English Language and Literature Commons^™

Characters Through Time, Alyssa Venezia

Honors Thesis

T. S. Eliot once wrote that we “often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [an author’s] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (Eliot 37). By focusing on character adaptations, one comes to understand how authors of children’s books are able to adapt classic literature into age-appropriate texts that retain the merits of the original. Five sets of characters shall be analyzed to demonstrate the success of the adaptations presented in children’s literature. In the first, Sir Bedivere from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

A Hero For A Good War: Captain America And The Mythologization Of World War Two, Ella Donnelly

History Theses

March, 1941, months before the United States officially entered the Second World War, marks one of the first attacks made by an American force against Adolf Hitler. This literal strike was the cover of the first issue of Captain America, which featured a star-spangled superhero punching Hitler in the face. The trend of putting real people (like Hitler) into fiction (like comic books) contributed to the mythologization of WWII. That is, blurring the lines between fiction and reality made it easy for popular American history to ascribe morality to a historical event. This paper examines the ways in which …

Signs Of Friendship, Ashley N. Brickner, Kaylee J. Kapalko

Honors Projects

This children's book is about mainstreaming a deaf student into a public school composed of predominantly hearing children, and the eventual friendship between that student and a hearing student. The majority of deaf students are educated in hearing schools and experience high rates of social isolation as a result of the inability to communicate with their peers. In order to create this book, there was collaboration between a communication disorders major and a creative writing major in order to create a realistic portrayal yet creative learning tool for children at a young age. We chose to aim our book at …

Signs Of Friendship, Kaylee J. Kapalko, Ashley N. Brickner

Honors Projects

This children's book is about mainstreaming a deaf student into a public school composed of predominantly hearing children, and the eventual friendship between that student and a hearing student. The majority of deaf students are educated in hearing schools and experience high rates of social isolation as a result of the inability to communicate with their peers. In order to create this book, there was collaboration between a communication disorders major and a creative writing major in order to create a realistic portrayal yet creative learning tool for children at a young age. We chose to aim our book at …

Portraits Of Children Of Alcoholics: Stories That Add Hope To Hope, Meagan Lacy

Publications and Research

This literary analysis examines the emergence of children of alcoholics narratives and their growth from "resource" texts to literary subgenre. While early texts offer useful information about parental alcoholism, they are also limited. Namely, they do not adequately mirror the diversity of children, families, and problems associated with parental alcoholism nor do they offer alternatives for children whose parents do not, or cannot, seek treatment for their addiction. Literature, on the other hand, in inviting what philosopher Martha Nussbaum refers to as "narrative play," can help children learn to understand and empathize with others, nourish their inner curiosity, and, most …

What A Wonderful World! Using Batchelder Books To Support Literacy, Deborah Parrott, Reneé C. Lyons

ETSU Faculty Works

Are you searching for fresh opportunities to support literacy through reader response activities? Batchelder Awards and international stories are relatively untapped resources that offer a global approach for children to expand comprehension through tales from many nations. Pairing these stories with reader response exercises provides an outstanding opportunity for collaboration with social studies and language arts teachers. Handouts will be provided. (F4-E162)

1904: Tolkien, Trauma, And Its Anniversaries, Nancy Bunting

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A controversial speculative reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s early years with his mother Mabel and brother Hilary. Applying our current understanding of childhood trauma and its later effects, definitions of abuse, and knowledge of the history of childrearing to a close reading of underused material from Hilary’s memoirs and Ronald’s artwork, among other documents, Bunting proposes a far less rosy picture of Tolkien’s early childhood than usually seen. However, statements from Tolkien’s official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, hint at a great deal of suppressed material; it’s possible this interpretation may turn out to be closer to the truth than one might expect …

Reviews, Nicholas Birns, Joe R. Christopher, Catherine Coker, Janet Brennan Croft, Mike Foster, Jon Garrad, Crystal Hurd, Yvette Kisor, Jeremy Larson, Laura Lee Smith

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis: A Critical Edition. Edited by Don W. King. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North. G. Ronald Murphy. Reviewed by Jon Garrad.

Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Deborah A. Higgins. Reviewed by Yvette Kisor.

Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C.S. Lewis and Gender. Monika B. Hilder. Reviewed by Laura Lee Smith.

Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of The Rings. Susan Jeffers. Reviewed by Jeremy Larson.

Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis. Abigail Santamaria. …

Notes, Seona Ford, Joe R. Christopher

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An obituary of long-time Mythlore advisory board member and Sayers scholar Barbara Reynolds, who was closely associated with Dorothy L. Sayers. An anniversary appreciation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; attempts to analyze its literary staying power.

Tolkien's Philological Philosophy In His Fiction, Sherrylyn Branchaw

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Reading of several key passages in Tolkien’s works that tie back to and illustrate his deepest-held philosophical beliefs about philology. Among other examples, pays particular attention to Gimli’s speech about the Glittering Caves of Aglarond and to Faramir’s failure to understand the warning implicit in the place-name Cirith Ungol due to the drift of linguistic meaning over time.

The Lost Letter: Seeking The Keys To William's Arthuriad, John D. Rateliff

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Mythcon 47 Guest of Honor address. The Arthuriad is dense with allusion and the reader often has a sense of missing much that goes on below the surface; as it happens, the reader is not wrong to be confused. Rateliff finds the keys that unlock this poetic sequence à clef in a relatively unknown letter Williams wrote in answer to a list of questions on the Arthuriad from C.S. Lewis, in the “gynecomorphical map” drawn to Williams’s personal specifications which served as endpapers to the poetry, and in Williams’s private life as revealed in letters and memoirs, in particular to …

"A Wilderness Of Dragons": Tolkien's Treatment Of Dragons In Roverandom And Farmer Giles Of Ham, Romuald I. Lakowski

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An exploration of Tolkien’s depictions of dragons in his stories for children, Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham. Draws on “On Fairy-stories,” the Beowulf lecture, the Father Christmas letters, and a little-known “Lecture on Dragons” Tolkien gave to an audience of children at the University Museum in Oxford, as well as source Tolkien would have known: Nennius, The Fairy Queene, and so on.

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Noms De Guerre: The Power Of Naming In War And Conflict In Middle-Earth, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers named weapons, noms de plume and other personal name changes, place name changes. Un-naming is seen as both a political strategy and a key tactic of in Sauron’s arsenal.

Tales Of Anti-Heroes In The Work Of J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers two stories which seem uncharacteristically anti-heroic in comparison to the rest of Tolkien’s legendarium—the story of Túrin Turambar, and in particular, the portrait of the failed marriage of Aldarion and Erendis in “The Mariner’s Wife” and its ecological implications.

Hearkening To The Other: A Certeauvian Reading Of The Ainulindale, Cami Agan

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Applying literary theory to authors whose works interest us is “a kind of play that attunes us to the interior movements, voices, and processes” of their work. Analyzes the Ainulindalë using the literary-historical theoretical framework of Michel de Certeau as a way of understanding how the inhabitants of Arda, not just the readers outside the world, comprehend how they are situated in their history, and what this says about Tolkien’s understanding of history.

Mythcon 46 - The Arthurian Mythos, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

Mythcon 46 will be held at the Hotel Elegante Event and Conference Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Hotel Elegante features a full restaurant, a sports bar, and a casual bakery/ coffee shop for drinks and snacks. The entire hotel is non-smoking.

Protecting Dixie: Southern Girlhood In Children's Literature, 1852-1920, Laura Anne Hakala

Dissertations

Most scholarship about girlhood in children’s literature tends to rely on national models of girlhood. My project complicates those models by demonstrating how region shapes distinct forms of American girlhood. In particular, I examine representations of southern girlhood in children’s literature published between 1852 and 1920, drawing on the four types of literature that most featured southern girls during this time period: abolitionist literature, Confederate literature, postbellum plantation fiction, and family stories. Using a historicist methodology and spatial analysis, I place these texts in relation to information about the spatial arrangements and protocols of southern domestic sites. By viewing girlhood …

Ornery Corn, William H. Wandless

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Saturn's Complaint, Kevan Bowkett

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Mythic Circle #37, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Contributors, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Laser Cell Phones, Ryder Miller

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Diamond Face, October Williams

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

How The Fire Beings Became Slaves Of The Mer-People, Kevan Bowkett

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Fulfillment, Nicolo Santilli

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Call Me Leda, Chelsi Robichaud

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Shaman's Craft, Joseph Murphy

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

By Calling, R. L. Boyer

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.