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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America

House Of Leaves: The End Of Postmodernism, Joseph B. Noah May 2012

House Of Leaves: The End Of Postmodernism, Joseph B. Noah

English Theses

Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut 2000 novel House of Leaves is written in part as an essay titled The Navidson Record by Zampanò. Within this essay, Zampanò includes footnotes and citations to many works both real and fictional. Through investigating some of his footnotes and allusions in The Navidson Record, certain connections to the postmodern movement may be drawn. By interpreting Zampanò’s allusions to Freud, Derrida, and Einstein, elements from Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism change the reception of Danielewski’s novel. Thorough investigation of a few allusions within the novel House of Leaves reveal many foundations …


Unbreakable Glass Slippers: Hegemony In Ella Enchanted, Tori Shereen Mirsadjadi Apr 2012

Unbreakable Glass Slippers: Hegemony In Ella Enchanted, Tori Shereen Mirsadjadi

Scripps Senior Theses

The way Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted simultaneously conforms to its late-20th-century American standards and rebels against its Cinderella origins is analyzed in this thesis. As an analysis of a piece of literature written for children, the thesis works to defend the notion that playful literature produces a serious dialogue with its readers, and that young female readers are a particularly apropos group for the dialogue about hegemony that Ella Enchanted allows.


Post-War Europe: The Waste Land As A Metaphor, Semy Rhee Apr 2012

Post-War Europe: The Waste Land As A Metaphor, Semy Rhee

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the mindset of twentieth-century Europe through the perspective of a modern individual that T. S. Eliot creates in his poem The Waste Land. Although The Waste Land is the greatest modernist poem, it is often criticized for its esoteric nature. A thorough examination of the poem is useful in understanding and appreciating Eliot’s masterful demonstration of the modernist philosophy. This study analyzes the poem in light of the definition of modernism and the poem’s metaphorical nature. It also aims to reconcile the two most confusing elements of the poem—its allusive content and fragmented structure—to the design …


Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans Jan 2012

Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood – originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis – Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of …


The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson Jan 2012

The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: "People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing." I assert that Atwood depicts this "third thing" through her characters who navigate between the binaries of "masculine" and "feminine" in a third realm of gender. As the female characters—regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior—engage in a quest for agency, …


Rain Inside The Elevator: Dualities In The Plays Of Sarah Ruhl As Seen Through The Lens Of Ancient Greek Theatre, Hannah Fattor Jan 2012

Rain Inside The Elevator: Dualities In The Plays Of Sarah Ruhl As Seen Through The Lens Of Ancient Greek Theatre, Hannah Fattor

Summer Research

Considering the modern playwright Sarah Ruhl’s current body of work through the paradigm of ancient Greek theatrical tradition illuminates many links to Greek theatre and highlights the depth of the emotions within her plays. The ancient Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, along with Ruhl, confront themes of love and death with both sorrow and humor, considering the different ways people cope with traumatic circumstances. They focus in particular on the relationships that form between people after a significant loss, and how humans come together in a community, seeking connection with each other. By theatrically exploring the themes of …


An Opposing Self, Christine M. Gamache Jan 2012

An Opposing Self, Christine M. Gamache

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

People have always been both frightened and fascinated by the unknown, and themes touching on the existence of things beyond human understanding have longevity in the literary arena as well as in popular culture. One such theme is that of the doppelgänger, or double, which has been around for centuries but was first made popular by Jean-Paul’s (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) work Hesperus in 1795. Due to a resurgence in the nineteenth century in the popularity of Gothic literature, doppelgängers, or variations of this double motif, found their way into some of the most famous works of literature …


"What's That Noise?": Paying Attention To Perception, Excess, And Meta-Art In David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, Christopher Mccarthy Jan 2012

"What's That Noise?": Paying Attention To Perception, Excess, And Meta-Art In David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, Christopher Mccarthy

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In his graphic novel Asterios Polyp David Mazzucchelli is concerned with the nature of human perception. He highlights the limitations of perception through his title character's struggle to find a new way to filter information from the world around him. Mazzucchelli reminds us that no matter which method a person uses to look at the world there will always be excess details that he or she will ignore or simply not notice due to perceptual blind spots. I argue that, while Asterios gains a new method for perceiving the world, his true victory is in his acknowledgement that all perceptions …