Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

The Desire Of Strict Souls: The Poetry, Criticism, And Letters Of Paul Valéry And Wallace Stevens, Michael Healy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation compares the poetic, critical, and epistolary oeuvres of Paul Valéry and Wallace Stevens and the influence of the former on the latter. Valéry famously advocated for the pursuit of “poésie pure” (“pure poetry”) and influenced Stevens especially in this way, though both of them concluded it was not achievable. I establish an approximation of a critical framework based on the work of the following critics and scholars: Wendy Lesser, Wendy Steiner, Anthony Cuda, Michael Clune, Paul Bové, and Liesl Olson. Harold Bloom’s passionate advocacy and deep, sustained engagement with Stevens and his work strongly influenced my choice to …

Wanted: More Feminist Queer Medievalists In Tolkien Scholarship, Robin A. Reid

Journal of Tolkien Research

J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction has been identified with the medieval world, and with medieval studies, from the beginning. In this presentation, I acknowledge the extent to which Tolkien scholarship is indebted to the medievalists who established the cornerstone upon which we have all built. Current publications in queer approaches to Tolkien and feminist approaches are growing, but queer scholarship tends to focus on male characters and feminist scholarship on (straight) female characters. What is currently missing in Tolkien scholarship, based on the bibliographic scholarship I have done in the past ten years, is work by feminist queer medievalist scholars and scholarship. …

Satire And Sentiment: Dickensian Characterization In Hard Times, Helen R. Ball

The Confluence

Readers of Charles Dickens both celebrate and criticize his characters, who are paramount among the quintessential aspects of his writing. His industrial novel Hard Times bears particularly the weight of such criticism in its portrayal of Stephen Blackpool, one of the Coketown factory Hands. Scholars have complained that Blackpool exemplifies, in too boring or didactic a manner, the typical virtues of the Victorian era, such as saintliness, humility, and long-suffering (Spector 365), and that his character lacks the necessary traits to compel and inspire readers.

Such a critique has prompted the following research and analysis. Using formalist observation of diction …

Nineteenth-Century Literary Magazines As Short Story Anthologies, Kelsey J. Brazil

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

This project undertakes an inter-generic study of nineteenth-century literary magazines and classroom anthologies. Based on the workings of genre theory by Julia Kristeva, this inter-generic study argues that the form, ideologemic function, and intertextuality of the literary magazine and anthology are generically similar. This notion has the potential to greatly change the reading of periodical literature from a simple reflection of Victorian times or as a mere container of collected (but isolated) literary pieces into one of cohesive, multi-genre significance. The resulting argument is that a nineteenth-century literary magazine can be a reasonable substitute for a textbook anthology in the …

Satiric Modernism By Kevin Rulo, Michael Shallcross

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

Kevin Rulo, Satiric Modernism (Clemson University Press/ Liverpool University Press, 2021), 288pp. £91.60 (Hbk)

Contributors

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Jo Cottrell, Louise Kane

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

"Neutrality—That Was Anathema": The Critique Of Ideology In The Revenge For Love, Joseph Owen

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Wyndham Lewis's "Most Active Colleague": William Harcourt's 1917 Diary, Jim Beach, Rod Rosenquist

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Wyndham Lewis, Time And Western Man By Paul Edwards, Alexander Alfred Scott

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man, edited by Paul Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2023), 592pp. £190.00 (Hbk)

Wyndham Lewis And British Art Rock: A Practicological Modernism By Thomas Keller, David A. Wragg

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

Thomas Keller, Wyndham Lewis and British Art Rock: a Practicological Modernism. (Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2024), 328pp. £54.00 (Hbk)

The Grotesque Modernist Body: Gothic Horror And Carnival Satire In Art And Writing By David Cruickshank, Benjamin Bruce

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

David Cruickshank, The Grotesque Modernist Body: Gothic Horror and Carnival Satire in Art and Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 276pp. £99.00 (Hbk)

David Shackleton, British Modernism And The Antropocene: Experiments With Time, Alberto Andrés Calvo

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

David Shackleton,  British Modernism and the Anthropocene: Experiments with Time (Oxford University Press, 2023), 226pp. £65.00 (Hbk)

Modernist Parody: Imitation, Origination, And Experimentation In Early Twentieth-Century Literature By Sarah Davison, Cooper Casale

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

Sarah Davison, Modernist Parody: Imitation, Origination, and Experimentation in Early Twentieth-Century Literature (Oxford University Press, 2023), 300pp. £78.00 (Hbk)

The Outsider And The Enemy: Colin Wilson On Wyndham Lewis, Luke Gilfedder

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Volume 12, 2024/2025, Full Issue

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Time And The Small Man: Lewis's Early Democratic Tendencies, Alexander Alfred Scott

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

No abstract provided.

Investigating The "Party Consciousness": Gender Normativity & Affect In Woolf’S Party Scenes In “To The Lighthouse” & “Mrs. Dalloway”, Chelsea Goodman

English

In 1925, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary, “…I should like to investigate the party consciousness…where people secrete an envelope which connects them and protects them from others, like myself, who am outside the envelope” (DIII 13). Woolf’s metaphor of the “envelope” reflects how parties have the potential to be places of community and, conversely, of alienation. In literary criticism, Woolf’s parties are often simplified and read as sites of communion. I argue that instead of a suspension of normativity across all characters, which one might expect in a party scene, Woolf’s domestic party scenes solidify, reflect, and enforce …

Great War Modernists: D.H. Lawrence, H.D., And Richard Aldington By Lee M. Jenkins, Buxi Duan

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

Book Review

Lee M. Jenkins, Great War Modernists: D. H. Lawrence, H. D., and Richard Aldington (Bloomsbury, 2024), 200pp. £85.00 (Hbk)

“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how the female protagonists in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Jonson’s Volpone navigate and combat corrupting patriarchal forces through moral religious speech. In both plays, the male characters have allowed false gods and hypocrisy to dictate and justify their corrupt behavior. By engaging with the historical significance of early modern female rhetoric this thesis examines Jonson’s Celia and Shakespeare’s Isabella, and how they operate in the interest of godly virtue rather than blind obedience to patriarchal figure heads.  Volpone’s Celia is a character largely neglected in the canon, and whose speech emphasizes the relationship between female agency …