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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

“Beyond The Gilded Cage”: Staged Performances And The Reconstruction Of Gender Identity In Mrs. Dalloway And The Great Gatsby, Anthony F. Pinzone Jan 2019

“Beyond The Gilded Cage”: Staged Performances And The Reconstruction Of Gender Identity In Mrs. Dalloway And The Great Gatsby, Anthony F. Pinzone

ETD Archive

Although scholars have examined Mrs. Dalloway extensively in terms of gender performance, few critics of The Great Gatsby have explored Gatsby’s masculinity through gender studies. Using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I argue that Mrs. Dalloway and Gatsby represent both actors and directors rehearsing a new gendered identity of the twentieth century. Through their roles as staged performers, I emphasize how seemingly minute tasks connect to larger social and political stakes of memory, celebrity status, and reappraisals of gender identity. I further assert that while both Mrs. Dalloway and Nick Carraway experience revelations and heightened imagination through death, neither …


Tracing The Origins Of The Eighteenth-And Nineteenth-Century Rake Character To Depictions Of The Modern Monster, Courtney A. Conrad Jan 2019

Tracing The Origins Of The Eighteenth-And Nineteenth-Century Rake Character To Depictions Of The Modern Monster, Courtney A. Conrad

ETD Archive

While critics and authors alike have deemed the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary rake figure as a “monster” and a “devil,” scholars have rarely drawn the same connections between monsters to rakes. Even as critics have decidedly characterized iconic monsters like Victor Frankenstein and Dracula as rapists or seducers, they oftentimes do not make the distinction that these literary monsters originated from the image of the rake. However, the rake and the monster share overarching characteristics, particularly in the inherent qualities their respective authors attribute to them, which shape the way they treat women and offspring. A side-by-side comparison between the …


You Can Go Home Again: The Misunderstood Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder, Monica M. Krason Jan 2019

You Can Go Home Again: The Misunderstood Memories Of Captain Charles Ryder, Monica M. Krason

ETD Archive

Critics have frequently commented on the nostalgic tone of Brideshead Revisited. Their assessment has been largely negative, with most considering Brideshead too sentimental about England’s aristocratic past. This current characterization fails to recognize Waugh’s critiques of such thinking in Brideshead, wherein he upends the nostalgic tropes of popular Oxford novels, illustrates the dangers of both insulated upper class living and thoughtless presentism through his depictions of various characters, and proposes a greater metaphysical drama through memory is at play in the novel. Brideshead offers nostalgia as an enlivening force which allows Charles Ryder to maintain a vibrant understanding for who …