Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Toward A Narnian Valuation Of Nature: Participatory Ontology, Jeff Sellars

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Lewis’ appreciation of nature begs the question: from where does the natural world gain its purpose and meaning? Lewis’ valuation of nature can be understood perhaps best through participatory ontology: the immanent world is valued and saved only through the participation of the divine; the lower life is brought up into the higher life. This view can be seen very openly and unmistakably throughout The Chronicles of Narnia, where the natural Narnian world of plants, animals, trees, and creatures of all kinds are celebrated, and some are eventually included in the New Narnia.

Diversity In Times Of Adversity: Sounding A Horn In Narnia, D. G. Kehl

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Why, one might ask, does Lewis go to such great lengths to specify twelve different varieties of animals—“all you variety of creatures”—if not to stress diversity? In Letters to Malcolm Lewis wrote: “If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them.”

Front Matter (Volume 2, Issue 1), Grayson Carter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Man Wants To Love Mankind: Disability And The Inadequacy Of England's Modern Institutions In E.M. Forster's "The Longest Journey", Lillianna Wright

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Three Minute Thesis

Masculinity, Empire, And The Boyhood Companion In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein And Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Ruth Rempart

Campus Research Month

In 19th-century Britain, rigid social hierarchies and gender roles play a largely unseen role in the rise of the empire. In a society that relies upon the myths of heroic or self-sustaining masculinity to maintain the public sphere, how a “nontraditional” gentleman decides to affirm their masculinity can have a significant impact on the country’s cultural consciousness. As seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, young men tend to reassert their gender identities by pursuing careers that further British imperialist agendas. This paper examines the intersection between gender studies and postcolonial theory in 19^th-century …

Backmatter (Volume 1, Issue 1), Grayson Carter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us To Wrestle With The Modern And Postmodern World, William Gentrup

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A lengthy review of Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World. By Louis Markos. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2003.

ISBN 0-8054-2778-3. Pp. xv + 174. $19.99 [paper].

Grooving A Symbol: Turkish Delight In Narnia, Del Kehl

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Excerpt: Imagine yourself a writer living in Britain during the late 1940s. You are writing a book for children, but you believe that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then, and that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The challenge before you is to choose something a witch might offer enticingly to a boy of ten or eleven, most likely some delicious viand, to symbolize temptation, solicitation to evil. What would it be? This was the challenge facing C. S. Lewis as he wrote The Lion, …

A Time For Joy: The Ancestry And Apologetic Force Of C.S. Lewis' Sehnsucht, James P. Helfers

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Excerpt: "In sum, it is clear that Lewis owes a great debt to Wordsworth’s idea of Joy, a debt he acknowledges explicitly through the title of his autobiography. Their views of the experience have much in common: for both it is an intense long- ing, for both it undergirds their sense of the reality of an eternal realm, as well as guiding them toward either virtue (in Wordsworth’s case) or a contemplation of and belief in the eternal (in Lewis’ case). Both of their experiences connect, ei- ther explicitly or implicitly, with the philosophical notion of the sublime. There are …

"Samson Agonistes" And Milton's Paradoxical Weakness, Hudson Rice

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Paradise And Paradiso: Echoes Of A Fortunate Fall, Kathryn Alley

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

The Mythopoeic Code Of Tolkien: A Christian Platonic Reading Of The Legendarium (2021), By Jyrki Korpua, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by John Wm. Houghton, of The Mythopoeic Code of Tolkien: A Christian Platonic Reading of the Legendarium (2021), by Jyrki Korpua

Apocalypse Then And Now: Narrative Influence And Thematic Subversion Of Victorian Literature In Modern American War Narratives, Douglas James Scully

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that by looking at the lasting impact of Victorian war literature on a variety of modern media, one can see that an increased cultural awareness of trauma has led to less humane depictions of the traumatized. The multitude of Sherlock Holmes adaptations produced and set in various time periods and covering assorted wars serves as a strong example in my first chapter of how a Victorian-produced text can have a lingering impact, and the veteran Watson serves as a strong tool for adaptors to use when commenting on the shifting nature of war and the …

Something “Transcendentally Stimulating”: Resistance And Antidote To Empiricist British Culture In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’S Sherlock Holmes, Crissy Preston, Crissy M. Preston

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

Sherlock Holmes is a name synonymous with detective and perhaps more familiar to households than his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His lasting impact as a literary figure is indisputable, but the curiosity surrounding the reasons for his longevity in popularity remain an enigma to many scholars and critics. In my thesis, I will discuss some of the reasons Holmes relates to readers from various time periods, age groups, and nationalities for more than a century. The first section of this project will establish the empiricist culture surrounding the decadent late 1800s, which compose the setting for most of Doyle’s …

Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver

Dissertations

On the early modern stage, gendered epithets like “strumpet,” “mermaid,” “minx,” “hobby horse,” “courtesan,” “drab,” and “whore” are not just markers of misogyny. Instead, these insults harm the male user as well as their female target. My cross-playwright and cross-genre connections show the complex, wide use and impact of anti-woman terms. A wide-ranging study of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reveals that gendered insults signify masculine mental decline in tragedies as well as comedies and tragicomedies. In tragedy, the increasingly violent language of male slur users – like, for example, the frustrated Othello, who declares, of his wife, …

Neil Gaiman's Elevated Fairy Tale: Childhood Trauma Through The Lens Of Postmodernism, Faith Adams

Student Works

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman explores the influence of trauma on identity formation. In the sinister world of his liminal fantasy, Gaiman’s nameless narrator strives to assemble a comforting sense of identity in the midst of traumatic chaos. Viewed through a postmodern lens, Gaiman’s use of hypertextuality and non-linear storytelling undermines idealized views of objective truth and reality, ultimately suggesting that nothing in life can be reduced to a binary.

The Importance Of Reading In Jane Austen's Novels, Leah Rice

Student Works

Reading is a central theme of both Emma (1815) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), two of Jane Austen’s most celebrated novels. The characters are constantly reading books, comparing the sizes of their libraries, and endeavoring to respond to tricky situations based on their readings of them. Mr. Darcy claims that a lady’s education is not complete until she adds to all the usual accomplishments something “more substantial”: the “improvement of her mind by extensive reading” (27). Though reading is regarded as a source of knowledge and even wisdom, these novels are what Bonaparte calls “a map of misreading” (142). Elizabeth …

The Linguistic Reimagining Of Natural Elements In Gerard Manley Hopkins' Nature Sonnets, Leah Rice

Student Works

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest now numbered among the major English poets. When the first edition of his poems was published posthumously in 1918 by his friend Robert Bridges, it “baffled more readers than it converted” (Martin 50). Nevertheless, despite this original reticence to accept Hopkins as a poet, the tests of time and scholarship has proven his depth and continued relevance of study.

“Þer Watz Mete, Þer Watz Myrþe, Þer Watz Much Ioye”: The Manipulative Sotilte Of Middle English Romance, Kelly Evans

English Theses and Dissertations

The Middle English sotilte and its Middle French counterpart, the entremet, refer to the elements during a feast that conjure wonder. Like “feast” and “banquet,” both terms have been used interchangeably, with the entremet coming to signify a sweet dessert at the end of a meal in modern usage of the term. In Middle English romance, the sotilte of the feast builds upon the connotations that “subtlety” carry—guile, artifice, craft, even deceit.

Perhaps the most well-known of all Middle English sotiltes is the sudden intrusion of the Green Knight during the Christmastide feast in Sir Gawain and the Green …

Psychological Criticism And Shakespearean Allusions In J.M. Barrie’S Dear Brutus: A Neverland For Adults, Kathryn Alley

Senior Honors Theses

In Peter Pan, Sir James Barrie welcomes readers into Neverland, the realm of eternal youth. Barrie’s lesser-known play, Dear Brutus, ushers audiences into a supernatural garden free of responsibility, reality, and permanence. Referring to Cassius’ words in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the 1917 tragedy explores the consequences of romantic escapism and the seductive power of second chances. Through the lens of Freud’s and Lacan’s psychological criticism, and Barrie’s connection to his might-have-been daughter, Margaret, Dear Brutus unveils the plight of eight mysterious strangers by illustrating that all adults are lost children. Dear Brutus feels in many ways like …