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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Journey Into The Self: Essays On Biculturalism, Heidi Moe Graviet
Journey Into The Self: Essays On Biculturalism, Heidi Moe Graviet
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis examines what it means to exist as a bicultural being and how one approaches creating and negotiating a multicultural identity in terms of names, war, religion, belonging, and loss. In Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Bashō embarks upon a journey of transcendence and self-discovery into the interior regions of Japan. In doing so, he establishes a Japanese writing tradition that centers around introspective journey-taking and writing oneself into truth and being. This thesis examines, participates in, and expands upon this writing tradition as it follows one Japanese American woman’s attempts to selfhood. Ultimately, it proposes the idea …
"What Do The Divils Find To Laugh About" In Melville's The Confidence-Man, Truedson J. Sandberg
"What Do The Divils Find To Laugh About" In Melville's The Confidence-Man, Truedson J. Sandberg
Theses and Dissertations
The failure of identity in The Confidence-Man has confounded readers since its publication. To some critics, Melville's titular character has seemed to leave his readers in a hopelessness without access to confidence, identity, trust, ethical relationality, and, finally, without anything to say. I argue, however, that Melville's text does not leave us without hope. My argument, consequently, is inextricably bound to a reading of Melville's text as deeply engaged with the concepts it inherits from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, an inheritance woefully under-examined by those critics who would leave Melville's text in the mire of hopelessness. In examining …
The Need For Shadows: The Death Of The Ego For Virginia Woolf In Night And Day, Jennifer A. Beck Miss
The Need For Shadows: The Death Of The Ego For Virginia Woolf In Night And Day, Jennifer A. Beck Miss
Student Works
Following Woolf’s own belief that the human character and condition changed in 1910, Woolf examines in Night and Day the human condition by destroying the identity of Katharine and following her reconstruction of self to evaluate just how far the human character has changed and where this change will lead the modern novelist. Through a Freudian melancholic reading, we identify what Katharine has lost, the ambivalence that shadows cast upon her play in one’s self-discovery, and the death of her ego, which causes her to retreat into her imaginary world. Although Katharine fails to gain a new ego at the …
More Than A Feeling: The Transmission Of Affect And Group Identity, Lauren Fine
More Than A Feeling: The Transmission Of Affect And Group Identity, Lauren Fine
Student Works
This thesis explores the implications that the transmission of affect (when one person’s emotions are transferred through pheromones and visual cues to trigger a similar affective response in someone else) could have on the study of rhetoric, specifically how we understand rhetorical situations involving large groups. According to Kenneth Burke, our identities are made up of the groups we identify ourselves with, which makes our identities largely based on emotionally connecting with other people. When groups are gathered together, particularly in emotionally charged situations, this emotional connection is often triggered by the subconscious transmission of affect. Transmission can lead a …
Identification Through Inhabitation In Literature, Film, And Video Games, Charlotte Palfreyman Smith
Identification Through Inhabitation In Literature, Film, And Video Games, Charlotte Palfreyman Smith
Theses and Dissertations
In real life we each experience the world separately through our individual bodies, which necessitates what Kenneth Burke calls "identification." In this paper, I assert that as artistic media have structured our aesthetic experience in a way that increasingly resembles our lived, embodied experiences, our identification with fictional characters requires less imaginative effort and is more automatic and powerful. I will show this by analyzing how we inhabit characters through sensory engagement, point of view, and narrative form in literature, film, and video games (specifically action/adventure games, RPGs, and MMORPGs). I will then build off of Burke's foundational theory to …
Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins
Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …
A Virginia Woolf Of One's Own: Consequences Of Adaptation In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Brooke Leora Grant
A Virginia Woolf Of One's Own: Consequences Of Adaptation In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Brooke Leora Grant
Theses and Dissertations
With a rising interest in visual media in academia, studies have overlapped at literary and film scholars' interest in adaptation. This interest has mainly focused on the examination of issues regarding adaptation of novel to novel or novel to film. Here I discuss both: Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and the 2002 film adaptation of Cunningham's novel. However, my thesis also investigates a different kind of adaptation: the adaptation of a literary and historical figure. By including in The Hours a fictionalization of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham entrenches his adaptation with Virginia …