English Language and Literature Commons^™

Subversion And Containment In Adrienne Rich’S “Aunt Jennifer’S Tigers”, Samuel G. Turner

BYU English Symposium

This paper explores Stephen Greenblatt's theory of subversion and containment in the poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" by Adrienne Rich. Critics such as Claire Keyes and Cheri Langdell have identified patterns of subversion in Rich's early poetry, but have largely ignored patterns of containment by masculinst powers. I explore subversion and containment in the metrical structure and themes of the poem.

Persuasion And Sexuality, Emily Sullivan

BYU English Symposium

The sexual transformation of the protagonist, Anne Elliot, in Austen's Persuasion shows a self-confidence and independence uncommon during the Regency era. This article studies the sources and factors of this change and why the change is so revolutionary.

Wayward Sons: Modern Mythology In Supernatural, Alison Siggard

BYU English Symposium

Throughout human history, there have been myths that reflect societal ideals. This trend continues in the modern age in a new medium, that of television and movies. Though the way the stories are told may be different, the archetypes and motifs can still be seen in these new myths. In this paper, I analyze the motifs and archetypes used in the television show Supernatural to explore how ancient mythological aspects, including those of the hero's journey, monsters, and death and resurrection, are used and changed for a modern audience. Though classic archetypes are present, this paper also argues that they …

There's A Moral Here: Emerging Ethics In The Things They Carried, Jordan Wright

BYU English Symposium

In this paper, I argue against the mentality that all Vietnam War veterans were irreparably damaged by their time in service. My primary text, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is very critical of the war and seems to agree with this mentality. However, I am intrigued by the underlying theme of race in the novel. Kiowa, a Native American character, suffers discrimination from his fellow soldiers. However, with further reading it becomes clear that Kiowa is loved and respected by the men, and that their experiences in the field have helped them transcend racial barriers. By researching everything …

Eve Transcending Demeaned: The Construct Of Female Gender In Paradise Lost, Jillie L. Orth

BYU English Symposium

A contradiction exists in John Milton’s Paradise Lost of Eve being simultaneously demeaned and esteemed. My paper focuses on these contradictions and explores the way in which Eve transcends the demeaned by analyzing the role of the female gender throughout the poem, epitomized by both Eve and female-gendered nonhuman entities: the Earth, the Garden of Eden, Reason, and Sin. This paper also delves into scenes of the poem that may at first seem oppressive for Eve, but that are actually complementary to the role of Eve and the female gender. This analysis serves to then uphold Eve as a representation …

The Modern Walden, Jeffrey G. Wray

BYU English Symposium

“Men have become tools of their tools.” Henry David Thoreau had no idea how much his declaration of the mid 19^th century would become a prophecy of the 21^st. As I entered my newly rented apartment to find a completely Wi-Fi free zone this past semester, I realized just how proud Thoreau would be. This would be my “modern-day Walden.” More out of irony than academic intrigue, I was motivated to read Thoreau’s Walden as I lived my very own. But as I read on, I realized I was part of the transcendentalist movement, just two centuries …

Complacency And Convergence: “Everything That Rises Must Converge", Alex Malouf

BYU English Symposium

Critics, such as Patricia Maida, have described Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” as a depiction of mankind’s defects shown through Julian’s fallacies. However, this explanation is far too simplistic. Although her presumption of Julian’s imperfection is most certainly correct, Maida has neglected to ask an important question: what is the barrier that prevents Julian from facing his inadequacies and advancing beyond such a flawed state? “Everything That Rises Must Converge” does far more than merely comment on human imperfection in a fictional setting. Rather, it details the hindering effect of self-image as a roadblock to potential change as …

A Revolutionary Act: Investigating The Draw Of Dystopia In Young Adult Literature, Rachel L. Pullan

BYU English Symposium

The Dystopian genre of the mid-18^th century, with underpinnings of Communism, Nazism, and totalitarianism, was one thing. The Hunger Games is quite another. Or is it? The recent upsurge in dystopia in the younger demographic is undeniable—but why is it so popular with teenagers? George Orwell wrote that “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Dystopia's unique brand of “telling the truth”—with its basis in real sociopolitical issues and its development of believable young adult protagonists—is in fact what makes this genre so appealing to a younger readership. Young adult dystopia generally and The Hunger Games specifically defy assumptions …

Calamus: Homoeroticism Or Brotherly Love?, Scott Hill

BYU English Symposium

Walt Whitman was gay. That was one of the first things I heard when I picked up Leaves of Grass and began my study of Whitman. While it wasn’t readily apparent in all of his works, there were some large contenders to back up the assertion, namely his Calamus poems. After I read Calamus I finally understood all of the talk about Whitman’s sexuality because some definitely seemed homoerotic. However, upon further study, I began to change my mind. The more I read over Calamus the less I saw these poems as some big “coming out” for Whitman, and the …

The Treachery Of The Persistence Of Memory: An Analysis Of The Manipulative Narrator Of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia", Chelsea Lee

BYU English Symposium

By taking a narrator-centric approach to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia,” I analyze the story through the motif of memory and highlight the ways the narrator manipulates his memories to serve his dark desires. Concluding that the resuscitated Ligeia at the end of the narrative is merely a projection, and the Ligeia we are presented with throughout the narrative does not exist outside of the narrator’s memory. I argue that the narrator uses his manipulations of memory to set himself up as the god of his narrative, which reconciles the events of the story with the Glanvill epigraph that …

Signifier, Signified, And The Nature Of Madness In The Winter's Tale, Adam Anderson

BYU English Symposium

This paper explores, through the careful marriage of psychoanalytic and linguistic literary theories, the nature and cause of Leontes’ madness in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Analysis of textual clues through a psychoanalytic lens coupled with the signifier-signified theory of linguistic sign construction reveal nuance - and cause - in the madness of Shakespeare’s timeless character.

Death And Irish Revivalism In "The Dead", William "Drew" Chandler

BYU English Symposium

Who is really dead in “The Dead”? My paper focuses on the concept of literal and figurative death as represented by the characters of James Joyce’s story “The Dead.” I argue that the protagonist of the story Gabriel Conroy is compelled to commit suicide as a means of competing with his wife Gretta’s long-dead lover. Joyce sets up Gabriel as a victim of Irish Revivalism, a backward-looking brand of Irish nationalism that the author rejected. Imagery from the story (and particularly the ending scene) point to Gabriel’s decision to kill himself and his interactions with other characters show us why …

The Will And Poe, Bethanie A. Sonnefeld

BYU English Symposium

Poe's treatment of "Ligeia" and "William Wilson" suggest that Poe believes in the power of the will in overcoming external and internal difficulties. "Ligeia" presents an external conflict with death as she struggles to remain alive while "William Wilson" deals with the internal conflict of tactile delusions. Ultimately, though, the titular characters' strong wills allow them to overcome their adversity, showing the power Poe believes the will possesses.

James Joyce And His War With The Catholic Church, Kimball R. Gardner

BYU English Symposium

At a young age, James Joyce was disillusioned with the Catholic Church, seeing corruption and intolerance toward humanity within the institution. As a result, he stated solemnly of the Church, "I make war with it by what I write and say and do." In his short story "The Dead," we see a complex criticism of the Catholic Church through characterization, imagery, and symbols.

Joyce uses the main character, Gabriel, as the vehicle of the criticism. He portrays the different characteristics of the Church through Gabriel, all culminating in the moment of epiphany at the end of the story, where he …

His Waxen Wings, Madeleine J. Dresden

BYU English Symposium

His Waxen Wings asks questions about redemption and heaven. These are issues that compel me to write a story about a protagonist who believes that erasing pain is the key to happiness, and is willing to fight against the natural order of God’s universe to get it. Wynn is a lonely man and a dreamer—a Byronic hero. As an Asian-American author, I’m entering the field of Byronic heroism to explore my own relationship with isolation and being a cultural outsider. Like Wynn, I have many questions about navigating a culture with expectations and alienating stereotypes for those who stand apart …

Wild Tongues In Education: Anzaldúa, Linguistic Oppression, And Power Culture, Alexandra Harker

BYU English Symposium

The issue of educating immigrants who do not speak English as their first language has been an extremely heated topic for decades. The American education system has chosen to deal with this issue in various ways, including the controversial English Only movement that has been implemented for some time in Arizona as well as other states. This research paper explores how linguistic oppression has occurred and continues to occur in the American education system using Gloria Anzaldúa's piece "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" as a primary resource. Anzaldúa's firsthand experiences with the American education system as well as the …

Of Embers And Glass: A Cinderella Retelling, Jenna Cooper

BYU English Symposium

People are often familiar with the Cinderella tales and retellings of a nearly-perfect, beautiful young woman, and yet think little of the fact that she subjected herself to being a servant for her family. For my master’s thesis, I wrote a Cinderella retelling featuring, Amelia, who is emotionally abused by her family, providing an explanation for her servitude with her low self-esteem. Cinderella is an ideal tale to retell in relation to finding one’s self-worth because of its rags-to-riches theme. While Amelia has a rags-to-riches tale of her own, the real wealth she acquires in the novel is realizing her …

The Treachery Of The Persistence Of Memory: An Analysis Of The Manipulative Narrator Of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia", Chelsea Lee

BYU English Symposium

By taking a narrator-centric approach to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Ligeia,” I analyze the story through the motif of memory and highlight the ways the narrator manipulates his memories to serve his dark desires. Concluding that the resuscitated Ligeia at the end of the narrative is merely a projection, and the Ligeia we are presented with throughout the narrative does not exist outside of the narrator’s memory. I argue that the narrator uses his manipulations of memory to set himself up as the god of his narrative, which reconciles the events of the story with the Glanvill epigraph that …

Readers’ Disappointed Expectations: Religious Symbols In ‘The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall’, Rachel I. Gessel

BYU English Symposium

The short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter is the account of a devout Catholic woman on her death bed who dwells on being jilted at the altar sixty years earlier. It is commonly accepted among scholars that the “jilting” in the title also refers to a second jilting at the end of the story. Although it could be debated that the jilting referred to in the title could only refer to Granny’s jilting at the altar, over ten peer-reviewed articles about this short story suggest or acknowledge that the jilting in the title also refers …

Levinas’S “Face” And “Other” In The Idiot: Embodiment And Betrayal, Hannah Vinchur

BYU English Symposium

If we accept Vinokurov’s claim of the “series of face-to-face encounters,” then The Idiot should display Levinas’s principles, as well. In fact, of Dostoevsky’s works, The Idiot may be the best representative of Levinas’s theory of the face. By reading The Idiot through Levinas’s theory of the face and the responsibility it entails, we see that not only does Prince Myshkin perfectly embody the execution of Levinas’s theory, but the continued violation of this theory drives the plot of the novel. Additionally, Myshkin becomes a victim of others violating the face, as he is placed in a position in which, …

Kierkegaard's Aesthetic Life View In Elliott Smith's Either/Or, Cami Richey

BYU English Symposium

When Elliott Smith, the tragic pop acoustic singer songwriter from Portland, titled his third album Either/Or, he was deliberately linking himself to Søren Kierkegaard, the existentialist philosopher of mid-1800s Copenhagen, and his book with the same title. Yet when people talk about the connection, they usually conclude that the depressed Smith was simply attracted to the musings of a depressed Kierkegaard, as if their depression was the only similarity. However, I propose that with the allusive title, Smith begs us to compare the content and form of both works, to not just see Kierkegaard as some vague figure who …

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

BYU English Symposium

The postapocalyptic genre provides opportunity for examination of the most basic aspects of society considering this alone remains of humanity and culture after apocalyptic events. In a genre where much of societal structures and ideologies are lost, the destroyed concepts cannot adequately analyze postapoclayptic texts. Folklore—the study of human behavior and interaction including the communication and binding together of a individuals and groups—becomes necessary. When applying the revelatory aspect of the postapocalypse with the folkloric framework of analysis to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, religion comes to the forefront—not religion as expressed and understood by structured and mass religion, but …

“My Wonderful And Less Than”: The Inadequacy And Necessity Of Metaphor In Szybist’S Incarnadine, Katherine Nelson

BYU English Symposium

Mary Szybist’s 2013 National Book Award–winning poetry collection, Incarnadine, re-envisions the encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel, entering the same thematic space that early Annunciation artwork traditionally has in order to portray the human encountering the alien. In these poems, symbol systems—particularly metaphor and sometimes language itself—allow the speaker to approach understanding without full comprehension. In reexamining, rupturing, and recombining traditional elements of Annunciation representations and the respective tenets of Marian theology they signified, the poems in Incarnadine point to the persistent inadequacy but inescapable necessity of metaphor in the process of meaning-making. After briefly describing the history of …

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

BYU English Symposium

The relationship between speaking and writing, specifically how speech can help us improve writing, has been discussed extensively by composition scholars (Leander and Prior 2004; Elbow 2012). However, little empirical research has been done to support these theories of how speech affects writing. In this paper, I report on a preliminary study I performed to discover this connection, specifically looking at how speech-recognition software could be used to help inexperienced writers overcome problems like writer’s block or unnatural phrasing. By having students compose aloud for 15 minutes and then interviewing them about the process, I learned that speech recognition software …

Timshel: The Monomyth In East Of Eden, Nikkita Walker

BYU English Symposium

Steinbeck’s East of Eden utilizes mythical and Biblical stories to create an allegorical bridge to understanding what he considered the fundamental story of mankind - man's conscious mastery of himself. Joseph Campbell, a literary theorist and contemporary with Steinbeck elaborated on this same concept in 1949 in his work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, wherein he posited that, universally, the story at the heart of mythology is an awareness of the human ability to consciously act. Steinbeck’s East of Eden acts as a contemporary myth through which Steinbeck communicates the eternal myth he considered the “one story in …

Redefining Atonement In The Eco-Dystopian World Of Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake, Rachel Gilman

BYU English Symposium

What if there was no God? Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake infiltrates a faithful reader’s mind to consider her eco-dystopian world with this question in mind. From a perspective of faith in God and in atonement, considering this dystopian world becomes an exercise in placing human identity in the context of self-creation and self-destruction rather than in divine origin. Without a spiritual genesis of animals and the natural environment, their purpose becomes more dictated by the progress of human need and their end becomes less intertwined with the fate of humanity. Characters that act as creators and destroyers who are …

“I Could Do With Less Caressing”: Sexual Abuse In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Andrew S. Doub

BYU English Symposium

Anne Brontë’s 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has long been called a seminal text in the feminist literary canon. Although a fair amount of recent scholarship has been written on the element of domestic violence found within its pages, most critics concede that Brontë stops short of depicting actual physical abuse between Helen Huntingdon and her husband Arthur. However, this paper suggests that scholars have overlooked Helen’s explicit reports of being sexually assaulted by her husband and their significance. By including the element in her story, Brontë entered her description of marital sexual abuse into the public discourse …

Politics And Theology Of Flannery O’Connor: How They Coincide In “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, Baylee Vasquez

BYU English Symposium

Michael L. Schroeder fastidiously argues that because O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge” focuses on the dynamics of a relationship between a self-righteous white liberal and his “racist but not malicious” mother, it is a political parable reflecting O’Connor’s beliefs about the shared racial responsibility of the civil rights movement (Schroeder 45). However, he neglects the story’s important religious underpinnings, therefore failing to grasp O’Connor’s underlying attitude about the issues of desegregation and civil rights, and also the necessary juxtaposition between Christian values with racial tolerance. Through characterization and imagery, O’Connor shows that the ideals of racial equality and individual …

Evil Deity: How White Racist Christians Made God Bad, William Guajardo

BYU English Symposium

Zora Neille Hurston, Stephan Haynes, and Langston Hughes address African-American literature’s relation to traditional, Christian, white-American beliefs. Black literature consistently shows a deep distrust of Christian teachings due to the historic attempts to force blacks into an oppressive ideology of willing servitude. The pressure to conform to an antagonistic religion produced various reactions from African-Americans, including: assimilation, subversion, and even rejection of white Christian beliefs. These black authors struggle to come to terms with a seemingly empty religion thrust upon them by a hostile and oppressive racial force driven by a biased, white-master-favoring god (lower-case). They are unable to find …

The “Wonderment” Of Oz: Theosophy And Religious Leadership In Oz, Heather M. White

BYU English Symposium

Too often when analyzing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Baum’s spiritual beliefs are not applied to perceiving the meaning behind the novel. I argue that Baum’s belief in the spiritual movement of Theosophy is imbued throughout the novel to show how one cannot rely on corrupt religious leaders and must have a personal connection with spiritualism. Through these aspects of Theosophy in the novel, Baum exhibits how to attain one’s potential through personal spirituality. I continue on to explain how the novel and Theosophy have a symbiotic relationship: the novel outlines Theosophy in a more easily understood …