Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

The Value Of Attending University: An Analysis On The Novels Of Evelyn Waugh And Their Adaptations, Evan J. Molineux

CMC Senior Theses

An analysis on Evelyn Waugh's novels: Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, and Vile Bodies as well as their film and television adaptations. The paper relates all of these works to Waugh's idea that the true value and reason why students should attend university is not because their degree will earn them a massive salary, but because it allows for another four years of sequestered development away from adult society. Waugh stated that the true value of his time as an undergraduate at Oxford was because it provided him with the opportunity to drink, throw parties, discover art, etc...which therefore …

Guarded Optimism, Cynical Fatalism: An Intertextual Analysis Of Selected Victorian Novels And Their Modernist Reinterpretations, Michelle L. Strickland

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The Victorian and modern eras are known for being a time of great change. Victorian authors focused their works on the social, political, and religious upheaval that the country was experiencing during the period. They felt a strong sense of pride in their country, and there was always a sense of hope in their writing. These views are what draw the modern author to retell Victorian novels; yet, the modern writer removes the Victorian sense of hope and replaces it with the sense of the disillusionment which engulfed their era. In this paper, I examine the concept of intertextuality, the …

The Scholar Magician In English Renaissance Drama, Ashley M. Minnis-Lemley

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I will explore the rise and fall of the scholar magician or sorcerer, both as a popular dramatic subject and as an arc for individual characters, and the ways in which these figures tied into contemporary fears about the intersection of religion and developing scientific knowledge.

“There Is Only Power”: Surveying The Structures And Operations Of Power In The Magical World Of Harry Potter, Aaron D. Marciniak

Departmental Honors Projects

As the internationally best-selling series Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling moves into its second generation of readers, it becomes increasingly important to analyze the assumptions it communicates about power differentials between people and belief systems. A central tenant of narrative paradigm holds that humans are innately narrative, internalizing narrative frameworks as a means to understand the world which then become externalized through human action. Thus, while the social hierarchies, collective actions, and institutional authorities in the fantasy world of Harry Potter in some ways map onto Anglo-American social and political structures, the significant differences between these textual and “real world” …

Satire And Synthesis: Parody And Satire Of Victorian Education In The Works Of Lewis Carroll, Cameron D. Sedlacek

All Master's Theses

Education is an integral part of any society. Victorian England saw drastic reform in the method of childhood education, shifting from religious to secular forms of rote memorization. An analysis of the works of Lewis Carroll reveals significant instances of parody, pastiche, and satire on these styles of education and their corresponding reform. Unlike traditional satire, however, Lewis Carroll’s satire does not simply criticize these targets, but utilizes a strategy of synthesis to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of various conflicting educational ideologies and to suggest ways of adopting methods from all available options.

Jonson's Old Age: The Force Of Disgust, Laura Kolb

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Jewel, Purse, Trash: Reckoning And Reputation In Othello, Laura Kolb

Publications and Research

This article offers an analysis of Shakespeare’s Othello alongside arithmetic textbooks for merchants and soldiers. It argues that Othello dramatizes a problem that also haunts the pages of these math books: the problem of calculating the value of persons in a society where new forms of commercial credit were unsettling traditional notions of worth grounded in status, military prowess and sexual purity. Othello’s loss of faith in his wife and the disintegration of his sense of self both depend on Iago’s manipulation of two competing models of reputation: one based on martial valor and sexual purity (reputation as honor) and …

Resonant Texts: Sound, Noise, And Technology In Modern Literature, Leah Hutchison Toth

Theses and Dissertations--English

“Resonant Texts” draws from literary criticism, history, biography, media theory, and the history of technology to examine representations of sound and acts of listening in modern experimental fiction and drama. I argue that sound recording technology, invented in the late 19th century, equipped 20th century authors including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, and Samuel Beckett with new resources for depicting human consciousness and experience. The works in my study feature what I call “close listening,” a technique initially made possible by the phonograph, which forced listeners to focus exclusively on what they heard without the presence of an accompanying …

Strangers Among Us: Invasive Plants In British Literature, 1669-1800., Thomas Lance Bullington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exotic flora in the long eighteenth century (1666-1800) embodied a point of contact between the natural and imaginary worlds, bearing witness to the ways that ideology relocates living things according to human desire. Most accounts view these exotics through the lens of ecological imperialism and “invasive” species. Both of these terms are twenty-first century metaphors that materialize the role of imperialism in circulating exotics, applying the narrative of invading British empire to the behavior of foreign plants. However, such accounts do not fully acknowledge the cultural work that images of foreign plants do. I opt instead for an ecocritical reappraisal …

The Performance Of Melancholy: Understanding The Humours Through Burton, Jonson, And Shakespeare, Lindsey N. Betts

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis aims to explore the relationships between dramatic texts and the Elizabethan topic of the humours. It covers Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Jonson's plays Every Man Out of His Humour and Every Man in His Humour, and Shakespeare's plays Hamlet and As You Like It. Each of these works provides a glimpse into society and its opinions specifically on melancholy, from its most basic and complex definitions to how it is perceived and addressed.

The Transition From The Psychical To The Psychological: An Examination Of William James’ Influence On Henry James’ “The Turn Of The Screw”, Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will show that, in its original form, “The Turn of the Screw” acted as a monument to the intellectual unity shared between Henry James and his brother William. Through evaluating James’ biography, memoirs, and letters with William, this thesis will illustrate the subtle collaborative inspirations that initially helped James write the first twelve-part serial edition of “The Turn of the Screw” for Collier’s Weekly, which ran from January 27, 1898 until April 16, 1898. I will also demonstrate the effect of William’s philosophy and his death on the revisions James’ made to his story as published in the …

Challenging Classical Legacy: Virginia Woolf' Mythical Method In To The Lighthouse, Alex Rucka

Maria Dittman Library Research Competition: Student Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Joyce's Musical Doublespeak, James May

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Culture & Money In The Nineteenth Century: Abstracting Economics, Daniel Bivona, Marlene Tromp

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Since the 1980s, scholars have made the case for examining nineteenth-century culture—particularly literary output—through the lens of economics. In Culture and Money in the Nineteenth Century: Abstracting Economics, two luminaries in the field of Victorian studies, Daniel Bivona and Marlene Tromp, have collected contributions from leading thinkers that push New Economic Criticism in new and exciting directions.

Spanning the Americas, India, England, and Scotland, this volume adopts an inclusive, global view of the cultural effects of economics and exchange. Contributors use the concept of abstraction to show how economic thought and concerns around money permeated all aspects of nineteenth-century culture, …

Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …

Strange Compositions: Chemistry And Its Occult History In Victorian Speculative Fiction, Susan Hroncek

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how depictions of chemistry in Victorian literature are influenced by concerns regarding the history of chemistry and its relationship to the occult. Among these depictions, I consider non-fiction writings of the period, such as histories of science and articles from periodicals, but I focus on novels that prominently feature chemistry, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894), T. Mullet Ellis’s Zalma (1895), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). These texts link chemistry with its origins in alchemy, the occult, and …

Hanging The Servant Girl To Hunting The Ripper: The Victorian Birth Of The True Crime Genre, Jonathan G. Brown

Masters Theses

More definitive answers about the creation and form of the modern True Crime genre narrative can be found by exploring, not the creators of True Crime narratives, but by following reader expectations and examining the social situation from which True Crime narratives were able to arise. Theorists in the genre field such as Lloyd Bitzer Carolyn Miller and Amy Devitt have introduced and refined the view of genre as a social action. In this view, genre does not come about as a set of rules imposed upon types of literature to bring order, but as a societally accepted creation constructed …

Genesis B From Ms Junius 11 And Paradise Lost: Possible Connections, Alicia D. Arnold

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at the ongoing debate concerning John Milton's potential use of Genesis B from MS Junius II when creating Paradise Lost. Much of the thesis looks at the probability of John Milton's ability to access or know Genesis B. Included is an annotated translation of "Satan in Hell" from Genesis B. The last chapter looks at the given translation and Paradise Lost to see if there are similarities in dialect, theme, and word-choices, or if Paradise Lost has Old English markers. The conclusion is that the debate must continue as there is currently not enough evidence to prove …

Human Cloning As The Other In Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Wen Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Human Cloning as the Other in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go" Wen Guo analyzes Kazuo Ishiguro's novel with focus on Ishiguro's analogy between human cloning and people of marginality in contemporary society. Guo discusses the novel's ambience of doubt and suspense and elaborates on how the theme of otherness is addressed by Ishiguro's mock-realism in a landscape of science fiction. Further, Guo analyses the "unhomely" Hailsham of the novel, the clones' self-pursuit, and their ethical attitudes. Guo argues that in Ishiguro's novel a person's ethical choices are determined by his/her situation which confirms Ishiguro's beliefs with …

Rædende Iudithðe: The Heroic, Mythological And Christian Elements In The Old English Poem Judith, Judith Caywood

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project, devoted to the Old English epic fragment Judith, argues that the title character arises from the complex multicultural forces that shaped Anglo-Saxon society, positing that she exists between the mythological, the heroic and the Christian. Simultaneously Christian saint, Germanic warrior and pagan demi-goddess or supernatural figure, Judith arbitrates amongst the seemingly incompatible forces that shaped the poet’s world, allowing the poem to serve as an important site for the making of a new Anglo-Saxon mythos, one which incorporates these disparate yet co-existing elements. Judith becomes a single figure who is able to reconcile these opposing forces within …