Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Literature in English, British Isles Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

5,473 Full-Text Articles 4,145 Authors 7,265,219 Downloads 205 Institutions

All Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Faceted Search

5,473 full-text articles. Page 36 of 184.

Gaps Of Speculation: Refusing Representation In Queer And Postcolonial Fiction, Sarah Schwartz 2023 CUNY Graduate Center

Gaps Of Speculation: Refusing Representation In Queer And Postcolonial Fiction, Sarah Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how queer and postcolonial novels respond to the archive as a determiner of what stories we can and cannot tell through formal experimentation that omits expected elements. Focusing on the subject- and object-making power and the tekhne of inclusion and exclusion that shape the modern archive, I analyze how novels spanning the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century refuse to mimetically reproduce bodies that were traditionally made the object of that knowledge in ways legible to the familiar archival forms. Instead, these novels turn the exclusion of the archive back on itself by manifesting lacunae …


Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller 2023 CUNY Graduate Center

Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Muscling Through” reconstructs an overlooked history of strong female bodies in the nineteenth century. It argues that popular representations of athletic women introduced a new category of identity that was distinct from women’s traditional relational and social roles. The project’s central figure is the hyper-able “Sportswoman,” who bridges the gap between two familiar versions of the Victorian woman’s body: the mid-century ideal of docile, domesticated femininity and the sturdy, capable women who enter universities, professions, and public spaces en masse just before the turn of the century. Representationally, the Sportswoman figures a range of attitudes, from anxious to aspirational, toward …


Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor 2023 CUNY Graduate Center

Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The mythical city of Troy functioned as an imagined point of origin for many medieval nations, providing a tangible connection to the legendary past and nation-building tools useful for the ruling class. Troy provided a convenient foundation narrative upon which ideas of collective identity could be built for these nations, and England, where construction of a homogeneous past was difficult due to frequent ruptures in its development of communal identity, was an eager producer and consumer of such a legitimizing device. However, the trauma of war and destruction intrinsic in Troy narratives also generates potent political anxiety about the reanimated …


Selecting Authority: The Compiler And Female Mystical Sources In Speculum Devotorum, Caitlin J. BranumThrash 2023 University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Selecting Authority: The Compiler And Female Mystical Sources In Speculum Devotorum, Caitlin J. Branumthrash

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The fifteenth-century Speculum devotorum, or Mirror to Devout People, is best known for incorporating the texts of mystical women into its narrative of the life of Christ, likely because it has an explicitly stated female audience—a nun of Syon. Rather than considering how the female audience may have perceived the female sources in Speculum devotorum, this article investigates the compiler’s views of his female sources based on how he incorporates them into his work. I argue that the compiler treats his female sources as full auctores, but he only includes their works when he addresses what he considers female …


Angels Of Many Houses: Reconciling Domesticity In 19th-Century Victorian Literature, Amanda Vierra 2023 College of the Holy Cross

Angels Of Many Houses: Reconciling Domesticity In 19th-Century Victorian Literature, Amanda Vierra

College Honors Program

The rise of the Victorian middle class is known for solidifying a separation of gender roles, with women operating in the private, domestic sphere and men in the public sphere. This historical value placed on domesticity is reflected in the rise of domestic fiction, the dominant genre of Victorian literature, which commonly depicts young, middle-class women making their way in the world. The plot of these narratives revolves around women perfecting or contending with their place in the domestic sphere through courtship, marriage, and family. Scholars on domestic fiction have continued to argue over whether domestic fiction reflected the oppressive …


The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski 2023 Washington University in St. Louis

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …


Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb 2023 Washington University in St. Louis

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …


The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez II 2023 Texas A&M International University

The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is concerned with analyzing key themes and ideas in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through an existentialist lens which is made possible through a comparison to themes and ideas in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I aim to make a contribution to my field by fulfilling a comparison that has long been made since the late 1960s when conversations about British Romanticism and Existentialism were still common. The purpose of my first chapter is to elucidate a new argument about the relationship between these two novels. There is a discernable element of Camusian Revolt exhibited by the Creature in …


Queer Mother, Hybrid Monster: Serpentine Hybridity And Monstrous Motherhood In D’Arras And Spenser, Farah R. Paterson-Cisco 2023 CUNY Hunter College

Queer Mother, Hybrid Monster: Serpentine Hybridity And Monstrous Motherhood In D’Arras And Spenser, Farah R. Paterson-Cisco

Theses and Dissertations

Disparate, deformed, and hybridized bodies of women have appeared in mythology and literature in myriad allegorical incarnations as representations of monstrosity. The monstrous serpent-woman hybrid form can be traced back quite far, though at the point when one reaches antiquity, literary examples meld into the religious, mythological, and folkloric. These hybrid beings also embodied meanings particular to their time and culture that work to distinguish them as literary characters, presenting a compelling case for the consideration of the hybridized and deformed figure as a threat to patriarchal systems. Contemporary readings through the lens of feminist, gender, and disability frameworks offer …


Review Of Inklings Of Heaven: C. S. Lewis And Eschatology, P. H. Brazier 2023 George Fox University

Review Of Inklings Of Heaven: C. S. Lewis And Eschatology, P. H. Brazier

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Sean Connolly, Inklings of Heaven: C. S. Lewis and Eschatology (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2007). 324 pages. $35.00. ISBN: 9780852446591.


Sweat Equity: Lynn Nottage's Radical Dialectic Of Deindustrialization, Jocelyn L. Buckner 2023 Chapman University

Sweat Equity: Lynn Nottage's Radical Dialectic Of Deindustrialization, Jocelyn L. Buckner

Theatre Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Lynn Nottage has devoted her career to researching and telling stories of Black individuals and communities with expressed interest in laborers, advocating for their agency, humanity, and legacy. In her second Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat, Nottage dramatizes more recent US history, illuminating the lives of workers marginalized by the deindustrialization of the Rust Belt in the early 2000s. Sweat is emblematic of Nottage's sustained effort to deploy playwriting as activism and stand in solidarity with those whose stories she chooses to tell. As a constant theme in her works, Lynn Nottage's stories align with marginalized workers' efforts and histories, …


Review Of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives Of The Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Joel D. Heck 2023 Concordia University, Texas

Review Of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives Of The Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Joel D. Heck

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). 644 pages. $17.00. ISBN 9780374536251.


Review Of Beren And Luthien, Jonthan B. Himes 2023 John Brown University

Review Of Beren And Luthien, Jonthan B. Himes

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of J. R. R. Tolkien, Beren and Luthien, ed. by Christopher Tolkien (New York: HarperCollins, 2017). 288 pages. $30.00. ISBN 9781328791825.


Review Of The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale, Tiffany Brooke Martin 2023 George Fox University

Review Of The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale, Tiffany Brooke Martin

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of George MacDonald, The Golden Key: A Victorian Fairy Tale, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016). 136 pages, including “Afterward” and “Illustrator’s Note.” $16.00. ISBN 9780802854568.


Review Of C. S. Lewis And The Art Of Writing: What The Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us About The Life And Craft Of Writing, Kevin Belmonte 2023 Gordon College

Review Of C. S. Lewis And The Art Of Writing: What The Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us About The Life And Craft Of Writing, Kevin Belmonte

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Corey Latta, C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing: What the Essayist, Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic, Apologist, Memoirist, Theologian Teaches Us about the Life and Craft of Writing (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2016). ix + 239 pages. $24.00. ISBN 9781498225342.


Review Of A Well Of Wonder: Essays On C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, And The Inklings, Corey Latta 2023 George Fox University

Review Of A Well Of Wonder: Essays On C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, And The Inklings, Corey Latta

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Clyde S. Kilby, A Well of Wonder: Essays on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings, ed. by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2016). vii + 348 pages, including “A Tribute to Clyde S. Kilby.” $28.99. ISBN 9781612618623.


Review Of Jack Lewis And His American Cousin, Nat Hawthorne: A Study Of Instructive Affinities, John Stanifer 2023 Morehead State University

Review Of Jack Lewis And His American Cousin, Nat Hawthorne: A Study Of Instructive Affinities, John Stanifer

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of D. G. Kehl, Jack Lewis and His American Cousin, Nat Hawthorne: A Study of Instructive Affinities (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013). ix + 247 pages. $29.00. ISBN 9781610978361.


Review Of High Towers And Strong Places: A Political History Of Middle- Earth, Dominic J. Nardi 2023 University of Michigan

Review Of High Towers And Strong Places: A Political History Of Middle- Earth, Dominic J. Nardi

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Timothy R. Furnish, High Towers and Strong Places: A Political History of Middle- earth (Toronto: Oloris Publishing, 2016). 166 pages. $35.00. ISBN 9781940992518.


Review Of The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien And Their Circle, Matthew Carey Jordan 2023 Auburn University at Montgomery

Review Of The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien And Their Circle, Matthew Carey Jordan

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Colin Duriez, The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle (Oxford: Lion Hudson Books, 2015). 296 pages, including full-color photograph inserts, “An Inklings Gallery,” and “A Select Inklings Chronology.” $16.95. ISBN 9780745956343.


“Evil Enchantment” Versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, And The Weight Of Glory, Jason Baxter 2023 Wyoming Catholic College

“Evil Enchantment” Versus Platonic Vision: Dante, Lewis, And The Weight Of Glory, Jason Baxter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

C. S. Lewis was convinced that, in the modern world, goodness often strikes us as bland and diluted, a kind of spiritual neutral. What we need, especially in the modern world, he thought, is a positive vision of the good, a vision of beauties that “pierce like swords or burn like cold iron,” as he once said of Tolkien’s work. We need a positive picture and we need to have positive desire, as opposed to thinking of goodness primarily in negative terms, as “not being bad.” Lewis thought we need to have a sense of the gravity and heaviness and, …


Digital Commons powered by bepress