The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, 2024 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, Giacomo R. Bianchino
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation, “The Redemption of History: Poetics and Politics in the Modern Epic.” provides a materialist theory of the modern epic, focusing on the way that the poets deployed this form towards political ends. Building on theories of the epic going back to the German Romantics, it argues that the modern form is predicated on the idea that it has departed from the conditions that made the ancient form possible. It examines the way that writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed the idea that the immediacy of the social “totality” expressed by the ancient epopee was …
The Lady’S Museum Project, A Digital Critical And Teaching Edition Of Charlotte Lennox’S Lady’S Museum (1760-61), Completes Phase Two Of Its Three-Phase Development Schedule, 2024 University of Ottawa
The Lady’S Museum Project, A Digital Critical And Teaching Edition Of Charlotte Lennox’S Lady’S Museum (1760-61), Completes Phase Two Of Its Three-Phase Development Schedule, Karenza Sutton-Bennett
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
The Lady’s Museum (1760–61) was among the most important early periodicals largely written by one of the most important eighteenth-century authors, Charlotte Lennox, whose multigenre, proto-feminist writing is beginning to receive the critical and pedagogical attention it deserves. Yet no modern edition of the text has existed—until now. Launched in 2021, the Lady’s Museum Project is presenting the first critical edition of—and learning community around—Lennox’s Museum in three open-access formats to encourage the widest possible readership: a non-specialist digital, interactive edition of the text and LibriVox audiobook intended for public and undergraduate-student audiences, and a specialist digital edition intended for …
Review Of The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 5: 1645–1714: The Later Seventeenth Century, By Margaret J. M. Ezell, 2024 Community College of Rhode Island; Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Review Of The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 5: 1645–1714: The Later Seventeenth Century, By Margaret J. M. Ezell, Karen Griscom
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
A review of The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 5: 1645–1714: The Later Seventeenth Century by Margaret J. M. Ezell.
Review Of The Cambridge Edition Of The Works Of Anne Finch, Countess Of Winchilsea, Edited By Jennifer Keith Et Al, 2024 College of the Holy Cross
Review Of The Cambridge Edition Of The Works Of Anne Finch, Countess Of Winchilsea, Edited By Jennifer Keith Et Al, Melissa Schoenberger
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
A review of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, edited by Jennifer Keith et. al.
Out Of The Closet And Into The Classroom: Teaching Anne Finch's Plays, 2024 Simon Fraser University
Out Of The Closet And Into The Classroom: Teaching Anne Finch's Plays, Diana Solomon
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
The publication of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea makes it possible to teach not only a much wider assorted of her edited poetry, but also Finch’s two dramas: the tragicomedy The Triumphs of Love and Innocence, and the tragedy Aristomenes. This essay proposes integrating Finch’s plays into a course on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama by proposing a class, “Genre Trouble,” which sets them in dialogue with frequently-taught plays of the era. Included herein are a syllabus of primary and secondary sources, suggestions for discussing Finch’s plays and dramatic paratexts in comparison to works …
Teaching Poetry With Anne Finch: Manuscript Culture As Early Modern Social Media, 2024 University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Teaching Poetry With Anne Finch: Manuscript Culture As Early Modern Social Media, Jennifer Keith
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This essay discusses two approaches I use to teach Anne Finch's—and others'—poetry. Drawing on certain habits of early modern manuscript culture, I make visible to my students ways that reading and writing are socially embedded practices, which may variously involve exchange, reciprocity, or censorship. By adapting the "quaint" habits of manuscript culture practiced by Finch and many others to specific assignments, I encourage students to experience poetry as living, sociable occasions of reading and writing. To augment my students' engagement with early modern poetry I connect it to frameworks from their twenty-first-century reading and writing worlds. These exercises in "early …
Anne Finch On The Patio: A Scholarly Eat And Greet, 2024 College of the Holy Cross
Anne Finch On The Patio: A Scholarly Eat And Greet, Melissa Schoenberger
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This article recounts an instructional event for English majors held in the central campus library. Students engaged with various materials related to the career and editorial history of Anne Finch. The event offered students an introduction to questions of information literacy, textual history, and literary studies.
Teaching Finch And / In Performance: A Media Studies Approach (With Toolkit), 2024 UC Santa Barbara
Teaching Finch And / In Performance: A Media Studies Approach (With Toolkit), Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Teaching the birdsong poems and compositions for musical settings of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, through media theory allows students to connect their own social-media-based expressive arts practices with the multimedia practices of early modern women writers.
Introduction: Teaching The Works Of Anne Finch, Part Ii, 2024 University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Introduction: Teaching The Works Of Anne Finch, Part Ii, Jennifer Keith, Tiffany Potter
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This essay introduces Part Two of the two-part “Concise Collection on Teaching the Works of Anne Finch," guest edited by Jennifer Keith (Aphra Behn Online, vol. 14, no. 1, 2024). The first part of this collection appeared in Fall 2023.
Politics, Authorship, And Philosophy: Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S The Blazing World In The Diverse Graduate Classroom, 2024 California State University, Long Beach
Politics, Authorship, And Philosophy: Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S The Blazing World In The Diverse Graduate Classroom, Martine Van Elk
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This essay explores how Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World works differently when taught and read on its own and in combination with Cavendish’s other works. Focusing specifically on the graduate classroom, I examine and present strategies for teaching the book alongside works by other early modern women and for teaching it in a single-author course. While in isolation, The Blazing World allows for discussions that focus primarily on questions of gender, genre, class, and politics, read in tandem with Cavendish’s other works, in particular her philosophical writings, The Blazing World becomes a source for reflections on questions of creaturely identity, …
Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S Philosophy: Early Modern Women And The Question Of Biography, 2024 Northeastern University London
Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S Philosophy: Early Modern Women And The Question Of Biography, Peter West
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the learning experience.
Teaching Queer Theory And The History Of Sexuality With Margaret Cavendish’S The Convent Of Pleasure, 2024 Central College
Teaching Queer Theory And The History Of Sexuality With Margaret Cavendish’S The Convent Of Pleasure, Valerie Billing
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This article summarizes my approach to teaching Cavendish’s play The Convent of Pleasure in my course “LGBTQ+ Literature and Culture,” which I teach at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. I demonstrate how I teach the play with excerpts from literary scholarship in queer theory in order to help students sharpen their close reading skills, teach scholarly engagement, and deepen students’ understanding of early modern and Restoration comedy and the history of sexuality.
“A World Of Her Own Invention”: Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S Blazing World In The Early British Literature Survey And Beyond, 2024 Ball State University
“A World Of Her Own Invention”: Teaching Margaret Cavendish’S Blazing World In The Early British Literature Survey And Beyond, Vanessa L. Rapatz
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Margaret Cavendish has only recently been included in the canonical literature anthologies and even then, the samplings of her prolific writings are severely truncated. However, even this small taste of Cavendish’s poems and excerpts of A Description of a New World called The Blazing World leave early British literature survey students hungry for more. Frequently, students in the survey choose to focus on Cavendish’s writing for their research projects in which they practice feminist and queer readings and engage with Cavendish as a key player in utopian and science fiction genres. Beyond the survey course, Blazing World works wonderfully in …
Relocating Early Modern Women: Teaching Margaret Cavendish To A Broader Audience, 2024 University of Denver
Relocating Early Modern Women: Teaching Margaret Cavendish To A Broader Audience, Jennifer Topale
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, can be called many things: writer, poet, philosopher, woman, Royalist, eccentric rule-breaker, scientific collaborator, utopian thinker, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, access to her writings, typically her The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, are often limited in academic settings to courses centered on the seventeenth century, early modern utopian literature, Restoration literature, and possibly an early modern women writers class. Though these are all wonderful course topics, they are often upper-division courses specifically designed for English majors of the early modern period. Limiting Cavendish to only these courses means that …
Concise Collections: Teaching Margaret Cavendish, Part I, 2024 Northern Illinois University
Concise Collections: Teaching Margaret Cavendish, Part I, E Mariah Spencer
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This is the introduction of Part I of the "Concise Collection on Teaching the Works of Margaret Cavendish."
“Always Unguarded And Often Uncivil”: A Case For Lydia In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, 2024 Kennesaw State University
“Always Unguarded And Often Uncivil”: A Case For Lydia In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Leah Benedict
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Despite decades of feminist scholarship, Lydia Bennet has consistently been taken at Jane Austen’s word: she is viewed as capricious, difficult, and silly, and in most cases found to be deserving of her fate. But with the adaptation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Lydia became the character most likely to inspire a heightened emotional bond with viewers. Because of the show’s format, Lydia’s voice and experiences became more central, and were conveyed with greater sympathy than prior adaptations. Against all anticipation, many viewers immediately identified not with Lizzie, but with Lydia. My paper explores the cultural contexts surrounding the web …
Behn And The “Epitaph On The Tombstone Of A Child”, 2024 Manhattan College
Behn And The “Epitaph On The Tombstone Of A Child”, Mary Ann O'Donnell
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Aphra Behn’s poems usually celebrate some form of pastoral life or love, so much so that her “Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child” seems anomalous in her 1685 Miscellany. The same poem (with two lines crossed out) appears in Cambridge University Library MS Add. 8460, Elizabeth Lyttelton’s Commonplace Book, where it is titled simply “Epitaph on William Fairfax.” The twelve lines also appear on one other material witness: the tomb marker for young William Fairfax, who was Elizabeth Lyttelton’s nephew and Sir Thomas Browne’s grandson. This article examines the poem itself, discusses the deleted lines, considers connections that …
Fallen Creator And Failed Christ: An Exploration Of Religious Imagery And Metafiction In Ian Mcewan’S Atonement, 2024 University of Mary Washington
Fallen Creator And Failed Christ: An Exploration Of Religious Imagery And Metafiction In Ian Mcewan’S Atonement, Tabitha Robinson
Student Research Submissions
This paper examines the religious imagery in Atonement by Ian McEwan through a close reading of the structure and main characters Briony, Cecilia and Robbie. The novel is deeply concerned with questions of sin and redemption, which intersect with religious symbolism and metafiction to create the story. This paper reads Briony as both a creator god and a failed Christ figure and Cecilia and Robbie as Adam and Eve characters, showing the text’s self-awareness through its use of narrative to create meaning. It argues that the field of religious studies offers many theories and terms that enrich the field of …
Like Shapes Moving In Another World: An Identification And Interpretation Of Mythical Figures In C. S. Lewis’ Novel The Silver Chair, 2024 Southern Adventist University
Like Shapes Moving In Another World: An Identification And Interpretation Of Mythical Figures In C. S. Lewis’ Novel The Silver Chair, Benjamin S. Perkin
Student Research
As a result of his conversion to Christianity, author C. S. Lewis felt compelled to formulate a unique definition of myth. From his perspective, myth is a means through which God communicates His truth to the non-Christian world. Myth recognizes the yearning for home all people experience yet cannot satisfy, but while it correctly diagnoses humanity’s symptoms, myth fails to treat the underlying disease responsible for them. The influence of non-Christian, specifically Greek, myth can be felt most strongly in The Silver Chair, the sixth installment of Lewis’ series The Chronicles of Narnia. Through the allusions this essay explores, in …
Blake’S Green Symbols Of Humanity, Society, And Spirituality, 2024 Southern New Hampshire University
Blake’S Green Symbols Of Humanity, Society, And Spirituality, Angela J. Heagy
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
William Blake is an exemplar of Romantic poetry characterized by depictions of the occult, the divine, and human nature. Despite Blake’s reputation as a Romantic poet, many critics claim that there is not sufficient evidence to consider him a nature writer. As a result, Blake’s name is frequently omitted from ecological discussions; some scholars go so far as to claim that Blake’s poetry demonstrates a disregard for nature altogether. This article argues that an eco-critical analysis of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience reveals nature to be Blake’s continual source of inspiration. Within this collection, nature represents the struggles …