English Language and Literature Commons^™

Clockwork Heroines: Female Characters In Steampunk Literature, Cassie N. Bergman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Steampunk is a progressive literary genre that evokes, imitates, and re-imagines the nineteenth century and favors the Industrial Revolution ideals of science and technology. In a historical framework, it mixes nineteenth-century conventions and retrofuturistic machinery with science fiction and fantasy elements. Steampunk authors are able to radically redefine socio-cultural implications that affect both past and contemporary societies. The following study explores the multitude of characteristics that define Steampunk literature as an interdisciplinary study. Chapter 1 explores the definitions and literary genres that construct Steampunk and includes a brief literary history of Steampunk works. Chapter 2 focuses on Cherie Priest’s novel …

Wordsworth's Decline: Self-Editing And Editing The Self, Kenneth E. Morrison

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In critical discourse surrounding the poetry of William Wordsworth, it has become generally acceptable to describe the course of the poet’s career by means of a theory of “decline.” In its most common form, this theory argues that Wordsworth’s best poetry was written during one “Great Decade” (1798-1807)—an isolated epoch of prolificacy and genius. His subsequent works, it is argued, neither surpass nor equal his initial efforts; the course of his career after 1808 may be best described in terms of declivity, ebb, and decline.

Due to its ideological complicity with the very texts it engages, and due to its …

Lady Macbeth And Gertrude: A Study In Gender, Lisa Ferguson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The detailed examination of two of Shakespeare's female leads, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, is designed to determine whether or not these particular characters were free from the confines of their society, or if they were content within its oppressive grasp. A combination of Feminist Criticism and New Historicism reveals that Lady Macbeth and Gertrude did not overstep the bounds of their gender, but in fact were suppressed within them. The limited rights and freedoms of a woman during the Renaissance is heavily discussed, and aids in giving the reader a vivid impression of Lady Macbeth's and Gertrude's subjugation. As Renaissance …

"In What Particular Thought To Work": Hamlet And Manic-Depression, Lewis Pickett

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

By means of contemporary diagnostic criteria, Prince Hamlet may be demonstrated to be a Bi-Polar I Manic Depressive. Because current genetic research suggests that this disease is inherited, it is logical to ask if Claudius also suffers from this disorder. It can be demonstrated that he does. We may conclude that Claudius murdered the late King of Denmark during a manic episode similar to the one in which Hamlet kills Polonius.

Stain Upon The Silence: Samuel Beckett’S Deconstructive Inventions, Leigh Howard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In recent years, deconstruction theory has emerged as a key method for exploring public address, organizational culture, and literary discourse. Deconstruction theory encourages tearing apart hierarchy and established order to gain insights about the artifact being studied. Furthermore, the theory questions surface or superficial messages and encourages the reader to explore signals hidden below the surface. Deconstruction discounts context and places faith in experience.

Using the early plays of Samuel Beckett, this research explores deconstruction as a method to create messages. This new perspective transports deconstruction from a set of theoretical concepts into basic assumptions that enhance communication. This study …

Charlotte Mew: An Introduction, Sandra Carol Joiner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) published short stories, essays, and poetry between 1894 and the time of her death. She published a slim volume of poems in 1916, a few of which place her as one of the great English poets. Indeed, both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf thought her one of the greatest living female poets. Mew is particularly interesting as a poet who was born in the Victorian period, published during the “decadent decade” of the nineties, throughout Edward’s reign, and well into the reign of George V. Although few of Mew’s poems are dated, there is a gradual yet …

D.H. Lawrence's Philosophy Of Human Relationships As Seen In Four Novels, Jacqueline Eachus

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The growth of an individual into mature selfhood is the primary basis of the Lawrentian relationship. Lawrence describes a mystical kind of rebirth of the self into a deeper level of the unconscious. He says that one should explore the impulses and desires of the unconscious in order to find a deeper, more fulfilled self. Ursula of The Rainbow and Paul of Sons and Lovers are the characters who most successfully begin this growth into separate selfhood.

According to Lawrence the journey into the unconscious is to be accomplished through sensual experiences. He mistrusts the intellect because he feels that …

Charles Dickens & The Breakdown Of Society's Institutions For Children, David Major

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

As a social critic, Charles Dickens carries an attack against the mistreatment of children throughout his career. At first reacting in the defense of wronged children, he develops a view of the process of social breakdown that results from mistreating children. Adults fai3 in their duty to children because they fail to recognize the needs of children as children and even fail to recognize the human rights of children. This mistreatment is implemented by social institutions that are supposedly dedicated to caring for children. The family fails to bring up the child with love and care. The child's education rarely …

In Search Of The Grail: The Poetic Development Of T.S. Eliot, William Bell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In Poets of Reality, Joseph Hillis Miller seeks to establish T.S. Eliot as a precursor of the modern movement towards romantic. subjectivism. By applying his phenomenological critique, Miller claims that several major modern writers, including Eliot, adopt aesthetics based on various forms of philosophical monism.

The point underlying this thesis is that Eliot stands opposed to any such position and, until 1930, breaks with philosophy, monistic or otherwise. His art from this period is instead characterized by a search for solution in poetic artifice, a pure art. However, with "Ash Wednesday," the poet once again enters fully into the …

In Search Of Individual Freedom: Ford Madox Ford, Phenomenology & Reader-Response Criticism, Edgar Shields Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Ford Madox Ford has often been seen by critics as an author of pure style, writing without philosophic underpinnings for his impressionistic techniques. However, philosophy plays a large role in Ford's work—as a foundation for both his themes and literary theory. This philosophy, phenomenology--the metaphysics of individual experience as opposed to universal determinism—came into existence during Ford's lifetime. Though Ford may never have read in phenomenology, his works reflect the movement both in what he writes, by emphasizing the individual over the communal experience, and how he writes, using the idea of the neutral author to present objective narration.

The …

Isabel's Sexual Drama, Barbara Pinson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Henry James, Jr. (1843-1916) has had a greater impact on the world of the novel than any other writer. The greatest controversy surrounding this most prolific of American authors and critics Concerns the area of sexual passion. The most insidious criticism leveled against James is that he and his characters lack sexuality. The whole problem is epitomized in this perusal of the sexual consciousness of Isabel Archer Osmond, the famous heroine in The Portrait of a Lady. While many critics simply ignore Isabel's sexuality, many others are less discerning than they should be, and some are absolutely mistaken: they …

Some Measures Of Ulysses, June Sinclair

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Contemporary literary theorists, very much aware of themselves as constituting a break in, and a refutation of, an entire classical metaphysics, are trying to prove that James Joyce, the foremost prose writer of the twentieth century, writing when that classical view was falling from grace and the modern perspective was forcing itself upon the intellectual world, is, in fact, in his work--all works considered as one work--undermining the very tradition which critics consider his foundation. Consequently, the way in which Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are read and valued will be linked to an entire theory of literature.

The body of …

Rasselas & Candide: Common Links, Robert Rowe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Many critics have discovered striking similarities between Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's Candide. Yet, most have failed to describe the links that exist between the works which indicate that similar forces may have spurred the authors to write so similar tales, one quickly following the other into publication.

Source studies of the two tales indicate that very little, if any, evidence is available to prove that the works were inspired by the same written sources that Johnson and Voltaire may have relied upon. While source studies of the tales do not reveal any shocking information, they do inform the …

Auden's Poetic Theory & The Child-Like Voice, Diana Graham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

W. H. Auden shares with most of his contemporaries, including Yeats and Eliot, the goal of lighting modern man's way back to a sense of harmony with his universe--the certainty of identity which his ancestors enjoyed. In New Year Letter, Auden announces that the problem lies within man himself because each of us is possessed of a "double" nature, thus rendering us our own schismatics.

Auden finds that only with the help of divinity, specifically Christian, can the destructive element be overcome. To illustrate this solution in his poems then becomes Auden's great challenge. Employing a child-like voice or tone …

The Duke Of Dark Corners: Toward An Interpretation Of Measure For Measure's Duke Vincento, Jan Funk

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The multiple and widely varying interpretations of Duke Vincentio in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure can be reconciled and made into a consistent interpretation by the application of a framework consisting of both literary and Elizabethan conventions as well as a view of comedy that accepts the comic function of movement toward identity as comedy's goal. Duke Vincentio is the comic drive in the play. His behavioral motives are based on his sincere concern for his constituency and his courageous use of his power during a time when reform is vital. The morally equivocal means he sometimes employs are justified by …

Providence & Free Will In The History Of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Steven Smith

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The three books J.R.R. Tolkien has written about his imaginary world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, have a common element. In all thre& books, he presents the characters and their adventures within an historical framework which he has structured according to the four principles of Christian history: periodization, universality, apocalypse, and providence. While this historical perspective serves to give his fantasized world "an inner consistence of reality," it also frames one of the main themes of his stories: the relationship between Divine Providence and free will in a world containing good …

Eliot's Use Of Contemporary Political Events In Middlemarch, Sara Winstead

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the consideration of most critics and scholars. Middlemarch by George Eliot is a catalog of the Victorian era, depicting with clarity the concerns of the period as they appeared in all levels of social, economic, and political life. Although the form of the book is that of the novel, dealing primarily with the development of characters and their relationships, the author includes a sufficient number of references to contemporary political events to merit in-depth study of the purpose of these references. This paper locates and explains the references to contemporary political events in Middlemarch, it discusses the ways …

"Fair Terms & A Villain's Mind:" Shylock In Perspective, Montreva Calhoun

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While The Merchant of Venice has long been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, it has also been one of the most controversial with Shylock being the hub of the conflict. Critics have long been arguing whether this great character is a tragic hero or a larger-than-life villain. Those opting for the first often believe the playwright guilty of anti-semitism, and those following the latter consider Shylock the embodiment of evil. Very few critics have viewed this character as three dimensional, possessing human dignity as well as a capacity for evil.

The first chapter reveals the many sources for both …

Antony & Cleopatra: A Study In Polarities, Mary Yarbrough

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In reading or seeing Antony and Cleopatra, several clear dualities emerge. The first is the polarity between Egypt and Rome as different settings for the action. Rome is cold, mechanical, rational, and businesslike, whereas Egypt is lush, erotic, exotic, and langourous. Antony is torn between the two worlds, and this split of loyalty and interest helps to make the second duality of the play, that of the personalities and attitudes of the main characters. Antony and Cleopatra are both seen in double perspective--as lustful, self-gratifying sinners and as lovers in a truly transcendent sense of love. Both perspectives are …

The Occult Tradition, Blake, & The Kabbalah: A Preliminary Study, Laura Miller

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study represents an attempt to explore the occult tradition, in particular the Kabbalah, in an effort to establish a relationship between this tradition and the prophetic poems of William Blake. The Kabbalah is examined to reveal similarities between the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon and Blake's sleeping giant Albion. In addition, a comparison is made of the sexual dichotomies in both sources. Once Blake is viewed as a part of the occult tradition and the kabbalistic similarities are explored, an important aspect of Blake's poetry is clarified, by considering the essential design of kabbalistic thought as it stands in close relation …

Samuel Butler’S Way Of All Flesh As A Sociological Novel, David Carter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

To scholars of Victorian literature, Samuel Butler has always been a rebel who strikes out at society with wide-ranging criticism. After years of studying subjects as varied as music, art, biology, literature, and theology, Butler felt (like many Victorian writers) that he could make valuable social comments with his satires, travelogues, biological studies and one novel.

Critical studies of Butler have tended to treat in broad outline all facets of his life and work. This study, however, examines in depth Butler’s novel The Way of All Flesh, as the focal point of his critical analysis of Victorian society. It treats …

Balance, Symmetry, And Order In As You Like It, Lois Stacy Creed

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although many critics have commented on various aspects of balance, symmetry, and order in Shakespeare’s As You like It, others have given the impression that the play uses a carefree series of episodes to give the audience lighthearted entertainment. Few, if any have discussed the extent to which these elements are exemplified through the remarkable skill and craftsmanship of the playwright. The coordination of these elements shows that the work is not, as it frequently has been considered, a simple romance, but is rather a superlative exemplification of Shakespeare’s remarkable artistry. Through the use of various devices, Shakespeare constructs for …

Richard Iii & Elizabethan Kingship, Frances Perdue

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this study Richard III's character, motivations, and his path to the throne were examined as they affect the well-being of the country. Analyzed were the political, social, and moral philosophies of Elizabethan England and how they conflicted with Richard's Machiavellian tactics in achieving and holding the position of king. The necessity of purging Richard III from the throne was shown to be consistent with the Elizabethan concept of God's will for the good of the country. "Macbeth" and "Hamlet" revealed the idea that the health of the nation depends on the moral health of the king. In "Coriolanus," another …

Polonius, The Man Behind The Arras: A Study Of His Archetypal Significance, Elizabeth Oakes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

On the archetypal level of Hamlet, Polonius embodies three roles--the wise old man, the fool, and the scapegoat-- in a schema composed also of embodiments of the archetypal hero-prince, the anima, the racial father, the shadow, the terrible mother, and the night sea journey. Polonius as an incarnation of the wise old man archetype has both a positive side, which is denoted in his relationship to Ophelia, and a negative side, which is shown in his relationship to Hamlet. From the wise old man, Polonius degenerates into the archetypal fool who, being on the periphery of the social order, constantly …

Molly Bloom: From Literal To Anagogical, Georgia Disman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study attempts to present Molly Bloom, the major fem.ale character in Joyce's prose-satire, Ulysses, as an intentional fourfold corrective for the traditional interpretation of the female principle. Her speeches and actions are examined to reveal her positive significance as part of the Stephen-Molly-Bloom triad, and through her various manifestations of the female principle she comes to represent a major force in the world of Ulysses. Specifically, Molly's role as the new poetic muse and her ability to reinterpret both Christian and Eastern female religious figures are probed. Although Molly may be seen as a corrective on all …

Human Love And Divine Love: The Platonic Matrix In C.S. Lewis, Laura Case

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A comparison of the writings of Plato and C.S. Lewis reveals a common idea that human love is not sufficient for man. An examination of Plato’s Symposium and Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves, in particular, shows that both writers illustrate that man must ascend the ladder of love in order to meet the source of all love: Divine Love. Concerned with man’s innate needs and ethics, both Plato and Lewis argue that there is a universal principle of goodness known to all men of all cultures. Lewis argues, especially in The Abolition of Man, that man …

Isolation In The Dramas Of T.S. Eliot, Jean Conway

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

T.S. Eliot is a monumental figure in literature. He distinguished himself as a poet in his youth, as a critic in his middle age, and as a dramatist in his later years. Because of the vitality of Eliot’s early literary works, his dramas are frequently bypassed by critics when discussing the major themes that interested him as an artist. The purpose this study is to examine thoroughly Eliot’s position on isolation and alienation as revealed in his seven plays: Sweeney Agonistes (1926), The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential …

Jane Austens' Attitude Toward The Position Of Women, Carol Burford

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Jane Austen's attitude toward the position of middle-class women at the end of the eighteenth century is examined in the context of her life and thought and the women characters in her six novels. Comparisons are made with the position of women today regarding marriage, work, and the goals of the women's liberation movement. Jane Austen shared with feminists a recognition of the need for self-fulfillment. Because she was a realist, she provided fulfillment for her heroines through the only vehicle that was available to most women of her time--marriage. The solution she worked out for satisfying this need in …

Gertrude & Volumnia: Their Influences On Their Sons At The Climaxes Of The Plays, Laddawan Bunchoo

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The examination of the climaxes of the two plays Hamlet, and Coriolanus, illustrates that the two mothers, Gertrude and Volumnia, have destructive influences on their sons. The closet scene in Hamlet reflects that Gertrude's second marriage and her choice of Claudius shatter Hamlet's Idealization of her in the role of the faithful wife and the virtuous mother. Hamlet's inaction and destruction are caused in part by his mother's influence.

Volumnia's influence both shapes and destroys her son. She rears him as the embodiment of her chivalric ideal of nobility. The climactic scene in this play reveals that Coriolanus' …

Thomas Hardy's Male Characters: Vehicles For His Thought, Peggy Belasco

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Ihomas Hardy believed that each man should make his own philosophy, and he formulated his own system of thought under the influence of the Bible, the classics, certain of the philosophers, and the Wessex environment. The elements of his thought include religious and philosophical convictions, man's relationship to nature, social institutions, and Victorian limitations. The male characters of his novels set forth his thought just as his female characters reveal his emotions. They show the transition from his early traditional beliefs to his conclusion that the Immanent Will is the governing; force in the universe and that man's ultimate hope …