English Language and Literature Commons^™

Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Memoirs and poetry. Concerns the travels of a West Virginian woman, the granddaughter of a first generation Sicilian West Virginian, within the U.S., the Bahamas, Thailand, and China, where she taught English as a second language for two years from 2000-2002. Themes include identity (Appalachian, Persian, African-American, Chinese, and even Uigur), ethnicity and gender in West Virginia, fatalism, religion, poverty, Diaspora, travel, discrimination, the Ugly American/European, Ah Q, Imperialism, Orientalism, otherness, political asylum, victims and survival, substance abuse in West Virginia, feminist narrative, West Virginian authors, mountaintop removal, environmentalism, and protest.

"I Will Learn You Something If You Listen To This Song": Southern Women Writers' Representations Of Music In Fiction, Courtney George

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a rhetorical analysis of the formation of women’s memory, history, and communities in intersections of musical and literary expression in the American South, a region graced with a vital but underexamined tradition of female musicianship. Recent scholars have deconstructed the imagined narrative of southern culture as static, patriarchal, and white to uncover alternative stories and cultures that exist outside of canonical literature. This project significantly expands current understandings of these conflicting narratives by investigating how women writers recall, reclaim, and re-envision women’s roles in southern music to challenge, comply, and/or identify with women’s prescribed place in the …

A Virginia Woolf Of One's Own: Consequences Of Adaptation In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Brooke Leora Grant

Theses and Dissertations

With a rising interest in visual media in academia, studies have overlapped at literary and film scholars' interest in adaptation. This interest has mainly focused on the examination of issues regarding adaptation of novel to novel or novel to film. Here I discuss both: Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and the 2002 film adaptation of Cunningham's novel. However, my thesis also investigates a different kind of adaptation: the adaptation of a literary and historical figure. By including in The Hours a fictionalization of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham entrenches his adaptation with Virginia …

Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness And Resistance In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Roslyn Nicole Smith

English Theses

Dana, the Black female protagonist in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979), finds herself literally and figuratively in medias res as she sporadically travels between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two converse concepts of her identity as a Black woman. As a result, her time travel experiences cause her to revise her racial and gendered identity from a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences, to a Black woman who defines herself based on her present life and her personal and ancestral history …

Remapping And Renaming Ireland: A Postcolonial Look At The Problem Of Language And Identity In Brian Friel's Translations., Maria Laura Barberan Reinares

Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2007

Brian Friel‘s acclaimed Translations, suggestively written in English, captures the moment in the history of Ireland when the British, in a clear sign of imperial dominance, initiated the remapping and renaming of the Irish territory, generating a linguistic uncertainty that eventually led to the capitulation of the Gaelic language and placed the colonizing tongue – English -- on central stage. The fact that this contemporary Irish playwright in 1980 wrote Translations in English and not in Gaelic speaks for itself. But Friel‘s choice of English as the vehicle for his play is far from trivial, and to assume that this …

An Erratic Performance: Constructing Racial Identity And James Baldwin, Natasha N. Walker

English Theses

This thesis analyzes James Baldwin's essays as a method for understanding racial identity and authenticity. By using Vetta Sanders-Thompson's racial identification parameters, I suggest that Baldwin's struggle with his identity as a black American is crucial to deposing the idea of a monolithic black experience, which opens up new ways of analyzing African American literature.

Rapid Identification: River Guides, Storytelling, And Sharing Identity, Alisha Paxton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I moved to Moab from another Utah town in the spring of 2005 to train and guide on the Colorado River. Over the course of two summers I rowed or paddled on three Colorado River sections-Fisher Towers, Westwater and Cataract Canyon-as well as Desolation/Gray Canyons on the Green River and the Main Fork of the Salmon River. The next fall, during my first semester of graduate study in folklore, I became interested in studying river guides as a folk group. I wanted to study the formation of "community" based upon both guide and passenger interactions on river trips. However, because …

Exploring The Nature Of Individual Identity In Faulkner’S As I Lay Dying And Ware’S Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth, Elizabeth Spavento

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Angela Johnson: Award-Winning Novels And The Search For Self, Kaavonia M. Hinton-Johnson, Angela Johnson

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

It was over a decade ago when Rudine Sims Bishop (1992) prophetically dubbed Angela Johnson as possibly one of "the most prominent AfricanAmerican literary artists of the next generation" (616). At the time she had four picture books to her credit, but the following year she would publish her debut young adult novel, Toning the Sweep. From there, a number of other award-winners would follow and the total of young adult books would increase to eleven and counting. To date, Johnson has three Coretta Scott King Awards, a Michael L. Printz award, and the "Genius Grant" on her list of …

Sites Of Resistance: Language, Intertextuality, And Subjectivity In The Poetry Of Diane Wakoski, Cordelia Maxwell Hanemann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interconnectedness of language and related cultural texts and women’s subjectivity. The poststructuralist feminist enterprise of examining and critiquing language and signifying practices for the ways in which they impose social values and of interrogating and undermining the fixity of meanings in cultural texts will serve as my primary frame. Concerned with the individual (gendered) consciousness, poststructuralist feminist theory of subject formation posits that while language, along with ideologically biased texts of the culture, construct subjects, language and the cultural texts also serve as sites of resistance for the deconstruction and reconception of individual and collective subjectivities. …

Split Infinities: The Comedy Of Performative Identity In Maxine Hong Kingston's *Tripmaster Monkey*, Jonna Mackin

Dr. Jonna C Mackin

The article discusses a quarrel between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston regarding Chinese American Identity and goes on to analyze Kingston's novel *Tripmaster Monkey, His Fake Book* as a case where an analysis of the comedy leads to questions about her professed multiculturalism. Kingston's jokes reveal hidden aggression in the text and a tendency to obscure or erase African American cultural icons.

Piero Chiara E La Tradizione, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Piero Chiara (Luino 1913- Varese 1986) wrote many novels and short stories that immediately met great public success. Critics devoted mixed attention to him but his works deserve a new critical assessment to analyze the rich and sophisticated web of cultural and literary references that permeate them. Through readings of Il piatto piange, “L’uovo al cianuro” and other novels and short stories, this paper analyses the complex textual relations Chiara entertains with Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal. Chiara investigates the themes of identity and the double. His narrative depicts an apparently lighthearted reality that in fact reveals despair. …

Review Of Moving Out: A Nebraska Woman's Life, Susan Naramore Maher

English Faculty Publications

At the end of her memoir, Moving Out, Polly Spence assesses all the little ironies of her life and concludes, "[each] time everything seemed just right, each time I thought I'd found it all—the work, the love, and the ideal way to live—something brought change to me." Change is a central motif in her narrative, reflected in a title that underscores movement and mobility, not settlement. Spence's Nebraska life provides a toehold on the slippery surface of twentieth-century culture in America.

The Shifting Frontiers Of Belonging In The Fiction Of J. M. Coetzee, Dawn Grieve

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an examination of the fictional works of J.M. Coetzee to date. There are two aspects to my argument. First I posit that Coetzee adumbrates the prevailing crisis of belonging in the world and the universal yearning for a sense of connectedness. Secondly, I maintain that Coetzee prompts a review of the demarcation lines that divide and alienate in two ways. He installs boundaries that are shifting and. unstable. He also represents numerous frontier transgressions that expose the permeability of these finite conceptual constructions and reveals their potential for revision. It is my contention that Coetzee exploits the …

"We Are Five-And-Forty": Meter And National Identity In Sir Walter Scott, John Kerkering

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

"A Plea For Color:" The Construction Of A Feminine Identity In African American Women's Novels., Kirsten A. Moffler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writers of slave narratives i n the nineteenth-century manipulated the western sentimental literary tradition to appeal t o a white, predominantly female readership during a time of national ideological division. These writers had their own agendas which often m e t (or were forced to meet ) those of white-run abolitionist movements t o achieve the ultimate goal of abolishing slavery. Northern white-run abolitionist movements were kept warm by the moral fires of mid-nineteenth-century Protestant Christianity; Christian ideals flooded their meetings and publications. Therefore, it is no wonder that the writers of slave narratives are so overt i n discussing …

“Of Me And Of Mine”: The Music Of Racial Identity In Whitman And Lanier, Dvořák And Dubois, John Kerkering

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Dyke's Life: Sexual Identity And Gender Performance In Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness, Erica L. Ellsworth

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis studies sexual and gender identity and gender performance in The Well of Loneliness by utilizing postmodern theory. The protagonist in the novel, Stephen Gordon, is not only one example of the many identities of lesbianism, but she is also an example of a multiplicitous identity. This thesis also questions whether we can find the exact moment or reason why an identity is formed. An exploration of not only The Well of Loneliness but also of a character study of Stephen Gordon is important to this dialogue because both studies validate the contradictory and complimentary relationship between sex and …

Jane Eyre's Quest For Truth And Identity, Christina J. Jnge

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

"Being A Half-Breed" Discourses Of Race And Cultural Syncreticity In The Works Of Three Metis Women Writers, Jodi Lundgren

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.

Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article applies principles of new historicism to show that A Sport of Nature can be read as Gordimer's attempt to persuade South African artists to reject mere protest art and to shift art beyond the trap of oppositional forces in South Africa's history today. The text calls instead—via fiction and the imagination—for a new post-apartheid art that will generate creative possibilities for a future South Africa. Gordimer's protagonist, Hillela Capran, is read as a metaphor for the white South African artist who, like Hillela, struggles for an authentic identity and meaningful role in the evolving history of South Africa. …

Self-Effacement And Autonomy In Shakespeare, Kirby Farrell Prof

kirby farrell

This chapter develops the argument in "Self-Effacement and Autonomy in Sx," extending it to fantasies of apotheosis in the poems and plays.

Self-Effacement And Autonomy In Shakespeare, Kirby Farrell Prof

kirby farrell

This is a chapter from my _Play, Death, and Heroism in Shakespeare_ (1988). It identifies a pattern of behavior in Sx and Early Modern culture, in which children learn to efface themselves in order to achieve (or "earn") autonomy. The paradigm has significant implications for the structure of authority in EarlyModern culture, and in Shakespeare supports the fantasies of heroic apotheosis everywhere in his work.

Honoring The Farm: Identity And Meaning In Personal Narratives, Jeannie Banks Thomas

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis employs the literary folklorist methodology to explore personal narratives. Personal narratives told by Elizabeth (Beth) Wyatt Winn were analyzed. It was discovered that these narratives provide an eyewitness account of history, reveal world views, and encapsulate experiences into values and personal meanings. The depth of meaning found in Elizabeth (Beth) Wyatt Winn's personal narratives illustrates the importance of personal narratives in historical research and historical re-creation and simulation.

Appendices include several oral interviews containing personal narratives.

[Introduction To] Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical And Critical Sourcebook, Daryl Cumber Dance

Bookshelf

The beginnings of Caribbean literature lie hidden In the folklore of the plantation era and in the prim, condescending travelogues, the exotic novels, and the apparently naive slave narratives - often authored by Whites - that began to appear as early as the eighteenth century. Francis Williams, the classically educated Black poet of 18th century Jamaica, used conventional Augustan poetics to protest racism and assert the common humanity of mankind. The vision draws from Caribbean life. By the 19th century some black poets began to write of their own concerns and experiences, some writing in the local vernacular.

The essays …

Polyphonic Theory And Contemporary Literary Practices, M.-Pierrette Malcuzynski

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This paper briefly explores some of the ways in which Mikhail Bakhtin reaffirms the principle of the non-identity yet inseparability of theory and practice in literary criticism. The lesson is one which stresses the need to disentangle the critical discourse from idealistic theoretical issues and engage in a materialist practice of criticism. If polyphonical dialogism (especially with respect to contemporary polyphony) is not to be confused with dialectics, then the most urgent and perhaps the most difficult task for the critic facing a polyphonic narrative is to negotiate the text in terms of the socio-historical actuality of the transformation which …