Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Transmutations Of Ophelia's "Melodious Lay", Danielle Byington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are multiple ways in which language and image share one another’s aesthetic message, such as traditional ekphrasis, which uses language to describe a work of art, or notional ekphrasis, which involves literature describing something that can be considered a work of art but does not physically exist at the time the description is written. However, these two terms are not inclusive to all artworks depicting literature or literature depicting artworks. Several scenes and characters from literature have been appropriated in art and the numerous paintings of Ophelia’s death as described by Gertrude in Hamlet, specifically Millais’ Ophelia, …

"Some Things Grew No Less With Time:" Tracing Atu 510b From The Thirteenth To The Twentieth Century, Rachel L. Maynard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of seven different variants of the fairy tale commonly known as “Donkeyskin,” classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale motif index as ATU 510B. By comparing so many different iterations of one fairy tale, it is easier to recognize the inherent attitudes concerning women and their place in society contained in this tale. Additionally, reading multiple variants from different centuries lends a perspective on the way that these attitudes changed over the centuries. Each of the thirteenth century texts considered end with their heroines trapped in loveless marriages, much like the seventeenth-century fairy tale, “Donkeyskin,” their …

Robert Burns's Hand In 'Ay Waukin, O': The Roy Manuscript And William Tytler's Dissertation (1779), Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Robert Burns's sources and manuscripts for his expansion of the song "Ay waukin, O," first published as song 213 in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, III (1790); highlights an often neglected and misdated printed item, William Tytler’s Dissertation, as Burns's source for two of the four stanzas; considers the two full-length manuscripts, identifying one as being an Antique Smith forgery, and detailing the provenance and purpose, of the other, now at the Birthplace Museum; examines and reproduces the Roy manuscript and its pencilled additions; and so clarifies the relationship among the three genuine manuscripts to argue that …

"A Magic Deeper Still": Sacramental Poetics In William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, And C.S. Lewis, Eric Michael Bontempo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A sacramental poetics requires a particular mode of being-in-the-world. Religiously-minded poets, from Dante and Milton to Donne and Herbert, have long considered how the individual becomes attuned with creation and God’s will. But what happens when modernity and secularization challenge long-held assumptions about the universe and how humankind fits into it? A reevaluation is then needed. My thesis begins with an examination of how William Wordsworth, who sort of falls into modernity, seeks to reoccupy the functions of religion in an increasingly secularized landscape. One consequence of the European Enlightenment is the disentangling and distancing that occurs in regards to …

The Two-Sided Coin: Madness And Laughter As Subversion In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland And The Sandman, Tessa Starr Swehla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mad female characters in Western literature have traditionally represented attempts by dominant patriarchal discourse to subjugate women’s discourse: these characters are usually pathologized in both their dialogue with other characters and in their physical bodies. This subjugation by representation of mad female characters in dominant discourse parallels similar attempts to portray women as lacking in humor. This thesis studies the intersections between madness and humor and the ability of female characters that embody both to challenge and subvert dominant discourse. By examining the characters of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s novel and Delirium from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series The Sandman …

Tolkien And The Deadly Sin Of Greed, Amanda A. Kieffer

The Kabod

Tolkien’s genius as a writer and insight as a philosopher and theologian (of sorts) are reflected in his subtle yet impactful interweaving of the consequences of greed within the lives of the peoples of Middle-Earth. He shows readers that greed is not simply the love of money. Greed is the root of all evil, and it takes a variety of forms, as represented by Sauron’s desire to possess power over and control others, Saruman’s imitative desire, and Feanor’s over-possessiveness of his sub-creative acts. Tolkien also reveals that a proper relationship with nature can provide recovery from the drab familiarity which …

"Enchantment Dissolved": A Reexamination Of The Hymn's Authorship And Significance In The Commonplace Ms. Hannah Swynock, Hannah Bradley

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

“Enchantment Dissolved” is a hymn written by John Newton and a part of the first publication of the Olney Hymns in 1779. However, starting around the year 1803, the hymn was misattributed in multiple publications to William Cowper, the second author of the collection. This article will analyze Cowper’s literary style and consider why the hymn may have been mistaken for his creation. This particular hymn also appears in a 17-18th century commonplace, Hannah Swynock 1687, in the Parker MSS. at the Lilly Rare Book Library at Indiana University. In this hand-written manuscript, the hymn has four additional verses that …

Neues Testament Und Märchen: Tolkien, Fairy Stories, And The Gospel, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1943 claim in “On Fairy-stories” that the Christian Gospel is a fairy story which “has entered History and the primary world” stands over against significant (and widely publicized) elements of Liberal Protestant biblical interpretation of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, exemplified in Rudolph Bultmann’s 1941 essay, “New Testament and Mythology.” Tolkien’s position, which seems to have influenced C. S. Lewis and Austin Farrer, owes something to G. K. Chesterton but has yet more direct parallels in Thomas Aquinas and Gregory the Great.

Private Deaths: The Impossibilities Of Home In The Modernist Novel, Ava Bindas

English Honors Projects

This project examines novels by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Nella Larsen featuring female characters who contemplate or commit suicide. Relying on a composite theoretical framework that weaves together geography theories of spaces as well as gendered theories of bodies by authors like Judith Butler, Rita Felski, and Victoria Rosner, I argue women commit suicide because their modern homes fail to accommodate their gendered bodies. Focusing less on the moment of death than on the conditions that make choosing to live impossible, this project tracks how, during a moment of supposed liberation, conceptions of gender, modernity, and domestic …

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Harold Pinter’S Other Places (Staged Reading), Katherine Weiss

ETSU Faculty Works

ETSU Patchwork Players will perform a staged reading of Other Places – 3 Plays by Harold Pinter in Studio 205 of Campus Center Building at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. The reading is under the direction of Theatre & Dance faculty member Melissa Shafer and advising of Department of Literature & Language Chair Dr. Katherine Weiss, acting as dramaturg.

Silver And Gold: The Markers Of Goodness, Greed And Vanity In Chaucer's Travelers, Samantha G. Strickland

Georgia College Student Research Events

In this presentation, I will argue that in the “General Prologue” to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer refers to silver and gold in three different ways in and analyze how these methods reflect on the travelers as well as reflect Chaucer’s own musings on morality and wealth: through description of their attire or looks, through reference to the literal exchange, and through metaphor. All three types of references allow for both negative, like the Pardoner and Miller, and positive, like the Parson, evaluations of the specific traveler’s character, and through this Chaucer reminds the reader that wealth is not inherently good …

The Horse And The Heroic Quest: Equestrian Indicators Of Morality In Lancelot, Don Quixote, And Tolkien, Kirsten G. Rodning

English MA Theses

There is a strong connection in Don Quixote and the works of Chretièn de Troyes and J.R.R. Tolkien between a character’s moral decisions and the way that said character treats his horse or horses. The Horse and the Heroic Quest: Equestrian Indicators of Morality in Lancelot, Don Quixote, and Tolkien studies the moral factors that affect the way heroic characters are revealed to readers and how these morals relate to the ways in which characters interact with horses. This ecocritical study focuses on the protagonists in Chretièn’s Lancelot, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and …

Eng 200: The Consciousness Of Reality Through Poetry, Jill Matthews

English 100-200-300 Conference

No abstract provided.

Games & Disguise: The Businessman In 19th & 20th Century Literature, Megan Koperna

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Transatlantic Grammars: Lindley Murray And William Cobbett, Peter J. Manning

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sight And Song Augmented, Robert P. Fletcher

Sight and Song Augmented: Painting and Poetry in Mixed Reality

This file is an Android application built in the Unity 3D game engine with the Vuforia Augmented Reality extension. It remediates Sight and Song (1892) by Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), a collection of ekphrastic poetry about paintings by the Old Masters.

Root And Neal's "The Surprising Imagination Of C. S. Lewis" (Book Review), James L. Sauer

The Christian Librarian

A review of Root, J. & Neal, M. (2015). The surprising imagination of C. S. Lewis. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 270 pp. $34.99. ISBN 9781426795107

Recording Angels: Examining Female Narrators In Vampire Fiction And Film, Jacqueline T. Bashaw

College Honors Program

Authors of vampire fiction often grapple with the shifting gender norms of the late nineteenth century. They explore these shifting tensions through the creation of complex narrative structures, some of which incorporate female narrators. By making these women narrators, these authors carefully consider female perspectives and the authority women can wield, both as narrators in their respective texts, and as women in late nineteenth-century British society who were confined to rigid gender roles. The narrative tension that arises between the narrator and the text then allows these authors to use literature to explore and theorize about broader societal tensions.

This …

Ambiguous Pleasure(Ers): Negotiating The Bodies Of Falstaff And Moll, Lauren Van Atta

Honors Theses

The British Early Modern Period was a time of shifting social ideologies where class as well as gender were mapped onto bodies and embedded in the very material conditions of life. But class and gender were not discreet categories with dichotomous definitions like ‘male’ and ‘female’, or ‘nobility’ and ‘peasant’. They had many inbetweens, and the theater was perhaps the most glaring inbetween of all. The theater necessarily complicates definitions and ways of viewing bodies as no body is what they seem. And at the heart of these ambiguous identities lay the fat body. It is consumptive, it is transgressive, …