Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

English Language and Literature Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Hysteria, Perversion, And Paranoia In The Canterbury Tales: "Wild" Analysis And The Symptomatic Storyteller, Becky Renee Mclaughlin Jul 2020

Hysteria, Perversion, And Paranoia In The Canterbury Tales: "Wild" Analysis And The Symptomatic Storyteller, Becky Renee Mclaughlin

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Beginning with the spectacle of hysteria, moving through the perversions of fetishism, masochism, and sadism, and ending with paranoia and psychosis, this book explores the ways that conflicts with the Oedipal law erupt on the body and in language in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for Chaucer’s tales are rife with issues of mastery and control that emerge as conflicts not only between authority and experience but also between power and knowledge, word and flesh, rule books and reason, man and woman, same and other—conflicts that erupt in a macabre sprawl of broken bones, dismembered bodies, cut throats, and decapitations. Like …


Convents And Novices In Early Modern English Dramatic Works: In Medias Res, Vanessa L. Rapatz Apr 2020

Convents And Novices In Early Modern English Dramatic Works: In Medias Res, Vanessa L. Rapatz

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Texts: In Medias Res attends to the religious, social, and material changes in England during the century following the Reformation, specifically examining how the English came to terms with the meanings of convents and novices even after they disappeared from the physical and social landscape. In five chapters, it traces convents and novices across a range of dramatic texts that refuse easy generic classification: problem plays such as Shakespeare's Measure for Measure; Marlowe's comic tragedy The Jew of Malta; Margaret Cavendish's closet dramas The Convent of Pleasure and The Religious …


Fine Southern Gentlemen: The Three Beaux Of Edna Pontellier, Keli Masten Oct 2018

Fine Southern Gentlemen: The Three Beaux Of Edna Pontellier, Keli Masten

The Hilltop Review

Much of the literary criticism on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has focused upon the main character, Edna Pontellier, and her journey of self-discovery, but the surrounding cast is rich with personalities as diverse and enlightening as Edna’s own. While most of the characters seem clearly defined as to their values, desires, and how they reconcile any dissonance they might face, and Edna Pontellier might seem like the only person suffering the torment of this discord, each character is actually negotiating a careful playing field replete with rules, regulations, and strict penalties if one is to run afoul. This essay explores …


The Unpardonable Reader, Ariel Berry Aug 2018

The Unpardonable Reader, Ariel Berry

The Hilltop Review

Hawthorne’s prefaces to his romances, though largely ignored as a composite body of work, contain key insights into reading his fiction. Each preface is a sort of instruction manual directed toward the reader. He expects empathy from his readers and openness to his version of magical realism. A study of Hawthorne’s concept of the “Unpardonable Sin” as presented in “Ethan Brand” reveals that these reading instructions warn against a similar crime, that of a cold lack of empathy and tendency toward disbelief. On a much smaller scale, then, it becomes clear that a reader who does not follow Hawthorne’s instructions …


A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson Apr 2017

A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this scholarly fictional narrative is meant to reveal the struggles that individuals with mental illness go through, not only in their personal lives, but also with their place in society. I lay out research around the stigma that surrounds mental illness first, defining both public and self-stigma in relation to mental illness. I also briefly mention Girl, Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how authors have addressed the stigma that surrounds mental illness in literature in the past. The research is an important part of understanding why I write the fictional narrative the way I do, …


Precarious Positions Of Femininity In Contemporary Literature: A College Course Creation, Ireland Atkinson Apr 2017

Precarious Positions Of Femininity In Contemporary Literature: A College Course Creation, Ireland Atkinson

Honors Theses

In an effort to understand college instruction, I created a collegiate literature course and its logistical materials. This process manifested in the creation of a syllabus, schedules, assignments, and a teaching philosophy statement. With the title “Precarious Positions of Femininity in Contemporary Literature,” the course is in an interdisciplinary format that explores gender and women’s studies with literary scholarship as its medium. All of the texts are not only written by female authors, but also address women’s issues and the precarious positions their femininity puts them in. With a focus on the intersectionality and the diversity of the female experience, …


The Peace Of The Waste Land And Understanding Eliot’S Two Readings, Luke J. Chambers May 2015

The Peace Of The Waste Land And Understanding Eliot’S Two Readings, Luke J. Chambers

The Hilltop Review

There are two recordings of T.S. Eliot reading The Waste Land in existence today, one made in 1946 for the Library of Congress, and another from 1935, recorded at Columbia University. The later 1946 recording, being the only one published, is by far the more well known. The 1935 recording is of much inferior sound quality and is difficult to find. The younger Eliot recites at times with greater energy, a quicker tempo, and with markedly different phrasing and intonation. However, quite often Eliot’s recitation is nearly indistinguishable between the two recordings. The specific moments of difference reveal a great …


Neurodiversity’S Lingua Franca?: The Wild Iris, Autobiography Of Red, And The Breakdown Of Cognitive Barriers Through Poetic Language, Dani Alexis Ryskamp Jan 2015

Neurodiversity’S Lingua Franca?: The Wild Iris, Autobiography Of Red, And The Breakdown Of Cognitive Barriers Through Poetic Language, Dani Alexis Ryskamp

The Hilltop Review

Persons with mental and emotional disabilities, including self-advocates in the fledgling "neurodiversity" movement, often find themselves at a loss to communicate effectively with the "neurotypical," abled majority when experiences of language differ dramatically across typical and atypical populations. This paper explores the possibility of poetic language as a "lingua franca" permitting communication of neurodiverse experiences. It does so by examining examples of animism, synesthesia, and metonymy in Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris and Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red - poetic elements that also appear frequently in the writing of activists with depression, autism, and other neuroatypical conditions. I argue that, …


Harvard Cowboys: The Role Of Silas Weir Mitchell's Creative Works In Defining Western-Style American Masculinity, Becky De Oliveira Jun 2012

Harvard Cowboys: The Role Of Silas Weir Mitchell's Creative Works In Defining Western-Style American Masculinity, Becky De Oliveira

The Hilltop Review

There were probably few men better placed in the latter part of the nineteenth century to help other men create a persona of strength and vigor--based quite firmly, too, in the tradition of literature and writing--than Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), a physician who "achieved great success in popularizing the idea of a correlation between mental activity and nerve strain" (Will, 293).


Party Line: Allen Ginsberg And Political Expression In Death & Fame, Todd Ide Sep 2011

Party Line: Allen Ginsberg And Political Expression In Death & Fame, Todd Ide

The Hilltop Review

Mention the name Allen Ginsberg and it is hard to resist the urge to drift back into the psychedelic-colored world of the 1960s where free love, drugs and the Beat Poets influenced the literary landscape. Ginsberg came into his own as part of the Beat generation. It was during this time that he helped give voice to the “youthful, dissatisfied, rebellious” energy “that would soon coalesce into the” political “culture and practices of the New Left” (Lee 365). The publication of Howl, not only expressed the feelings of a generation but also became, according to literary critics, one of the …


Dark Side Of The Dream: The Social Gothic In Vietnam Era America, Greg Smith Dec 2000

Dark Side Of The Dream: The Social Gothic In Vietnam Era America, Greg Smith

Dissertations

Gothic horror narratives have been a mainstay of American literature since Charles Brockden Brown's 1798 novel Wieland, and also of our cinema since the celebrated Universal films Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931. Often considered tripe by professional literary and film critics, such tales—both in written and cinematic form—began to gamer intellectual attention during the 1970s as their general popularity soared and as academic interest in American popular culture increased significantly. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Gothic genre became one of the most discussed and debated aspects of American pop culture, with numerous critics weighing in on its potential implications, …