Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Shaping Character: The Role Of Mythology In Society, Jaclyn Weist

Masters Theses

Throughout history, man has told stories. Some stories were written on walls, tablets, or bits of parchment. Others have been passed down to posterity through oral tradition. Every culture worldwide has a rich tapestry of legends and myths. It is my intent to demonstrate that these stories use the tools of character development within their various plot lines to both express and shape beliefs, superstitions, and life lessons. Whether they are religious in nature or simply trying to make sense of the world, these stories, myths, and legends have played a part in shaping society into what it is today.

Discovering Souls Below: Mythology, Lore, And Christian Feminism In Contemporary Fantasy, Emma Dearing

Masters Theses

There are few things I love more than sitting on a warm, sunny beach with my toes in the sand. With a cool breeze rippling off the waves and the smell of salty ocean, it is easy to feel completely at peace. Yet last summer, as I sat limply in a beach chair experiencing all those sensations, I wondered, “What if this was my last day on earth, and I knew it?” More specifically, what if we chose such a serene day as our last? Of course, that reminded me there is only one way to truly choose our last …

Horned & Hidden Child: The Minotaur & Modern Opera, Mikeila Ashley Mcqueston

Masters Theses

Picture a world in which stories never die. Just down the street is the Halfway House for the Mythically Challenged, where fairytale creatures learn how to prepare for job-interviews. This is the world of Pasiphae, a beautiful sorceress, queen, and former wife of the ancient King Minos. After millennia on her own, she enlists the help of her Greek Chorus to rescue her children from their respective prisons – first Ariadne from the island Naxos, and now the Minotaur from Daedalus’ labyrinth. Horned & Hidden Child is a contemporary opera with music by Mikeila McQueston and libretto by Nicole Yackley. …

Treeing: What Remains Of A Pilgrim, Sichen Liu

Masters Theses

Myths and legends have existed since the start of human civilization, but now we can only imagine a world full of wonders from our ancestor’s scripts. What if we could go back to the age of myths and magic? Would we see things differently?

In Treeing: What Remains of a Pilgrim, I propose a fictional book with 15 short myths of humans transformed into trees. The stories combine my own imagination with inspiration from real mythologies. In the annotations of each story, an unnamed person is following the myths as guidance and manuals, one by one, trying to bring them …

Discovering “God Almighty”: An Exploration Of Kurt Vonnegut’S Mythmaking In Sirens Of Titan, Cat’S Cradle, And Slaughterhouse-Five, Megan Joy Kehoe

Masters Theses

In an interview with Charlie Reilly interview, Kurt Vonnegut argues, “The Christ story is marvelous, but it’s not really about people like us” (“Two Conversations” 20). Vonnegut makes clear his appreciation for Christ, though he critiques the gospel’s relevance to humankind. In his own novels, Vonnegut takes from popular religion and creates his own stories, mythologies that are carefully catered to the human experience. In this evaluation of three of Vonnegut’s, I offer a new reading of the author which highlights his use of mythology, his parodies of God Almighty, and his hope for the direction of mankind. I begin …

“Celtic Things” In Tolkien’S Mythology, Erin Kriz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Ars Technica, Bayan Mashrequi

Masters Theses

It’s easy to forget that we are living in an age of wonders, where the ability to perform feats that would have seemed divine miracles to our ancestors, has become mundane and routine to us. Even for people who are practitioners of this Modern Magic, the artificers and the sorcerers, the wonderfulness of the endeavor becomes difficult to appreciate most times.

Ars Technica serves a two-fold purpose here: for the uninitiated and the novice, this book aims to inspire and enable students, engineers and tech aficionados by highlighting the connection between mythology, literature, history and folklore with the wonders of …

Modern Myths: Adding To America's Cultural Heritage, Kathryne E. Wood

Masters Theses

As children, we believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny. We cower in fear when our friends talk about the Boogeyman, or how they'll summon Bloody Mary in the mirror. We check our closets, in hopes of finding an entrance to Narnia at the back of them. The world is a mysterious place in which anything can happen, anything can exist. What makes these types of stories so special? How do they generate true belief? What propels a narrative from entertaining story to the status of myth, legend, or folktale? This thesis explores the enduring qualities …

C.S. Lewis And The True Myth: A Reconciliation Of Theology, Philosophy, And Mythology, Courage Lowrance

Masters Theses

C.S. Lewis was both a student of pagan philosophy and mythology and a Christian. He never was divided between these two pursuits in his life, though he gave the latter its proper priority. What allowed Lewis to keep this balance was his idea of the gospel as the True Myth, an idea that helped lead to his conversion and remained at the core of his thinking throughout his life. By this idea of True Myth, Lewis was able to not only unite the pagan myths to Christian truth, but also the rest of human thought as well. Thus, in order …

Restoring What Has Been Lost: The Mythic Journey Of Shakespearean And Tolkien Heroes After The Fall In Eden, Taylor Loforti

Masters Theses

In order for man to understand where he is going, he must first remember where he began. The intertwining link between the beginning, the in-between journey, and the end of a story, or narrative, has been present since the ancient years of literary criticism. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle explains that a unified and effective narrative should have a beginning, middle, and end, and the even more ancient realm of mythology tends to follow this format not only in its written structure, but also in its thematic and archetypal construction. These three main segments of a mythic narrative are later …

Batman As Monomyth: Joseph Campbell, Robert Jewett, John Shelton Lawrence, Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, And The Hero’S Journey To Gotham, Andrew Thigpen

Masters Theses

In 1988, Jeffrey Lang and Patrick Trimble wrote an article called, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow,” which explains the absence of a hero of the American monomyth in comic books. The American monomyth was proposed by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence and describes a community in harmonious paradise threatened by evil. The normal institutions of law and order fail to defeat the evil, but fortunately, a hero from outside the community arises to resist temptation, defeat the evil, and return the community to its peaceful condition. Lang and Trimble observe the death of Superman during the events …

Silver Breathed Upon The Stage: The American Revolution As Drama And Mythology, Nathan Stone

Masters Theses

At the time of the American Revolution, several different intellectual influences were present within the American colonies: the classical tradition, taken from ancient Greece and Rome; Christianity, taken from the Bible and the Reformed, Calvinist tradition; and, Whig theory. The question that must be asked is: Were these different intellectual traditions brought together at the time of the American Revolution and, if so, by what means? By analyzing how the different traditions were present in the colonies as well as how the past was utilized through the eighteenth century understanding of time and history—particularly through the use of pseudonyms and …

Old And New Gods In An Age Of Uncertainty: Mixed Content Tales In Lebor Na Huidre, Eric Patterson

Masters Theses

This thesis will demonstrate that the mixed pagan and Christian content of LU, as examined through two selected exemplar tales, provides evidence of the unique merger of politics and religion in the localized setting of late eleventh century Clonmacnoise. Further, and more specifically, we will see that the mBocht family, influenced by its 2 participation in the Céli Dé movement and seeking to protect the societal standing and holdings of themselves and their monastery, used portions of these tales to send subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, messages to the Irish Church, to chieftains and kings across Ireland, and specifically …

Subverting A Mythology: Examining Joseph Campbell's Monomyth In The Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft, Wesley Vandenbos

Masters Theses

American horror author H. P. Lovecraft's tales of monsters and madness, collectively known as the Cthulhu Mythos, have exploded in popularity in the last few decades and attracted both critical and casual interest. Inspired by his childhood mythological readings, Lovecraft created these chilling stories as a more modern version of ancient myths, drawing upon yet subtly altering the sources that influenced him. The author of this thesis draws attention to the differences between classic myths and the Cthulhu Mythos, using the monomyth of Joseph Campbell as a framework through which to view both ancient mythologies and Lovecraft's tales. This thesis …

An Implacable Force: Caryl Churchill And The “Theater Of Cruelty”, Kerri Ann Considine

Masters Theses

Churchill’s plays incorporate intensity, complexity, and imagination to create a theatrical landscape that is rich in danger and possibility. Examining her plays through the theoretical lens of Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty” allows an open investigation into the way that violence, transgression, and theatricality function in her work to create powerful and thought-provoking pieces of theatre. By creating her own contemporary “theater of cruelty,” Churchill creates plays that actively and violently transgress physical, social, and political boundaries.

This paper examines three of Churchill’s plays spanning over thirty years of her career to investigate the different ways Churchill has used concepts …