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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America

“The Ugly Truth”: Examining War Trauma And Therapeutic Storytelling Through The Works Of Tim O’Brien, Meredith Ivy Fedewa Dec 2022

“The Ugly Truth”: Examining War Trauma And Therapeutic Storytelling Through The Works Of Tim O’Brien, Meredith Ivy Fedewa

Masters Theses

Within this work, a close study on the relationship between trauma and storytelling is examined through three of Tim O’Brien’s works: The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and In the Lake of the Woods. Through the application of psychoanalysis, specifically the work of Jacques Lacan, and modern trauma theory, the relationship between individual identity and the traumatizing encounter of the Real is examined through O’Brien’s concepts of Story Truth versus Happening Truth, as well as how those concepts work together to navigate one’s trauma story. Through weaving the aforementioned theory with each text, O’Brien is seen …


#Metoo: The Literary And Social Impact Of Sexual Violence Narratives, Aura Comer May 2022

#Metoo: The Literary And Social Impact Of Sexual Violence Narratives, Aura Comer

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

To fully understand the severity of sexual violence and its pervasiveness in America, I will present statistics of rape and sexual assault, as well as available legal court statistics of justice and punishment for offenders (or a lack thereof). However, there must be an acknowledgment of the disparity in information and representation pertaining to indigenous, LGBT+, immigrant, and minor communities. Note that these statistics do not speak to the complete pervasiveness of rape and sexual assault in the United States, given the negligent protection and lack of belief in victims, which results in victim silencing and a lack of reporting.


Textual Persuasion: Trauma Representation In Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves, Elizabeth A. Wall May 2022

Textual Persuasion: Trauma Representation In Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves, Elizabeth A. Wall

English Theses

Textualization is the act of putting words on a page. Typography is the style and way in which the textualization of the text appears to the reader. Together, textualization and typography have the ability to coerce the reader into a specific reading pattern. Mark Z. Danielewski has combined textualization and typography in his complex novel House of Leaves as a unique attempt to represent trauma in the space between language and written language. Typical textual play becomes textual persuasion as the reader is guided through the labyrinth of text by typographical coercion. In this novel, these elements of play essentially …


Bildungsroman And Trauma In Harper Lee’S To Kill A Mockingbird And Dorothy Allison’S Bastard Out Of Carolina, Bernadette D'Auria Apr 2022

Bildungsroman And Trauma In Harper Lee’S To Kill A Mockingbird And Dorothy Allison’S Bastard Out Of Carolina, Bernadette D'Auria

Student Research Submissions

Scholars have long viewed Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as a young girl’s Bildungsroman. Through an adult Scout’s reflection on her childhood, Lee takes her readers on a journey that has traditionally been categorized as a young girl’s growth from naivete to maturity. While Scout is witness to the impacts and traumas of racism in Maycomb, scholars have often overlooked Scout’s ambivalent attitude regarding these events. Scout sentimentalizes Maycomb and rarely processes or reacts to the traumatic events that encompass her childhood, leaving Lee’s narrative a poor example of a growth towards maturity. In contrast, the coming-of-age arc in …