English Language and Literature Commons^™

Hearing Adam: Gender Relationships In The Short Fiction Of Caroline Gordon., Linda Elaine Hipple

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writer and critic Caroline Gordon has been a participant on the Southern literary scene since the early 1930s, yet her works have been neither studied nor appreciated as frequently as the works of her male contemporaries. Her novels and short fiction never received the critical acclaim that they merited due to the perpetuation of the erroneous idea that women have little to say. While at the time other female writers were exploring their emancipation, Gordon retreated to the consistent confines of male-dominated tradition and created fiction embodying her conservative philosophy. This thesis will examine five pieces of her short fiction, …

Picture Postcard, Anthony Fife

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Humanities at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Anthony Fife on December 14, 2007.

Katherine Anne Porter's Adaptation Of Joycean Paralysis In The Pale Horse, Pale Rider Collection, Jamie Colwell

All Theses

This thesis is a study of Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider collection in relationship to James Joyce's Dubliners. The main focus of this study is Porter's use of Joycean paralysis in the three stories 'Old Mortality,' 'Noon Wine,' and 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider.' There is evidence in interviews and letters of Porter's admiration of Joyce, and her characters' states of hopelessness reflect a similar paralysis to those found in the following selections of Dubliners: 'The Dead,' 'Grace,' and 'Eveline.' Porter's collection of stories is not an imitation of Joyce's work; her voice and story setting remain distinct. However, …

The Home Tie, Christina Davenport

All Theses

The Home Tie is a collection of short fiction that utilizes place as a vital literary element by exploring the southern landscape and giving a candid rendering of the people who live in the region. Outsiders' conceptions of the South are varied, from the genteel southern belle strolling beneath the Spanish moss of her Savannah plantation to the unrefined redneck blaring country-western music from his oversized pick-up truck; from the clergyman greeting his long procession of faithful church-goers to the Klansman still calling his secret meetings somewhere in the backwoods of Appalachia. There is a feeling, both within and without, …

It's Alive! The Gothic (Dis)Embodiment Of The Logic Of Networks, Anna Katharine Bennion

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis draws connections between today's network society and the workings of gothic literature in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century. Just as our society is formed and affected by the flow of information, the eighteenth-century culture of sensibility was formed by the merging and flow of scientific "technology" (or new scientific discoveries) and societal norms and rules. Gothic literature was born out of this science-society network, and in many ways embodies the ruptures implicit in it. Although gothic literature is not a network in the same sense as informationalism and the culture of sensibility are, gothic literature works according …

Cognitive Dissonance: The Apocalyptic Poetics Of Spenser’S Faerie Queene, April Phillips Boone

Doctoral Dissertations

While sixteenth-century citizens of England and the Continent read, interpreted, and appropriated The Book of Revelation for a number of purposes, Edmund Spenser’s primary motivation was to find a source of his poetic theory and practice, as well as his poetic themes and imagery. Spenser began his literary career in 1569 with the anonymous publication of his English translation of Jan van der Noot’s Theatre for Worldlings, which concluded with four sonnets based on scenes from Revelation. My project examines the ways in which Revelation, or Apocalypse as it was frequently called in the period, remained a significant creative fountainhead …

The Roots Of Middle-Earth: William Morris's Influence Upon J. R. R. Tolkien, Kelvin Lee Massey

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the influence of William Morris (1834-1896) upon J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). It concentrates specifically upon the impact of Morris’s romance, The Roots of the Mountains, upon Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. After surveying the scholarly literature pertaining to this topic, it proceeds to discuss their work within the context of the nineteenth-century revival of interest in the medieval period and in folkloric and mythological narratives. It then analyzes numerous parallels between the two works in characterization; plot motifs; archaic diction, syntax, and semantics; and topographical description and reanimation are then analyzed. These parallels …

The Sleepy Hero: Romantic & Spiritual Sleep In The Gawain-Poet, Erin Kathleen Turner Hepner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis examines two accepted styles of writing in the Middle Ages, the romance and religious genres, and what purpose they perform in the Gawain-poet’s religious poem, Patience, and his romance poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK). One recently popular line of research among medieval scholars is examining the way medieval authors, such as the Gawain-poet, combine elements of romance and spiritual writings. By funneling the Gawain-poet’s intermingling of the medieval romance and religious genres through the specific lens of sleep, which is represented differently in medieval romance texts than in medieval religious …

Rhyme And Reason In Language Acquisition: Incorporating Poetry Into The Esl Classroom, Kimberly Call Gleason

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Utah is seeing a rapid increase in K-12 students whose native language is not English. With this increase, teachers face the challenge of finding new and effective teaching methods to reach their ESL (English as a Second Language) students. This research explores the study of poetry as an instrument to improve ESL students' pronunciation of English. When read out loud, poetry can be an exercise in pronouncing consonant sounds (from alliteration), decoding vowel sounds (from rhyme), and acquiring the natural speech rhythm of the English language (from meter). Poetry was selected not only because of its exaggerated sound elements (alliteration, …

Wordsworth's Evolving Project: Nature, The Satanic School, And (Underline) The River Duddon (End Underline), Kimberly Jones May

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss Wordsworth's evolving nature project, particularly during the Regency, when his sonnet collection The River Duddon offered an alternative view of nature to that found in the works of Byron and Shelley. This thesis argues that The River Duddon deserves renewed critical attention not only because of the acclaim it received at its publication in 1820, but also because it marks yet another turn in Wordsworth's evolving nature project, and one that comes in opposition to the depiction of nature given during the Regency by Byron, and Shelley. Wordsworth's portrayal of nature dramatically …

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 …

Sound Of Terror: Hearing Ghosts In Victorian Fiction, Melissa Kendall Mcleod

English Dissertations

"Sounds of Terror" explores the interrelations between discourses of sound and the ghostly in Victorian novels and short stories. Narrative techniques used by Charles, Dickens, George Eliot, Henry James, and Charlotte Mew are historically and culturally situated through their use of or reactions against acoustic technology. Since ghost stories and nvoels with gothic elements rely for the terrifying effects on tropes of liminality, my study consists of an analysis of an important yet largely unacknowledged species of these tropes: auditory metaphors. Many critics have examined the visual metaphors that appear in nineteenth-century fiction, but, until recently, aural representations have remain …

Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness And Resistance In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Roslyn Nicole Smith

English Theses

Dana, the Black female protagonist in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979), finds herself literally and figuratively in medias res as she sporadically travels between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two converse concepts of her identity as a Black woman. As a result, her time travel experiences cause her to revise her racial and gendered identity from a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences, to a Black woman who defines herself based on her present life and her personal and ancestral history …

The Play's The Thing: Investigating The Potential Of Performance Pedagogy, Tamara Lynn Scoville

Theses and Dissertations

In the last ten years there has been a resurgence of interest in teaching Shakespeare through performance. However, most literature on the topic continues to focus on the pragmatic selling points of how performance makes Shakespeare fun and understandable while remaining surprisingly silent on issues of theory and ethics. By investigating the ethical implications of performance pedagogy as it affects our students' construction of identity, empathy, and pluralistic tolerance we can better understand and discuss the potential of performance pedagogy in relation to the ethical goals of the Humanities. Performance Pedagogy has particular ethical potential due to the structure of …

Images Of Loss In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, Marsha Norman's Night, Mother, And Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive, Dipa Janardanan

English Dissertations

This dissertation offers an analysis of the image of loss in modern American drama at three levels: the loss of physical space, loss of psychological space, and loss of moral space. The playwrights and plays examined are Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (1945), Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949), Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother (1983), and Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive (1998). This study is the first scholarly work to discuss the theme of loss with these specific playwrights and works. This dissertation argues that loss is a central trope in twentieth-century American drama. The purpose of this …

Carefully Constructed Pictures Of Nobodies: Shakespeare's And Cesaire's Ariels, Nadirah Shabazz

All Theses

Critical scholarship of William Shakespeare's The Tempest and AimŽ CŽsaire's adaptation Une Tempte frequently neglects to examine Ariel's place within colonialist discourse. Ariel's ambiguity in both texts undoubtedly contributes to this unjust marginalization. An understanding of the function of Ariel within the texts is critical in understanding the placement of both plays in colonialist discourse. This thesis proposes a reading of the Ariels that reestablishes their place within the dialogue.
Shakespeare's Ariel problematizes views of the colonized as content to live under the domination of the colonizer. Using subversive tactics--principally his invisibility--Ariel disguises himself as unimportant and attains his freedom. …

Levelling Up: Designing And Testing A Contextual, Web-Based Dreamweaver 8 Tutorial For Students With Technological Aptitude Differences, Alicia Nicole Hatter

English Theses

This thesis examines the user-centered design methods and methodology inherent to designing and testing a web-based Dreamweaver 8 tutorial for undergraduate and graduate students who enroll in certain English rhetoric and composition courses at Georgia State University. The tutorial’s three interfaces were rhetorically designed to support three corresponding types of user—novices, intermediates, and experts— whose familiarity with Dreamweaver and student web space determined their starting point of interaction with the artifact. Three usability tests examined each interface based on four usability attributes. Findings revealed the novice and expert interfaces to be usable, while the intermediate interface was more problematic. The …

Everything Stems From Nothing, Daniel Theis

All Theses

In sixteenth century Europe, mathematics was undergoing a transformation. Prominently among these changes were the switch from roman numerals to arabic numerals and the implementation of the number zero. The number zero has two main functions: to stand on its own as a symbol of nothing and to function as a placeholder. Thus, zero can be a symbol of nothing as well as a number that dramatically increases the value of the others. The dual roles of zero led to much confusion in early modern people. Shakespeare uses the different roles of zero in his plays Richard III, Hamlet, and …

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Rhetoric And Gender In Marriage, Andrea Marcotte

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the Middle Ages, marriage represented a shift in the balance of power for both men and women. Struggling to define what constitutes the ideal marriage in medieval society, the marriage group of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales attempts to reconcile the ongoing battle for sovereignty between husband and wife. Existing hierarchies restricted women; therefore, marriage fittingly presented more obstacles for women. Chaucer creates the dynamic personalities of the Wife of Bath, the Clerk and the Merchant to debate marriage intelligently while citing their experiences within marriage in their prologues. The rhetorical device of ethos plays a significant role for …

Satirical Inquiry, Gina Henderson Prescott

English Theses

Satire might not inspire physical action—the physical act of picking up a sign to picket the government—but it moves an audience towards a state of mental action by confronting audiences with the interdictions and iniquities it fears the most. The rhetorical qualities of satire need to be acknowledged to fully understand how satire functions. To look at an example of contemporary satire, like The Onion, and see how it functions as a tool to create knowledge, three concepts can be borrowed from the rhetorical tradition: (1) Plato’s dialectic as a rhetorical model for Donald Griffin’s “Rhetoric of inquiry and provocation” …

Winning, Losing, And Changing The Rules: The Rhetoric Of Poetry Contests And Competition, Marc Pietrzykowski

English Dissertations

This dissertation attempts to trace the shifting relationship between the fields of Rhetoric and Poetry in Western culture by focusing on poetry contests and competitions during several different historical eras. In order to examine how the distinction between the two fields is contingent on a variety of local factors, this study makes use of research in contemporary cognitive neuroscience, particularly work in categorization and cognitive linguistics, to emphasize the provisional nature of conceptual thought; that is, on the type of mental activity that gives rise to conceptualizations such as “Rhetoric” and “Poetry.” The final portions of the research attempt to …

To Hold As T'Were The Mirror Up To Hate: Terrence Mcnally's Response To The Christian Right In Corpus Christi, Richard Kimberly Sisson

English Dissertations

In 1998, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s staging of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi ignited protest and virulent condemnation from various religious and politically conservative groups which eventually led to the cancellation of the play’s production. This led to a barrage of criticism from the national theatre, gay, and civil rights communities and free speech advocates, including the ACLU and PEN, which issued a press releases about the cancellation that decried censorship and acquiescence by the theatre to neo-conservative religiously political groups. As swiftly as the cancellation, the Manhattan Theatre Club reversed its decision and the show resumed its rehearsal schedule. …

Emaricdulfe By E. C. Esquier (1595): Materials Toward A Critical Edition, Georgia Chapman Caver

Doctoral Dissertations

E. C.’s Emaricdulfe (1595; STC2 4268) is a collection of forty English sonnets introduced by a brief dedicatory epistle addressed “to my very good friends, John Zouch and Edward Fitton, Esquiers.” The book was printed by Joan Orwin for bookseller Matthew Law. Two copies of the original text survive, one in the Huntington Library, the other in the Folger Shakespeare Library. In both subject matter and poetic aspiration, the collection answers to the conventions of the sonnet sequence, a genre that captivated English poets great and small during the last decades of the sixteenth century. The subject of E. C.’s …

Unsafe: Sex And Death In Contemporary Gay Culture, Wiiliam Dustin Parrott

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the role of sex and death in contemporary gay male culture, particularly focusing on issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” practices, specifically bug-chasing. By analyzing relevant literature and public discourse the topic of bug-chasing, or intentional pursuit of HIV sero-conversion, is placed in appropriate context. The work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Leo Bersani is employed in order to frame bug-chasing as a means of radical sexual self-determination which attempts to transcend the bonds of the administered bourgeois self, and ultimately results in an act of will akin to Martin Heidegger’s being-towards-death.

Empress' Story, Brandy Michelle Yates

Masters Theses

Empress' Story is a creative thesis written by Brandy Michelle Yates in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts in English degree. Empress' Story explores four days in Empress' adolescent life in which her best friend, Roni, is raped by a deacon in the church they both attend. Empress' Story is not a coming-of-age story; instead, it focuses upon race, gender, rape, and religion in a small Southern town. The way the town handles the rape of Roni is an example of the social context and stigma that surround the deeply personal actualization of people and their actions. This thesis …

Nude With Anything, James D'Agostino

Dissertations

Nude With Anything is a book-length manuscript of poetry that sources itself in a painterly world, one in which a visual vocabulary privileges the materiality of language in all its attempts to rival experience. Its teleos leans often toward velocity, a fevered stacking up of phrases, and so its range of poetic forms documents attempts at building calm into the rapids, intersecting verbal excess with contrasting silences, a kind of late-phase Henry James short through by haiku. With each syntactical tactic and shift in diction, Nude With Anything employs an abiding collage aesthetic, braiding different strands of discourse and seeking …

Go Left, Young Folk : Meridel Le Sueur’S Radical Children’S Stories Invoke The Spirit Of The Red, White, And True, William J. Valladares

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

It is no secret to scholars of American literary Communism that left-wing authors blacklisted by adult and textbook publishers that caved in to government pressure during the Communist witch- hunts of the McCarthy era, often survived by writing children’s books. However, by accepting this overly simplified explanation, we risk ignoring a vital genre in recovering a link in American literary and cultural history that a right-of-center government attempted to erase.

In my thesis I will explore how left-wing writer Meridel Le Sueur, in her children’s books, Little Brother of the Wilderness: The Story of Johnny Appleseed, Nancy Hanks of Wilderness …

Brideshead Exposed : Evelyn Waugh, The Newspaper, And The Modern Age, Curtis Zimmermann

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores representations of newspapers and journalists in Evelyn Waugh’s novels, focusing specifically on Vile Bodies, Scoop and Brides head Revisited. The central argument of the thesis is that Waugh’s depiction of the newspaper industry is highly similar to his portrayals of modernity. In Waugh’s novels, newspapers, like modernity, cause tremendous problems for his characters. Even with these flaws, however, newspapers retain some overall value for society. In addition to providing insight into Waugh’s views of journalism, this thesis places Waugh’s novels in a historical context with a thorough examination of British journalism history.

The thesis is divided into …

Mending The Moor On The Early Modern English Stage : The Rise Of Shakespeare's Black Tragic Hero, Marcos S. Vargas

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Shakespeare’s two inverse representations dealing with the black male Moor— Aaron (Titus Andronicus) and Othello (Othello)—can figure prominently in a reading of his stage treatment of those notions of racial differences in the early modem era. By retracing early modem histories which affected the early formation of race and by emphasizing the popular representations of race on the early modem English stage, this study seeks to answer whether Shakespeare’s own treatment of race was typical or, in fact, anomalous for his time. Using re-conceptualized vocabularies of race laid out by recent early modem race scholars, this study applies that groundwork …

Ghostly Writing : Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers And Issues Of Visibility, Erin Barclay Nemiroff

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines three nineteenth-century female authors’ use of the ghost story to articulate and illustrate the anxiety and restriction they suffered under the ideals of True Womanhood. It discusses how Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, and Mary Wilkins Freeman were compelled to use this unorthodox method of expression because its innate characteristics granted them the creative liberty necessary for authentic female expression and an evolution into New Womanhood and tum-of-the-century feminism. It reveals how the ghost story allowed them to be taken seriously by their male counterparts, yet still provided them with the degree of camouflage necessary to prevent …