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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick
Sex And The Superman: Gender And The Superhero Monomyth, Christopher Maverick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Since the 1938 introduction of Superman, superheroes have been ever-present in American popular culture. Indeed, with the modern preponderance of comic book movies dominating the American cinematic box-office, superhero fantasy is arguably the most important genre of fiction being produced in the contemporary moment. Peter Coogan, Kurt Busiek and many other scholars have discussed the prominence and relevance of the superhero fantasy as a genre. Still others, including Umberto Eco and Marco Arnaudo, have asserted that the superhero is not so much a genre and as it is the evolution of mythology. In Sex and the Superman, I argue …
Cultural Trauma Fiction: Political Violence, Rampage Violence, And Structural Violence In Contemporary American Literature, Courtney Mullis
Cultural Trauma Fiction: Political Violence, Rampage Violence, And Structural Violence In Contemporary American Literature, Courtney Mullis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation identifies and proposes a new subgenre of American literature, Cultural Trauma Fiction, that has arisen since the late 20th century in response to numerous large-scale traumatic events and their representation in the media. Cultural trauma occurs when a shocking, shared event fractures collective identity and initiates a discursive process to understand what took place, why it happened, and how the affected culture can heal. Cultural traumas differ from individual trauma because cultural traumas affect a culture, rather than an individual, and because they are mediated; many members of the culture experience the trauma of these events secondhand …
The Whale-Road To Road House: A Study Of The Contemporary Transmission Of Beowulf, Haley Grindstaff
The Whale-Road To Road House: A Study Of The Contemporary Transmission Of Beowulf, Haley Grindstaff
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores three versions of Beowulf: Gareth Hinds’s graphic novel Beowulf (2007), Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation Beowulf (2020), and Rowdy Herrington’s film Road House (1989). While Hinds and Headley fail to convey Beowulf as a cultural elegy by subtracting or misrepresenting significant scenes and characters, Road House superimposes the story of Beowulf onto 1980s America. Parallels between the plots of Beowulf and Road House and Road House’s interaction with the political underpinnings of the 80s (such as Reaganomics and the AIDS epidemic) make the film one of the best at capturing the elements of cultural elegy in the …
A Lesson In Mourning: The Evolution Of The English Anti-Elegy, K. Matthew Bennett
A Lesson In Mourning: The Evolution Of The English Anti-Elegy, K. Matthew Bennett
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis analyzes the evolution of the anti-elegy originating with Thomas Hardy’s elegiac sequence in memory of his wife Emma; Poems of 1912-1913. Using French post-structuralist Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share as a theoretical lens, Hardy’s anti-elegies are analyzed and rhetorically connected to English war poet Siegfried Sassoon’s anti-elegies. Hardy’s anti-sentimentality, fatalistic outlook on death, and rejection of the Christian afterlife seeps into the language of Sassoon’s war poems which serve as a protest to the dehumanizing effects of late capitalism witnessed during the First World War. Hardy and Sassoon’s anti-elegies, with their hyper-focus on the elegized body, are …
Kurt Vonnegut, Modernity, And The Self: A Guide To The Good Life., Josh Simpson
Kurt Vonnegut, Modernity, And The Self: A Guide To The Good Life., Josh Simpson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
What are people for? This is a question Kurt Vonnegut raises in his first novel, 1952’s Player Piano. Over five decades later, when he concludes a career with 2005’s A Man Without a Country, he is still asking, “What is life all about?” (66). These are the central questions for Vonnegut, and his novels, short stories, essays, interviews, correspondence, and commencement addresses offer a singular, life-long attempt at an answer. In this dissertation I offer a reading of Vonnegut not just as a writer concerned with philosophical questions, but rather, on a deeper, more personal level, as a …
Loving The Mountains, Leaving The Mountains: The Appalachian Dilemma And Jim Wayne Miller’S The Brier Poems, Madeline Dawson
Loving The Mountains, Leaving The Mountains: The Appalachian Dilemma And Jim Wayne Miller’S The Brier Poems, Madeline Dawson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
For decades now, the Appalachian community has been internally combatting two equally strong feelings—an inherently rich love of the mountains and a conflicting urge to leave the mountains. In recent years, Appalachian writers have produced a new literary tradition of identifying, discussing, and remedying this dilemma. Jim Wayne Miller’s 1997 The Brier Poems unapologetically explores the Appalachian community’s complicated relationship to its region. bell hooks’ 2012 Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place and Savannah Sipple’s 2019 WWJD and Other Poems then expand Miller’s exploration as both hooks and Sipple collectively represent voices that have often been left out of the stereotypical …
A Shift In Perspective: Temptress Witch To Realistic Woman, Caroline Conroy
A Shift In Perspective: Temptress Witch To Realistic Woman, Caroline Conroy
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In mid-20th century Anglo-American translations of The Odyssey, Odysseus is painted as a courageous, clever king while the briefly-featured Circe is portrayed as a temptress witch. This dichotomy changes, however, by the time these characters are featured in early 21st-century adaptations of Homer’s work; both released in 2018, Madeline Miller’s Circe and Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing reclaim Circe’s depiction by portraying a Circe-like character as a powerful protagonist, aware of her strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing the archetype of the witch and how it is reflective of patriarchal society’s efforts to reduce and isolate women’s power, I argue …
Middle American Gothic, Jordan Heisler
Middle American Gothic, Jordan Heisler
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Though Gothicism has evolved since its inception in the eighteenth century, its most common tropes—such as deteriorating settings, supernatural figures, and foreboding atmospheres—have remained integral to the genre. While, the following fictional collection, Middle American Gothic, draws inspiration from these familiar Gothic tropes, it substitutes the grandeur of crumbling castles, monasteries, and sprawling estates for a common town within the rural Midwest. Similarly, while the collection nods to the existence of supernatural beings, none of its stories actually rely on anything otherworldly as a source of terror. Its setting, while not traditionally Gothic, features a series of decaying, outdated homes …