Ernest Hemingway: The Modern Transcendentalist,
2016
Brigham Young University - Provo
Ernest Hemingway: The Modern Transcendentalist, Camryn Scott
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
When thinking about Transcendentalism, most of us look solely to the 19th Century writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In this paper I reject this static treatment of the movement by exploring Ernest Hemingway’s connection to nature both in his life and in his writings, and claim that he created a modern version of Transcendentalism in the early 20th Century.
Flannery O'Connor's Protestant Grace,
2016
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
Flannery O'Connor's Protestant Grace, Emily Strong
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
Flannery O’Connor has long been known for the didactic Catholic message in her literature. However, upon closer study we may find that there are Protestant themes in O’Connor’s portrayal of grace. This paper explores the differences between Catholic and Protestant grace, examines the Protestant themes that can be found in her texts “Greenleaf,” “Revelation,” and “The Lame Shall Enter First,” and offers possible explanations as to why these Protestant themes exist in her literature.
Morality And Pleasure In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried,
2016
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
Morality And Pleasure In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Sarah Bonney
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
In “Morality and Pleasure in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried,” I examine how representations of pleasure in O’Brien’s novel indicate how the soldiers establish a new code of morality during their military service in Vietnam. Although civilians live with a binary understanding of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, the soldiers must commit immoral acts in order to serve honorably, thereby conflicting with this previous understanding. Western ideology asserts that pleasure accompanies moral behavior; because the soldiers perform violent acts, they must ascertain a new understanding of morality in order to continue to feel pleasure throughout and in spite of …
The Art Of Death: Murder According To Poe, Hitchcock, And De Quincey,
2016
Brigham Young University - Utah
The Art Of Death: Murder According To Poe, Hitchcock, And De Quincey, Jeanine Bee
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
This paper examines the works of both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock in light of Thomas De Quincey’s series of essays entitled “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” In his essays, De Quincey presents murder as an art form that can be criticized and appreciated just as any other fine art. While De Quincey’s essays faced some negative reaction when they were originally published, both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock seem to have found something worthwhile in De Quincey’s ideas about the art of murder; Poe and Hitchcock both present murder as an art form …
The Pastor's Theology Of Uncertainty In Lila,
2016
Brigham Young University - Provo
The Pastor's Theology Of Uncertainty In Lila, Ben Lehnardt
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
Marillynne Robinson’s most recent novel Lila depicts a preacher, John Ames, whose personal theology is studded with uncertainty. Rather than being a weakness to his faith, however, his insecurity is actually his greatest strength. This unusual theological trait becomes especially applicable when placed in the context of the philosophical struggle between scientific positivism and humanistic reasoning. This article explores the nuances of Ames’ theology of uncertainty and expands its philosophical importance in a greater context.
Writing Resistance: Agency And Politics In The Postmodern And Contemporary Novel,
2016
Illinois State University
Writing Resistance: Agency And Politics In The Postmodern And Contemporary Novel, Bradley Michael Poling
Theses and Dissertations
This project seeks to substantiate a key ambivalence at the heart of contemporary literature: what does it mean to "return" to politics? Critics of contemporary literature have outlined the new literary aesthetic, using social and political engagement as a key component in distinguishing the contemporary novel from its postmodern predecessor. This project, in response to this claim, will examine both the discursive and representation politics of two landmark postmodern novels, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Don DeLillo's Libra, while examining Jennifer Eganâ??s A Visit from the Goon Squad as a descendent of this literary lineage. This project argues that the …
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989 (Sc 2988),
2016
Western Kentucky University
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989 (Sc 2988), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Manuscript Collection Finding Aids
Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2988. Letter, 20 March 1952, of Robert Penn Warren, New Haven, Connecticut, to Mrs. Carl P. Rollins. He refers to his “wandering loquacity about the sadistic Lewises” (an apparent reference to his poem Brother to Dragons) being included in certain minutes, but observes that the entry will be “much shorter” than the poem itself.
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989 (Sc 2977),
2016
Western Kentucky University
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989 (Sc 2977), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Manuscript Collection Finding Aids
Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2977. Newspaper and magazine clippings, programs and correspondence relating to the 80th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholars program at Oxford University. Robert Penn Warren participated in these festivities as a program alumnus. Includes a brief correspondence between Warren and fellow Rhodes alumnus Don Price.
Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner,
2016
University of Massachusetts Boston
Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell
New England Journal of Public Policy
William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, was highly praised after its publication in 1967. Then African American essayists in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond took issue with the novel and rejected Styron’s asserted right to reimagine Nat Turner’s life and to assume his voice, claiming their rights of racial heritage and historical accuracy to castigate Styron for his offensive presumption. That distant argument of unshared assumptions and crossed purposes between high-minded and hypersensitive artists and intellectuals of another day may throw refracted …
City Poems And Urban Crisis, 1945 - Present,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
City Poems And Urban Crisis, 1945 - Present, Jeffrey Nathan Mickelson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
City Poems proposes that twentieth-century American city poets hold important concerns, commitments, and strategies in common with urban theorists and city planners. The study situates canonical and lesser-read city poetry, including work by William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Wanda Coleman, among others, in relation to discourses of urban crisis. Following Raymond Williams, Henri Lefebvre, and James Scully, it approaches city poetry as a form of social action that holds particular value for practitioners of progressive city planning. Because poetic representations of cities influence public perceptions, City Poems suggests, they have the potential to …
The Fictions Of Whiteness: Transatlantic Race Science, Gender, Nationalism, And The Construction Of Race In Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1823-1867),
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
The Fictions Of Whiteness: Transatlantic Race Science, Gender, Nationalism, And The Construction Of Race In Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1823-1867), Philip E. Kadish
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Fictions of Whiteness argues that political beliefs preceded and determined the race science theories which nineteenth century American white novelists applied or invoked in their work, the inverse of the current critical consensus. For issues ranging from Indian removal to slavery and Reconstruction, and utilizing theories from of Condorcet, Buffon, Camper, Louis Agassiz, James Pritchard, Johannes Blumenbach, and George Borrow these authors shifted allegiances to divergent race theories between and within works, applied those theories selectively to white, black, and Indians characters, and applied the same scientific race theories to politically divergent rhetorical ends. By analyzing shifting application of different …
The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, And Cinematic Narration In The Digital Age,
2016
CUNY Graduate Center
The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, And Cinematic Narration In The Digital Age, Jordan Lavender-Smith
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“The New Reflexivity” tracks two narrative styles of contemporary Hollywood production that have yet to be studied in tandem: the puzzle film and the found footage horror film. In early August 1999, near the end of what D.N. Rodowick refers to as “the summer of digital paranoia,” two films entered the wide-release U.S. theatrical marketplace and enjoyed surprisingly massive financial success, just as news of the “death of film” circulated widely. Though each might typically be classified as belonging to the horror genre, both the unreliable “puzzle film” The Sixth Sense and the fake-documentary “found footage film” The Blair Witch …
Ideal Objects: The Dehumanization And Consumption Of Racial Minorities In Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie,
2016
Independent Scholar
Ideal Objects: The Dehumanization And Consumption Of Racial Minorities In Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie, April D. Pitts
Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies
This essay explores the relationship between race and ideal democratic citizenship in Joyce Carol Oates's novel, Zombie (1995). It argues that in Zombie, white social status is depicted as dependent upon the dehumanization and consumption of racial minorities.
An Uninformed Pilgrim,
2016
Liberty University
An Uninformed Pilgrim, Lillian Fassero
Aidenn: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal of American Literature
Joseph C. Pattison’s article, “The Celestial City, or Dream Tale,” examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad” and portrays the narrator as a Christian hero standing against the modernist persuasions of his time – a protagonist who enters the story with firm orthodox convictions and exits his dream journey with unaltered principles or character. However, Hawthorne’s narrator frequently adopts new modernist arguments and wavers in his pre-formed convictions. He toys with Christian faith but promptly discards any accusations of guilt that such beliefs suggest. While he repeatedly compromises his principles and doubts the ramifications of Christian faith, his dynamic nature is …
Analyzing True Self-Reliance And Individualism,
2016
Liberty University
Analyzing True Self-Reliance And Individualism, Stephanie Greene
Aidenn: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal of American Literature
This essay analyzes the story of “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving and criticizes Daniel Plung’s assessment of it in his article, “Rip Van Winkle’: Metempsychosis and the Quest for Self-Reliance.” In Plung’s article, he assesses that in the story of “Rip Van Winkle,” the main character, Rip, attains self-reliance and individualism through his escape and experience on the mountain. However, although Plung’s points support his assessments, there are also many other details in the story that contradict Plung’s analysis. This essay seeks to enlighten readers to a differing interpretation of “Rip Van Winkle” by studying other details in the …
Payne, William Samuel, 1941-2015 (Sc 2968),
2016
Western Kentucky University
Payne, William Samuel, 1941-2015 (Sc 2968), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Manuscript Collection Finding Aids
Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2968. Letters of William Samuel Payne to Cora Jane Spiller, Bowling Green, Kentucky, mostly with news of his cousin, Louise (Natcher) Murphy, a novelist and the daughter of Kentucky Congressman William H. Natcher.
Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory,
2016
Hamline University
Proto-Postmodernism: Constructing Postmodern Ethics Through Cold War Literature And Theory, Rock Lamanna
Departmental Honors Projects
While postmodern theory and literature is typically viewed as either “anti-humanist” or a rejection of Humanism, this essay reconsiders these assumptions by exploring ethical questions in early postmodern novels and theory, referred to as “proto-postmodernism.” For proto-postmodernists such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, Humanism—the ethical framework that asserts a centered “self” and a collective “metanarrative” of human progress—causes and legitimates violence, yet in their theories and literature, they promote the humanist value of dignity in their critiques of modern ethics and politics. To examine this hybrid stance toward Humanism, the first section situates …
“That Paradox Of Unjoyful Joyousness” Or Pure And Impure History: Retrospection And The Past In Robert Penn Warren’S A Place To Come To,
2016
The Bronx Community College
“That Paradox Of Unjoyful Joyousness” Or Pure And Impure History: Retrospection And The Past In Robert Penn Warren’S A Place To Come To, Noah Simon Jampol
Robert Penn Warren Studies
No abstract provided.
Loving The Unlovable Body In Lois Ann Yamanaka’S Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre,
2016
CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College
Loving The Unlovable Body In Lois Ann Yamanaka’S Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada
Publications and Research
Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by explicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …
The Taboo Of Experience,
2016
Chapman University
The Taboo Of Experience, Brian Glaser
English Faculty Articles and Research
A lyric essay discussing Henry James and cosmopolitanism
from the perspective of a scholar
visiting a German university.
