Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Pity, Power, And Tolkien's Ring: To Rule The Fate Of Many (2023) By Thomas P. Hillman, Marilyn R. Pukkila

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Marilyn R. Pukkila, of Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many (2023) by Thomas P. Hillman

Concealment And Darkness In Horace Walpole’S The Castle Of Otranto, Alexandra G. Speck

Global Tides

This paper examines the relationship between darkness and fear in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, widely recognized as the first Gothic novel. Walpole wrote Otranto soon after the rise of Enlightenment thought, which stressed sensory observation as the foundation for human reason. Walpole engages with Enlightenment ideas through Otranto’s dark setting, which invokes fear and irrationality in the heroine, Isabella.

Tracking Walpole’s manipulation of light and darkness through the narrative, this paper illustrates how darkness inspires more fear in Isabella than either the novel’s infamous supernatural dangers or its human villain, Prince Manfred, who pursues her through …

Mythos And Logos: Foucauldian Subjectivities Of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Hayley R. Cisney

Student Publications

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography details a centuries-long battle between Orlando and the sexual structures of repressive power in England. The biographical framework of the novel implies its contribution to objective, historical fact, while the miraculous nature of Orlando’s sexual transformation directly conflicts with constituted epistemologies of being. This paper examines these contrasting forces through Michel Foucault’s post-structuralist considerations of knowledge, power, and sexuality, in addition to the incorporation of other scholarship on Woolf’s conceptions of gender. I specifically follow the timeline of Foucault’s interpretation of the repressive hypothesis as it unfolds throughout the course of Woolf’s novel. By establishing …

Bibliography For "Pico Iyer Display", Isabella Piechota, Arianna Tillman, Kalea Brown

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to support a display about Pico Iyer at the Leatherby Libraries during April 2024 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Beyond The Looking Glass: Dreams And Somnial States And Spaces In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Anne N. Nagel

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Poised between a waning magico-theological tradition of symbolic dream interpretation and the rising influence of scientific dream theories, which equated dreaming with disorder, the dream occupied a unique space in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Dreams were coming untethered from signification, as natural philosophers deemed their content indecipherable and chaotic. Yet vestiges of early modern beliefs could still lend supernatural power and polyphony to dreams.

This was not simply a matter of making a binary choice between two ways of thinking about dreams but instead a site of collisions and coalescences. I contend that the ways in which dreams were conceptualized in …

Inviting Submission: Isabella Beeton At The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1856-1865, Julie Megan Sorge Way

English Theses & Dissertations

Isabella Beeton, creator of the iconic domestic manual Beeton’s Book of Household Management, died suddenly in 1865, just before her twenty-ninth birthday. Her popular book survived to codify stereotypical Victorian female ideals. Yet the “Mrs Beeton” mythos camouflages a remarkable talent: far from domestic drudgery, Beeton maintained a vibrant career as a writer and editor at the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (EDM), traveling widely to research the latest fashions and laboring behind the scenes to ensure the magazine’s success. Closely examining Beeton’s EDM work demonstrates how these formative, productive years shaped her later, more popular writing. Such a …

“Éowyn It Was, And Dernhelm Also”: Reading The ‘Wild Shieldmaiden’ Through A Queer Lens., Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Éowyn we first meet in 'The Two Towers' is a woman who has been traumatised by the loss of her parents at a young age, the recent loss of her cousin Théodred, the apparent weakening of her uncle Théoden, and her inability to escape the lascivious gaze of Wormtongue. Marginalised by her gender and by social expectation, her desire to find purpose in her life as a shieldmaiden is repeatedly thwarted. Seeking to reclaim control over her life and to make her own choices, she rides out with the Rohirrim not as Éowyn, but as Dernhelm.

Past scholars have …

“Creating And Maintaining Black Life-Worlds”: The Black Aesthetics Of Bernardine Evaristo’S Blonde Roots And Girl, Woman, Other, Sharanya Dg

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Black Aesthetics is the philosophical inquiry into the objects and practices of expressions coming from people who have been racialized as black. These expressive practices then lend to the creation of the life-worlds of people subjected to racist discourses. One such author in the contemporary English society, Bernadine Evaristo, responds to anti-black racist discourses by exploring the cultural plurality of British black life-worlds. This paper is a textual and formal analysis of two experimental novels of Evaristo to study how they distinctly present the quotidian lives of various characters in their racialised bodies to reflect on the sociocultural and political …

Beyond "His Native Town": Travel And Alienation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Erin G. Quinn

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein features a surprisingly extensive variety of locations through which Victor Frankenstein travels, ranging from the vibrant cities of London and Oxford to the isolated Orkney islands and Arctic lands. Scholars have analyzed the roles which some of these settings, namely, the Alps and the Arctic, play in the novel, and many have noted the importance of travel to the text. However, little scholarship exists assessing how Victor’s travels as a whole impact him, as well as their collective purpose within the story. Given the prominence of travel in Shelley’s text, as well as the fact …

You’Re Invited! Collaborating With Faculty And Students To Create A Successful Library Event, Laura Semrau

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

To celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Baylor University Libraries hosted a three-day celebration; “Shakespeare 400” drew faculty members from six academic departments and leveraged the talents of both graduate and undergraduate students. The four main events drew a cumulative crowd of over 200 people. Graduate students contributed to the events through music performance, a dramatic reading, enthusiastic promotion, and engaged participation. This presentation will explore key take-aways for including graduate students in library events.

The success of Shakespeare 400 was largely due to collaborations between the library, faculty members, and graduate …

Tolkien: Uomo, Professore, Autore (2023), Ivano Sassanelli

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Ivano Sassanelli, of Tolkien: Uomo, Professore, Autore (2023)

Tolkien And The Relation Between Sub-Creation And Reality (2023), Edited By Guiseppe Pezzini And Eden O'Brien, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by John Wm. Houghton, of Tolkien and the Relation between Sub-Creation and Reality (2023), edited by Guiseppe Pezzini and Eden O'Brien

Sauron: Weirdly Sexy, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

A popular meme depict Galadriel and Frodo admitting that Sauron is "weirdly sexy," a humorous allusion to The Rings of Power’s Halbrand. The show's controversial revelation of Halbrand as Sauron highlights the differences between Tolkien’s construction of Second and Third Age Sauron as an attractive or admirable leader compared to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of him as a monster or disembodied fiery eyeball. This, in turn, has implications for the geopolitical order of Middle-earth in which many people legitimately might wish to be on Sauron’s side. Acknowledging Sauron's "sexiness" may allow us to see Tolkien's world system in a new …

Miscellaneous, Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Announcements:

Call for papers (The Abolition of Man 80 Years On)

The C. S. Lewis Correspondence Project

The Inaugural Undiscovered C.S. Lewis Conference (George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon September 5-8, 2024)

Submission guidelines, style guide, copyright notice, and order form.

Review Of Further Up And Further In, Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Further Up and Further In. Written and performed by Max McLean. Phoenix, AZ: Herberger Theater, 18 March 2023.

Review Of Bareface, David Bates

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of C. S. Lewis, Bareface (Proposed title for Till We Have Faces). Produced by Ballet 5:8. Choreography and Lighting by Julianna Rubio Slager. Costumes by Lorianne Robertson. Props by Sarah L. Freeman. Chicago, United States: Harris Theatre, 22 April 2023.

Review Of The Nature Of Middle-Earth, Brenton D.G. Dickieson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Nature of Middle-earth, ed. by Carl Hostetter (New York: Mariner Books, 2021). 464 pages, including appendices and index. $32.00. ISBN 9780358454601.

Review Of A Narnian Vision Of The Atonement: A Defense Of The Ransom Theory, William Gentrup

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Charles Taliaferro, A Narnian Vision of the Atonement: A Defense of the Ransom Theory (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022). 134 pages. $37.00. ISBN 9781666796537.

Review Of The Lion's Country: C.S. Lewis's Theory Of The Real, David N. Beckmann

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Charlie W. Starr, The Lion’s Country: C. S. Lewis’s Theory of the Real (Kent, OH; Kent State University Press, 2022). 132 pages. $18.95. ISBN 9781606354537.

Review Of The Man Born To Be King: Wade Annotated Edition, Barbara L. Prescott

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King: Wade Annotated Edition, ed. by Kathryn Wehr (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2023). 464 pages. $43.49. ISBN 9781514005330.