Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Review Of Writing The Stage Coach Nation: Locality On The Move In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Ruth Livesey

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Starting from the observation that so many of the major Victorian novels are set, not in the railway age in which they were written, but in the horse-drawn world of the previous generation, a world that is 'just past', this fine study explores the ways in which novelists from Waiter Scott to Thomas Hardy use the stage coach to connect particular localities, often closely observed and substantially realized, to the larger framework of the nation. This turning back to the past is not, Ruth Livesey insists, a retreat from the complications and dislocations of a modern present into a simpler …

Living With George Eliot: A Tribute To My Parents, Will Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It was a strange but much-appreciated honour to be asked to address the annual George Eliot Fellowship lunch in 2016. It was strange because I'd attended many such events long ago - fewer more recently - and had always sat with the 'rank and file' on the lower tables while Mum and Dad, officers and distinguished guests occupied the top table. So, when on Sunday 20 November, I rose to speak, I was quite miffed to find that there was no top table! All very egalitarian, but it left me wandering up and down the floor as I imparted my …

Radical Politics In The 1860s: The Writing Of Felix Holt, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

While Felix Halt the Radical was being written there was a transformation in the atmosphere surrounding further parliamentary reform in Britain. In March 1865, when George Eliot began the novel, the Liberal Prime Minister Palmerston remained cautious about an extension of the franchise. Yet Felix Holt was finished on 31 May 1866 amidst great political excitement: a Reform Bill was being debated and the outcome uncertain. This change in emphasis in the political mood had its effect on Eliot 's writing, since the 'reform campaign had not gained enough momentum' I to explain Eliot's initial choice of subject. To say …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2016, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The most noteworthy events of 2016 were the deaths of Bill and Kathleen Adams, a couple whose extraordinary dedication and hard work from 1968 until 2008 enabled the Fellowship to prosper and become a genuinely influential literary society. Bill was the first to die, just a couple of days after laying the wreath for us in June in Nuneaton, an event he loved, and where he met and chatted to so many old friends.

The AGM in March saw the existing team of Council members renewing their positions, with a request from Hon. Treasurer Jill Bridgewater that we should find …

When Howard Met George: A Play In Two Acts, Susan Ryley Hoyle

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance)

Marian Evans (Mrs. Lewes) (George Eliot) (left) was born near Nuneaton in 1819 to a prosperous land agent and his (second) wife. She has lost whatever regional accent she may have had, and has often been complimented on her melodious voice. She speaks quite slowly, rarely with emphasis, nearly always with a shy earnestness and a dry sense of humour. At the time of this play, only her husband and (very recently) her publisher know that she is 'George Eliot', the author of the huge best-seller Adam Bede (1859), and of the only …

Snoop-Women With Notebooks: Naomi Mitchison, Mass Observation, And The Gender Of Domestic Intelligence, Megan Faragher

English Language and Literatures Faculty Publications

Novelist Naomi Mitchison and Home Intelligence head Mary Adams were crucial supporters of Mass Observation's qualitative approach to public opinion collection, but their efforts were significantly curtailed when the public denounced observers as internal spies. This article traces the backlash against MO's methodology, both bureaucratically and publicly, uncovering that MO critics were partially fueled by the gendering of its unique methodology. While some considered interviews and surveys tantamount to domestic espionage, the subsequent turn towards quantitative data devalued women's experiences by favoring institutionalized patriarchal approaches to analyzing public opinion. Within this context, Mitchison's novel We Have Been Warned similarly presents …

Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Supernatural And Unnatural In Macbeth, Mary Spencer

Undergraduate Research Journal

Fate is an omnipresent force woven through much ancient literature, and in English literature it is named from the earliest recorded writings as wyrd. By tracing this influence from its first appearances in Anglo-Saxon writing to the Early Modern period, we can see how Shakespeare uses his cultural inheritance to create the supernatural world of Macbeth, specifically through representations of wyrd. In the play, he examines the question “Does fate make the characters, or do the characters create their fates?” Juhász Tamás, a Shakespeare scholar, makes the point, “Of all Shakespearean dramas, the concept of fate and destiny seems most …

The Rewards Of Impertinence: Happy And Unhappy Endings In Jane Austen's Novels, Elizabeth Bolger

English Honors Papers

In this thesis, I use a wide range of period sources—the law governing marriage in the United Kingdom, sermons, and treatises on women’s education—to argue that Jane Austen uses irony and satire to defend “impertinent” women by exposing the villainy of a patriarchal order that attempts to restrain female desire. Her literary strategies of indirection, including irony and satire, have an ethical purpose that is neglected by the many critics who read her works as endorsing conservative values. Her novels function within a traditional narrative framework in order to expose and ultimately undermine the oppressive morals inherent within the patriarchal …

Fight For Equality, Edgar A. Ruiz-Guaderrama

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The great author Jane Austen lived during a time period in which there was a patriarchal society installed which made it quite difficult for women rights similar to the Victorian Era. Both in Jane Austen’s society and the Victorian Era, there were huge gaps in gender equality. The society at the time made it easy for men to run everything that happened in society which in turn lead to women being at a huge disadvantage.Jane Austen showed people many examples of this inequality in her book Pride and Prejudice It is crucial as a society to improve from and correct …

Behind The Shadows, Selena Ramirez Ahilon

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The nineteenth century is classified as the Victorian era, a period in which the middle class rose in power as a result of industrialization. As the middle classes living standards rose the middle class became reliant on utilitarianism values. This ideal appeared to offer a more comfortable life for both men and women, however, by classifying the position of women as the “heart” and men as the “head” of the house, women were hindered to a society in shadows. Women were restricted in every aspect of life because men were in power, and the ideal Victorian woman became the one …

Jonathan Swift: Ideology And Influences, Ricky Romero

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

This project will analyze the ideology and influences Irish author and satirist, Jonathan Swift had in cultivating theories on society/economy and thoughts especially relevant in his novel Gulliver’s Travels. The information is worth noting because of the bigger than life themes he suggests in liberal thoughts and social interactions between people. Ultimately, remorseful thoughts on monotheistic governments, European influences, and pro-world-peace examples were found as prominent ideas conveyed by Jonathan Swift.

Overall, it is morally correct to agree with Jonathan Swift’s ideology of a world based upon freedom and liberty. It is fairly simple to sympathize with Swift’s thoughts on …

Shakespeare And Black Masculinity In Antebellum America: Slave Revolts And Construction Of Revolutionary Blackness, Elisabeth Mayer

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how Shakespeare was used by Antebellum American writers to frame slave revolts as either criminal or revolutionary. By specifically addressing The Confessions of Nat Turner by Thomas R. Gray and "The Heroic Slave" by Frederick Douglass, this paper looks at the way invocations of Shakespeare framed depictions of black violence. At a moment when what it means to be American was questioned, American writers like Gray and Douglass turned to Shakespeare and the British roots of the English language in order to structure their respective arguments. In doing so, these texts illuminate how transatlantic identity still permeated …

Archive Fever, Archive Failure: Exploring The ‘It’ In Beckett’S Theatre, Katherine Weiss

ETSU Faculty Works

Using Jacques Derrida's 1995 study, Archive Fever, Weiss examines how Samuel Beckett's Come and Go and Footfalls stage the failed acts of archiving. In both plays, memories are either unknown or not named. Either way, without being named they cannot be collected, catalogued or made public. Despite this, the women haunting his plays seem struck by archive fever. Ultimately, Beckett stages the tension between the desire to remain silent with the desire to archive.

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory And Constructions Of Race In Nazi Germany: A Literary And Cultural Analysis Of Darwin’S Works And Nazi Rhetoric, Emily M. Wollmuth

Departmental Honors Projects

First published in 1856, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is one of the most impactful scientific writings in history. While the influence of Darwinian evolutionary theory on historical events has been widely studied, no single work of scholarship has previously combined close reading of Origin’s representations of “race” with analysis of how those constructions of “racial” difference are (mis)translated across the cultural discourses of the eugenics movement and Nazi Germany. Through comparative cultural studies and close literary analysis of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Darwin’s works—including Origin, Descent of Man, and Voyage of the Beagle, this paper examines how evolutionary …

The "Great Background" In Hardy And Lawrence, Rochelle H. Kim

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates D.H. Lawrence’s idea of the “great background” in the context of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and how it reappears in a transformed way in Lawrence’s novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Women in Love. Through examining the perverse effects of modernism on these novels’ characters, this thesis argues that the “great background” is something that gradually moves inward––from the old, traditional “State” to an internal, inscrutable yet attainable reality.

Charles Dickens In Cinema And The Loss Of His Message, Elliot Staatz

All Master's Theses

The collected works of Charles Dickens have garnered countless critiques, not the least of which involve their social and political meaning, but what about the films based on these works? There are few nineteenth century authors who have been adapted to film more than Dickens. However, these cinematic works are often left under-analyzed; there is much to be said about Dickensian adaptations. Adaptations can be critically compared with the original, possibly showing changing societal values. So, by focusing on Dickens and his adaptations, we can expose societal values which have changed. Specifically, I will focus on the increased societal acceptance …

Violence And Edification In 19th Century Fiction: An Analysis Of The Novels Of Charles Dickens And Leo Tolstoy, Caroline Fassett

Honors Theses

This Thesis argues that violence is essential to the structures and plots of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities and of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is particularly essential to the edification, or the moral and intellectual improvement, of principal characters in these four novels. Additionally, this Thesis contends that this edification is both anticipated and reinforced by the novelists’ incorporation of counterparts whose demeanor and/or narrative overtly mirror that of the principal characters.

To support this argument, I bring the theory of Thomas Carlyle into conversation with the novels of Dickens …

The Social Network Of Early English Drama: A Digital Humanities Lesson Plan, Adam Rzepka, Pierce Williams, Jennifer Royston

The Emerging Learning Design Journal

The Folger Shakespeare Library's recently launched Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama (EMED) provides searchable, TEI-encoded, digital editions of 403 English plays first staged in London between1576 and 1642. A central task for participants at the Folger's 2016 summer workshop "Beyond Access: Early Modern Digital Texts in the Classroom" was to devise pedagogical uses for the Digital Anthology. Our team focused on the metadata that the editors of the anthology attached to each play—its chronology, author, printer, publisher, and the theater company that initially staged it—in order to foreground an aspect of these dramas that is crucial yet very …

Queen Alice And The Monstrous Child: Alice Through The Looking Glass, Veronica Schanoes

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Masks Of The Dark Goddess In Arthurian Literature: Origin And Evolution Of Morgan Le Fay, John Christopher Shearer

Online Theses and Dissertations

The world of Arthurian legend is one steeped in mythology and magic, reflecting ancient Celtic traditions and tales that long preceded it. Such tales often feature perplexing and seemingly contradictory characters who drive complex plotlines and frequently challenge primary figures, greatly impacting how the overall story unfolds. A primary example of such a character is Morgan le Fay, who, by the time Sir Thomas Malory writes Le Morte d'Arthur in the fifteenth century, has assumed a range of roles from sister to King Arthur, Queen in her own right, wicked sorceress, and healer. Using both Post-Colonial and Feminist lenses, this …