English Language and Literature Commons^™

Unexpected Zeus, Adam Lambert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Bioscience-Industrial Complex, Radical Materialist Aesthetics, And Interspecies Political Ecologies: The Unforeseen Posthuman Future In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam Trilogy, Sarah Sydney Lane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project traces how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, science fiction novels from the Romantic and contemporary literary periods respectively, contest the problematic relationships between subjecthood, science, ecological health, and patriarchal, capitalist societies by crafting radical materialist alternatives to such a system and its dualistic and destructive interpersonal/interspecies relations. Through the theoretical framework of ecofeminism that recognizes the conceptual linkages between women and nature in Western systems of thought, as well as psychoanalytical feminist critiques of the masculinization of scientific epistemology, this project examines the developmental and ontological overlaps between literary “masculine” and “scientific” subjects socialized under …

Jp's Thesis, Jp Kemmick

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Morphing Myths And Shedding Skins: Interconnectivity And The Subversion Of The Isolated Female Self In Angela Carter’S “The Tiger’S Bride” And Margaret Atwood’S Surfacing, Sara M. Laskoski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project is an analysis of the utilization of mythmaking and human-animal relationships reflected in Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” and Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing. Carter and Atwood show how societal restrictions can devalue the connections between the body, the mind, and the natural world. Through the theoretical lenses of primarily post-structuralism and ecofeminism, this project seeks to show how these two authors subvert isolated female identities through the use of the fairy tale element of the human-animal transformation. This subversion rejects dualistic tendencies of the dominant, patriarchal society, opening new ways of identifying the self through interconnections otherwise rejected or …

The Ethics Of Mourning: The Role Of Material Culture And Public Politics In The 'Book Of The Duchess' And The 'Pearl' Poem, Tarren Andrews

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project is a socio-historic analysis of two late 14^th century dream visions: Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess and the Pearl poem. Utilizing Robert Pogue Harrison’s concept of objectifying grief through ritualized communal mourning, this thesis examines the ways in which mourning literature functioned as consolatory device, and a form of public performance for the powerful patrons who commissioned the pieces. By engaging with pre-existing communities of grief, material culture, and courtly discourse these poems perform the work of mourning while simultaneously enacting modes of public performativity that stress the ethics of grieving, and suggest that, for royal patrons, …

Melville's Mardi And The Book Of Mormon, Giordano Lahaderne

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

While Melville’s Mardi has long remained a puzzle to both readers and critics, scholars agree that his third novel marked a significant turning point in his writing career. It is with Mardi that Meville realized the novel as a form suited to grapple the various philosophical and religious questions he would famously explore in his following book, Moby Dick. Although scholars have already pinpointed many various sources for Mardi, this thesis examines the heretofore overlooked connections between Melville’s third book and the esoteric volume of American scripture, the Book of Mormon.

The first chapter of this thesis examines …