English Language and Literature Commons^™

Eng 200: Protection Vs. Slavery In The Tempest, Emily Caldwell

English 100-200-300 Conference

No abstract provided.

Eng 200: The Consciousness Of Reality Through Poetry, Jill Matthews

English 100-200-300 Conference

No abstract provided.

Targeting Nonconformity In Elizabethan England: Colonial Rhetoric As A Tool Of Religious Differentiation, John Corum

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Christopher Marlowe’ early modern plays were unequivocally controversial and often seen as testament to his presumed atheism. However, these assumptions focus on the depicted conflicts using religious terms, sometimes overlooking the geopolitical implications of the portrayed demographics. In this project, I argue Marlowe examines not only the religious institutions of early modern England, but also the moral compromises necessitated by England’s colonial endeavors. Through close readings of The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine, and The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus as well as contributions from various scholarly perspectives, I conclude that Marlowe’s analysis critiques the treatment of religious minorities as …

Introduction To Innovative Approaches To Teaching Chaucer, Alison (Ganze) Langdon, David Sprunger

English Faculty Publications

Many a medievalist has been seduced by Chaucer. Perhaps it’s the totality of Chaucer’s enduring characters, memorable tales, elusive narrator, and fragmented whole that keeps us coming back. We are fascinated and delighted, too, by his linguistic play and the lyrical cadence of Middle English. Chaucer may have led us to graduate study in the first place and remains a treat that organizes our pedagogical lives. For some who teach in smaller programs or two-year colleges, Chaucer’s canonical status may provide the only guaranteed place for medieval texts in the curriculum and thus represents one small chance to share our …

A Literary Tour Of Ireland, Lisa K. Miller

DLPS Faculty Publications

This Powerpoint presentation offers an overview of some of Ireland's greatest writers, from Dublin, Limerick and the West, and Belfast and the North. Includes an audio file of W.B. Yeats reading "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." The Powerpoint is available below under "Additional Files."

Clockwork Heroines: Female Characters In Steampunk Literature, Cassie N. Bergman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Steampunk is a progressive literary genre that evokes, imitates, and re-imagines the nineteenth century and favors the Industrial Revolution ideals of science and technology. In a historical framework, it mixes nineteenth-century conventions and retrofuturistic machinery with science fiction and fantasy elements. Steampunk authors are able to radically redefine socio-cultural implications that affect both past and contemporary societies. The following study explores the multitude of characteristics that define Steampunk literature as an interdisciplinary study. Chapter 1 explores the definitions and literary genres that construct Steampunk and includes a brief literary history of Steampunk works. Chapter 2 focuses on Cherie Priest’s novel …

Heckscher, Robert Valantine, 1883-1928 (Sc 2444), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2444. Letter of English poet Robert Valantine Heckscher, postmarked 5 January 1914, to Curtis H. Page, a professor of English at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He thanks Page for praise of his book of poems, Rose Windows, and contrasts its favorable reception by the public and literary community with that of the general press.

Trevelyan, George Otto, 1838-1928 (Sc 2436), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2436. Letter of George Otto Trevelyan to Joseph H. Choate, 18 March 1912, written on the publication in the United States of Trevelyan’s book George the Third and Charles Fox. Trevelyan remarks on the book’s favorable reception in Britain and gives news of his family.

Horne, Richard Henry, 1803-1884 (Sc 2424), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2424. Letter from Richard Henry Horne, English poet and dramatist, to poet, novelist and playwright Algernon Charles Swinburne. Home discusses Swinburne's reaction to his work "King Nihil's Round-Table" and offers to let Swinburn quote from his comic verses written fifty years earlier, as part of Swinburne's work on Elizabethan drama.

Wordsworth's Decline: Self-Editing And Editing The Self, Kenneth E. Morrison

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In critical discourse surrounding the poetry of William Wordsworth, it has become generally acceptable to describe the course of the poet’s career by means of a theory of “decline.” In its most common form, this theory argues that Wordsworth’s best poetry was written during one “Great Decade” (1798-1807)—an isolated epoch of prolificacy and genius. His subsequent works, it is argued, neither surpass nor equal his initial efforts; the course of his career after 1808 may be best described in terms of declivity, ebb, and decline.

Due to its ideological complicity with the very texts it engages, and due to its …

Morton, David, 1886-1957 (Mss 50), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 50. Correspondence of David Morton, correspondence concerning Morton Collection, speeches, essays, MSS: "Entries for a Diary," and MSS: "The Amateur Listener" -- diary, poems, pamphlets, and miscellaneous items of Morton, a poet and English professor born in Elkton, Kentucky.

Lady Macbeth And Gertrude: A Study In Gender, Lisa Ferguson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The detailed examination of two of Shakespeare's female leads, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, is designed to determine whether or not these particular characters were free from the confines of their society, or if they were content within its oppressive grasp. A combination of Feminist Criticism and New Historicism reveals that Lady Macbeth and Gertrude did not overstep the bounds of their gender, but in fact were suppressed within them. The limited rights and freedoms of a woman during the Renaissance is heavily discussed, and aids in giving the reader a vivid impression of Lady Macbeth's and Gertrude's subjugation. As Renaissance …

"In What Particular Thought To Work": Hamlet And Manic-Depression, Lewis Pickett

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

By means of contemporary diagnostic criteria, Prince Hamlet may be demonstrated to be a Bi-Polar I Manic Depressive. Because current genetic research suggests that this disease is inherited, it is logical to ask if Claudius also suffers from this disorder. It can be demonstrated that he does. We may conclude that Claudius murdered the late King of Denmark during a manic episode similar to the one in which Hamlet kills Polonius.

Stain Upon The Silence: Samuel Beckett’S Deconstructive Inventions, Leigh Howard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In recent years, deconstruction theory has emerged as a key method for exploring public address, organizational culture, and literary discourse. Deconstruction theory encourages tearing apart hierarchy and established order to gain insights about the artifact being studied. Furthermore, the theory questions surface or superficial messages and encourages the reader to explore signals hidden below the surface. Deconstruction discounts context and places faith in experience.

Using the early plays of Samuel Beckett, this research explores deconstruction as a method to create messages. This new perspective transports deconstruction from a set of theoretical concepts into basic assumptions that enhance communication. This study …

Charlotte Mew: An Introduction, Sandra Carol Joiner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) published short stories, essays, and poetry between 1894 and the time of her death. She published a slim volume of poems in 1916, a few of which place her as one of the great English poets. Indeed, both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf thought her one of the greatest living female poets. Mew is particularly interesting as a poet who was born in the Victorian period, published during the “decadent decade” of the nineties, throughout Edward’s reign, and well into the reign of George V. Although few of Mew’s poems are dated, there is a gradual yet …

Ua35/11 Wku Student Honors Research Bulletin, Wku University Honors Program

WKU Archives Records

The Western Kentucky University Student Honors Research Bulletin is dedicated to scholarly involvement and student research. These papers represent work done by students from throughout the university.

• Kesselring, Marcia. Attitudes Toward the Need for Computer Literacy
• Tuck, Janna & Karen Wiggins. Methylation and Confirmation of PGE
• Lewis, Gloria. John Donne's Attitude Toward Love
• Johnson, Linda. International Telecommunications Trade with Japan
• Sharpe, Greg. Precipitation Patterns in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 1980-1985
• Smith, Sandy. Religion and the Media: Alliance or War?
• Bell, Suzanne. Early Secret Involvement of the United States Military in Cambodia
• Scariot, Linda. Parental Divorce and Childhood Emotional Disturbances
• Daniel, Janice. …

D.H. Lawrence's Philosophy Of Human Relationships As Seen In Four Novels, Jacqueline Eachus

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The growth of an individual into mature selfhood is the primary basis of the Lawrentian relationship. Lawrence describes a mystical kind of rebirth of the self into a deeper level of the unconscious. He says that one should explore the impulses and desires of the unconscious in order to find a deeper, more fulfilled self. Ursula of The Rainbow and Paul of Sons and Lovers are the characters who most successfully begin this growth into separate selfhood.

According to Lawrence the journey into the unconscious is to be accomplished through sensual experiences. He mistrusts the intellect because he feels that …

Charles Dickens & The Breakdown Of Society's Institutions For Children, David Major

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

As a social critic, Charles Dickens carries an attack against the mistreatment of children throughout his career. At first reacting in the defense of wronged children, he develops a view of the process of social breakdown that results from mistreating children. Adults fai3 in their duty to children because they fail to recognize the needs of children as children and even fail to recognize the human rights of children. This mistreatment is implemented by social institutions that are supposedly dedicated to caring for children. The family fails to bring up the child with love and care. The child's education rarely …

In Search Of The Grail: The Poetic Development Of T.S. Eliot, William Bell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In Poets of Reality, Joseph Hillis Miller seeks to establish T.S. Eliot as a precursor of the modern movement towards romantic. subjectivism. By applying his phenomenological critique, Miller claims that several major modern writers, including Eliot, adopt aesthetics based on various forms of philosophical monism.

The point underlying this thesis is that Eliot stands opposed to any such position and, until 1930, breaks with philosophy, monistic or otherwise. His art from this period is instead characterized by a search for solution in poetic artifice, a pure art. However, with "Ash Wednesday," the poet once again enters fully into the …

In Search Of Individual Freedom: Ford Madox Ford, Phenomenology & Reader-Response Criticism, Edgar Shields Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Ford Madox Ford has often been seen by critics as an author of pure style, writing without philosophic underpinnings for his impressionistic techniques. However, philosophy plays a large role in Ford's work—as a foundation for both his themes and literary theory. This philosophy, phenomenology--the metaphysics of individual experience as opposed to universal determinism—came into existence during Ford's lifetime. Though Ford may never have read in phenomenology, his works reflect the movement both in what he writes, by emphasizing the individual over the communal experience, and how he writes, using the idea of the neutral author to present objective narration.

The …

Isabel's Sexual Drama, Barbara Pinson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Henry James, Jr. (1843-1916) has had a greater impact on the world of the novel than any other writer. The greatest controversy surrounding this most prolific of American authors and critics Concerns the area of sexual passion. The most insidious criticism leveled against James is that he and his characters lack sexuality. The whole problem is epitomized in this perusal of the sexual consciousness of Isabel Archer Osmond, the famous heroine in The Portrait of a Lady. While many critics simply ignore Isabel's sexuality, many others are less discerning than they should be, and some are absolutely mistaken: they …

Some Measures Of Ulysses, June Sinclair

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Contemporary literary theorists, very much aware of themselves as constituting a break in, and a refutation of, an entire classical metaphysics, are trying to prove that James Joyce, the foremost prose writer of the twentieth century, writing when that classical view was falling from grace and the modern perspective was forcing itself upon the intellectual world, is, in fact, in his work--all works considered as one work--undermining the very tradition which critics consider his foundation. Consequently, the way in which Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are read and valued will be linked to an entire theory of literature.

The body of …

Rasselas & Candide: Common Links, Robert Rowe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Many critics have discovered striking similarities between Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's Candide. Yet, most have failed to describe the links that exist between the works which indicate that similar forces may have spurred the authors to write so similar tales, one quickly following the other into publication.

Source studies of the two tales indicate that very little, if any, evidence is available to prove that the works were inspired by the same written sources that Johnson and Voltaire may have relied upon. While source studies of the tales do not reveal any shocking information, they do inform the …

Auden's Poetic Theory & The Child-Like Voice, Diana Graham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

W. H. Auden shares with most of his contemporaries, including Yeats and Eliot, the goal of lighting modern man's way back to a sense of harmony with his universe--the certainty of identity which his ancestors enjoyed. In New Year Letter, Auden announces that the problem lies within man himself because each of us is possessed of a "double" nature, thus rendering us our own schismatics.

Auden finds that only with the help of divinity, specifically Christian, can the destructive element be overcome. To illustrate this solution in his poems then becomes Auden's great challenge. Employing a child-like voice or tone …

The Duke Of Dark Corners: Toward An Interpretation Of Measure For Measure's Duke Vincento, Jan Funk

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The multiple and widely varying interpretations of Duke Vincentio in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure can be reconciled and made into a consistent interpretation by the application of a framework consisting of both literary and Elizabethan conventions as well as a view of comedy that accepts the comic function of movement toward identity as comedy's goal. Duke Vincentio is the comic drive in the play. His behavioral motives are based on his sincere concern for his constituency and his courageous use of his power during a time when reform is vital. The morally equivocal means he sometimes employs are justified by …

Providence & Free Will In The History Of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Steven Smith

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The three books J.R.R. Tolkien has written about his imaginary world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, have a common element. In all thre& books, he presents the characters and their adventures within an historical framework which he has structured according to the four principles of Christian history: periodization, universality, apocalypse, and providence. While this historical perspective serves to give his fantasized world "an inner consistence of reality," it also frames one of the main themes of his stories: the relationship between Divine Providence and free will in a world containing good …

Eliot's Use Of Contemporary Political Events In Middlemarch, Sara Winstead

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the consideration of most critics and scholars. Middlemarch by George Eliot is a catalog of the Victorian era, depicting with clarity the concerns of the period as they appeared in all levels of social, economic, and political life. Although the form of the book is that of the novel, dealing primarily with the development of characters and their relationships, the author includes a sufficient number of references to contemporary political events to merit in-depth study of the purpose of these references. This paper locates and explains the references to contemporary political events in Middlemarch, it discusses the ways …

"Fair Terms & A Villain's Mind:" Shylock In Perspective, Montreva Calhoun

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While The Merchant of Venice has long been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, it has also been one of the most controversial with Shylock being the hub of the conflict. Critics have long been arguing whether this great character is a tragic hero or a larger-than-life villain. Those opting for the first often believe the playwright guilty of anti-semitism, and those following the latter consider Shylock the embodiment of evil. Very few critics have viewed this character as three dimensional, possessing human dignity as well as a capacity for evil.

The first chapter reveals the many sources for both …

Antony & Cleopatra: A Study In Polarities, Mary Yarbrough

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In reading or seeing Antony and Cleopatra, several clear dualities emerge. The first is the polarity between Egypt and Rome as different settings for the action. Rome is cold, mechanical, rational, and businesslike, whereas Egypt is lush, erotic, exotic, and langourous. Antony is torn between the two worlds, and this split of loyalty and interest helps to make the second duality of the play, that of the personalities and attitudes of the main characters. Antony and Cleopatra are both seen in double perspective--as lustful, self-gratifying sinners and as lovers in a truly transcendent sense of love. Both perspectives are …

The Occult Tradition, Blake, & The Kabbalah: A Preliminary Study, Laura Miller

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study represents an attempt to explore the occult tradition, in particular the Kabbalah, in an effort to establish a relationship between this tradition and the prophetic poems of William Blake. The Kabbalah is examined to reveal similarities between the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon and Blake's sleeping giant Albion. In addition, a comparison is made of the sexual dichotomies in both sources. Once Blake is viewed as a part of the occult tradition and the kabbalistic similarities are explored, an important aspect of Blake's poetry is clarified, by considering the essential design of kabbalistic thought as it stands in close relation …