English Language and Literature Commons^™

Idealization And Desire In The Hundred Acre Wood: A.A. Milne And Christopher (Robin), Laura Bright

Laura E Bright

Argues that A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner represent the conscious rejection, unconscious reproduction, and re-imaging of the author's traumatic Victorian childhood.

The Medieval Dark Horse: Challenge And Reward In The Middle English Lyric, Andrew S. Marvin

English Faculty Publications

“The Medieval Dark Horse: Challenge and Reward in the Middle English Lyric” explores the genre’s history and literary merits while addressing the question of why this valuable and extensive body of literature has largely gone untapped by scholars.

The introductory sections detail the historical and modern contexts of the lyric, including the state of scholarship, manuscripts, editions, dating issues, purpose, audience, types of lyrics, and themes. This background informs a discussion of the genre’s difficulties and offers solutions with which to counter them. Close readings of eight poems are included to exemplify the lyric’s thematic range, stylistic diversity, and literary …

Frankenstein: A Seminal Work Of Modern Literature, Traci K. Damron

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Although Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, is assigned to the Romantic period of literature, it surpasses her contemporaries by its complexity of themes, philosophies, and social commentary embedded deep within. This paper contends that the novel should be considered one of the seminal works of modernity by closely examining the following elements of Modern literature as they apply to Frankenstein: the beginnings of speculative fiction found within the novel, science vs. religion, dark aspects of the psyche, disenchantment with the world, and the isolation/emptiness of the individual. Additionally, Mary Shelley’s own life and the influences …

Archiving Joyce & Joyce's Archive: Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, And Copyright, Jessica Michelle Lucero

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

"Archiving Joyce and Joyce's Archive: Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and Copyright" investigates the ways in which James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake incorporate archival institutions and archival modes such as gossip into its composition. For example, this work explores how both works, at times, present institutions such as the National Library of Ireland, and, at other times, enact archiving in its collection and preservation of historical personages relevant to Irish literature and history. Additionally, Joyce was involved in the construction of his own archive, and thereby becomes the curator of his own history as well as that of Ireland.

Importantly, this …

"When The Eternal Can Be Met": Bergsonian Time In The Theologies Of C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, And W.H. Auden, James Corey Latta

Dissertations

C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden all converted to the Christian faith and, upon conversion, turned to the theme of time in their post-conversion works. Interestingly, these Christian authors employed the secular philosophical framework of Henri Bergson’s theory of duration to construct their theologies of time. As texts fostered by Bergson’s ideas of intuition, the dualistic self, and durative force, Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Eliot’sFour Quartets, and Auden’s “Kairos and Logos” are theological works that depict time as an agent.

Goo Goo Goo Joob!:The John Lennon/James Joyce Connection Through Lewis Carroll’S “Looking-Glass”, Richard J. Gerber

Northeast Popular Culture Association

No abstract provided.

Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, John Young

John K. Young

The famous skywriting scene in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway owes more to 1920s advertising culture than has been previously recognized. In their rapt reading of the “Kreemo” aerial ad, the London pedestrians create both a commentary on consumerism and a model of collaborative, modernist reading.

Canonicity And Commercialization In Woolf's Uniform Edition, John K. Young

John K. Young

This paper considers Virginia Woolf the publisher alongside Virginia Woolf the author. While the Hogarth Press has long been known for making Woolf "the only woman in England free to write what I like," it also made her free to be published as she liked. Hogarth, Jane Marcus argues, "gave Woolf a way of negotiating the terms of literary publicity, and a space somewhere between the private, the coterie, and the public sphere" (144-5). I will examine one such negotiation, the Uniform Edition of Woolf's works, a series designed to capitalize on her growing recognition and marketability. Once the Woolfs …

"The Poets Welcome": An Unrecorded Manuscript By Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy, Patrick G. Scott

Patrick Scott

Introduces, reproduces, and gives provenance for a previously-unrecorded autograph manuscript of Robert Burns's poem about the birth of his first-born child, and his mixed emotions of pride and some shame at her illegitimacy.

Self-Assurance And Literature, Stephanie Wang '14

2012 Fall Semester

Recognizing our faults and failures is no voluntary task. We are cautious, almost reluctant, to do so as those shortcomings cast a shadow over the ideal lives we would like to have. Our inability to confront our problems leads us to follow the lives of characters in books and stories whose flaws are apparent to us – characters who struggle valiantly against or fall miserably to the challenges they face. From the epic Beowulf, where the god-like hero Beowulf fights glorious battles, to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where common folk embark on a pilgrimage, we are fascinated by …

Reputation: A Destructive Force, Srisha Kotlo '14

2012 Fall Semester

In Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, a soldier “[seeks] the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth” (“Shakespeare”). Shakespeare portrays reputation as a bubble because just as bubbles are fragile and can pop at any moment, a man’s reputation is delicate and can be lost in an instant. Reputation and prestige are highly valued by characters in many stories and plays. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Cassio and Othello strive to preserve notable reputations while Iago intends to use reputation as a tool for manipulation, and as the play unfolds they get exceedingly desperate to defend their reputations. This …

Writers And Critics At The Dinner Table: Tristram Shandy As Conversational Model, Cynthia N. Malone

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Arrest Of Caleb Williams: Unnatural Crime, Constructive Violence, And Overwhelming Terror In Late Eighteenth-Century England, Gary Dyer

English Faculty Publications

In the later eighteenth century, the twelve justices of the supreme English common law courts ruled repeatedly that blackmailing a man by threatening to accuse him of sodomitical practices constituted the capital offense of robbery; the judges focused on the overwhelming terror they claimed was unique to this threat. This legal doctrine is a covert presence in William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams (1794). Ferdinando Falkland, fearing that his secret is about to be revealed by Caleb, accuses him of having 'robbed' him, and even though Falkland's secret is literally murder, the mutual persecution and mutual terrorizing that ensue evoke the …

Aesthetics And Ideology In Felicia Hemans's The Forest Sanctuary: A Biocultural Perspective, Nancy Easterlin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

William Fulford, “The Set,” And The Oxford And Cambridge Magazine, Patrick C. Fleming

Faculty Publications

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine is familiar to Victorian scholars largely because its contributors included William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones (the most famous members of the set that produced the magazine) and because Dante Gabriel Rossetti published several poems there. For the magazine’s first readers, however, its most important feature was not the identity of individual contributors but the fact that it was produced by college students. The magazine was a group project, produced not just by Morris and Burne-Jones but by their whole set. Morris’s and Burne-Jones’s contributions are well-known, and their biographies never fail to mention the magazine …

Virginia Woolf And British Russophilia, Michael Lackey

English Publications

Roberta Rubenstein convincingly demonstrates that England was infatuated with all things Russian between the years 1912 and 1922. These were some of the most formative years in the development of Woolf ’s writing and thinking, and consequently, Rubenstein argues that prominent Russian writers heavily influenced Woolf the writer and Woolf the critic. Given the degree to which Russian writers influenced Woolf in particular and England more generally, Rubenstein suggests that the Russian influence had a decisive impact in determining the shape of British Modernism.

Fear And Loathing In Nineteenth-Century England: Monsters, Freaks, And Deformities And Their Influence On Romantic And Victorian Society, Valerie Falk

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Shelley's Mont Blanc, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

"Mont Blanc" studies the relationship between the poet and the omnipotent. Spencer Hall questions the attribution of the supernatural to Shelley's thinking. Hall sees Shelley as creating a non-transcendental and hybrid confluence of emotions and ideas. Shelley concept of the sublime is not intuited by the poet, but rather constructed and projected by him. It is a process in which the imagination is primary.

Wordworth's "Lucy" Poems, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

This essay seeks to provide meaning and a context for interpretation of the Romantic "Lucy" poems by William Wordsworth. Hall argues against two critics' opposing interpretations by suggesting the meaning is humanistic which provides somewhat of a clarity into Wordsworth's poetic development. Hall suggests that his proposed context into these poems isn't merely one dimensional, but multi-faceted and draws upon other critics.

Refashioning A Wordsworthian Tradition, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

In this review of the critical approaches to Wordsworthian study, Spencer Hall discusses the contrast between theory and academic study of Wordsworthian poetry and their links to each other. Wordsworth is discussed in that of the "problematic Wordsworth" and that of the "programmatic Wordsworth." The two sides show how one thought was a product of imagination which was perpetuated in our time and the other from current academic theories. Hall brings to the forefront that by recognizing the interconnectedness of Wordsworthian studies and contemporary theorizing, the issues of literary studies and liberal education can be engaged with Wordsworth.

Feminism, Ecology, Romanticism, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

This review studies gender discrimination in academic Romantic criticism. It brings to light the influence of the works of William Wordsworth on women poets. The review takes a look at the term "Wordsworth" and suggests it needs to be viewed not as a masculinist concept, but as a product of the combination of he and his wife's, Dorothy Wordsworth, works. The review states the book goes further past the knowledge that William used some of his wife's material as his "raw material" for his poetry and suggests that Dorothy intended to supply William with data.

Beyond The Realms Of Dream, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

Mary Shelley's Alastor is analyzed in light of the relationship between Gothic and Romantic literature. The relationship between Gothicism and Romanticism is assessed in light of literature. Shelly's poem is held up as a representation of mature Gothic literature owing a debt to Romanticism.

The Ideal, The Rhetorical, And The Erotic, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

In this review of English Romanticism Spencer Hall examines two works in regards to the intense interest in P. B. Shelley's works. Hall uses many examples to demonstrate why Shelley has become so popular and why he will be in the years to come. With the ongoing critical reexamination of Shelley's works, and evidence of teachers use in their classrooms and in undergraduate studies, the passionate intensity that is undertaken affirms how "hot" Shelley really is.

On Sir Charles Bell’S The Hand, 1833, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay explores the cultural context in which Sir Charles Bell’s 1833 Bridgewater Treatise was published by focusing on the work as a culmination of his deep religious faith, his Edinburgh anatomical training, and his occupation as a surgeon at the Leeds Infirmary. It argues that The Handwas not merely an extension of Paleyan natural theology but also an important response to the era’s struggle with the grim physical reality of the supersession of manual labor by automatic manufacture.

Religion And The Academy: Report On The Western Conference On British Studies Roundtable, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This article is a report of a roundtable I moderated at the 2006 meeting of the Western Conference on British Studies. It proposes some directions religious studies might take in the 21st century; it is also the first publication to mention of the British Pulpit Online, an emerging digital resource for the study of the sermon from 1688-1901.

“’National Apostasy,’ Tracts For The Times, And Plain Sermons: John Keble's Tractarian Prose.”, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

John Keble is perhaps best known for The Christian Year and his work as Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841. In this essay, I argue that his prose is worthy of study as well. I focus on "National Apostasy," the sermon that John Henry Newman saw as the inauguration of the Oxford Movement; the 8 pieces he contributed to the Tracts for the Times; and his many contributions to the Plain Sermons, by Contributors to the "Tracts for the Times."

The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This article examines the political speaking and writing of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other leading figures of the Oxford Movement. It argues that while they were essentially conservative in the pulpit, where they spoke as official representatives of the Established Church, they were more critical and outspoken in other works, where they enjoyed more of the freedom afforded to private citizens.

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.

The Tractarians' Sermons And Other Speeches, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This is the first chapter of A New History of the Sermon: The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It provides an overview of the Tractarians' homiletic theory, and examines the various genres of their oratory: sermons (both "plain" and "university"), lectures, and episcopal charges.

Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer

Robert Ellison

John Cumming (1807-1881) was the popular minister of the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London's Covent Garden. This article examines his views on the end times and the Roman Catholic Church, two of the favorite subjects of his preaching.