Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Harry Potter And The Theory Of Things, Erica Maitland Lange

Master’s Theses

This thesis investigates the boundaries between body and object in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, seven children’s literature novels published between 1997 and 2007. Lord Voldemort, Rowling’s villain, creates Horcruxes—objects that contain fragments of his soul—in order to ensure his immortality. As vessels for human soul, these objects rupture the boundaries between body and object and become “things.” Using contemporary thing theorists including John Plotz and materialists Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin, I look at Voldemort’s Horcruxes as transgressive, liminal, unclassifiable entities in the first chapter.

If objects can occupy the juncture between body and object, then bodies can as …

Don't Take Orpheus Without The Lyre: The Intricacies Of Using Pagan Myths For Christian Purposes In The Divine Comedy And Paradise Lost, Rebekah J. Waltmann

Masters Theses

Because of their universal and artistic nature, the classical myths lend themselves well to use in literature, especially poetry. When used properly, as by Dante and Milton, the myths have the ability to enhance the work; when used poorly, they become gaudy ornamentation. It was, and is, this ability to enhance both the artistry and function of literature that pulled so many poets to the myths, despite the difficulties that could arise when the pagan myths did not quite match the Christian setting. My purpose in this thesis is not to explicate every use of myth within The Divine Comedy …

Happily Ever After? Redefining Womanhood And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century Novels, Laura Elizabeth Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Henry James challenged patriarchal conventions and assumptions by redefining womanhood and marriage in their novels, particularly by breaking from the traditional marriage ending. While Pride and Prejudice, North and South, and Jane Eyre end in marriage, these novels depict a freely chosen companionate marriage based on equality; Villette replaces the typical marriage ending with complete independence; and Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady both portray the decisive rejection of the marriage ideal for a life of renunciation. This thesis analyzes the ways in which these novels challenge nineteenth-century society, as well …

Public Parks And Private Ideologies: Building Nineteenth-Century British National Identity Through Landscape, Laura Swaim Witherington

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines how nineteenth-century landscape theories shaped national identity and were influenced by it. Predominant is an investigation of how the desire for a more egalitarian class structure underlies the changes in British landscape design from an attachment to classical exclusivity through pastoral tropes to a limited acceptance of middle and working classes within public landscapes that represented patriotic values. Although poetic works inform the study, novel-length fiction and non-fiction prose and periodicals are also a primary source of consideration. Novels demonstrate how fictional geography generates the constructs of national ideology, and although canonical works typically referenced in studu …

Dickensian Characters In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Alison Mckeever

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

J.K. Rowling includes many Dickensian-esque characters in her Harry Potter series. This thesis compares the characters seen in Rowling's series with many of Charles Dickens's characters, specifically those seen in David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House. Rowling's work is similar to Dickens's novels in many ways. The most interesting connection between the two is how they treat the characters on the periphery of the societies they have created, most notably their orphans, servants, and women.

Orphans are their most obvious comparison. Each author based their texts on the story of an orphan. However, there is more to their orphan …

Romanticism, Blake, And The Politics Of Nature (Flyer), Kevin Hutchings

The Idea of Nature Public Lecture Series

Because politics is a distinctly human activity, we often think of nature as something that exists apart from the political realm. However, in an era of revolutionary turmoil, William Blake, who championed “England’s green and pleasant land” against industrialism’s “dark Satanic Mills,” understood better than any other Romantic poet that nature was subject to myriad political uses. By showing how cultural institutions invoke nature to “naturalize” their authority, Blake reveals that nature can be thoroughly political. Join author and musician Kevin Hutchings as he explores the politics of Blake’s visionary ecology in poetry, painting, and song.

The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

In his groundbreaking work of postcolonial theory, Orientalism, Edward Said puts forth the idea that imperial Europe asserted an identity by constructing the character of its colonized subjects. Said writes that his book tries to “show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). The object of this thesis is a related project, for it too is a search for imperial Britain’s surrogate or underground self. Yet rather than positioning this search within the British colonies, this thesis takes as its context a …

Force Or Fraud: British Seduction Stories And The Problem Of Resistance, 1660-1760, By Toni Bowers. (Review), Rachel Carnell, Toni Bowers

English Faculty Publications

A review of the book "Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760," by Toni Bowers is presented.

A Victorian Christmas In Hell: Yuletide Ghosts And Necessary Pleasures In The Age Of Capital, Brandon Chitwood

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores how the cultural and literary development – one might argue, creation – of a specifically Victorian Christmas arose in response to social anxieties related to the expansion of industrial capitalism, Darwinian theories of evolution, and the increasingly problematic definition of the family during the nineteenth century in Britain. Using a Lacanian psychoanalytic lens, the dissertation explores how the liminal figure of the ghost pervades the literary narrativization of the Christmas holiday, and how such ghosts provided uncanny comforts to a reading public increasingly horrified by social, economic, and natural forces seemingly beyond their control. The dissertation argues …

The Search For Pan: Difference And Morality In D. H. Lawrence’S St. Mawr And The Woman Who Rode Away, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

Both St. Mawr (1925) and The Woman Who Rode Away (1928) were written at the height of Lawrence’s fascination with New Mexico and demonstrate a continuum of thought about the position of the European and the Indian, but what is most interesting about these stories when read in conjunction is their attitude towards difference. Lou Carrington, the protagonist of St. Mawr, holds herself separate from other women of her class, from other men, from her mother and her Indian groom, finally finding a temporary peace in seeking affinity in a landscape; the woman who rides away from home and …

"An Image Comforting The Mind”: Emotion Theory And Tennyson’S In Memoriam, Melanie Pavao

English Student Scholarship

This paper examines Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam A.H.H. through the lens of Cicero’s stoic theory of emotion. It critically reviews the manner in which Tennyson describes grief in the poem and how he uses the poem to deal with his own grief over the death of his best friend. It continues with a discussion of how the poem is useful for others in learning to deal with their own grief.

A Hierarchy Of Love: Myth In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, Joseph Walls

Masters Theses

In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, the transposed creature is drawn up into its "kindly stede" as a sacramental symbol of Christ through that fictional planet's unbroken relationship between meaning and form. Although Perelandra's "wheels-within-wheels" hierarchy may at first seem reminiscent of Catholicism's teachings on symbol, as a Protestant, Lewis believes that human beings cannot be truly sacramental symbols until the return of Christ. Lewis's optimistic depiction of a cosmic hierarchy is one of perfect love: superiors rule their subordinates with agape, and creatures who discover their submissive roles reciprocate with eros or adoring love. Every created being in Perelandra is part …

With This Ring, I Surrender: Politics, Religion, And Marriage In Shakespeare And Tudor England, Mara R. Berkoff

Honors College Theses

The ideas I wish to explore are the overarching themes of politics, religion, and marriage in the Turor period under the rule of King Henry VIII from 1509 to 1547. The popular opinion of the period on Henry VIII's behavior can be seen in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and Henry VIII.

Gender Politics In The Novels Of Eliza Haywood, Susan Muse

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how Eliza Haywood addressed ideological conflicts about gender produced by modernization in early eighteenth-century England. Expanding Michael McKeon's theory of the novel to include "questions of gender," I address a wide sample of novels in order to show how Haywood's writing developed during her long career. Her first preoccupation was the sexual double standard that defined "fallen women" as society's exiles. Influenced by the "she-tragedy" of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Haywood wrote novels that elicited pity for fallen women and searched for reasons to explain their condition. Haywood's writing became overtly political with her …

Pamela: Or, Virtue Reworded: The Texts, Paratexts, And Revisions That Redefine Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Jarrod Hurlbert

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation is a study of the revisions Samuel Richardson made to his first novel, Pamela, and its sequel, Pamela in Her Exalted Condition, published within his lifetime. Richardson, who was his own printer, revised Pamela eight times over twenty years, the sequel three times, and the majority of the variants have hitherto suffered from critical neglect. Because it is well known that Richardson responded to friendly and antagonistic "collaborators" by making emendations, I also examine the extant documents that played a role in Pamela's development, including Richardson's correspondence and contemporary criticisms of the novel. Pamela Reworded, then, is an …

Post-War Europe: The Waste Land As A Metaphor, Semy Rhee

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the mindset of twentieth-century Europe through the perspective of a modern individual that T. S. Eliot creates in his poem The Waste Land. Although The Waste Land is the greatest modernist poem, it is often criticized for its esoteric nature. A thorough examination of the poem is useful in understanding and appreciating Eliot’s masterful demonstration of the modernist philosophy. This study analyzes the poem in light of the definition of modernism and the poem’s metaphorical nature. It also aims to reconcile the two most confusing elements of the poem—its allusive content and fragmented structure—to the design …

Review Of Poetry, Pictures, And Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book And Victorian Visual Culture 1855-1875 By Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of Silence: The Muted Voices Of Count Fosco And Laura Fairlie In The Woman In White, Melanie Page

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the intricacies of voice using narrative theory and reader-response theory with Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Since Collins first wrote this epistolary novel serially, he wrote aware of his audience as he printed segments with different narrators. This novel allowed Collins the opportunity to reveal an internal set of narrators' responses to other characters' voices--responses that sometimes conflict with and modify one another. At the same time, Collins' contemporary audience's responses to the novel reveal the role of characters' voices in shaping reactions of members of the novel's reading public. Two opposing figures--Laura Fairlie and Count …

Respect Des Fonds D'Archives: Theory And Application, Danielle Lee-Muma

Data and Test Instruments

This paper examines the principle of Respect des fonds, its history and reason for becoming a dominant principle, and what its aspects mean: interpreting original order as an internal arrangement, and discussing external arrangement in the principle of provenance. Case studies (both real world examples and hypothetical examples based on real fonds and archives) will be used to discuss how the twin principles of respect des fonds, original order and provenance can be put into practice. The case studies are used to discuss what problems can arise in the application of respect des fonds.

The Dangerous ‘New Woman’ In The Victorian Press: ‘Blind Alike To Maiden Modesty And Maternal Dignity, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Present in photography, artwork, fiction, drama, and popular journalism, the New Woman was a familiar presence in late-Victorian Britain. By analyzing the journalistic portrayal of the New Woman and the construction of a negative femininity by those authors who opposed her and the values she represented, this essay draws from that popularity and presence. I argue that Victorians who disagreed with the political and social ramifications of the New Woman participated in discourse communities or communities of practice. These discourse communities portrayed the New Woman as one who was first, competitive rather than cooperative, and second, a mythical, unnatural creature. …