English Language and Literature Commons^™

White Shadows: Perception And Imagination In Poetry, Madison Chartier

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the spring of my sophomore year, I enrolled in the introductory course to writing poetry here at Butler University. I am not naturally a poet, but I have an appreciation for reading poetry and, at the time of the course, was curious to try my hand at the craft, despite having had little experience prior to the collegiate level. As may be expected, I ran into obstacles.

I enjoyed playing with language in experiments of sound and rhythm, but, despite the vast array of assonance, consonance, enjambment, and every other technique I employed, the poems I created throughout the …

Mental Illness In Early American Fiction: Charles Brockden Brown And The Sentimental Novelists, Katie E. Walk

Masters Theses

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of the United States of America as a new nation. This development brought with it new ideologies and social and political change; included in these changes was the way that sexual conduct outside of marriage was dealt with. Because the emerging legal system became less concerned with matters of morality, some people became frightened that sexual promiscuity would become rampant. The sentimental novel or seduction tale became a means of attempting to control sexual behavior when the law was not able to step in.

The way that madness, a term …

The Lyric And The Lathe: Dreams Of Perfect Poetic Efficiency, 1800-1917, Steven A. Nathaniel

Masters Theses

This study examines patterns of efficiency in the poetry and theory of William Wordsworth, Hilda Doolittle, and other figures from the Modernist and Romantic periods. I begin by defining perfect efficiency as occurring when energy transforms, without loss, inside a closed energy system, and I offer perpetual motion machines as hypothetical examples of this impossible state. I then demonstrate the process of efficiency in William Wordsworth's poetry, which begins with circumlocutory poetic cycles but contracts into terse repetitions. Since technical efficiency is calculated by the formula output/input, poetry's subjectivity makes poetic efficiency difficult to measure. However, I suggest that repetitions …

The Problem Of Love And Codes Of Conduct For The Younger Courtiers In King Lear, Debora L. Pfeiffer

Masters Theses

The courtiers Edmund and Edgar are critical to the action of King Lear, yet there has been little scholarship which has treated these characters in depth. I argue that one way to comprehend them and their significance in the play's action is to analyze their behavior according to the standards of the Renaissance conduct books that were circulating in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the play was written. Baldassare Castigligone's The Book of the Courtier, Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, and Desiderius Erasmus's The Education of a Christian Prince each sheds light on important themes …

Gender Performance, Trauma, And Orality In Adichie's Half Of A Yellow Sun And Purple Hibiscus, Lauren Elizabeth Rackley

Honors Theses

This thesis examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus in order to explore the implications of trauma on middleclass Igbo women's gender performance. The traumas that the women encounter within the novels occur within the domestic sphere and are results of the Biafran War in Half of a Yellow Sun and domestic abuse in Purple Hibiscus. This thesis interrogates women's experiences within the domestic sphere, ultimately reflecting a larger national trauma that Biafra and later Nigeria undergo as a result of colonial occupation. This thesis concludes with an exploration of the culturally specific practice of …

Honestly, Woman, You Call Yourself Our Mother?: Mothers And Witches In Harry Potter, Mary-Eileen Rankin Rankin

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the importance of maternal nurture and the witches as mothers trope in the Harry Potter series. This nurture is traditional as well as perverse and appears in characters besides the adult women. Rowling creates characters who appeal to paradigms of the Early Modern bad mother witch who harmed children among other accusations associated with female sexuality and motherhood. Additionally, Rowling challenges the negative stereotype of associating witches and bad mothering by presenting witches as good mothers. The power of maternal nurture in the series is best seen through the good mothers. This theme plays such …

Paradoxical Agency: The Ethics Of Women's Rhetoric In Shakespeare's Rome, Catherine Riley Godbold

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I address the problems of ethics and agency for women’s speech in Shakepseare’s Roman plays—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and Coriolanus—and the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece. Regardless of their rhetorical skill, virtue, or agency, it seems that the Roman women in these works are doomed to fail: either their lives become unlivable or they lose the people most important to them. This prompts the project’s initiating question: why do Shakespeare’s Roman women speak if their words have no long-term effect? For these characters, rhetorical success in Shakespeare’s Rome is dependent upon a particular …

The Obstacles To And Solutions Of Female Characters' Speech: Beatrice In Dante's Vita Nuova And Purgatorio And Susan In J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Tamara Savage

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the speaking and silencing of two female characters, Beatrice from Dante’s Vita Nuova and Purgatorio and Susan from J. M. Coetzee’s Foe. The texts are viewed through postcolonial and feminist lenses to show the problems with male characters speaking for female characters and the obstacles the female characters face when attempting to speak. Dante’s solution to this problem is to transform Beatrice from a silent and demure woman into a character who issues commands with a powerful voice. Coetzee’s solution is instead to refuse to provide a solution, since no one but Susan can speak for …

Dark Journeys: Robert Frost's Dantean Inspiration, Elena Segarra

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the way in which Robert Frost incorporates Dantean ideas and imagery into his poetry, particularly in relation to the pursuit of reason and truth. Similarly to Dante, Frost portrays human reason as limited. Both authors nevertheless present truth as a desire that often drives people’s journey through life. Frost differs from Dante by dwelling in apparent contradictions rather than appealing to a clarifying divine light. The paper considers themes of loss, human labor, suffering, and justice, and it also analyzes Scriptural and Platonic inspirations. It focuses on the image of the journey used by both Frost and …

Angel Outside The House: The New Woman In Brittish Periodicals 1890-1910, Lindsay Rosa

Graduate Thesis Collection

The New Woman described in short fiction and editorial articles in British periodicals not only presented the ideal New Woman to readers, but served to shape the perceptions of the reader depending on the demographic of the targeted reading audience for that specific periodical. The audience for specific British periodicals featuring the New Woman included conservative families whose youth saw the New Woman figure as a role model. The New Woman figure easily connected to readers, particularly young, female middle-class readers, who easily identified with her because she possessed similar socioeconomic characteristics. Just as there were many New Women characters …

Blended Learning, Blended Lives: School One-To-One Programs, Control Societies, And Late Capitalist Subjectivity, Sarah Nolan

Graduate Thesis Collection

In his 2011 article "Florida Reformers Got It Right," William Mattox uses his son Richard as an example of the benefits of hybrid education, or blended learning, which allows students to combine traditional classroom-based instruction with online schooling. Mattox only briefly praises the benefits of his son's opportunity for customized instruction, and he never tells his reader about the types of classes his son took, or how those classes helped his son reach greater achievements in co llege. Instead, he focuses his attention and (and about half his word count) on the network of acquaintances his son was able to …

Working In Utopia: Locating Marx's "Realm Of Necessity" In The Socialist Futures Of Bellamy And Morris, Kira Braham

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This project examines two works of nineteenth-century utopian fiction, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and William Morris's News from Nowhere, and considers the way in which the organization of work in these imagined post-capitalist futures is guided by their respective philosophies of labor: while Bellamy's utopia is structured by an understanding of labor as primarily a social duty, Morris presents labor as central to the full development and happiness of the individual. These two utopias are read as representative of a fundamental tension within the writings of Marx: while Morris's understanding of labor aligns with the early works of Marx, Bellamy's …

Counterfeiting And Power In Invisible Man And Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, Matthew Gassan

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of modern reproduction, anxiety over the difference between the authentic and counterfeit has risen. This has led to copious investigations into the nature of authenticity by such theorists as Derrida and Baudrillard, but this approach overlooks pertinent social questions. By looking into Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Invisible Man, I hope to foster a conversation about who counterfeits and what they get out of it. What rises from my approach is an understanding of counterfeiting as a manifestation of Foucauldian power. By dictating the terms of what is real and what is fake, certain groups …

Tactical Encounters:Material Rhetoric And The Politics Of Tactical Media, Anthony Michael Stagliano

Theses and Dissertations

Tactical Encounters: Material Rhetoric and the Politics of Tactical Media articulates the concept of material rhetorical tactics, discrete rhetorical moves effecting political and social change, however ephemeral. I argue that material rhetorical tactics do not necessarily originate or conclude with a human subject, and that to understand this, we must reorient our conceptions of rhetorical action, agency, and, ultimately, its relationship to the demos, to include actions, actors, agents, and events that are not, in themselves, human. I build on recent work in rhetorical theory that has conceptualized the function and nature of rhetoric as involving agents human and nonhuman, …

A Taste For Things: Sensory Rhetoric Beyond The Human, Justine Beatrice Wells

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst rising agricultural pollution, poor conditions for livestock animals, and disparity between “high” and “low” food cultures, gustatory taste has entered contemporary public rhetoric as a significant modality of intervention. This dissertation considers the environmentalist and social potential of this public embrace of sensory rhetoric. To do so, I build a rhetorical theory of sensation through a sensory re-engagement of the rhetorical tradition. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, I argue, embraced aesthetic taste as a site where rhetoric and ethics mingle, and yet in promoting its cultivation, they fell into elitism. The subsequent, Marxist discourse on sensory emancipation developed rhetoric’s sensory and …

Creating The Self: Women Artists In Twentieth-Century Fiction, Bethany Dailey Tisdale

Theses and Dissertations

In novels of artistic development (or künstlerromane) by women in the early twentieth-century, becoming an artist is intimately tied to becoming recognized as an individual. It would appear that an era of rapid change and expanding opportunities for women would result in affirmative narratives of women’s artistry, but studying texts by Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Dawn Powell shows that stringent gender roles can still keep women from realizing artist success.

In Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart ruins her prospects on the marriage market by striving for freedom and aesthetic pleasure. Those desires cannot be reconciled …

Of Wilderness, Forest, And Garden: An Eco-Theory Of Genre In Middle English Literature, Barbara L. Bolt

Theses and Dissertations

“Of Wilderness, Forest, and Garden: An Eco-Theory of Genre in Middle English Literature” proposes a new theory of genre that considers the material elements of the natural environment in Middle English literature composed between 1300-1450 CE. Instead of treating the setting as just a backdrop for human activity, I posit that the components of the environment play a role in the deployment of the narrative by shaping the characters and influencing the action. More than an acknowledgement of the particular natural features, this study explores the role that these components play and how they give us a deeper understanding of …

Historical Violence And Modernist Form In Zoe Wicomb's David's Story, Kaelie Rianne Giffel

Theses and Dissertations

The essay brings together Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story with Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and (less centrally) Julia Kristeva’s work on “Women’s Time.” I argue that, while Derek Attridge claims that the novel’s modernism emerges from its interrogation of historical crisis, David’s Story is modernist because of its experimentation with nonlinear narrative and an engagement with modern intertexts such as Heart of Darkness and Ulysses. Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” illuminates the structure of Wicomb’s novel, which creates what Benjamin calls a “constellation” of stories that are non-causally yet historically related to each other. …

Removing The Binaries Between Humanity And Nature: The Female Perception Through Science Fiction Utopias, Sarah Gail Farrell

English Dissertations

This dissertation examines utopian science fictions by women from the early modern era and the latter half of the 20th century. While the utopian genre shifts in time, the project focuses on comparing two time periods in order to discuss the topic of humanity’s place in nature. By examining these two distinct eras, I am able to argue that ecofeminist debates about ecological concerns often center around the human/nature binary. These ecofeminist views, I argue, rely on analyzing certain texts in order to glean the truth about the human/nature dichotomy and to offer solutions to these problems. Using Margaret Cavendish’s …

Teaching/Writing Workshop: A Critical Memoir Of Training Teacher Candidates In Developmental Composition, Chere Harden Blair

English Dissertations

I began by attempting to fill a gap I observed in the preparation of the novice teachers whom I supervised. I created a teaching apprenticeship program in order to give preservice teachers opportunities to enact the theories and methods of writing instruction that I had taught them. The more I read and researched, the more I uncovered important gaps in those theories and methods.Through narrative and critical self-study, I explore my own teaching life, my work with both struggling college writers and teachers-in-training, and my attempts to navigate the complex institutional forces that can frustrate innovation. Ultimately, I suggest that …

Constructing Mothering Performances: The Motherhood Ideal In Caldecott And Newbery Winners, 1980-2014, Dana Mccullough Brewer

English Dissertations

This project examines representations of motherhood in Caldecott and Newbery winners from 1980-2014 and is informed by feminist literary theory, juvenile literary theory, and motherhood studies. While motherhood studies are evolving to consider egalitarian ideas of motherhood and multiple definitions of motherhood, many Caldecott and Newbery Medal winners present a traditional (and antiquated) motherhood ideal in which maternal figures tend to domestic duties and provide selfless nurturing of children. This objectification depersonalizes, essentializes, and stereotypes motherhood. Diverse mothering characters and practices do materialize in some texts but are often regulated by the motherhood ideal. In Chapter 2, I define the …

The Fecundity Of The Figural: Ethical And Phototextual Di-Vision In Postmodern American Fiction, Brian Scott Carroll

English Dissertations

This study contends that sites of the phototextual--that is, narrative works that employ as their chief structural basis any photographic disposition, such as, for example, tangible portraiture and/or a literary styling that implements photographic properties or theory--may be the ideal way to encounter, experience, and respect active (meta)physical exchanges between the Self and Other in the temporal spaces of postmodern American fiction and beyond. By engaging with a pluralistic ethical paradigm comprised from the thought of philosophers like Levinas, Barthes, Derrida, Badiou, and Irigaray, this dissertation examines an array of American phototexts ascribed to the postmodern epoch. Thusly, this very …

The Performing Mother: Maternal Ethics Beyond Embodiment, Charles Hicks

English Dissertations

The rich and diverse history of maternal thought is at once a response to the Western philosophical tradition's relegation of the maternal to the material abject, as well as a renegotiation of the maternal body as a site of empowerment capable of destabilizing the foundations of the symbolic economy. Understanding the material and historical conditions that subject these bodies and work to construct maternity, as well as their mediating position to authentic ethical activity, reveals that maternity offers a salient schemata for, not only viewing the fundamental operations of power, but the possibilities of ethical interaction. This study focuses on, …

Media And Literary Representations Of Latinos In Baseball And Baseball Fiction, Mihir Dilip Parekh

English Theses

The first chapter of this project looks at media representations of two Mexican-born baseball players – Fernando Valenzuela and Teodoro “Teddy” Higuera – pitchers who made their big league debuts in the 1980s and garnered significant attention due to their stellar play and ethnic backgrounds. Chapter one looks at U.S. media narratives of these Mexican baseball players and their focus on these foreign athletes’ bodies when presenting them the American public, arguing that 1980s U.S. news media focuses its attention on each pitcher’s body but constructs differing media narratives when doing so, with Valenzuela’s body discussed in terms of culture …

Creating Myself: Friendship As Black Women's Liberation In Toni Morrison's Sula And Alice Walker's The Color Purple, India Renee Miles

English Theses

The talking book trope, begun in the era of and with the authors of slave narratives, firmly establishes a literary tradition for black writers that continues today. Contemporary authors employ this rhetorical device in order to prove the humanity of those of African descent, express a lack of familiarity with the dominant power structure that seeks to disenfranchise the Other, and to illustrate one method of entry into a hegemonic social structure. Toni Morrison's Sula and Alice Walker's The Color Purple fit into this trope, with varying degrees of success. In both texts, the relational mode of friendship between the …

Realizing The Virtual: Constructing And Embodying Cyberspace In Gibson's Sprawl, Matt Underwood

English Theses

While the term “cyberspace” first appears in William Gibson’s 1980’s Sprawl series, it arises from a culmination of information and communication technology and cybernetic theory development spanning the majority of the twentieth century. Further, the notion of cyberspace has existed and functioned since the advent of language and tool use and has always reached a global population of users. The recent recognition of cyberspace and its coinage occur as a result of how contemporary technology allows for much more instantaneous and extensive interaction across rapidly increasing distances and user bases. All media and technology, meaning all cyberspace operations, serve as …

In Another Time With (An)Other Race: Representations Of Race And National Narratives In Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And Fallout 3, Christopher M. Simpson

English Theses

The video games Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3 provide simulations of systems of racial marginalization within the context of competing narratives of nation. By utilizing Ian Bogost’s concept of unit operations in concert with postcolonial theorists Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak it is possible to see how these games perpetuate discourses of the human Western Self and the non-human racial Other. Despite the limitations in the simulation presented in these games, they reflect how video games offer the potential for simulating real-life systems of discrimination and marginalization.

Protofeminist Women In Bronte’S Jane Eyre And Braddon’S Lady Audley’S Secret, Allison Wong

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Variations On A Theme: Contemporary Memorials To Harriet Tubman, Elise Anne Geltzer

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers And The Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910, Helana E. Brigman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Until recently, critics have devalued the Victorian cookbook as an object of literary inquiry, regularly dismissing it as “Victoriana”—cultural, anthropological histories detailing bland culinary traditions. A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers and the Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910 seeks to provide a framework by which we can explore the Victorian cookbook as a literary text appropriated by writers responding to and advocating for cultural, educational, and artistic reform during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Looking specifically at how women used recipes to discuss food preparation, dining, and household management, I argue that British women writers participated in a collaborative tradition, borrowing and sharing …