Arts and Humanities Commons^™

An Implacable Force: Caryl Churchill And The “Theater Of Cruelty”, Kerri Ann Considine

Masters Theses

Churchill’s plays incorporate intensity, complexity, and imagination to create a theatrical landscape that is rich in danger and possibility. Examining her plays through the theoretical lens of Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty” allows an open investigation into the way that violence, transgression, and theatricality function in her work to create powerful and thought-provoking pieces of theatre. By creating her own contemporary “theater of cruelty,” Churchill creates plays that actively and violently transgress physical, social, and political boundaries.

This paper examines three of Churchill’s plays spanning over thirty years of her career to investigate the different ways Churchill has used concepts …

Uncelebrated Stylists: Wyndham Lewis, Ford Madox Ford, And The Artist As Masochist, Chase Morgan Erwin

Masters Theses

This study presents an attempt to understand the political and aesthetic relationship between two of Modernism’s most enigmatic authors, Wyndham Lewis and Ford Madox Ford by examining their novelistic practice in light of their writings on politics and social criticism. A close look at the use of ironic distance, a hallmark feature in our understanding of modernist fiction, in Tarr (1918) and The Good Soldier (1915) reveals both authors conscious effort to distance themselves from their novel’s subjects, Fredric Tarr and John Dowell respectively. In light of both novels’ satirical element, a scathing attack on bourgeois narcissism caused by the …

Toward A Material History Of Epic Poetry, John Paul Hampstead

Masters Theses

Literary histories of specific genres like tragedy or epic typically concern themselves with influence and deviation, tradition and innovation, the genealogical links between authors and the forms they make. Renaissance scholarship is particularly suited to these accounts of generic evolution; we read of the afterlife of Senecan tragedy in English drama, or of the respective influence of Virgil and Lucan on Renaissance epic. My study of epic poetry differs, though: by insisting on the primacy of material conditions, social organization and especially information technology to the production of literature, I present a discontinuous series of set pieces in which any …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

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: …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 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 …

Expectations As Character Development In Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, Kevin Gorham

Masters Theses

The Clerk of Oxenford in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is often maligned for lacking development as a literary character. Frequently, the Clerk has been dismissed as a stereotype or an ideal rather than a multi-dimensional character. The Clerk's character, much like the meaning of his tale, is concealed from the reader and veiled behind expectations.

Chaucer manipulates readers by exploiting expectations associated with fourteenth century clerks. These expectations derive from historical and literary stereotypes which constitute the General Prologue portrait of the Clerk. Because Chaucer's description of the Clerk is populated with stereotypes, the reader expects the Clerk to tell a …

Imagination And Intuition In The Narrative Of Charlotte Brontë, Norma Henning

Masters Theses

In this paper, I will examine the four novels of Charlotte Brontë: The Professor, Jane Eyre Shirley and Villette. I will examine the reason/passion conflict within the characters of William Crimsworth, Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone and Lucy Snowe. I will show that there exists a basic duality within each of these characters: the pull of duty and the desire to escape into passion and the imagination. Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe resolve the conflict by recognizing the divided nature of their souls and emerge as complete and whole individuals. William Crimsworth and Caroline Helstone refuse to acknowledge the …

Rhetoric In Fiction: A Fantasy-Theme Analysis Of Conrad’S Heart Of Darkness, Thomas S. Caldwell

Masters Theses

This study meets three primary objectives.

First, it demonstrates how rhetorical theory and Iiterary criticism are compatible fields of study and explains how Ernest Bormann's rhetorical theory based on "fantasy-theme analysis" can be used as an appropriate method for the analysis of literary works.

Secondly, this study identifies a trend in late Nineteenth Century "adventure stories" in which travel to foreign lands and European influence on the cultures of those lands is portrayed as "good" and "philanthropic."

Finally, this study concludes with a fantasy-theme analysis of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which reveals that Conrad's adventure fiction breaks away from …

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 …

Inside Or Outside The Whale: George Orwell's Art And Polemic, Richard H. Walker

Masters Theses

This chronological study of the evolution of the works of George Orwell is helpful for the futurist, the citizen awash in groupthink, scholars of standpoint epistemology, of mind and nature, of radical humanism, and others. A former British officer and Spanish revolutionary, he became a Democratic Socialist who believed in intellectual freedom above all and was a champion of the common man. Described as the leading exemplar of the public intellectual, he focused on activism vs passivism (and pacifism), and transforming art and politics into cultural power with mind and nature as the foundation. Like few others, he understood cultural …