Comparative Literature Commons^™

Compilation Of Scandinavian Studies Index, Volume 37 – Volume 71, Joshua D. Jewkes, Dr. Gary R. Hooper

Journal of Undergraduate Research

With the generosity on the part of the Office of Research and Creative Design and the grant offered me, I was able to produce a significant piece of scholarly work that will contribute significantly to a major academic field: a subject-word index for the academic journal, Scandinavian Studies. The actual work for the project was completed between January and August 1999. Through my experiences, I was able to broaden my knowledge of a field of study which I consider very interesting in addition to gaining valuable skills relating to editing, formatting, and indexing in journalism.

Mistress As Metaphor: The Written Woman In Martial, Elizabeth L. Long

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Martial features women as his subjects in roughly twenty-five percent of his epigrams .I Just as his other epigrams explore a wide range of subjects and themes, these poems differ in the ways that they use women. Some are merely crude jests2; others explore mythological or historical subjects3; still others, such as l 0.35 and 1 0.38, written about Sulpicia the satirist, are encomiastic. In addition, some of the poems about women can be read as programmatic statements about Martial’s and others’ poetry. Martial employs various programmatic devices to explain his epigrams. Although these types of poems occur throughout the …

State Of The Discipline: Comparative Literature And Transdisciplinarity, Paul Jay

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

An inquiry into the practices and applications of comparative literature and transdisciplinarity.

Four Poems, Four Voices: Fragmented Authorship In Fernando Pessoa, James Peter Rasmussen, Dr. Steven P. Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The poetry of Fernando Pessoa contributes in a highly original way to a significant twentieth-century aesthetic development: the attempt to overthrow Romantic conceptions of authorship. Through the creation of his “heteronyms”—invented poets with a large degree of independence in style, form, imagery, and thought to whom he attributes his poetry—Pessoa’s poetry fragments into many distinct voices and thus challenges the notion of coherent authorial identity. Fernando Pessoa’s heteronymic structure itself is thus a quintessentially modern voice. The heteronyms challenge, as critic Darlene J. Sadlier writes, “the notion of coherent identity” (118).1 With the fragmentation of the poetic voice, the romantic …

Economics And Education Vs. Griots: Threats To Traditional Performers In The Senegalese Arts, Joseph B. Hill, Dr. Michael D. Phillips

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In much of West Africa, the griot is the central figure in the performing arts. Traditionally, only those born into the griot caste perform publicly in any capacity, be it in music, dance, historical recitation, public speaking, or jesting. Although other castes look down on such work, griots embrace it and carefully guard their monopoly. Immune to most social sanctions, griots speak good and bad with impunity, and nobles pay dearly to ensure that griots say only good (1).

On-Line Language Learning, Peter Rich, Dr. Devon Asay

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As technology improves and its popularity increase, more and more people are turning to electronic methods of education. CALL, computer assisted language learning, is one particular field that has tried to jump on the bandwagon. However, recreating real environments and random interaction poses a constant challenge for CALL developers and administrators and very few effective CALL systems exist. That is, live interaction continues to be more effective than nearly every CALL system.

Poetry Of The River Tietê, Rex P. Nielson, Dr. George Handley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In an essay entitled “Quantity and Quality” written in 1990, Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz bespeaks the importance of poetry in our contemporary society. He contends that during classical times poetry provided an ethical code that significantly influenced the organization of society and government. Greek citizens memorized lines of Homer, Hebrew leaders quoted passages from the Torah and the Psalms, Roman Senators learned verse from the Aeneid, and Chinese emperors recited poems from the Shih Ching. “Our classics, apart from their being examples of formal perfection and sources of spiritual pleasure, were teachers of political wisdom for two millennia” (Paz 105). …

The Pompeian Building Complex Of 55 B. C. In The Campus Martius, Rebecca Allen, Dr. Roger Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The period of the late Roman Republic (ca. 80 B. C. to 44 B. C.) is the best documented of all the historical periods of Roman history. The age is characterized by intense struggles for political dominance among the leading politicians and generals of Rome, as well as a flowering of artistic and creative output. Cicero, the statesman and orator, provides much information about this period through his speeches and, more important, his letters to a variety of recipients. It is one of these letters where the research for this project began. In 55 B. C., Cicero wrote a letter …

The Literature Of Reconciliation: A Future For Afrikaans Publishing In South Africa, Desmond A. Eppel, Larry H. Peer

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As an native English-speaking South African married to a native Afrikaans-speaking wife, this research project held special personal importance for me. My wife and I intend to raise our children in a bilingual environment, and have been concerned about the future of Afrikaans materials and products with which to teach our children. I approached my research in an effort to understand the different factors influencing the market for Afrikaans publishing in South Africa, and discovered a wealth of information which will hopefully be instructive in a comprehensive effort to predict future growth or decline in this market.

Slave Women In Euripides: Struggling For Identity And Power In A Hostile World, Iantha M. Haight, Dr. Norbert H. O. Duckwitz

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Euripides’ plays continue to be very popular today because of their powerfully human themes. Because of their strong, emotional impact, however, many critics disagree on how to interpret Euripides’ views on women. Since so much knowledge about Greek society in general and women in particular has been lost, classical literature, such as poetry and plays, though difficult to interpret, are important sources of knowledge about the lives and attitudes of the ancient Greeks, especially in regards to the politically disenfranchised groups of women and slaves who feature insignificantly in political writings. Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, the other great Greek tragedians, …

In Search Of Grandeur: The Life And Times Of The Rio Grande, Todd Condie, Dr. John Bennion

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Eight years ago I moved to west Texas. In fact, I moved about as far west in the state of Texas as one can get. The housing plots adjacent to my own are bisected by the interstate border with New Mexico. Not forty yards beyond that invisible line of demarcation, the Rio Grande, itself a border-to-be, flows serenely through fields of knee-high grasses.

The “Sideward Glance”: Double-Voiced Discourse In The Tempest, Joel W. Darrington, Dr. Joseph Parry

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Mikhail Mikhailovich (M. M.) Bakhtin is increasingly becoming one of the important literary theorists of our century. Writing in Stalinist Russia in the first half of this century, Bakhtin has come out of obscurity in the last twenty or so years to a place of prominence. His literary theories are broad and diverse. One dimension to his theories stood out to me as being particularly useful to any reading of Shakespeare. Bakhtin, while writing about the novel, articulated the nature of “double-voiced discourse”&that is, discourse which anticipates, incorporates, and is penetrated by the discourse of others, words “with a sideward …

Ortega: Secrecy And The World, Stephen D. Gingerich

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Scandalous Deception In The Castle: An Examination Of The Gender Performance Through The Bedtrick Trope In Arthurian Literature, Abby Louise Daniel

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The bedtrick – mistaken identity in a sexual encounter – is a comic motif employed by medieval, renaissance and modern storytellers. While modern readers tend to recognize this motif as (at best) a disturbing sexual escapade and (at worst) rape, the scholarship on mistaken identity in medieval literature still generally glosses over the bedtrick as a moment of comedy. My thesis examines the literary trope of the bedtrick through the critical lens of Judith Butler’s performativity theory, and the motives behind this form of deception and the modern implications. Furthermore, the bedtrick trope is explored in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

The Promise "I Am Coming Soon" In Revelation, Rabach Odek

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

Is Geoffrey Chaucer’S Tale Of Sir Thopas A Rape Narrative? Reading Thopas In Light Of The 1382 Statute Of Rapes, Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

Quidditas

Considering the tale’s placement between two narratives of violence—the Prioress’s Tale and the Tale of Melibee—it is surprising that the Tale of Sir Thopas has not merited more discussion of the potential for violence against feminine bodies. I argue that Chaucer the author introduces significant changes to the typical medieval romance, with the result that Thopas’s actions in the name of “love” conceal a rape narrative that engages late fourteenth-century debates as to what exactly constituted rape. As the transfer of property was a significant portion of such discussions, the 1382 Statute of Rapes prompted concerns about the ability …

The National Imagination (Spring 2014), Robert D. Tobin, Juan Pablo Rivera

Syllabi

What images make people think of the United States of America? Cowboys? The flag? And are there similar icons in other cultures that help define cultural identity? The National Imagination explores the concept of a national community as constructed and critiqued through literary and cinematic narratives, as well as other cultural texts.

Our underlying premise is that national languages and cultures promote the identity of particular communities. We are interested in examining those subjective expressions of culture—images, symbols, narratives—that lead people to feel that they are members of the communities we call nations. We are also interested in discovering points …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Victorian Sexual Politics And The Unsettling Case Of George Eliot’S Response To Walt Whitman, Beverley Rilett

Department of English: Faculty Publications

George Eliot and Walt Whitman, two of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century, are rarely discussed in relation to one another. They did not correspond, nor did either writer ever cross the Atlantic. There may have been several degrees of separation between Eliot and Whitman personally, but even from a distance, the two writers influenced each other’s careers. There has been some misconception that Eliot disdained and discounted Whitman. This essay seeks to refute that assumption by examining the context in which Eliot appeared to reject him. Perhaps more significantly, this essay breaks new critical ground by attributing …

Allen D. Breck Award (2014)

Quidditas

Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

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