Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Willa Cather's O Pioneers!: Violence And Modernist Aesthetics, Jordan F. Hobson

English Theses

Willa Cather's 1913 novel, O Pioneers! concludes with an unexpected moment of extreme violence as two young lovers, Emil Bergson and Marie Shabata, are murdered by Marie's husband in a mulberry orchard. Cather's novel is almost wholly devoted to the psychological interior of the protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, thereby rendering this violent interruption more dynamic as it essentially undercuts the generally lulling interiority of the narration. My interest here is to examine this strange moment of violence and Alexandra's subsequent forgiveness of Frank for the murder of her brother and his own wife through the theoretical paradigms of René Girard, Jacques …

Life Among The Machines: James Joyce's Ulysses And Early Twentieth-Century Technology, Patrick Casey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project investigates the cultural impact of the various technological innovations that appeared around the turn of the twentieth century, and how modernism contends with the increasing presence of technology in everyday life. It focuses on the work of James Joyce, whose attitudes toward technology differ significantly from many of his contemporaries, and on his novel Ulysses, which takes place in metropolitan Dublin and features many of the everyday technologies of the early twentieth century.

The first chapter examines the relationship between technology and the vitalist theories of Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch, arguing that the popularity these theories …

Navigating The Fourth Dimension: Nonlinear Narratives In Film, Literature, And Television, Jason R. Boulanger

Senior Honors Projects

Time is often considered the fourth dimension due to the fact that nothing can exist outside the confines of time. Since time is so intrinsic to the very nature of being in the world, creators of film, literature, and television, which are reflective of life, must at least implicitly confront concepts of time and temporality within their work. The intangibility of time presents many difficulties but also a great number of opportunities in accurately portraying its true function within the world.

Many literary works, films, and television programs directly confront concepts of time. Each medium with its own benefits and …

Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms [Review], David Rando

English Faculty Research

It appears that the moderns are catching up to the Victorians at last. Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier’s edited volume, Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–1940, represents the most forceful statement to date about the possibilities and opportunities for print culture studies in the modernist period. While the study of print culture has flourished in Victorian studies for decades, particularly through the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and its journal, Victorian Periodicals Review, modernist studies has been slower to embrace print culture studies. There are many historical and theoretical reasons for this, but even field nomenclature may make a difference. “Victorian studies” …

Bad Blood: The Southern Family In The Work Of William Faulkner, Neil T. Phillips

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis concerns the Southern family in the work of William Faulkner, specifically The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses.

Poor Old Horse: Tragicomedy And The Good Soldier, Matthew Christian

Senior Projects Spring 2011

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

The Time Machine And Heart Of Darkness: H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, And The Fin De Siecle, Haili Ann Vinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much work has been done on the relationship between fin de siècle authors H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Ford Madox Ford. As Nicholas Delbanco explains, these writers lived closely to one another in Kent during the transition into the Twentieth Century. While scholars have stressed the collaboration between Conrad and Ford and the disagreements between Wells and James, fewer have treated the relationship of Wells and Conrad. Their most widely read works, The Time Machine and Heart of Darkness, share remarkable similarities that reveal common topical influences on both writers. Furthermore, I argue that Wells …