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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

The Liminal Mirror: The Impact Of Mirror Images And Reflections On Identity In The Bloody Chamber And Coraline, Staci Poston Conner May 2014

The Liminal Mirror: The Impact Of Mirror Images And Reflections On Identity In The Bloody Chamber And Coraline, Staci Poston Conner

Masters Theses

In Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002), mirrors play a large role in the development of the female protagonist’s identity. Tracing the motif of physical mirrors and mirrored realities in these texts offers a deeper understanding of each protagonist’s coming of age and coming to terms with her own identity. Though Angela Carter’s short stories are for an adult audience, they are remakes of fairy tales, which are often viewed as children’s literature, or at least literature about the child. Though the appropriate reading age for Coraline is debatable, it can tentatively be categorized as …


Ships That Do Not Sail: Antinauticalism, Antitheatricalism, And Irrationality In Stephen Gosson, Kent Lehnhof Jan 2014

Ships That Do Not Sail: Antinauticalism, Antitheatricalism, And Irrationality In Stephen Gosson, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Stephen Gosson's similes, particularly in 1579's The Schoole of Abuse, commend affective restraint, value stasis over motion, and idealize immobility. Combined with his Platonic mistrust of emotion and his dislike of stage plays for the emotional response they provoke, his criticisms can be seen to express a desire to slow cultural change and social mobility. The effect of this in The Schoole of Abuse is that it deprives objects and agents of their essential identify by removing the action that best defines them, implying that to become our best selves, we must give up the very qualities that define us.