Comparative Literature Commons^™

Bodies On The Line: Border Crossing In The Fiction Of Ernest Hemingway And Salman Rushdie, Rachel Northrop

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Why John Stuart Mill Cannot Dismiss The Poet Of Culture, Nelson Tuero

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Uncloseting The Harlem Renaissance: A Look At The Movement Through A Queer Lens, Mionnay Mckee

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Ptolemaic System And The Ramifications Of Hierarchical Thinking; The Impact Of Medieval Literature, Mark-Allan Donaldson

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Force Of Imagination And The Limits Of The Rational In Polidori, Stoker, And Weird Fiction, Eric Mattina

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Allergic To Sunflowers, Dana Rae Vessio

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

This year’s recipient is Samantha Dressel, doctoral candidate in English at the University of Rochester.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Small Mid-Tudor Chronicles And Popular History: 1540-1560, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

This essay examines twenty-two editions of little-studied small Mid-Tudor chronicles that were published by printers at Canterbury and London. They demonstrate the important role of printers in historical scholarship and offer a significantly different perspective on English history than the better-known, larger contemporary works of Robert Fabyan, Edward Hall, and Thomas Cooper. The chronicles also shed light on the readership of historical works by non-elite readers who presumably could not afford larger and more expensive chronicles. The short chronicles present a simplified view of the past, avoid propagating the well-known Tudor myths including the tyranny of Richard III, and demonstrate …

Master William’S Hamnet: A New Theory On Shakespeare’S Sonnets, Juan Daniel Millán

Quidditas

This essay suggests the Fair Youth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, to whom he later dedicated the cycle. Nevertheless, the larger claims of the essay are independent of the biographical details of Shakespeare’s life, and even independent of the particular ordering of the Sonnets as they have come down to us.

“The Man In The Shyppe That Showeth The Unstableness Of The World”: Social Memory And The Early Modern English Sailor, 1475-1650, Vincent V. Patarino Jr., Ph.D.

Quidditas

Both medieval and early modern English writers described the tumultuous, raging sea as the epitome of chaos and evil. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both manuscript and print documents connected seething storms with the power and influence of evil, especially the devil. As the Reformation advanced, this link included Satan’s supposed minions, witches. In addition to these texts, woodcut illustrations confirmed in very stark terms, a direct association between the devil, the sea, and sailors’ supposedly anti-religious behavior and beliefs. One powerful image revealed “the man in the shyppe” tormented by the devil; others depicted the devil steering a …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

The Delno C. West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

This year’s recipient is Ruth Frost, Associate Professor of History, the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC.

Richard Iii: Beyond The Mystery, Daniel Hobbins

Quidditas

He is not the likeliest theme for an American undergraduate classroom: his reign lasted barely two years; he contributed nothing of lasting significance to history; he is more memorable for his spectacular final defeat than for any victory; he was accused of murdering children; and he was after all an English king, as far removed as possible from the typical experience of an American undergraduate. Even the times he lived in are against him. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, his century was “the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages.”1 Yet he continues to …

“Like To My Soft Sex”: Female Revenge And Violence In The Fatal Contract, Samantha Dressel

Quidditas

The Fatal Contract by William Heminge is not a good play. Its critical afterlife is essentially non-existent, with Fredson Thayer Bowers being one of the only critics to discuss it, criticizing its lack of “inspiration” and “ethical spirit.”1 I argue however, that the play is both inventive and moral, despite its many derivative aspects and narrative foibles. I suggest a new reading of the play as deeply innovative in terms of gender and revenge. Bowers criticizes the play’s morality because of the ultimate exoneration of Chrotilda, the central revengeress. The play can be reinterpreted and partially redeemed by understanding Chrotilda’s …

The Politics Of Sensations: Body And Texture In Contemporary Cinema And Literature (Argentina - Cuba - Ireland), Guillermo Abel Severiche

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I argue that the human body and physical sensations are not only objects or metaphors that appear in cultural artifacts, but also means of political representation. There are cultural artifacts with a corporeal dimension in which human bodily sensations and states, such as sexual arousal, disease, and pain, are represented. The body becomes a dimension integrated in the discursive form of the artwork. The (literary or cinematic) text evokes a texture, a sensitive skin. This corporeal means is politically engaged with the context in which the artwork has been produced: The body becomes a space of political …

From Existentialism To Ecology: A Phlosophical Analysis Of Crisis In Samuel Beckett, Sean P. Collins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Evil Men Have No Songs: The Terrorist And Literatuer Boris Savinkov, 1879-1925, Irina Vasilyeva Meier

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the works of the legendary terrorist mastermind Boris Savinkov (1879-1925), who planned notorious political assassinations at the turn of the twentieth century even as he took part in the leading literary circles of his day. This work situates Savinkov in what Mikhail Bakhtin defines as a “chronotope,” a time-space module that I label “Revolutionary Apocalypse.” I compare the development of revolutionary myths of martyrdom in Revolutionary Russia for both Savinkov and his contemporary Maria Spiridonova to analyze the redefined notions of love, truth, and sacrifice among the Russian intelligentsia that turned these Russian revolutionary terrorists …

“‘It’S A Cu’Ous Thing Ter Me, Suh’: The Distinctive Narrative Innovation Of Literary Dialect In Late-Nineteenth Century American Literature”, Kym M. Goering

Theses and Dissertations

American literature and verse advanced in dialectal writing during the late-nineteenth century. Charles Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887), “Po’ Sandy” (1888), and “Hot-Foot Hannibal” (1899); Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881); Thomas Nelson Page’s “Marse Chan” (1884); and Mark Twain’s “Sociable Jimmy” (1874) and “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” (1874) provided diverse dialect representations. Dialect expanded into poetry with

James Whitcomb Riley’s “She ‘Displains’ It” (1888), “When the Frost is on the Punkin” (1882), and “My Philosofy” (1882) and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Spellin’ Bee” (1895), “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” …

The Warrior Kings And Their Giants: A Comparative Study Of Beowulf And King David, Fred Mcfarland

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

(Re)Writing History In Maryse Condé, Femi Euba, And Reinaldo Arenas, Lázara Bolton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This comparative study asserts the centrality of spirituality to literature that explores life in the African Diaspora. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of spirituality both to the authors and to the lives of their characters in the novels Victoire, les saveurs et les mots (2006) by the Guadeloupian author Maryse Condé, Camwood at Crossroads (2007) by Nigerian author Femi Euba, and El color del verano (1991) by Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas. A close reading of the three novels shows that they are representative of autohistoría literary works, which represent the spirituality of the writer, as well as the people written …