English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Texting Smile, Richard K. Angel

Student Works

There's nothing like dating to turn us into a miserable puddle of falsehood. When we're with the person we like, we fight to play the game and find the right balance of not showing too much interest (so she'll know that you like her) and showing enough (so she doesn't think you don't). It's an art. But when we're only texting, we can behave however we'd like as long as we choose our words carefully; we don't even try to hide our emotions, and the perfect strangers surrounding us see more of our unabashed smile than the object of our …

The Happy Warrior: Wordsworthian Reception And The Georgian Tradition Of Siegfried Sassoon’S War Memoirs And Poems, Shane Peterson

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The following thesis analyzes how the poetry and aesthetic values of William Wordsworth inspired the Georgian poets who served in World War I and influenced the writings of Siegfried Sassoon.

The first section focuses on how Wordsworth became an essential part of the national literary character as a result of the war and how many Edwardian writers used his more nationalistic poems to defend England’s imperial interests and the war effort against Germany. The following section compares the Edwardians to the Georgians, who were essentially neo-romantics that adopted Wordsworth’s poetic style, particularly the Romantic lyric and the pastoral mode. Georgians …

Black Intellectuals: The Transient Space Of Cultural Translation, Marissa Compton

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Among the many similarities between Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, the similar storylines surrounding the black intellectual figures is among the most important, because the shared narrative allows each text to engage in a larger conversation concerning the role of intellectuals in the black community. Soyinka and Hansberry initially highlight the in-betweenness of black intellectuals as a seemingly positive mediatory role that allow for cultural translation and negotiation. Despite this initially positive perspective, Soyinka and Hansberry’s exploration of the mediatory role’s advantages is ultimately used to add weight the authors’ dramatization of …

Presence In Absence In Shakespeare's King Lear, Kimberly Austin

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King Lear is imbedded with hidden Christian themes, expressed through characters like Cordelia and the Fool, to show that salvation and redemption can only be obtained in a world with Christ. The audience recognizes the absence of Christian principles in the play and through our desire for Christianity it becomes a present theme.The theory of presence in absence becomes clearer when analyzing Cordelia and the Fool. Their characteristics mimic those of Christ which reminds the audience of his absence in the play. Throughout the play King Lear repeats the theory of “nothing from nothing” and by analyzing this theme through …

Pervasive Parable: Christ And Ligeia, Todd Workman

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No abstract provided.

The Folks Of The Postapocalypse: The Road, Religion, And Folklore Studies, Megan M. Toone

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Please use abstract submitted to enter conference if possible.

"Pain, Death, And Nazis: The Surprisingly Beautiful Function Death Plays As Narrator In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief,", Sarah K. Johnson

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Death, pain, illness, and war often feature heavily into the plots of Young Adult fiction, and Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is no exception. However, by presenting Death as the narrator of the novel, Zusak allows an outside, impartial view of humanity's pain, its causes, its effects, and its meanings. Through a close reading of The Book Thief this paper discovers that Death as a narrator reveals that pain is both unavoidable and necessary to life. Furthermore, though most everyone fears death, life, not death, causes the true pain. Through Death's haunting narration, pain confers eventual strength, endurance, and power. …

You Grow This Way: An Analysis Of Mother And Daughter Selves In Anne Sexton’S Poem “Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Kennerley Roper

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The maternal speaker in Anne Sexton's poem “Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman” speaks to her maturing daughter about the wonders of the female body by revising the literary tradition that already exists about the female body. What the speaker ultimately conveys to her daughter is the power the body has through the use of parallel body and earth imagery. However, the daughter is distanced from this notion through a contrasting image: the string bean. The speaker uses that distance to show the mixed images of entanglement and separation of mother and daughter in order to expound wisdom to …

The Power Of Speech: Speech-Recognition Software In The Writing Process, Lauren Fine

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No abstract provided.

Is Literature Above Politics? James Joyce As An Author Of “Political Enthusiasm”, Lesli A. Mortensen

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James Joyce's stories "The Dead" and "Eveline" can be considered as "literatures of enthusiasm," a term previously used only to classify political literature in the American Revolution. By showing that Joyce joins in the tradition of writing "literatures of enthusiasm," or works that inspire revolution against colonial power and influence, readers can see how this strategy served to promote a postcolonial literary tradition in Ireland. Joyce sought to inspire the creation of a national identity in the wake of generations of British imperialism, as American authors did during the Revolutionary War. Joyce works towards this goal of inspiring social change …