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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Hero's Mother, Rosalyn Joy Ribeira
The Hero's Mother, Rosalyn Joy Ribeira
Theses and Dissertations
Sixteen-year-old Drea Grimm’s mother walked out of their family home at midnight seven years ago. All she left behind were notebooks full of made up stories and a family that Drea, being the oldest, was now in charge of. One day, Drea finds a mysterious letter with her name on it written in her mother’s handwriting and everything she thought was true is destroyed. With the help of her partner on a school project, Ian, Drea uses her mom’s stories and clues from her last moments to heal her family and maybe bring her mother home. But there is someone …
At Second Glance: Retroactive Continuity In Junot Díaz’S The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Stephen Clancy Clawson
At Second Glance: Retroactive Continuity In Junot Díaz’S The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Stephen Clancy Clawson
Theses and Dissertations
This work explores Junot Díaz’s incorporation of nerd culture into his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and that move's larger impact on the genre of trauma narratives. By using allusions to nerd texts such as The Lord of the Rings to structure his depiction of the brutal reign of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, Díaz effectively rewrites Dominican history, creating a retroactive continuity of fantasy. Retroactive continuity, or retcon, is a little-discussed interpretive strategy of the nerd community with striking parallels to Lacanian notions of fantasy. A reading of Díaz's retcon ultimately casts doubt on …
The Conduit: A Creative Thesis, Rachelle Larsen
The Conduit: A Creative Thesis, Rachelle Larsen
Theses and Dissertations
This is a high fantasy novel about Iníon Ríúil, a girl who discovers she has the ability to manipulate magic. Two weeks before Iní's seventeenth birthday, thieves attack their home and her grandmother is murdered. After her grandmother's death, Iní goes in search of the father she has never met and ends up joining the Magical Alliance, where she learns more about her unique skills. Iní is a full conduit, someone who possesses all four of the possible conduit abilities: shielding, absorption, transformation, and amplification. Because someone has been kidnapping other conduits, the Magical Alliance assigns guardians for her protection: …
The Wit And Wisdom In The Novels Of Diana Wynne Jones, Elizabeth A. Crowe
The Wit And Wisdom In The Novels Of Diana Wynne Jones, Elizabeth A. Crowe
Theses and Dissertations
British speculative fiction writer, Diana Wynne Jones, has published over forty books for middle school to adult readers, and her work continues to receive many awards for its creativity and high quality. Jones is a prolific and talented writer who has contributed to and influenced speculative fiction. She uses magical contexts to comment on social situations in what she sees as an essentially non-magical world. Whether she is being humorous, drawing upon myths and legends, or using fantasy or science fiction, Jones reflects the contemporary unpredictable adolescent mind. Jones's unusual childhood has influenced her writing, and a brief biography of …
Ruling Powers, Scot A. Hanson
Ruling Powers, Scot A. Hanson
Theses and Dissertations
While the fantasy genre is one of the most widely read modes of writing, literary criticism and academic discussion of the genre takes place at a much lower level. This imbalance has developed in part because of a misconception that fantasy genre writings cannot accomplish significant, literary purposes. This thesis first offers an argument for why the fantasy genre should receive more attention in scholarly circles, then presents an excerpt of a fantasy novel. The argument draws from the limited amount of existing criticism to highlight the strengths of the fantasy genre, building a case that, in most respects, works …