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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
"The First Fruits Of A Woman's Wit": Reclaiming The Childbirth Metaphor In Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Carolyn Mae Shakespear
"The First Fruits Of A Woman's Wit": Reclaiming The Childbirth Metaphor In Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Carolyn Mae Shakespear
Theses and Dissertations
The childbirth metaphor adopts imagery from female bodies carrying and delivering children to describe the effort and relationship of a poet to his/her poem. This was a commonly used trope in the renaissance, particularly by male authors. This thesis examines the way early modern woman poet, Aemilia Lanyer uses the childbirth metaphor in her poem, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Lanyer ultimately considers not only the physical realities of childbirth in her use of the metaphor, but also the emotional, social, and theological consequences. By doing so, I argue that Lanyer reclaims the metaphor from her male contemporaries in order to …
Finding Words For God: Poetic Foraging In Louise Glück's The Wild Iris, Rachel Cardall
Finding Words For God: Poetic Foraging In Louise Glück's The Wild Iris, Rachel Cardall
Theses and Dissertations
The primary speaker of Louise Glück's The Wild Iris is a wanderer in her own garden. She relentlessly searches for God among her foxgloves and daisies, straining to hear God's voice. Two other speakers, God and the collective plants of the garden, offer their perspectives without acknowledgement by the human speaker. Many critics read these two other speakers as, in fact, narcissistic projections of the human speaker, a God and a world made in her own image. In this thesis, I clarify that the kind of narcissistic projection that occurs in The Wild Iris is actually productive for genuine spiritual …
An Archive Of Poetry: Surviving Settlement, Upholding Feminine Virtue, And Practicing Narrative Discipline In Anne Bradstreet's And Eliza R. Snow's Poetry, Britta Karen Adams
An Archive Of Poetry: Surviving Settlement, Upholding Feminine Virtue, And Practicing Narrative Discipline In Anne Bradstreet's And Eliza R. Snow's Poetry, Britta Karen Adams
Theses and Dissertations
Settlement is a frequent topic in scholarly conversations about early American literature. From studies about William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation to Anne Bradstreet's poetry, settlement is a consistent theme in texts written by early Americans and in scholarship written by experts about early American texts. Settlement is also a major theme in the poetry written by Eliza R. Snow after fleeing with the Latter-day Saints from Missouri and settling in Nauvoo, Illinois. Both Bradstreet and Snow lived through settlement crises, crises that incorporated and exacerbated religious tensions within their communities eventually taking the form of the Antinomian Controversy and the …
The World, Rebecca Dawn Billings
The World, Rebecca Dawn Billings
Theses and Dissertations
A poem comes into the world when an obsession takes hold of a person who must write about it. These twenty-eight original poems are products of obsession and pleasure.
"Life Will Be A Brief, Hollow Walk": The Future Of Humanity Through Maternal Eyes In Tracy K. Smith's Life On Mars, Mallory Lynn Bingham
"Life Will Be A Brief, Hollow Walk": The Future Of Humanity Through Maternal Eyes In Tracy K. Smith's Life On Mars, Mallory Lynn Bingham
Theses and Dissertations
Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry, Life on Mars, has been celebrated and analyzed as an elegy to Smith's father by many reviewers and scholars. And while this reading is valid and has been openly endorsed by Smith herself, our understanding of this collection and Smith's father is incomplete without Smith's treatment of motherhood and religion, two previously unexplored fields in relation to Life on Mars that complete our picture of Smith's father. Smith uses her own new role as a mother and her religious questions about the afterlife and her father's fate to address her father's …
Pages Of The Revolution: Symbolism In Sophia De Mello Breyner Andresen's O Nome Das Coisas, Madalyn Alice Harper Lyman
Pages Of The Revolution: Symbolism In Sophia De Mello Breyner Andresen's O Nome Das Coisas, Madalyn Alice Harper Lyman
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In the midst of political turmoil surrounding the Portuguese Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen wrote the anthology O Nome das Coisas [“The Name of Things”] (1977). With this historically significant period as the background of her poetry, Andresen addresses the politics of the time with repeated metaphor, particularly the symbol of paper in various forms, such as a poster or a blank page. Through this repeated and evolving symbolism, she illustrates how the anxiousness and oppression of the Portuguese people turned first to relief and rejoicing after the dictatorship fell and then to disappointment …
The Battle Of The Sexes: Montagu V. Swift, Madison Savoie
The Battle Of The Sexes: Montagu V. Swift, Madison Savoie
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Two of the most interesting “guardians” of eighteenth-century sociocultural standards were the satirists Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Swift is remembered by scholars as one of the “greatest prose satirists in the history of English Literature,” but Montagu, until recent decades, has been less well-known. This thesis will look at the satirical poetic dialogue between the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift and the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and provide insights into the sociocultural dynamics of gender in eighteenth-century British print life as revealed by the individual texts.
"History Real Or Feigned": Tolkien, Scott, And Poetry's Place In Fashioning History, Kaleigh Jean Spooner
"History Real Or Feigned": Tolkien, Scott, And Poetry's Place In Fashioning History, Kaleigh Jean Spooner
Theses and Dissertations
Most critics of The Lord of the Rings correlate Tolkien's work to ancient texts, like Beowulf, the Elder Edda, and medieval romances. While the connection between these traditional materials and Tolkien is valid, it neglects a key feature of Tolkien's work and one of the author's desires, which was to fashion a sort of history that felt as real as any other old story. Moreover, it glosses over the rather obvious point that Tolkien is writing a novel, or at any rate a long work of prose fiction that owes a good deal to the novel tradition. …
"A Poem Containing History": Pound As A Poet Of Deep Time, Newell Scott Porter
"A Poem Containing History": Pound As A Poet Of Deep Time, Newell Scott Porter
Theses and Dissertations
There has been an emergent trend in literary studies that challenges the tendency to categorize our approach to literature. This new investment in the idea of "world literature," while exciting, is also both theoretically and pragmatically problematic. While theorists can usually articulate a defense of a wider approach to literature, they struggle to develop a tangible approach to such an ideal. By examining Ezra Pound's critical approach to poetry, especially in The Cantos, an applicable visualization of a global approach to literature becomes more transparent.
“I Take--No Less Than Skies”: Emily Dickinson And Nineteenth-Century Meteorology, Kjerstin Evans Ballard
“I Take--No Less Than Skies”: Emily Dickinson And Nineteenth-Century Meteorology, Kjerstin Evans Ballard
Theses and Dissertations
Emily Dickinson's poetry functions where scientific attention to the physical world and abstract theorizing about the ineffable intersect. Critics who emphasize the poet's dedication to the scientific often take for granted how deeply the uncertainty that underlies all of Dickinson's poetry opposes scientific discussion of the day. Meteorology is an exceptional nineteenth-century science because it takes as its subject complex systems which are inexplicable in Newtonian terms. As such, meteorology can articulate the ways that Dickinson bridges the divide between the unknown and the known, particularly as she relates to the interplay of nature and culture, the role of careful …
Memory As Ecology In The Poetry Of Tomas Tranströmer, Richelle Jolene Wilson
Memory As Ecology In The Poetry Of Tomas Tranströmer, Richelle Jolene Wilson
Theses and Dissertations
The purpose of this study is to explore how memory functions ecologically in the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer. The term ecology is useful because of its connotative associations with the natural world as well as its broader definition of being a network of relationships as they function within and relate to their environment. Throughout his oeuvre, Tranströmer positions memory as being an external presence with which he interacts primarily because he honors it as a living being and he feels a poetic responsibility to it. As such, he grapples with the challenges of representation, particularly the limitations of language. Ultimately, …
George Canning, Liberal Toryism, And Counterrevolutionary Satire In The Anti-Jacobin, Martha Thompson
George Canning, Liberal Toryism, And Counterrevolutionary Satire In The Anti-Jacobin, Martha Thompson
Theses and Dissertations
One of the most defining moments in the histories of British satire and the public sphere took place in the late 1790s in an abandoned house in Piccadilly. Here George Canning and several fellow conservatives began writing and circulating their weekly newspaper the Anti-Jacobin. Although the periodical has been critically neglected, it is a valuable model for exploring how literary (partisan) politicians attempted to form a rational and critical public sphere through their satiric poetry. Founded by George Canning and edited by William Gifford, the Anti-Jacobin seems to reflect a reactionary conservative's ideology and has been summarily dismissed because of …
Translation As Katabasis And Nekyia In Seamus Heaney's "The Riverbank Field", Gerrit Van Dyk
Translation As Katabasis And Nekyia In Seamus Heaney's "The Riverbank Field", Gerrit Van Dyk
Theses and Dissertations
Translation has been at the heart of Seamus Heaney's career. In his poem, "The Riverbank Field," from his latest collection, Human Chain, Heaney engages in metatranslation, "Ask me to translate what Loeb gives as / 'In a retired vale...a sequestered grove' / And I'll confound the Lethe in Moyola." Curiously, with a broad spectrum of classical works at his disposal, the poet chooses a particular moment in Virgil's Aeneid as an image for translation. What is it about this conversation between Aeneas and his dead father, Anchises, at the banks of the Lethe which makes it uniquely fitting for …
Literary Love(R)S: Recognizing The Female Outline And Its Implications In Roman Verse Satire, Kaitlyn Marie Klein
Literary Love(R)S: Recognizing The Female Outline And Its Implications In Roman Verse Satire, Kaitlyn Marie Klein
Theses and Dissertations
The existence of a metaphoric female standing in for poetic style was only plainly discussed in a paper from 1987 concerned with Roman elegiac poetry. This figure is given the title of scripta puella or written woman, since her existence depends solely on the writings of an author. These females often appear to have basis in reality; however there is insufficient evidence to allow them to cross out of the realm of fantasy. The term scripta puella in poetry refers to a perfected poetic form, one the author prefers over all others, and a human form creates the illusion of …
First Psalm: Poems And Paintings, Ashley Mae Christensen
First Psalm: Poems And Paintings, Ashley Mae Christensen
Theses and Dissertations
This collection of poems and paintings seeks to find the places where visual and written communication intersects, and the places where those two media diverge. The collection consists of poems and paintings juxtaposed, as if in conversation with one another throughout the pages. The collection treats each painting and poem as a separate attempt at prayer. As a reader turns the pages, similar questions are asked again and again, but in different settings and with different outcomes. This collection focuses on finding reconciliation between the oral culture of storytelling and the written culture of ideas, all within the context of …
Gesamtkunstwerk And Other Trifles: Poems, Derk A. Olthof
Gesamtkunstwerk And Other Trifles: Poems, Derk A. Olthof
Theses and Dissertations
In all their various categories, the arts serve as the dominant subject matter of Gesamtkunstwerk and Other Trifles. The title itself begins with a German word-meld—gesamt (total) + kunstwerk (work of art). Thus a primary aim of these poems is to bring as many elements of art together as possible and to use their various forms (self-portraits, nocturnes, odes, etc.) as metaphorical frameworks that inform abstractions such as regret ("How to Draw Regret"), psychological disorders ("Insomnia Nocturnes") and confusion in how one should feel about living realities as opposed to inanimate objects ("Dead Starling"). Most of the poems …
Merit Beyond Any Already Published: Austen And Authorship In The Romantic Age, Rebecca Lee Jensen Ogden
Merit Beyond Any Already Published: Austen And Authorship In The Romantic Age, Rebecca Lee Jensen Ogden
Theses and Dissertations
In recent decades there have been many attempts to pull Austen into the fold of high Romantic literature. On one level, these thematic comparisons are useful, for Austen has long been anachronistically treated as separate from the Romantic tradition. In the past, her writings have essentially straddled Romantic classification, labeled either as hangers-on in the satiric eighteenth-century literary tradition or as early artifacts of a kind of proto-Victorianism. To a large extent, scholars have described Austen as a writer departing from, rather than embracing, the literary trends of the Romantic era. Yet, while recent publications depicting a “Romantic Austen” yield …
Facing God: Contemporary American Devotional Poetry, Sarah E. Jenkins
Facing God: Contemporary American Devotional Poetry, Sarah E. Jenkins
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis examines the connection between scripture and contemporary American poetry. Scripture is inherently poetic, employing devices that require analysis and explication. Poets drawing from scriptural text for narrative, language, or form are not looking to replace scripture, or even enhance it. Poets create new experiences in language, and their writing can illuminate the poetics of scripture. My thesis will examine work by three contemporary poets who have imitated, alluded to, and re-created scripture: Jacqueline Osherow's "Scattered Psalms" from 1999 collection Dead Men's Praise; Louise Glück's 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Wild Iris; and Morri Creech's "The Testament of Judas" …
Rethinking Trümmerliteratur: The Aesthetics Of Destruction Ruins, Ruination, And Ruined Language In The Works Of Böll Grass, And Celan, Kurt R. Buhanan
Rethinking Trümmerliteratur: The Aesthetics Of Destruction Ruins, Ruination, And Ruined Language In The Works Of Böll Grass, And Celan, Kurt R. Buhanan
Theses and Dissertations
Trümmerliteratur - literally “rubble-literature" - is a brand of literature that became important after the Second World War, led by Heinrich Böll, whom I term the apologist of German Trümmerliteratur. Typically included under this classification are the writers who began to produce in the years immediately following the war, and in whose work the rubble and ruins of the landscape figure prominently. Böll provided the programmatic framework for the movement in his “Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur" but his relationship to another type of ruin writing presents a point of friction when he appears to be working in a romantic mode to …
Keeping Gardens: Poetry And Essay, Deja Anne Earley
Keeping Gardens: Poetry And Essay, Deja Anne Earley
Theses and Dissertations
This creative thesis includes two creative non-fiction essays and twenty-two poems, introduced by a critical essay that examines my work. The poems and essays share an origin in personal experience as well as an interest in language. Specifically, the poems and essays explore issues of family, relationships, spirituality, and observations of the natural world. The introductory essay discusses my interest in re-fashioning individual vision through the act of writing, relating to Helene Cixous's idea of creating a "portrait of God" through the act of art. The essay also examines the connections between the genres of creative non-fiction and poetry, in …
Bayard Taylor's The Prophet: Mormonism As Literary Taboo; Calaveras County Comes Of Age; The Erosion Of Belief In The Poetry Of Clinton F. Larson, Thomas D. Schwartz
Bayard Taylor's The Prophet: Mormonism As Literary Taboo; Calaveras County Comes Of Age; The Erosion Of Belief In The Poetry Of Clinton F. Larson, Thomas D. Schwartz
Theses and Dissertations
The three papers included in this thesis reflect my development as a graduate student during the course of my master's program at Brigham Young Universtiy. I came to Brigham Young University interested in creative writing and developed a love for research and criticism. My work in nineteenth century American literature led to the first two papers. Both deal with literary history, the first narrow in scope, devoted to a study of the significance of a single play, the second broad in scope, devoted to a study of the unifying thread of anti-sentimentalism in the writings of the major American realists. …
The Poetry Of Matthew Arnold: A Study In Versification, Douglas A. Mathewson
The Poetry Of Matthew Arnold: A Study In Versification, Douglas A. Mathewson
Theses and Dissertations
Despite the great number of published works that deal with English prosody or the more restricted subject of versification, there is a noticeable scarcity of studies that describe the practices of individual poets. One of the more apparent reasons for the meager number of versification studies is the instability of the basic criteria by which a poem is examined. Prosodists quite simply find it difficult to establish concrete principles of scansion that are acceptable to all other prosodists. Without going into discussion of the various schools of thought on metrical structure, suffice it to say that there are conflicting opinions …