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"Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be:" Ambiguity In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet And A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hannah Murphy Jan 2024

"Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be:" Ambiguity In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet And A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hannah Murphy

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis is focused on how and why ambiguity/double meanings within the language of Shakespeare plays occurs, and how this can be adapted into a ballet format as there is no verbal component. As well as why this aspect of the plays is so vital to the portrayal of the characters that to remove it would be to severely reduce the impact of the story. It focuses specifically on the plays and ballets of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, with the NYC Ballet versions of both as a reference.


“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont Jan 2023

“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont

Scripps Senior Theses

Virginia Woolf was particularly interested throughout her career in writing about war, ranging from the perspective of a depressed World War I veteran and his wife in Mrs. Dalloway, a dinner party held during an air raid in 1917 in The Years, an argument for the connections between patriarchal society and war in Three Guineas, and a pageant of British history held before World War II in Between the Acts. Woolf specifically writes of war as it impacts spheres away from the battlefield, in a way that is inherently gendered to her experience as a woman …


Virginia Woolf And The Consolations Of Abstraction, Ella Murdock Gardner Jan 2022

Virginia Woolf And The Consolations Of Abstraction, Ella Murdock Gardner

Scripps Senior Theses

Woolf believed that there are “two spheres: the novel; and life,” and her “great difficulty is the usual one—how to adjust the two worlds” (A Writer’s Diary 203, 208). But with this “great difficulty” comes great possibility; by pointing to the separation of these two spheres within and throughout her works, Woolf finds ways to create meaning from this border. Even as Woolf’s novels deal with the tragic restrictions of social conventions, the insurmountable barriers to communication and intimacy, the petty insignificance of human life and death within the context of an uncaring universe, the abstraction of both their …


Intimacy, Unity, And Shared Consciousness In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Meghan Rose Condas Jan 2022

Intimacy, Unity, And Shared Consciousness In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Meghan Rose Condas

Scripps Senior Theses

In the novels of Virginia Woolf, the difficulties of deep intimacy are troubled by the limitations of language and the fear of shame and vulnerability. What can characters express, and do words have the ability to appropriately describe their feelings of love and desire? Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves grapple with the penetrability of the mind and the potential for shared thought between characters. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf utilizes Clarissa and her relationship with men to highlight how eroticism and affection are inhibited by shame. To evade the anxieties of articulating romantic feelings and …


Men Who Conquered & The Women Who Mov'd Them, Nikita Chinamanthur Jan 2022

Men Who Conquered & The Women Who Mov'd Them, Nikita Chinamanthur

Scripps Senior Theses

Considering John Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, this thesis examines how drama shaped popular ideas of the Indian subcontinent in Renaissance England. This thesis engages in a comparative analysis of formal choices such as doubling, tripling, and etymology to assess the efficacy of two incomplete portrayals of South Asia configured as women.


‘I Have Had My Vision:’ Visions And The Escape From Expectations In The House Of Mirth And To The Lighthouse, Madison Yardumian Jan 2021

‘I Have Had My Vision:’ Visions And The Escape From Expectations In The House Of Mirth And To The Lighthouse, Madison Yardumian

Scripps Senior Theses

“I have had my vision,” Lily Briscoe declares in the triumphant culminating line of To the Lighthouse, indicating the fulfillment of her artistic vision on a project over ten years in the making. In her success, Lily Briscoe disproves those who have told her “women can’t write, women can’t paint” and actualizes her ability to create, all the while rejecting gendered and heteronormative expectations which prioritize heterosexual marriage over her artistic pursuits (Woolf, TL 86). Strikingly, this language of vision also recurs throughout The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a text published 22 years after To the Lighthouse, …


‘I Have Had My Vision:’ Visions And The Escape From Expectations In The House Of Mirth And To The Lighthouse, Madison Yardumian Jan 2021

‘I Have Had My Vision:’ Visions And The Escape From Expectations In The House Of Mirth And To The Lighthouse, Madison Yardumian

Scripps Senior Theses

“I have had my vision,” Lily Briscoe declares in the triumphant culminating line of To the Lighthouse, indicating the fulfillment of her artistic vision on a project over ten years in the making. In her success, Lily Briscoe disproves those who have told her “women can’t write, women can’t paint” and actualizes her ability to create, all the while rejecting gendered and heteronormative expectations which prioritize heterosexual marriage over her artistic pursuits (Woolf, TL 86). Strikingly, this language of vision also recurs throughout The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a text published 22 years after To the Lighthouse, …


"The Double Sorwe Of Troilus": Experimentation Of The Chivalric And Tragic Genres In Chaucer And Shakespeare, Rena Patel Jan 2019

"The Double Sorwe Of Troilus": Experimentation Of The Chivalric And Tragic Genres In Chaucer And Shakespeare, Rena Patel

Scripps Senior Theses

The tumulus tale of Troilus and his lover Cressida has left readers intrigued in renditions written by both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare due to their subversive nature of the authors’ chosen generic forms. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde challenges the expectations and limitations of the narrative of the chivalric romance. Shakespeare took the story and turned Troilus and Cressida into one of his famous “problem plays” by challenging his audience’s expectations of the tragic genre. I endeavor to draw attention to the ways in which both Chaucer and Shakespeare use the conventions of the chivalric romance and tragedy to play …


Depictions Of The Western Artist In Colonial South Africa: Turbott Wolfe, Chloe Bazlen Jan 2018

Depictions Of The Western Artist In Colonial South Africa: Turbott Wolfe, Chloe Bazlen

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores what the role of the artist provides to the colonial novel. Using William Plomer's novel Turbott Wolfe, the role of the Western artist in colonial South Africa is examined and critiqued, putting it in conversation with the art theory of Roger Fry and the Primitivism movement. In doing so, it explores themes such as desire, miscegenation, complexity, and carnival, showing that while artists partake in society, they also remain critical of it, responding to it in their artwork.


Post-Wartime Vs. Post-War Time: Temporality And Trauma In Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And The Years, Andrea Conover Jan 2018

Post-Wartime Vs. Post-War Time: Temporality And Trauma In Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And The Years, Andrea Conover

Scripps Senior Theses

In these novels, Woolf demonstrates the ways in which wartime trauma affects post-war life, from the societal trauma of losing an entire generation in Jacob’s Room, to the continuation of wartime beyond the end of the war for traumatized soldiers and anyone whose lives they touch in Mrs. Dalloway, to recovery through the creation of art and family ties in To the Lighthouse, to the question of futurity inherent in wartime trauma in The Years.


The "Great Background" In Hardy And Lawrence, Rochelle H. Kim Jan 2017

The "Great Background" In Hardy And Lawrence, Rochelle H. Kim

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates D.H. Lawrence’s idea of the “great background” in the context of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and how it reappears in a transformed way in Lawrence’s novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Women in Love. Through examining the perverse effects of modernism on these novels’ characters, this thesis argues that the “great background” is something that gradually moves inward––from the old, traditional “State” to an internal, inscrutable yet attainable reality.


Shakespeare And Black Masculinity In Antebellum America: Slave Revolts And Construction Of Revolutionary Blackness, Elisabeth Mayer Jan 2017

Shakespeare And Black Masculinity In Antebellum America: Slave Revolts And Construction Of Revolutionary Blackness, Elisabeth Mayer

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how Shakespeare was used by Antebellum American writers to frame slave revolts as either criminal or revolutionary. By specifically addressing The Confessions of Nat Turner by Thomas R. Gray and "The Heroic Slave" by Frederick Douglass, this paper looks at the way invocations of Shakespeare framed depictions of black violence. At a moment when what it means to be American was questioned, American writers like Gray and Douglass turned to Shakespeare and the British roots of the English language in order to structure their respective arguments. In doing so, these texts illuminate how transatlantic identity still permeated …


The Scholar Magician In English Renaissance Drama, Ashley M. Minnis-Lemley Jan 2016

The Scholar Magician In English Renaissance Drama, Ashley M. Minnis-Lemley

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I will explore the rise and fall of the scholar magician or sorcerer, both as a popular dramatic subject and as an arc for individual characters, and the ways in which these figures tied into contemporary fears about the intersection of religion and developing scientific knowledge.


Queer 'Paradise Lost': Reproduction, Gender, And Sexuality, Emily R. Kolpien Jan 2015

Queer 'Paradise Lost': Reproduction, Gender, And Sexuality, Emily R. Kolpien

Scripps Senior Theses

In the span of this thesis, I investigate the queer nature of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, and argue that in spite of the biblical subject matter it is in fact a text filled with instances of queer transgression. I focus on preexisting feminist critiques of Milton in my introduction in order to ground myself within the academic field, and in order to illustrate how I will be branching out from it. In my first chapter, I discuss the queered nature of the poem’s landscapes, such as Chaos and Hell, and the specifically queer and masculine nature of …


The Germ Theory Of Dystopias: Fears Of Human Nature In 1984 And Brave New World, Clea D. Harris Jan 2015

The Germ Theory Of Dystopias: Fears Of Human Nature In 1984 And Brave New World, Clea D. Harris

Scripps Senior Theses

This project is an exploration of 20th century dystopian literature through the lens of germ theory. This scientific principle, which emerged in the late 19th century, asserts that microorganisms pervade the world; these invisible and omnipresent germs cause specific diseases which are often life threatening. Additionally, germ theory states that vaccines and antiseptics can prevent some of these afflictions and that antibiotics can treat others. This concept of a pervasive, invisible, infection-causing other is not just a biological principle, though; in this paper, I argue that one can interpret it as an ideological framework for understanding human existence …


Love At First Sight? Jane Austen And The Transformative Male Gaze, Rachel S. Grate Jan 2015

Love At First Sight? Jane Austen And The Transformative Male Gaze, Rachel S. Grate

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I claim that the gaze is central to the courtship process in Austen’s novels. I also propose that an analysis of the gaze is crucial to understanding the gendered power dynamics that are central to these relationships. We tend to think of male gazers as having all the power, but one of Austen’s subversive arguments is that women can also be subjects of the gaze and transform through it. However, limits exist to their power. As I will argue, while men are able to simply project their transformative gaze, women must first use their gaze to perceive …


Hamlet #Princeofdenmark: Exploring Gender And Technology Through A Contemporary Feminist Re-Interpretation Of Hamlet, Allegra B. Breedlove Jan 2015

Hamlet #Princeofdenmark: Exploring Gender And Technology Through A Contemporary Feminist Re-Interpretation Of Hamlet, Allegra B. Breedlove

Scripps Senior Theses

Exploring the process of designing, producing, directing and starring in a multimedia feminist re-interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a contemporary social media landscape.


The Wisdom In Folly: An Examination Of William Shakespeare's Fools In Twelfth Night And King Lear, Siri M. Brudevold Jan 2015

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 …


Man Pain In The Man Booker Prize: A Quantitative Approach To Contemporary Canon Formation, Caitlin E. Powell Jan 2014

Man Pain In The Man Booker Prize: A Quantitative Approach To Contemporary Canon Formation, Caitlin E. Powell

Scripps Senior Theses

This project examines the corpus of novels that have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize and, using the prize as a creator of a contemporary literary canon, attempts to develop a model of a contemporary best text. Using the distant reading techniques proposed by digital humanities scholar Franco Moretti to track and graph a variety of formal and structural variables across the corpus of nominees, it becomes apparent that the kind of novel that typically wins the Booker Prize and thus the kind of novel that qualifies as a contemporary best text fits a distinct mold. These novels are …


The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs Apr 2012

The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

In his groundbreaking work of postcolonial theory, Orientalism, Edward Said puts forth the idea that imperial Europe asserted an identity by constructing the character of its colonized subjects. Said writes that his book tries to “show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). The object of this thesis is a related project, for it too is a search for imperial Britain’s surrogate or underground self. Yet rather than positioning this search within the British colonies, this thesis takes as its context a …