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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Origin Of Doubts: The Victorian Quest For Proof And Radical Manifestations Of Spirit, Holly O'Byrne
Origin Of Doubts: The Victorian Quest For Proof And Radical Manifestations Of Spirit, Holly O'Byrne
English Honors Theses
Victorians critics have deemed the nineteenth century in England “a crisis of faith.” In the face of dissatisfaction with the Church of England, people rejected organized religion and turned to alternative spirituality like Natural Supernaturalism and Corporeal Spiritualism. The motivation for this paper began with the questions: why were people leaving the church and what were they finding in these other spiritual practices? I argue that the question of belief, for Victorians, became a question of proof. Darwin’s 1859 publication On the Origin of Species presented a theory about the world through a scientific argument containing a hypothesis, evidence, and …
Repressing Deviance: The Discourse Of Sexuality In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, Olivia Blake Mendlinger
Repressing Deviance: The Discourse Of Sexuality In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde And The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, Olivia Blake Mendlinger
English Honors Theses
Michael Foucault postulates that Victorians of the late nineteenth century were experts at repressing their sexuality. This repression is especially evident in the passing of the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885, also known as the Labouchere Amendment, which outlawed homosexuality in Victorian England. However, as with any subjugated topic, there will be those that fight against the ruling power. The genre of the Victorian Gothic provides an outlet of deviance for the sexually “Othered,” as a place of protest against Victorian repression. Gothic writers showcase war within man’s soul when repression forces those labeled as “Other” to become dark monsters …
A Ray Of Moonlight Falls: Casting Light On Oscar Wilde's Dissident Decadence, Hannah Rose Sacks
A Ray Of Moonlight Falls: Casting Light On Oscar Wilde's Dissident Decadence, Hannah Rose Sacks
English Honors Theses
This thesis follows the work of Oscar Wilde, tracking his poetic prose in conjunction with his dissidence against societal expectations in the late Victorian era. Works analyzed include The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, The Happy Prince, De Profundis, and others.