Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Fearing The "Turban'd Turk": Socio-Economic Access To Genre And The "Turks" Of Early Modern English Dramas And Broadside Ballads, Katie S. Sisneros

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores an important means for the non-noble and non-gentry population of England to read and interpret the figure of the Turk as textually represented: the broadside ballad. Cheap to print and produced on an expansive scale, broadside ballads had access to economic and geographic segments of England beyond the reach of the drama. Aimed at a far more general audience than theater-goers (especially during the Restoration period), broadside ballads provide an alternative literary interpretation of the Turk, one long-neglected in Anglo-Ottoman studies. Current scholarship’s almost-exclusive focus on drama has led to a progress narrative positing an evolution in …

Christ Being Hopkins And Hopkins Being Christ, Cory Ames

English

This paper compares and contrasts Gerard Manly Hopkins’ sonnet “As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame” to the “terrible” sonnet “Carrion Comfort.” It asserts that since both sonnets explore opposite ends of a paradoxical relationship between man and Christ, which Hopkins often meditated over, both sonnets should work together as spiritual complements of one another, rather than proof of Hopkins’ spiritual derailment.

"The Future In The Instant": Posthumanism(S) In Early Modern English Drama, Farrah Lehman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines prominent points of intersection between early modern English theatrical practices and posthumanist, post-cybernetic new media theory as a means of interrogating assumptions about “media narratives” (here, the development of dramatic blank verse), proto-Brechtian anti-illusionism, and sensory encounter related to the late sixteenth-and early seventeenth century stage. The arguments presented here in part rely on the work of three present-day critics: Mark B.N. Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Brian Massumi, all of whom explore posthumanist theory while addressing possibilities for posthumanist practices within the humanities. Examining a wide range of texts, including plays and pro-and anti-theater tracts, initially …

Defying The Feminist Dilemma: Eavan Boland's "Listen. This Is The Noise Of Myth", Rachel Newman

English

Boland creates a narrative poem, “Listen. This is the Noise of Myth,” that repudiates all legends that show men to be stronger and the savior of women, and suggests both that there are endless ways to depict any myth.

Orts 71, 2010, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

Annual General Meeting The next Annual General Meeting of the Society will be held on Saturday 6th November 2010 at 10 Appian Court, Parnell Road, London E3 2RS at 2pm. Space is limited, so if you intend coming please contact Roger Bardet on + 44 (0)20 8980 0083 or at [email protected]. The purpose of the meeting is to receive accounts and a report of the Society’s activities, to elect officers and committee for 2011 and to discuss the Society’s future programme. The nearest underground is either Mile End or Bow Road. Members wishing to explore the neighbourhood ahead of time …

Review Of The Voice Of The Hammer: The Meaning Of Work In Middle English Literature, Gregory M. Sadlek

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Postcolonial "Knight‘S Tale": A Social Commentary On Post-Norman Invasion England, Ruth M.E. Oldman

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Every author injects a purpose into his or her works; in Chaucer‘s case, he scribed The Canterbury Tales, which tackles and successfully demonstrates various aspects to fourteenth century English society and culture. "The Knight‘s Tale" is no different; the tale is almost identical, plot-wise, to Giovanni Boccaccio‘s Teseida, and yet Chaucer weaves a tale that is distinctive. The tale reflects Chaucer‘s views on his society, in particular post-Norman attitudes. By examining the text with a post-colonial theoretical approach, Chaucer‘s "The Knight‘s Tale" is a subaltern commentary on the colonization of England after the Norman Conquest.

(De)Constructing Jane: Converting Austen In Film Responses, Karen Gevirtz

Department of English Publications

No abstract provided.

Miller's "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures In Narnia" - Book Review, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

“A Young Voice, A Statue, And Marvell's 'The Nymph Complaining', Matthew Harkins

English Faculty Publications

The allegorical flexibility of Marvell's ‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn’ is consonant both with shifting ideas of youth in early modern England and with Marvell's complicated fascination with the young. A companion poem by Marvell's contemporary, Thomas Philipott, also describes how a young nymph in a garden turns into a weeping statue: the differences between these two poems underscore how Marvell's young narrator, rather than satisfying familiar interpretive practices, prompts investigation into the cultural implications of these practices. Ultimately, the poem reconsiders the nature of pastoral and the consequences of circumscribing the voices of the young.

Mirren's Autobiography: The Life And Poetry Of Marion Bernstein (1846-1906), Edward Cohen, Linda Fleming

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dickinson And Smith: Years Apart But Not So Different, Nicole Day

English

Even though there were sixteen years separating them, Stevie Smith and Emily Dickinson had much in common. They both use death as a theme to explore and mock life. Their small poems have a lot to say about life and death.

The Power Of Pain Gender, Sadism, And Masochism In The Works Of Wilkie Collins, Helen Doyle

Undergraduate Review

In his novels No Name (1862) and Armadale (1866), Wilkie Collins explores the social role of women in Victorian England, a patriarchal society that forced women either to submit to the control of a man or rebel at the expense of their own health and sanity. Even though some of his characters eventually marry, thus conforming to social expectations for women, I argue that his portrayal of female characters was subversive. In quests for control over their own lives, Magdalen Vanstone and Lydia Gwilt turn to masochism and sadism, practices which eventually lead to identity loss and self-destruction. Collins suggests …

Review In Studies In Medieval And Renaissance Teaching Of "Ents, Elves And Eriador: The Environmental Vision Of J.R.R. Tolkien", Paul Siewers

Other Faculty Research and Publications

A review of a book-length ecocritical study of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy writing.

Review Of The Literary Culture Of The Reformation: Grammar And Grace / Liturgy And Literature In The Making Of Protestant England By Brian Cummings And Timothy Rosendale, Brooke Conti

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mrs. Meyrick's Cat, Derek Miller

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'''Great God!" the words escaped Deronda' as he watched the just-prevented-from-drowning Mirah. 'The old thought had come now with a new impetus of mingled feeling, and urged that exclamation in which both East and West have for ages concentrated their awe in the presence of inexorable calamity.'!

Among those who welcome Mirah to Mrs. Meyrick's household is the cat Hafiz, seen by Deronda as it 'came forward with tail erect and rubbed himself against her ankles', an Eastern moment accompanying Mirah's entrance into the Meyrick family. Hafiz is later to purr as Mirah starts to tell her story to Mrs. …

Review Of Charles Dickens, Michael Slater

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On the first page of this splendid new biography, Dickens is cited referring to his own earliest writings as 'certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten and represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries'. The genially tongue-in-cheek celebration of his own precociousness is entirely characteristic, with the final flourish of 'overflowing nurseries' an example of the kind of 'unnecessary detail' that Orwell identified as a typical device of Dickensian comedy. 'Overflowing' both transforms the brief recollection into a comic scene and indicates the essential quality of the creative imagination at work here. A very different writer …

Review Of Women Reviewing Women In Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Critical Reception Of Lane Austen, Charlotte Bronte And George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The subtitle of Joanne Wilkes' elegant and meticulous monograph is somewhat misleading. Although Austen, Bronte and Eliot make regular appearances, as one would expect the three major female literary figures of the nineteenth century to do, the work does not seek to investigate their critical histories - something which Wilkes has already done in a compelling essay published in Joanne Shattock's collection Women and Literature in Britain, 1800-1900 (2001). Instead, Wilkes' attention here is firmly directed at the careers of the critics who, for the most part, remain on the margins of Victorian studies: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah …

'Hetty Had Never Read A Novel': Adam Bede And Realism, Rachel Bowlby

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is not just the famous Chapter 17, 'In Which the Story Pauses a Little’, which makes George Eliot's Adam Bede one of the first candidates for any discussion of the tenets and aims of nineteenth-century literary realism. The question is opened in the very first paragraph of the novel - so very prominently, perhaps, and in so many dimensions, that we may miss its compacted meanings as we read on or rush on, past the beginning, to enter the narrative. Much of its meaning, of course, is not immediately available without the understandings that subsequent chapters will add, including …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 22 November 2009- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of two works of fiction by George Eliot. As no one here could fail to know, throughout the year there have been all kinds of celebrations of her first - and wonderful- novel, Adam Bede (and the word has spread even to London of great Adam Bede happenings in these parts). On the other hand, I've heard of nothing commemorating 'The Lifted Veil', which appeared in the same year as the novel. While this strange, supernatural tale of an acutely sensitive, unproductive poet whose clairvoyance alienates him from his fellow mortals is …