The Art Of Masking And Performing For The Perfect Marriage In William Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew,
2025
CUNY City College
The Art Of Masking And Performing For The Perfect Marriage In William Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Rita Oliva
Dissertations and Theses
This thesis explores how William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew exaggerates the art of masking and performing as necessary social techniques for women surviving the patriarchal culture of Padua. Through close analysis of Katherine and Bianca Minola, both sisters adopt performative identities, the “shrew” and the “ideal woman,” that reflect, resist, and expose the restrictive gender norms governing female behavior, qualifications for marriage, and worth. While Bianca’s apparent passivity and rhetorical femininity promote her to manipulate societal expectations to her advantage, Katherine’s refusal to submit to the societal and cultural standards of Padua results in her categorization of a …
All That May Become A Man: Dynamics Of Gender And Violence In Macbeth,
2025
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
All That May Become A Man: Dynamics Of Gender And Violence In Macbeth, Lauren M. Schuster
West Chester University Master’s Theses
The text of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is rife with the language of gender crisis, with the titular character and his wife struggling against the repressive nature of patriarchal gender norms. It is this conflict between individual gender expression and societal ideals of gender that underscores the play’s central conflict, with Lady Macbeth’s rejection of typical femininity as an inciting force for the murder of King Duncan and the chaos that follows. In my reading of Macbeth, I focus on the rhetoric of material sex and gender performativity. In doing so, I examine what such rhetoric suggests about the patriarchal structures …
Prophets Instead Of Priests: Diagonal Orientations & Coming-Of-Age Queerness In Jane Eyre And Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit,
2025
Colby College
Prophets Instead Of Priests: Diagonal Orientations & Coming-Of-Age Queerness In Jane Eyre And Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Emily G. Flanders
Honors Theses
This project asserts that the moment in which a girl leaves the trajectory of the expected in favor of the unknown in order to pursue her discovery of self is when her coming-of-age narrative becomes queer. This is demonstrated through Jane in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Jeanette in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Jane and Jeannette’s respective coming-of-age narratives–that is, them creating their fully embodied selves, the girl they believe and know themselves to be–happen off the expected life path in the liminal, in-between, undefined space of the queer oblique. There are moments …
Contents,
2025
University of South Carolina
Contents
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
“Being Natural Is Simply A Pose”: The Concept Of Foucault’S Panopticon In The Picture Of Dorian Gray And Orlando,
2025
Wilkes University
“Being Natural Is Simply A Pose”: The Concept Of Foucault’S Panopticon In The Picture Of Dorian Gray And Orlando, Mya Corcoran
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Comparing The Representations Of Order And Behavior In James Joyce’S “The Dead” And Samuel Beckett’S Endgame,
2025
FLAME University, India
Comparing The Representations Of Order And Behavior In James Joyce’S “The Dead” And Samuel Beckett’S Endgame, Araav Thakker
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Inoffensively Alice: Gender Politics In The Alice Series,
2025
University of Maryland, College Park
Inoffensively Alice: Gender Politics In The Alice Series, Eirian Gail Wells
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
The Great Wizarding Duel: Tolkien’S Possible Influence On Rowling,
2025
Marshall University
The Great Wizarding Duel: Tolkien’S Possible Influence On Rowling, Anna Jarrell
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Submission Guidelines,
2025
University of South Carolina
Submission Guidelines
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 27, 2025,
2025
University of South Carolina
The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 27, 2025
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
Virginia Woolf And The Lesbian Literary Tradition,
2025
Dominican University of California
Virginia Woolf And The Lesbian Literary Tradition, Hunter Candrian-Velez
English and Creative Writing | Senior Theses
Modernist English authors, such as Virginia Woolf in her novel Orlando: A Biography, built upon a pre-existing and long tradition of underground lesbian literature dating back to Sappho in Ancient Greece. Before Woolf, female writers of the 19th century continued this tradition by establishing the literary trope of the “Victorian Romantic Female Friendship,” which would later take on different shapes and connotations with discoveries made in the early 1900s related to sexology and homosexual inversion. These discoveries would lead writers to code their work in the hopes of avoiding censorship and government punishment. Writers such as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Gaskell, …
The Leaf That Tapped: Literary Still Life In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf,
2025
Claremont Colleges
The Leaf That Tapped: Literary Still Life In The Novels Of Virginia Woolf, Willa Frank
Pomona Senior Theses
Literary still life is a vital element of Virginia Woolf’s writing which recurs in almost all of her novels. Through these passages, she attends to the object world, portrays the animation of nonhuman entities, and adapts the aesthetic movements of her time present in modernist still life to the page. In this adaptation, Woolf’s literary still life becomes defined not by its stasis but rather by the rhythm she creates through the layering of these passages, one of the gathering and releasing of stillness. In this thesis, I propose literary still life as a way of thinking about the object-focused …
Fangs And Phantasms: Vampire Fiction's Role In Shaping Victorian Gender And Sexual Ideals,
2025
Central Washington University
Fangs And Phantasms: Vampire Fiction's Role In Shaping Victorian Gender And Sexual Ideals, Michele White
All Master's Theses
This thesis examines how Christabel (1816), Carmilla (1872), and Dracula (1897), three quintessential texts in the vampire literary genre, speak to the Victorian proliferation of sexual and gender discourses. These texts use the metaphor of the vampire to contradict and sustain 19th-century regulatory dialogues encompassing sexuality, gender, and desire. By investigating these vampire narratives by means of theories of sexuality and gender enumerated in Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, such as the ideas of “biopower” and “gender performativity,” I contend that these works do more than simply reproduce contemporary outlooks. Instead, these Gothic …
Breaking The Boundaries Of The Binary: Non-Normative Gender Expression And Rebellion In 19th-Century Literature,
2025
Bucknell University
Breaking The Boundaries Of The Binary: Non-Normative Gender Expression And Rebellion In 19th-Century Literature, Anna Marie Wingard
Honors Theses
This thesis explores non-normative expressions of gender in three nineteenth-century novels: Valperga (1823) by Mary Shelley, The Hermaphrodite (c. 1846) by Julia Ward Howe, and The Awakening (1999) by Kate Chopin. Each novel’s protagonist displays gender expression that rejects nineteenth-century British and American ideals and is consequently exiled from society and faces death. The project diagrams trajectories of gender expression and identity by tracing adherence, failure, and consequences to illustrate how non-normative gender expression directly leads to social exclusion and death. The findings of this literary analysis suggest that nineteenth-century understandings of gender were rigidly policed and the novel served …
Shakespeare’S Portia: A Feminist Icon But Figure Of Hierarchy,
2025
Mississippi State University
Shakespeare’S Portia: A Feminist Icon But Figure Of Hierarchy, Rowan G. Feasel
Endeavors: Mississippi State Undergraduate Research Journal
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Portia achieves a level of agency that few Shakespearean women do with her wealth and wit despite having to conform to her father’s wishes for her marriage with the casket test. Through dressing as a man during Antonio’s trial, Portia even assumes a physical appearance that reflects her skill in gaining influence and gives her more power over the men. Because of her ability to assert control in her home and the courtroom, literary critics often present Portia as a feminist icon. However, Portia restricts other characters like the Prince of Morocco and …
Leaden Circles, Eternal Springs, And Rusty Pumps: Time, Nature, And Industry In Mrs. Dalloway,
2025
Portland State University
Leaden Circles, Eternal Springs, And Rusty Pumps: Time, Nature, And Industry In Mrs. Dalloway, Katherine Evans
Anthós
This article explores often-overlooked ecocritical aspects in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, analyzing Woolf’s literary intersection of time, nature, and industry as a precursor to contemporary Anthropocene discourse. Acknowledging prevailing interpretations of Mrs. Dalloway through social lenses of trauma, class, and gender, Evans reveals how Woolf’s exploration of human-environment relationships is not only present but integral to interpreting the text fully. Drawing from textual close readings, scholarship on Woolf, and environmental humanities frameworks, Evans demonstrates how Woolf utilizes the Big Ben and a beggar woman to symbolize human-nature relationships. Evans’ ecocritical reading of Mrs. Dalloway repositions the 1925 novel within contemporary …
Romantic Materialities And The Politics Of Care: Negotiating Movement In A More-Than-Human World,
2025
West Virginia University
Romantic Materialities And The Politics Of Care: Negotiating Movement In A More-Than-Human World, April J. Mcginnis
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
This dissertation explores the ecological politics of movement in Romantic literature. It contributes to a growing body of scholarship that investigates the important role that walking played in nineteenth-century literary culture. Many authors from this period cast walking as a practice that frees up not only the body but the mind as well, as the steady rhythm of the feet lulls the walker into a state of self-absorbed introspection and heightened creativity. Because of this, walking was a celebrated part of the creative process for many writers. The freedom they celebrate is possible, however, only in spaces that are level, …
Mourning And Haunting In Irish Gothic Fiction From The Victorian Era To Modernism,
2025
West Virginia University
Mourning And Haunting In Irish Gothic Fiction From The Victorian Era To Modernism, Wenyu Kong
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
This dissertation explores how three Irish modernist writers, Elizabeth Bowen, Dorothy Macardle, and James Joyce, incorporate and reimagine tropes from the Victorian Gothic Revival to address Ireland’s uneven modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. I argue that the Irish Gothic tradition is essential for these writers to express their reflection and reaction to ongoing cultural and social turmoil in Ireland’s process of modernization during the foundation of the postcolonial Irish state. Extending Sheridan Le Fanu’s Big House Gothic legacy, Elizabeth Bowen creates haunted spaces in The Last September (1929) to describe Anglo-Ireland’s precarious situation during the War …
“Some Vague Utopia”: Searching For Urania,
2025
Virginia Commonwealth University
“Some Vague Utopia”: Searching For Urania, Moira L. Neve
Theses and Dissertations
Despite the global pendulum swing of gender trouble marked by the United States’ President’s declaration that there are only two sexes, activists have been rejecting assimilation (ie. defining equality as gay marriage or queer people in the military) within queer studies long before 2025. In the first half of the 20th century, a journal by the name of Urania (1916-1940), privately published and circulated to their home base in the United Kingdom and beyond, five editors (Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Jessey Wade, Dorothy Cornish, and Irene Clyde/Thomas Baty), challenged the gender binary and the resulting assumptions of heterosexual marriage. This …
A Story Of Oppression A Psychological And Creative Approach,
2025
University of Central Florida
A Story Of Oppression A Psychological And Creative Approach, Juan R. Morillo
Honors Undergraduate Theses
The aim of this project is to survey the manner in which oppression is expressed in selected works of literature. It is a topic that not only am I familiar with through my studies of literature and psychology, but one that I, as well as every Venezuelan expatriate has witnessed and felt for their country. The project focuses on social and political oppression, using the current Venezuelan crisis as a focal point, and selected literary sources as a framework. I will analyze dystopian classics such as George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, as well as Margaret Atwood’s The …
