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Articles 1 - 30 of 135
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
A Game Of Hazard, Per Chance: Reading Dice Games And Predestined Action In Troilus And Criseyde And Troilus And Cressida, Emma O. Corbin
A Game Of Hazard, Per Chance: Reading Dice Games And Predestined Action In Troilus And Criseyde And Troilus And Cressida, Emma O. Corbin
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the references to the dice game Hazard in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and the Folio version of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida as means to expand the understanding of Troilus’s ability to act as an agent of change within his predetermined story. Utilizing Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens as the foundation for game and play, this work focuses on Hazard as a game of chance present in both works. As a dice game that relies entirely on chance, Hazard is a game and a place of moral and religious anxiety as demonstrated through a survey of dice-based divination and …
Fortune, Fate, And Free Will: Chaucer’S Encounters With Providence, Ciara Jane Turula
Fortune, Fate, And Free Will: Chaucer’S Encounters With Providence, Ciara Jane Turula
Masters Theses
It’s easy to assume that the world is innately unstable as Chaucer seems to do in the short poems “Truth”, “Lak of Stedfastnesse”, “The Forger Age” and “Gentilesse”, and yet we are called to wonder with the Black Knight in The Book of the Duchess how any divine authority could let this be the case. As Lady Philosophy informs readers in Boece, the world is not really Fortune’s chaotic kingdom of unreliability. Instead, the Earth and all that happens within it has already been laid out in the plan of Providence, which unravels regardless of whether individuals are aware …
Love On The Spectrum: Djuna Barnes’S Case Against Categorization In Nightwood, Kaitlyn A. Alford
Love On The Spectrum: Djuna Barnes’S Case Against Categorization In Nightwood, Kaitlyn A. Alford
Masters Theses
Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is a challenging and beautiful text that continues to confound readers almost 100 years after its original publication. Though the text is often read as a “lesbian” novel, I consider the possibilities available when we read this text instead with a more open queerness in mind. By looking at the novel’s treatment of image, time, history, gender, sexuality, and identity, a new way of reading is revealed which rejects moves of taxonomization and categorization. This thesis explores how Barnes challenges dominant modes of representation and understanding, not to be a simple contrarian, but to present a new …
Neurodiversity In Sense And Sensibility And Emma: Jane Austen’S Heroines And Their Cognitive Difference, Alexandra Sausa
Neurodiversity In Sense And Sensibility And Emma: Jane Austen’S Heroines And Their Cognitive Difference, Alexandra Sausa
Masters Theses
There is a dearth of criticism that analyzes Jane Austen’s characters through the lens of neurodivergence — that is, an umbrella term for neurological difference, or behavior and cognitive processing that differs from what is “typical”. Although Austen has male characters that have been read as neurodivergent, this thesis will principally focus on two of Austen’s neurodivergent heroines: Marianne Dashwood and Emma Woodhouse. To support neurodivergent interpretations of these heroines, I will supplement close readings of Sense and Sensibility and Emma with social science and psychological literature. Marianne exhibits numerous traits that characterize Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and Emma exhibits …
Hagenheim Series By Melanie Dickerson: Creating Active Fairy Tale Heroines With The Christian Feminist Voice, Skylar R. Blankenship
Hagenheim Series By Melanie Dickerson: Creating Active Fairy Tale Heroines With The Christian Feminist Voice, Skylar R. Blankenship
Masters Theses
Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm; these four men are the great authors and compilers of western canon fairy tales. They may have created the canon, but others have expanded it through multiple means, including adaptations. One current author is Melanie Dickerson with the Hagenheim Series. Her adaptations alter the setting, characters, and a few other elements, but the most critical part of her work is the addition of the Christian-feminist voice. In the original fairy tales, the female protagonists were passive and uninspiring, but in Hagenheim, they are active heroines because Christianity and feminist ideas …
There Can Be But The One Ezra Pound: Rearticulating Hugh Selwyn Mauberley As Modernist Autobiography, Joshua H. Moore
There Can Be But The One Ezra Pound: Rearticulating Hugh Selwyn Mauberley As Modernist Autobiography, Joshua H. Moore
Masters Theses
Ezra Pound took Eliot’s theory of Literary Impersonality seriously and rejected biographical readings of his poetry. Yet, his poem Hugh Sewlyn Mauberley contains explicitly autobiographical material, which is directly related to the poem’s meaning and has been referenced repeatedly in historical criticism of the poem. This creates a paradox of interpretation, in which the poem’s interpretive meaning stands in contrast with the author’s preferred style of interpretation. The intent of this Thesis is to work within this paradox by applying new criticism on literary autobiography to the poem; specifically the work of Max Saunders, Kevin Wong, and Hannah Sullivan. As …
Revolting Delight: Posthuman Subversion In The Work Of Leonora Carrington, Jacob Breeding
Revolting Delight: Posthuman Subversion In The Work Of Leonora Carrington, Jacob Breeding
Masters Theses
This thesis explores the posthuman implications of Leonora Carrington’s writing, painting, and other works. Carrington’s is a remedial project, one that points to a healthier potential future beyond the conceptual limits of humanism. Her body of work disorders the projected/created order of human society (with its arrogant philosophies and systems of knowledge) and supplies a sublimely recombined “order” of its own—one that, in its very grotesquerie, defies human hubris and solipsism and celebrates everything else besides. In spite of the undermining inherent in her work, Carrington provides a positive alternative to some of the “-isms” that spring from humanism and …
Negative Realism: Reading The Novels Of John Williams, William Wells
Negative Realism: Reading The Novels Of John Williams, William Wells
Masters Theses
This thesis attempts to posit a dynamic theory of literary realism that accounts not only for the commonly understood “historical” realisms of the 18th and 19th centuries, but for the more fluid realisms that arise in the modern and postmodern eras. Realisms of this sort are still understood to be expressions of particular, sociohistorical eras, but these expressions must be understood to be subject to material change in society. This paper breaks, then, with traditional Marxist conceptions of realism as the direct response to enlightenment thought and early capitalism, and instead argues for traceable eruptions of realism throughout …
I Am Woman: The Complicated Relationship Between Fairy Mistresses, Virgin Martyrs, And The Medieval Patriarchy, Katherine A. Haire
I Am Woman: The Complicated Relationship Between Fairy Mistresses, Virgin Martyrs, And The Medieval Patriarchy, Katherine A. Haire
Masters Theses
While modern scholars cannot expect medieval authors to live up to our expectations of feminism, we can still reflect upon the ways in which they both circumvented and upheld the typical patriarchal discursive structure which dominated the Middle Ages. A cross-genre examination of virgin martyred saints and fairy mistresses will illuminate significant overlap in the treatment of magic and divine intervention and the typical female portrayal in these circumstances. Saint’s Lives and Medieval Romances occupy significantly distinct spaces in the popular literary consciousness of the High and Late Middle Ages; however, both genres offer moral instruction for the women who …
"Thou Art The Lorliest Lede That Ever I On Looked": Arthur And Kingship As Represented By The Alliterative Morte Arthure, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, And The Awntyrs Off Arthur, Samuel Hardin Cox
Masters Theses
King Arthur is one of the most well known mythical figures in the English language, and throughout his 1500-year literary tradition, poets have built an intricate and multifaceted mythos around this legendary character. Integral to Arthur’s various depictions is how each poet chooses to illustrate his kingship. These characteristics often overlap across poems, poets, and time periods. Yet, upon closer examination, subtle differences between those kingly depictions produce telling insights into the period in which the story was written. For this study, I have examined three separate Arthurian romances: The Alliterative Morte Arthure, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight …
“Everything Seemed Very Queer”: Divergent Temporalities Of Normative Relations In Mrs. Dalloway, Crystal Brooke Clark
“Everything Seemed Very Queer”: Divergent Temporalities Of Normative Relations In Mrs. Dalloway, Crystal Brooke Clark
Masters Theses
Queer theory predominantly aligns normative relations to normative experiences of time and connects queer affiliations to queer temporal spaces. Heterosexuality, marriage, sexual reproduction, and the family are hallmarks of normative temporality, as they enact and maintain a progressive, future-oriented, genealogical timeline. However, normative attachments do not always follow queer theory’s narrative of straight time. Closely observing the structure of normative relationships and, in terms of my study specifically, marriage, uncovers assumptions constructing the constitution of normative temporality. I discuss queer theoretical works by Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz, and others to see how current theories typically oversimplify normative …
Shakespeare In South Africa: An Examination Of Two Performances Of Titus Andronicus In Apartheid And Post-Apartheid South Africa, Erin Elizabeth Whitaker
Shakespeare In South Africa: An Examination Of Two Performances Of Titus Andronicus In Apartheid And Post-Apartheid South Africa, Erin Elizabeth Whitaker
Masters Theses
The works of William Shakespeare are wide and universal. His work has been and is still consistently performed in numerous countries and venues across the globe. This thesis focuses on two performances of Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, in South Africa. One performance, directed by Dieter Reible in 1970, was produced during apartheid. The second, directed by Gregory Doran, was performed in 1995, just after the end of apartheid. These performances of Titus not only show the versatility and universality of Shakespeare’s work, but the complexity of audience reception and directorial intention in different political landscapes. …
The Importance Of Disguise In The Middle English Romances, Sarah Catherine Moore
The Importance Of Disguise In The Middle English Romances, Sarah Catherine Moore
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the literary motif of disguise in the context of the Middle English romances. The thesis seeks to explore the various manifestations and functions of disguise, and how they relate to the familiar exile-and-return structure of the genre. Chapter I discusses the conversation of genre description of the Middle English romances, and presents the scholarship reviewed for this project along with relevant terms to the discussion at large. Chapter II explores disguise as it relates to a character’s social mobility in King Horn, Havelok the Dane, and The Tale of Gamelyn. Chapter III looks at …
Color-Blind Stancetaking In Racialized Discourse, Abigail Christine Tobias-Lauerman
Color-Blind Stancetaking In Racialized Discourse, Abigail Christine Tobias-Lauerman
Masters Theses
In this thesis, I examine how language constructs and constrains racialized discourse in post-Jim Crow contemporary America. Drawing on rhetorical and sociolinguistic work set forth by Booth, Shotwell, Bonilla-Silva, Omi and Winant, and others, it is apparent that racial organization— and racial identities and categorization— in the US is reliant upon specific markers that signify racial meaning. Such markers are assimilated into wider, unconscious discourse through what Shotwell and Booth describe as seemingly inherent— yet ultimately constructed— matters of “common sense,” and are expressed through evaluative stance acts. I explore the origins and construction of these markers and the relationship …
A Crisis Of Friendship: Calculation And Betrayal In Shakespeare’S The Merchant Of Venice And Othello, The Moor Of Venice, Kristi Rene Sexton
A Crisis Of Friendship: Calculation And Betrayal In Shakespeare’S The Merchant Of Venice And Othello, The Moor Of Venice, Kristi Rene Sexton
Masters Theses
The idea that friendship is an illusory connection that may only exist in philosophers’ writings was a subject of interest for many of the early modern writers. Writers like Thomas Elyot, Thomas Churchyard, and Michel de Montaigne attempted to uphold idealized traditions of friendship; conversely, Shakespeare, along with writers such as Francis Bacon, presented early modern perceptions of idealized friendship only to confront and challenge the precepts. In The Merchant of Venice and Othello, the Moor of Venice, Shakespeare expresses a sometimes cynical yet realistic approach toward idealized friendship. He exposes the problem of upholding the idealized early modern …
Poor Metaphors: How Language Makes, And How Analyzing Popular Stereotypes Can Challenge, Social Attitudes That Question The Value Of The Economically Oppressed In A Democratic Society, Jacob Patrick Sharbel
Poor Metaphors: How Language Makes, And How Analyzing Popular Stereotypes Can Challenge, Social Attitudes That Question The Value Of The Economically Oppressed In A Democratic Society, Jacob Patrick Sharbel
Masters Theses
This rhetorical project analyzes the historical and contemporary prevalence of some of the popular metaphors that have come to characterize recipients of government assistance programs such as food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. By synthesizing the metaphor theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson with the sociological concepts of doxa, habitus, and heretical discourse posited by Pierre Bourdieu, this project not only spotlights these negative metaphors but also offers ways of disrupting their tacit influence over people’s perceptions, which otherwise are in danger of reproducing themselves. The metaphors discussed seek to reduce the poor on …
Embodied Social Death: Speaking And Nonspeaking Corpses In Hannah Crafts’S The Bondwoman’S Narrative And Solomon Northup’S Twelve Years A Slave, Rachel Jane Dunsmore
Embodied Social Death: Speaking And Nonspeaking Corpses In Hannah Crafts’S The Bondwoman’S Narrative And Solomon Northup’S Twelve Years A Slave, Rachel Jane Dunsmore
Masters Theses
Hannah Crafts and Solomon Northup share remarkable similarities in their constructions of social death portrayed through characters’ bodies in images that not only represent this social death but do so in ways that illuminate the forced inbetweenness of slave life in antebellum America. This study looks at how the authors represent social death with figures that I term “speaking corpses” and “nonspeaking corpses” and portray embodiments of a unique type of social nonexistence. In Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative, the author constructs these images of speaking corpses in characters that are trapped in states of liminality and an existence that …
Kenneth Koch's Postmodern Comedy Revisited, John Campbell Nichols
Kenneth Koch's Postmodern Comedy Revisited, John Campbell Nichols
Masters Theses
This thesis describes and analyzes the postmodern comedy of New York School poet, Kenneth Koch and discusses the changes this comedy underwent throughout his lengthy career. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter I explains the aesthetic of the New York School of poets as contrasted to the dominant New Critical compositional aesthetic embodied by poets such as Robert Lowell in the mid-century United States. Chapter II develops Koch’s comedy as expressing an emergent postmodernism. Chapter III discusses the various aspects of Koch’s comedy, sampling poems from across his career. Chapter IV traces the development and maturity of Koch’s …
Everything Leaves A Trace: D. H. Lawrence, Modernism, And The English Bildungsroman Tradition, Justin Miles Mcgee
Everything Leaves A Trace: D. H. Lawrence, Modernism, And The English Bildungsroman Tradition, Justin Miles Mcgee
Masters Theses
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth-century, the Bildungsroman acted as a vehicle for artists’ reflections on the turbulent time. The Bildungsroman is especially well suited to capture the fragmentation and disillusionment characteristic of modernism because of its sensitivity to the community’s role in the individual’s social normalization. D. H. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913) embodies the jarring transition from the world of the Victorian Bildungsroman to modernity. While Lawrence’s novel still relies on characteristics of the Victorian Bildungsroman, it makes a significant attempt to break away from the Victorian Bildungsroman. Lawrence uses the …
Myth Y La Magia: Magical Realism And The Modernism Of Latin America, Hannah R. Widdifield
Myth Y La Magia: Magical Realism And The Modernism Of Latin America, Hannah R. Widdifield
Masters Theses
The similarities between Latin American magical realism and European surrealism have long been regarded as part of a shared, cohesive movement in literature and art. After all, they share certain nonsensical and fantastical traits that place both movements far away from the Realism that modernism, as a whole, refutes. But in light of postcolonial theory, it becomes more and more necessary to explore magical realism as a geographically and politically situated movement with its own unique value in discussions of Modernism; not an offshoot of surrealism, but a sister genre, born in the distinct atmosphere of a region trying to …
It's A Woman's World: Feminist Themes From Pride And Prejudice To The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Amber Naz Haydar
It's A Woman's World: Feminist Themes From Pride And Prejudice To The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Amber Naz Haydar
Masters Theses
The overall objective of It’s a woman’s world: Feminist themes from Pride and Prejudice to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is to examine the feminist themes present in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and their representation in Bernie Su and Hank Green’s recent web series adaptation of Austen’s novel, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. There is first discussion of the critical conversation regarding Austen’s position as a feminist, as well as background on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Analysis of the feminist themes present in novel and, subsequently, adaptation, follows, and the project concludes with a discussion of some of the …
Eruptive Baroque Hysteria In English Neoclassical Literature, Royce Lee Best
Eruptive Baroque Hysteria In English Neoclassical Literature, Royce Lee Best
Masters Theses
"Eruptive Baroque Hysteria in English Neoclassical Literature" explores the persistence and intrusion of early-seventeenth-century baroque aesthetics in otherwise bourgeois, neoclassical works of the English Restoration. These "baroque eruptive" moments, I argue, can be read as particular instances that articulate historically-specific anxieties felt by aristocrats, including the restructuring of the family unit and the dual appeal and abhorrence of continental Catholicism. The introduction discusses the poetry of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester; chapter 1 discusses William Wycherley's The Country Wife; chapter 2 discusses Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd; and the conclusion chapter probes into several early eighteenth-century works.
The Liminal Mirror: The Impact Of Mirror Images And Reflections On Identity In The Bloody Chamber And Coraline, Staci Poston Conner
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 …
“We Know What We Are, But Know Not What We May Be”: Victorian Adaptations Of The Shakespearean Gaze, Joanna Elizabeth Ruth Zimmerman
“We Know What We Are, But Know Not What We May Be”: Victorian Adaptations Of The Shakespearean Gaze, Joanna Elizabeth Ruth Zimmerman
Masters Theses
In considering Victorian adaptations of William Shakespeare, critics have long studied literary references to him as a sign of his popularity as a cultural figurehead. This thesis argues that Shakespeare played a larger role in Victorian writing as a symbol for social change. Through historical research and close readings of the texts, it becomes apparent that in adapting Shakespeare, Victorian authors purposefully wove him into writings that were intended to bring attention to social problems. Shakespeare originally brought focus to certain types of characters, such as women, servants, Jews, and other victims in his work by directing the gaze and …
Mina Loy And The Electric Body, Debra Elizabeth Cardell
Mina Loy And The Electric Body, Debra Elizabeth Cardell
Masters Theses
Abstract Mina Loy, modernist poet and artist, experimented with theories of feminism and class within her own artwork. This creates a complex point of interpretation for the reader because of overlap and contradiction. The concept of ekphrasis, when manipulated for Loy’s context, opens possibilities of understanding Loy’s many contradictions. Since the body and material world play a central role in Loy’s art, ekphrasis is a lens through which we can begin to see the relationship between Loy’s art and writing along with her feminism.
Tell Me A Story: Metaphysics And The Literary Criticism Of Robert Penn Warren And Wendell Berry, Jason Frederick Hardy
Tell Me A Story: Metaphysics And The Literary Criticism Of Robert Penn Warren And Wendell Berry, Jason Frederick Hardy
Masters Theses
Robert Penn Warren and Wendell Berry share more than a home state. Both have produced prodigious and varied literary oeuvres that include accomplished fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and both have written extensively on literature’s indispensable function within a healthy culture. This latter shared vision is not unanimously held in academic literary scholarship. In fact, many contemporary critics, who often see literature as a mere material participant in potentially oppressive power structures, oppose the idea that literature serves a valid and definable social function, or at least regard it with skepticism. For this reason, Warren’s and Berry’s views of literature’s proper …
Flannery O'Connor And The Mystery Of Justice, Matthew Holland Bryant Cheney
Flannery O'Connor And The Mystery Of Justice, Matthew Holland Bryant Cheney
Masters Theses
The purpose of this study will be to begin to answer the question, “What is ‘justice’ in the work of Flannery O’Connor?” by approaching three stories—“The Comforts of Home,” “The Partridge Festival,” and finally “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Each of these stories applies pressure to both individual and social conceptions of justice while fixating primarily on individuals’ just or unjust convictions and principles, usually in tension with those of their family or community. Flannery O’Connor’s work, while it seriously questions the possibility of “perfect” justice among a fallen humanity, exemplifies the paradoxes that arise from the contingency of our …
When Family And Politics Mix: Female Agency, Mixed Spaces, And Coercive Kinship In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, The Awntyrs Off Arthure At Terne Wathelyne, And “The Deth Of Arthur” From Le Morte Darthur, Lainie Pomerleau
Masters Theses
In this paper I will be examining the relationship and rivalry between Morgan and Guinevere, sisters by law, and the intricate combination of love, family loyalty, and political obedience they both elicit from their shared nephew, Gawain through the systemized use of coercive kinship. I will be arguing that Morgan and Guinevere are connected by a desire to exert control and influence on the masculine, chivalric world of Camelot. In order to do so, Guinevere accesses and utilizes the masculinized, political forms of influence available to her, while Morgan is dependent on the more traditionally female modes of access through …
Tied In Lusty Leese: Animalization And Agency In Troilus And Criseyde, Kendra Marie Slayton
Tied In Lusty Leese: Animalization And Agency In Troilus And Criseyde, Kendra Marie Slayton
Masters Theses
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is a tale fraught with ambiguity, and particularly so concerning issues of gender, agency, and free will. Critical readings often focus on depicting TC as Chaucer’s didactic portrayal of a flawed and transitory humanity, with Troilus’s death and transcendence taken as the primary lens through which to seek final meaning in the poem. However, I argue that Chaucer’s use of natural tropes, vocabulary, and artistry also reveal that the poem, before it reaches its transcendental ending, indicts not only the mortal world at large but more specifically the at-times misogynist conventions of the genre itself. Specifically, …
Cosmopolitan Christians: Religious Subjectivity And Political Agency In Equiano's Interesting Narrative And Achebe's African Trilogy, Joel David Cox
Cosmopolitan Christians: Religious Subjectivity And Political Agency In Equiano's Interesting Narrative And Achebe's African Trilogy, Joel David Cox
Masters Theses
The primary texts featured in this study—the Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano and two novels of Chinua Achebe’s so-called African Trilogy—each constitute responses to a sly and exploitive Christian modernity, responses which, borrowing from theories of intersubjectivity articulated by Kwame Anthony Appiah and others, might be called two cosmopolitanisms: for Equiano, a Christian cosmopolitanism, which works within available theological structures to revise Enlightenment-era notions of shared humanity; and for Achebe, a contaminated cosmopolitanism, which ironically celebrates the modern inevitability of cultural admixture. Despite their separation by time, space, and even genre, and even more than their common …