequently also makes her …
Jerusalem’S Song: William Blake As Forerunner To Jung’S Feminist Psychology, Trudy D. Eblen
Jerusalem’S Song: William Blake As Forerunner To Jung’S Feminist Psychology, Trudy D. Eblen
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
William Blake's final epic poem, The Song of Jerusalem, consists of two textual narratives: the verbal (let me call it the conscious state) and the visual (the unconscious). I primarily focus on the visual, where the eponymous heroine psychically matures along the trajectory of a Jungian process of individuation (somewhat similar to the ancient universal initiation rite of maturation, as most famously described by Joseph Campbell). Preceding in Blake's corpus is a succession of his other female poetic characters, who represent various stages of successful and failed individuation—Thel, Lyca, Oothoon, and Ahania; these culminate in Jerusalem, Blake’s apotheotic female. …
Science, Poetry, And Defining Life In The Romantic Era: “Life! What Is Life?”, Michelle E. Trantham
Science, Poetry, And Defining Life In The Romantic Era: “Life! What Is Life?”, Michelle E. Trantham
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
What defines humanity? Is it the soul? The body? In the early nineteenth century, these questions were not purely philosophical. Science, religion, politics, and literature were changing rapidly, and the question of “What is Life?” was central to the public and private pursuit of knowledge. One way to track the evolution of the question through the Romantic period is to look at the work of Dr. John Hunter, the originator of ‘vitalism’, which was the subject in the infamous the Lawrence-Abernethy debates. The question of life, and the nature of life, permeated the literary, scientific, and cultural spheres, influencing Romanticism …
Deforming Normalcy: Deformity And Disability In William Blake's Art, Seolha Lee
Deforming Normalcy: Deformity And Disability In William Blake's Art, Seolha Lee
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines William Blake’s verbal and visual art from the perspective that disability is a physical and mental condition that is viewed by society as deviant. Prior to modern conceptions of disability in Britain, the deviation was labeled as “deformity.” This thesis demonstrates various ways in which Blake illustrates deformity, and through this, prefigures the modern sense of disability in his art. I argue that Blake’s representation of deformity in his poetry and drawings is intended to reveal the precariousness of the “normal” human body and inform the reader and viewer that normality is an illusion. The age of …
Reading Charlotte Bronte Reading, Madhumita Gupta
Reading Charlotte Bronte Reading, Madhumita Gupta
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This essay considers the significance of undirected childhood reading on an author’s mind and the reason some authors reference specific real books in their fiction. I argue that independent reading (as against schooling or formal education), and the direct and indirect references to certain books in Jane Eyre[1] were deliberate, well-thought-out inclusions for specific purposes at different points in the story. When a title pointedly says Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, it is probable that a significant part of the author’s life has seeped into her creation which makes it essential to consider the relevant parts of her life to …
A City Room Of One's Own: Elizabeth Jordan, Henry James, And The New Woman Journalist, James Hunter Plummer
A City Room Of One's Own: Elizabeth Jordan, Henry James, And The New Woman Journalist, James Hunter Plummer
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis considers the portrayal of the female journalist in the works of Elizabeth Jordan and Henry James. In 1898, Jordan, a journalist and editor herself, published Tales of the City Room, a collection of interconnected short stories that depict a close and supportive community of female journalists. It is, overall, a positive portrayal of female journalists by a female journalist. James, on the other hand, uses the female journalists in The Portrait of a Lady, “Flickerbridge,” and “The Papers” to show his discomfort toward New Journalism and the New Woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These …
“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham
“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines the complexities of civilian identity and the crisis of gender in twentieth century fiction produced after World War I. Of central concern are four novels written by prominent women authors, novels that deal with themes of trauma, violence, and shifting gender roles in a post-war society: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s Room. Although these novels do not directly portray the battlefield experiences of war, I argue that, at their core, they are “war novels” in the fullest sense, concerned with the …
Adding To Blake Set To Music: A Bibliography, Ashanka Kumari
Adding To Blake Set To Music: A Bibliography, Ashanka Kumari
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
William Blake, like other Romantic-era poets, was inspired by and wrote about the world around him. The hundreds of poems he wrote later inspired other genres such as music. In 1990 the University of California Press published Blake Set to Music: A Bibliography of Musical Settings of the Poems and Prose of William Blake written by Donald Fitch. This bibliography lists 1,412 pieces up to 1988. The following bibliography consists of pieces of music written after Fitch’s bibliography was published or, in a few cases, a composition written before Fitch’s bibliography was published, but not mentioned in that bibliography. This …
Hardy, Darwin, And The Art Of Moral Husbandry, Owen Roberts-Day
Hardy, Darwin, And The Art Of Moral Husbandry, Owen Roberts-Day
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This study of the influence of Charles Darwin on Thomas Hardy's tragic novels centers on two key concepts in the work of Darwin. The first is Darwin's narrative of the evolution of morality, which describes moral decisions as a struggle for survival between various instincts, habits, and customs, both within the individual and within society as a whole. Of particular importance is the role of reason and sympathy in overcoming base and selfish instincts. The second is the idea, introduced in Origin, that the work of scientific breeders represents an act of Conscious Selection, a separate form of evolution …
Illuminating The Darkness: The Naturalistic Evolution Of Gothicism In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel And Visual Art, Cameron Dodworth
Illuminating The Darkness: The Naturalistic Evolution Of Gothicism In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel And Visual Art, Cameron Dodworth
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The British Gothic novel reached a level of very high popularity in the literary market of the late 1700s and the first two decades of the 1800s, but after that point in time the popularity of these types of publications dipped significantly. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the British Gothic novel rebounded in popularity, though not to the level of the early 1800s. This dissertation seeks to address why the publication of truly Gothic novels in Britain decreased during the middle of the century, only to increase once again at the fin de siècle. What this …
Beyond The Looking-Glass: The Intensity Of The Gothic Dream In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Anne N. Nagel
Beyond The Looking-Glass: The Intensity Of The Gothic Dream In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Anne N. Nagel
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The dream is a contested space in terms of allegory and affect, the non-conscious intensity associated with feelings and emotions. Readers tend to express disappointment when a narrative turns out to be “just a dream,” yet the dream is uniquely capable of evoking powerful affective intensity. Yet most scholarship approaches the literary dream through representational interpretation, which not only overlooks the intensity of affect, but dampens it. The dreamer cannot interpret the dream while engrossed in dreaming. By taking into consideration the perspective of the dreamer, this thesis moves beyond the reflective lens of symbolic interpretation to explore the intensity …
“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman
“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …
Symbolic Capital And The Performativity Of Authorship: The Construction And Commodification Of The Nineteenth-Century Authorial Celebrity, Whitney Helms
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Victorian and Antebellum writers were the first literary figures to construct and perform their authorship within the sphere of celebrity. Unlike their Romantic predecessors who endured fame as an unexpected consequence of their popularity, the Victorians and their contemporaries understood celebrity as a condition of authorship. This dissertation takes as its subject the origins and development of symbolic power for authors as it was expressed in the trappings of celebrity and mass culture and argues that authorship became no longer strictly a profession of writing, but rather a performative endeavor that could be presented through diverse commercial markets. Investigating the …
Monstrosity, Karen N. Wohlgemuth
Monstrosity, Karen N. Wohlgemuth
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The Early Gothic Period of English Literature was widely scrutinized for its sensationalism. This thesis explores the value of the genre by offering an alternative view of the monster typically portrayed. A close textual analysis of The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, and Frankenstein prove that the real monster is society, and more importantly ourselves. While this thesis dissects the innate characteristics of humankind in the novels, the author hopes that the readers will recognize the same themes in contemporary society. As students of the learned world, we all can acknowledge that Gothic fiction can teach us more …
“The Grin Of The Skull Beneath The Skin:” Reassessing The Power Of Comic Characters In Gothic Literature, Amanda D. Drake
“The Grin Of The Skull Beneath The Skin:” Reassessing The Power Of Comic Characters In Gothic Literature, Amanda D. Drake
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Neither representative of aesthetic flaws or mere comic relief, comic characters within Gothic narratives challenge and redefine the genre in ways that open up, rather than confuse, critical avenues. Comic characters in the Gothic texts of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Clara Reeve establish the comic as a serious and legitimate part of the Gothic aesthetic. Comic characters continue to appear in all forms of the Gothic, including its parodies, well into the nineteenth-century, suggesting that these characters endure as necessary and vital elements within the evolving Gothic genre. As the genre evolves, the characters evolve as well, progressing from …
Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly
Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …
Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson Mr.
Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson Mr.
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
My thesis will closely examine recent trends in criticism of "The Waste Land," namely the ideological rebuttal against the New Critics proposed by recent historicists such as Lawrence Rainey. I will show that Rainey has unfairly characterized the so-called New Critics as supporting a reading of the poem that only sees it for a work of order and unity while in fact they acknowledged many organizational inconsistencies within the text. A central tenet of my thesis will be that ideological characterizations of earlier critics should never substitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. My findings will lead to broader …
Fearing The "Turban'd Turk": Socio-Economic Access To Genre And The "Turks" Of Early Modern English Dramas And Broadside Ballads, Katie S. Sisneros
Fearing The "Turban'd Turk": Socio-Economic Access To Genre And The "Turks" Of Early Modern English Dramas And Broadside Ballads, Katie S. Sisneros
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This thesis explores an important means for the non-noble and non-gentry population of England to read and interpret the figure of the Turk as textually represented: the broadside ballad. Cheap to print and produced on an expansive scale, broadside ballads had access to economic and geographic segments of England beyond the reach of the drama. Aimed at a far more general audience than theater-goers (especially during the Restoration period), broadside ballads provide an alternative literary interpretation of the Turk, one long-neglected in Anglo-Ottoman studies. Current scholarship’s almost-exclusive focus on drama has led to a progress narrative positing an evolution in …
"The Future In The Instant": Posthumanism(S) In Early Modern English Drama, Farrah Lehman
"The Future In The Instant": Posthumanism(S) In Early Modern English Drama, Farrah Lehman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This dissertation examines prominent points of intersection between early modern English theatrical practices and posthumanist, post-cybernetic new media theory as a means of interrogating assumptions about “media narratives” (here, the development of dramatic blank verse), proto-Brechtian anti-illusionism, and sensory encounter related to the late sixteenth-and early seventeenth century stage. The arguments presented here in part rely on the work of three present-day critics: Mark B.N. Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Brian Massumi, all of whom explore posthumanist theory while addressing possibilities for posthumanist practices within the humanities. Examining a wide range of texts, including plays and pro-and anti-theater tracts, initially …
The Alchemy Of Art: A Study In The Evolution Of The Creative Mind Of John Keats, G. Brian Sullivan
The Alchemy Of Art: A Study In The Evolution Of The Creative Mind Of John Keats, G. Brian Sullivan
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
From the time John Keats began Endymion (March 1817) until his abandonment of the second version of Hyperion (September 1819), we have thirty vital months comprising a span of development unparalleled in English literature. This dissertation focuses upon the central feature of that development— the evolution of the creative mind of the poet. I do not purpose another factual biography of Keats, but rather an exploration of the internal autobiography of the poet in self-genesis as this evolvement is impressed upon the symbolic structures of his works. In artistic vitality, incisiveness of thought, and individual sublimity, Keats achieved a ripeness …