English Language and Literature Commons^™

John Milton’S Orphic Dependency, Magenta S. Reynolds

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The 17th-century poet John Milton invokes Ovid’s Orpheus as a source of strength and security in overcoming barriers of instability and insecurity, ultimately enabling Milton to claim his own authority as both a prophesizing poet and a bounds-breaking seeker of Classical knowledge. It is my argument that Milton’s dependency on Orpheus has been overlooked, and that it is only through an Orphic foundation that Milton is able to reach beyond artistic creativity, into higher registers of inspiration.

Milton repeatedly invokes the Orpheus in both his prose and poetry, including: Paradise Lost, Ad Patrem, Lycidas, and various sonnets and elegies. These …

The Politics Of Shelley: History, Theory, Form, Matthew C. Borushko | Editor

Matthew Borushko

A Proposal For Composing Change At Colby, Matthew Sindler

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

This project is part of a larger research project focused on an issue or problem that affects the Colby community. I will present an overview of the problem and present a feasible solution.

A Man Of This Time: Memory And Sheriff Bell’S First-Person Narratives In Cormac Mccarthy’S No Country For Old Men, Marie-Reine Pugh

BYU English Symposium

Critics often focus on the violence in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. But the function of memory in Sheriff Bell’s first-person narratives has yet to be examined. Bell may claim to be defeated by the events of the story and the changing times, but the structure of the novel bespeaks a greater importance: his voice marks the beginning and ending of the novel, of each new chapter. His narratives reveal the struggle between his collective and personal memories. In the end, Bell is able to settle in a less conflicted place mediated by his closest relations—his family—where he …

"That Lady, Sir, Is Her Own Mistress": Evelina's Condemnation Of Rape Culture, Rose Hadden

BYU English Symposium

Fanny Burney’s 18th Century novel Evelina is a canny critique of rape culture and the pervasive assumption of female consent. Evelina navigates a social world in which she nominally has the right to say no to anyone in any matter regarding her own body, but where that right is consistently undermined by social punishment, victim blaming, and deliberate ignorance. Earlier scholars have characterized Evelina’s compliance as a flaw in her character, a result of her lack of confidence and experience, but I contest that Burney’s text clearly absolves Evelina herself of all guilt. Burney instead condemns the society that would …

American Masculinity As Presented By Walt Whitman, Corinn Pratt

BYU English Symposium

As a homosexual Romantic poet neither Walt Whitman nor his work would immediately come to mind as particularly masculine. However, through a brief historical look at what Whitman was learning about as well as a close reading at some of the text it is clear that Whitman paints a very masculine picture. Whitman uses the sexual act as a way to understand what it means to be a man with himself at the helm. Within “Children of Adam” is Whitman uses this ultimate fulfillment of gender relations to explore masculinity and ultimately paints himself as the embodiment of masculinity.

“Robert Zemekis’ Contact As A Late Twentieth-Century Paradiso.”, Gregory M. Sadlek

Gregory M Sadlek

The film Contact employs a plot and literary motifs that are in many ways parallel to those in Dante's Paradiso. Although the film's philosophical and theological content has received mixed reviews, the film has deep significance because it not only seeks to convey a religious experience but also offers a kind of existential consolation similar to that offered by Dante. This is true even though the film is grounded in a vision of the numinous that is congruent not with the Dante's cosmos but with late twentieth-century science and cosmology. Contact, then, is a Dantean film that can be embraced …

Percy Shelley's A Defence Of Poetry: A Discussion, Maureen N. Mclane, Eric Alan Weinstein, Omar Miranda, Colin Jagaer, Susan Wolfson

Eric Alan Weinstein

An Addendum to the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn; filmed at The offices of the English Department of NYU in New York City, Kelly Writers House at U Penn, and the office of Susan Wolfson, English Dept, McCosh Hall, Princeton University. Materials published in OpenLearning's The Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. --- Eric Alan Weinstein

Considering Shelley's England In 1819: Penn Shelley Seminar Series (2 Of 3), Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at Upenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. Eric Alan Weinstein.

Some Comments On Percy Shelley & The Thought Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Eric Alan Weinstein, Monika Lee

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at Upenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. Eric Alan Weinstein.

The Figure Of Prometheus & The Revolutionary Moment, Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

A short talk about Percy Shelley, his family, the French and American Revolutions, and the importance of the figure of Prometheus in the Romantic era.

Penn Shelley Seminar Series, featured in OpenLearnings's Unbinding Prometheus MOOC on Percy Shelley. Part of The Great Poems Series.

Eric Alan Weinstein

Reading Aloud: Lord Byron's Prometheus, Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

A reading of Lord Byron's poem, Prometheus by Eric Alan Weinstein. Penn Shelley Seminar Series, featured in OpenLearnings's Unbinding Prometheus MOOC on Percy Shelley. Part of The Great Poems Series. Unit 1, Module 2 (Prometheus Cluster), Video 2 Recorded at Van Pelt Library, Fall term, 2014.

Ideas Which Shaped Shelley, Ideas Shelley Shaped, Eric Alan Weinstein, Monika Lee

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. Eric Alan Weinstein

Considering Lord Byron's Prometheus: Binding And Form: Penn Shelley Seminar Series (1 Of 3), Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. Eric Alan Weinstein

Considering Shelley's England In 1819: The Context Of Langston Hughes: Penn Shelley Seminar Series (3 Of 3), Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn. Materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC.

Considering Lord Byron's Prometheus: Stanza 2 & 3: Penn Shelley Seminar Series (3 Of 3), Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. --- Eric Alan Weinstein

Considering Shelley's England In 1819: The Context Of Blake's London: Penn Shelley Seminar Series (1 Of 3), Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein

Part of the Unbinding Prometheus Project's Penn Shelley Seminars at UPenn; materials published in OpenLearning's Great Poem Series Shelley MOOC. Eric Alan Weinstein.

On Reading & Teaching The Modern Long Poem, With Reference To Williams's 'Paterson' & Two Passages From Eliot's 'The Waste Land', Eric Alan Weinstein, Alan Filreis

Eric Alan Weinstein

Eric Alan Weinstein and Al Filreis spent some time in the Wexler Studio of the Kelly Writers House talking about the problematics of the modern long poem. Can it be taught? Why is it so challenging, despite its central importance? The discussion is intentionally general at first, but soon Eric and Al turn to Eliot's The Waste Land, and in particular to two modally quite distinct passages from the poem. This is a PennSound podcast, number 46 in the ongoing series. To see all episodes at once please see the PennSound archive. To see the series as part of Jacket2 …

Narrative Innovation In 9/11 Fiction., Magali Michael

Faculty Books

Narrative Innovation in 9/11 Fiction demonstrates how certain novels create narratives about the 9/11 attacks that refuse to shy away from exploring and representing their difficult and problematic aspects and, in fact, insist on doing so as the only means of coming to terms with the events in all their cultural and historical specificity.

The Collected Poems Of Gavin Turnbull Online, Patrick G. Scott, John Knox, Rachel Mann

Digital Projects

The Collected Poems of Gavin Turnbull contains 89 individual poems and songs, organized according to the date of their first publication. The poems are grouped into one of four sections, following the sequence of the books, manuscript, or periodicals in which they are first found. Turnbull's two prose prefaces (1788, 1794) and his short play The Recruit (also 1794) are included, but placed last, after the poems, as Appendices.

A list of the individual poems and songs in each section and links to the texts are available in the gray drop-down menu on the left-hand side of the screen. With …