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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Disenchantment: The Formation, Distortion, And Transformation Of Identity In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Lydia K. Christoph
Disenchantment: The Formation, Distortion, And Transformation Of Identity In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Lydia K. Christoph
Masters Theses
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1861) stands apart from his other works as a powerful expression of his later social and theological views. Rife with rich characterizations, fairy-tale elements, grotesque and bizarre plot twists, Victorian social issues, and a beautifully thoughtful and imaginative commentary on the universal human themes of loss, guilt, abuse, identity, money, social status, and love, this novel remains an outstanding example of truly great art, both popular and classic. This story of identity formation in a nineteenth-century English context demonstrates how Dickens' life and writings, influenced by spurious and inconsistent theological beliefs, express the idea that sin …
Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out Of The Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild And The Queering Of Saint George, James R. Wallace
Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out Of The Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild And The Queering Of Saint George, James R. Wallace
English Theses
Eudora Welty’s characterization of George Fairchild (Delta Wedding) queers the heroic masculine ideal, St George, whose legendary exploits have been popularized in narrative literature, Catholic iconography, and children’s fairy tale. Lauded by the Fairchild women for his “difference,” George’s sexuality offers him an identity apart from the suffocating Fairchild family myth. George Fairchild’s queer sexuality and homoeroticism augments our critical understanding of Delta Wedding, the character, as well as other characters. The author’s subtly politicized construction of the novel’s ostensible hero subverts literary tradition, the gender binary, and patriarchal myth.
Writing The Wrongs Of Chancery And Victorian Society: Esther Summerson Of Bleak House And Defining The First-Person, Alexandra C. Cain
Writing The Wrongs Of Chancery And Victorian Society: Esther Summerson Of Bleak House And Defining The First-Person, Alexandra C. Cain
Honors Scholar Theses
“Writing the Wrongs of Chancery and Victorian Society: Esther Summerson of Bleak House and Defining the First-Person” discusses the identity crisis faced by the controversial first person narrator of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. I argue that Esther is a complex character/narrator who develops an idealized self as a coping mechanism for her identity crisis. Dickens uses Esther’s illness as a physical manifestation of Esther’s separation from her mother and recognition of her identity crisis. By developing Esther’s identity crisis and using the illness to denote Esther’s separation from both her mother and her idealized self, Dickens creates a novel in …
Jean Toomer And Carl Van Vechten: Identity, Exploitation, And The Harlem Renaissance, Phil Shaw
Jean Toomer And Carl Van Vechten: Identity, Exploitation, And The Harlem Renaissance, Phil Shaw
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Jean Toomer's Cane is considered one of the literary achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, though the many of his philosophical ideas which inspired it are dismissed. Inversely, Carl Van Vechten's influence as an advocate and patron of African American art is foundational though his Nigger Heaven is dismissed. However, there are commonalities in each authors identity positioning and subsequent exploitation of the black Harlem Renaissance ethos. Further, their utilization of Gurdjieffian principles of objectivity and primitivist images of blacks links and explains, in part, how their identities contributed to the ideas expressed in the novels.