Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

British Literature Ii: Romantic Era To The Twentieth Century And Beyond, Bonnie J. Robinson

English Open Textbooks

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you British Literature II: Romantic Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond.

Featuring 37 authors and full texts of their works, the selections in this open anthology represent the literature developed within and developing through their respective eras. This completely-open anthology will connect students to the conversation of literature that has captivated readers in the past and still holds us now.

Features:

• Contextualizing introductions to the Romantic era; the Victorian era; and the Twentieth Century and beyond
• Over 90 historical images
• In-depth biographies of each author
• Instructional Design …

“Compassion And Benignytee”: A Reassessment Of The Relationship Between Canacee And The Falcon In Chaucer’S “Squire’S Tale”, Melissa Ridley Elmes

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Among its many elements, Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” includes an emotionally-charged dialogue between two aristocratic female figures: the human daughter of a king, Canacee, and the wounded falcon she meets in the wood. Scholars have debated the nature of this relationship in interspecial, gendered, and specifically feminist and ecofeminist terms. This essay provides a brief retrospective on some of the most recent scholarship examining their relationship—van Dyke (2005); Kordecki (2011); Crane (2012); and Schotland (2012 and 2015)—leading into a reassessment in two parts: first, that the affinity- and experience-driven bond these female figures develop supports a reading of this scene that …

Questioning Gynocentric Utopia: Nature As Addict In “Description Of Cookeham”, Liberty S. Stanavage

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In her 1610 “The Description of Cookeham,” Amelia Lanyer presents Cookeham as a space in which women and nature exist in poetry-inducing harmony until the intervention of man. Lanyer’s poem highlights the deference of both the animals (who “sport . . . in her eye” and “attend”), and the landscape to Clifford: the hills “descend” to meet her footstep and then raise themselves again at her whim. This alignment frequently leads critics to describe Cookeham as a utopian feminist landscape that aligns women and nature against an antagonistic masculine influence.

However, this utopian vision dramatizes a landscape that is not …

Something Rotten: Space, Place, And The Nation In Hamlet And As You Like It, Mikaela Lafave

English MA Theses

Ecocriticism has been defined as literature that concretely concerns the environment, which can be obviously applied to those of Shakespeare’s that directly depict natural disaster. This creates a prototype of a Shakespearean Ecocritical canon. My thesis addresses the limitation of this initial definition, and applies ecocritical theory to other works by Shakespeare. Ecocriticism is no longer confined to only the natural as critics expand the field through examinations of built environments and urban interaction with the natural. This widening of the field encourages the addition of further Ecocritical Shakespeare. How can audiences see the unnatural as natural, and conversely the …

Who Is Tom Bombadil?: Interpreting The Light In Frodo Baggins And Tom Bombadil's Role In The Healing Of Traumatic Memory In J.R.R. Tolkien's _Lord Of The Rings_, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

In Rivendell, after Frodo has been attacked by Ringwraiths and is healing from the removal of the splinter from a Morgul-blade that had been making its way toward his heart, Gandalf regards Frodo and contemplates a “clear light” that is visible through Frodo to “eyes to see that can.” Samwise Gamgee later sees this light in Frodo when Frodo is resting in Ithilien. The first half of this essay considers questions about this light: how does Frodo become transparent, and why, and what is the nature of the light that fills him? As recourse to Tolkien’s letters shows, the light …

James Joyce: I. Am. A. Discover Dublin By Reading And Running, Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space.

James Joyce (Ulysses,p.31).

In Ulysses, on the morning of the 16th June 1904, Stephen Dedalus is striding on Sandymount strand, thinking about time and place as he moves. Later in the day, Leopold Bloom writes I. AM. A.with a stick in the sand on the same Sandymount strand. His scrubbed words will wash away with the tide but remain forever in the novel.

Using geotracking, I recreated the same ephemeral I. AM. …

"Our Shouts Echoed In The Silent Street": Paralysis, Symbol, And Implication In James Joyce's "Araby", Luke R. Farquhar

Honors Projects

Critics, scholars, and readers commonly use paralysis as a means of interpreting James Joyce’s Dubliners. However, paralysis is ambiguously defined and can have a vague connection to the actual stories. This paper puts forward an interpretation of paralysis, that paralysis is a failed attempt at filling spiritual absence with presence. In order to examine our definition more fully, we then explore occurrences of absence and presence in James Joyce’s “Araby.” “Araby” depicts absence as a decaying, draining, and oppressive home existence, and it finds presence in romantic or mythic symbol. The illusory, nonexistent, and insufficient nature of these symbols …

Iago The Moor Killer: The Geo-Political Context Behind Shakespeare's Othello, Elisha A. Hamlin

Honors Projects

Shakespeare’s Othello is often viewed as an example of seventeenth century Renaissance binaries. Critics make distinctions when reading the play between hero and villain, Moors and Europeans, and between civilization and barbarity. These definitions are all complicated by Iago’s presence in the play. Iago, whose name implies he is actually a Spaniard, frames the play in a geo-political context. Because of Iago’s presence, Othello provides a picture of England’s position in the seventeenth century geo-political climate. Shakespeare is giving his English audience a particular political message.

Jane Austen's Hidden Bodies: Adaptation As Critical Commentary, Elizabeth Gilliland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Much of adaptation theory calls for a shift away from fidelity discourse, arguing that an adaptation does not need to be a faithful translation of the original, but should rather be viewed as literature in its own right. As such, adaptations are often studied separately from their source texts; yet even so, an unofficial hierarchy sometimes remains in deeming some types of adaptations more ripe for study than others. Further, in separating the adaptation from the original, some of the more radical alterations can be routinely dismissed as an “added” element to the text, rather than exploring what commentary these …

Treehouses: Civilizing The Wildness Of Men And Nature, Courtney Mckinney

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

In this paper, I explore how treehouses operate symbolically in tandem with culture. Through an analysis of British and American print culture, I argue that the treehouse building project became bound to boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century as the naturalist movement spread and youth organizations embraced treehouses as part of their vision for the development of boys. Parents and youth leaders intend for treehouse projects to build self-reliance, independence, imagination, and courage in their boys. Congruously, this activity associated with a child’s personal growth takes place in an actual growing organism. I analyze how treehouses juxtapose humans …

Sacramental Anxiety In Richard Ii And The Comedy Of Errors, Aria Casey

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Following England’s break from the Catholic Church in 1534, Protestant thought gradually transformed the English Church’s understanding of sacraments. The influence of Reformation thinkers such as Thomas Cranmer, the author of The Book of Common Prayer, propelled the idea that that a ritual is only as good as the worthiness of a recipient. Ritual, the “outer” component of a sacrament, now had the potential to be distant from divine favor, the “inner” component of a sacrament. This potential distance caused anxiety over the authenticity of sacraments, affecting English thought well into Shakespeare’s day. Shakespeare’s plays Richard II and The Comedy …

"I Believe In Sherlock Holmes": Fans, Readers, And The Problem Of Serial Character, Mary Katherine Evans

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Through the connections between Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s series Sherlock, this thesis examines the phenomenon of fan fictions and fan works, which constitutes a type of seriality distinct from serial fictions and television series.The project pursues the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes in order to better understand fan culture and the “virtual reality” created by original fans of the written works and fans of Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes represents a different model of characterization; he is presented across timelines, although he doesn’t always bear the name “Sherlock Holmes,” he is just as recognizable …

I Can't Hear You: Queering And Hearing In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Miranda Lynn Hajduk

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis project attempts to prove that the Wife of Bath’s deafness is the key to understanding her text, and the ways in which both her Prologue and Tale play with the constructions of gender and normativity. The Wife of Bath’s deafness is one of her most prominent characteristics. Not only is it the first thing which Chaucer describes about her in the General Prologue, but the whole of the Wife’s own prologue builds toward and ultimately concludes with the Wife’s story of how she was struck deaf by her husband Jankyn. As a result of this act of violence, …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

Eomer Gets Poetic: Tolkien's Alliterative Versecraft, James Shelton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Throughout Tolkien's professional career he dealt with a great number of texts that had varying views on the heroic, the romantic, the everyday world, and the role of Faerie. One consistent tendency among them, though, is to treat the past, and particularly Anglo-Saxon heritage, with a great deal of respect while trying to find ways to incorporate themes or ideas from that time into his own imaginative subcreations. Tolkien's use of alliterative verse serves to re-contextualize an ancient heroic ethos in a way that shows how heroism has changed, and must change, for the modern world. This paper examines Tolkien’s …

Illuminating The Eighteenth-Century British Stage: Perfecting Performance Through Education, Bethany Csomay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Actress studies has become “a truly interdisciplinary field” that “intersect[s] with art, music, literature, history, economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and fashion” (Engel 752). While much scholarship has been conducted on the actress’ life, interaction with material culture, public spectacle, authority, femininity, and writings, the role of an actress’ education in her success has yet to be explored adequately or examined beyond biography. My project seeks to examine the educational beginnings of actresses and I assert there are three modes that eighteenth-century actresses often undertook to cultivate their celebrity and success: inheritance, discovery, and trial and error. This project examines the …

Forgotten Fairies: Traditional English Folklore In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Alexandra Larkin

The Criterion

While the fairies shown in the play would have been known by Shakespeare’s audience, there was a clear difference between the fairies of traditional folklore and the fairies that Shakespeare describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In traditional English folklore, fairies were “made” for, and by, the middle and lower classes; their stories were most believed and the most encounters were experienced by these people. Fairies in folklore were alternatingly deadly and wildly helpful, giving humans who stumbled upon them presents or death. In the play, Shakespeare departs from more traditional depictions of fairies and instead characterizes these magical creatures …

Something In Nothing: A Discussion Of Madness And Wisdom In King Lear, Leela Mennillo

The Criterion

This essay argues against Shakespeare critic David Kastan’s nihilistic reading of King Lear. While I agree that nothingness lies at the heart of the tragedy, I maintain that the recurring theme of nothing does not depict a world devoid of meaning. Rather, Shakespeare suggests that the recognition of the abyss is necessary in the quest for higher meaning. I approach this debate through various philosophical lenses, presenting a reading that equates wisdom and nothingness. Cordelia’s recognition of the limitations of human knowledge first introduces this idea. I detect elements of the divine nature of nothingness in the seemingly nonsensical speeches …

"'Violent Love': Jane Austen And Eighteenth-Century Marriage Laws", Brianna Bicho

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In several of Jane Austen’s novels, her heroines are confronted more than once with the proposition of marriage. Many of the primary proposal scenes in these tales contain violent language seemingly at odds with the romantic context, and the romance convention, of a proposal scene. Austen’s rhetoric of violence functions as a critique of contemporary laws defining and regulating marriage, particularly Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765. These laws negated a woman’s ownership – both personal and financial – upon her marriage: they outlined both the illegality of a wedded female to own property and the …

Time, Memory, And Consciousness In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And Between The Acts, Nicole Olivotti

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway emerges as a character gripped by the notion and passage of time. Woolf represents the chronological aspect of time through images such as Big Ben and its relentless chimes as well as the various references to clocks or bells throughout the novel. To the Lighthouse also thematically and narratively explores constructions of time, particularly by focusing on elements such as inaction and delay. The journey to the Lighthouse, for example, does not occur until the end of the novel. Both texts underscore the tension between the linear timeframe of the novel and …