Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

A Wilderness Of Dragons: Essays In Honor Of Verlyn Flieger (2018), Edited By John D. Rateliff, Deidre A. Dawson

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Deidre A. Dawson, of A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger (2018), edited by John D. Rateliff

Poetic Style And Innovation In Old English, Old Norse, And Old Saxon, Megan E. Hartman

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

This book traces the development of hypermetric verse in Old English and compares it to the cognate traditions of Old Norse and Old Saxon. The study illustrates the inherent flexibility of the hypermetric line and shows how poets were able to manipulate this flexibility in different contexts for different practical and rhetorical purposes. This analysis shows what degree of control the poets had over the traditional alliterative line, what effects they were able to produce with various stylistic choices, and how attention to poetic style aids literary analysis.

Making Knowledge With Science And Literature, Joseph Drury

Criticism

The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment by Tita Chico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. 256 pp. Hardcover $60.00, paper $26.00.

Chaucer's Polyphony: The Modern In Medieval Poetry, Jonathan Fruoco

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Geoffrey Chaucer has long been considered by the critics as the father of English poetry. However, this notion not only tends to forget a huge part of the history of Anglo-Saxon literature but also to ignore the specificities of Chaucer’s style. Indeed, Chaucer’s decision to write in Middle English, in a time when the hegemony of Latin and Old French was undisputed (especially at the court of Edward III and Richard II), was consistent with an intellectual movement that was trying to give back to European vernaculars the prestige necessary to a genuine cultural production, which eventually led to the …

The Immortal Jane Austen: Why Her Novels Remain Popular, Jayrah Trapp

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

No abstract provided.

Sensitive Plants And Senseless Weeds: Plants, Consciousness, And Elizabeth Kent, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

When a team of researchers in 2018 found that plants exposed to anesthesia appeared to lose consciousness, the press reported that plants might have a consciousness to lose. The ensuing debate revealed a gap between scientific and literary approaches to human and nonhuman consciousness that this article traces back to the botanical writing of the Romantic period. These concerns, I argue, are central to Elizabeth Kent’s Flora Domestica (1823) and Sylvan Sketches (1825), both botanical works that double as literary anthologies in order to expose a productive gap between literary and scientific knowledge. In a time when the distinction between …

"The Most Glorious War Recorded In The British Annals”: Portugal In British Figurations Of The Peninsular War, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

“THE MOST GLORIOUS WAR RECORDED IN THE BRITISH ANNALS,” AS ROBERT Southey described it in the dedication of his History of the Peninsular War,1 the conflict that brought together Portugal, Spain, and Britain against Napoleon’s armies between 1807 and 1814 was a dominant preoccupation of the British public in general, and of the first generation of Romantics in particular.2 Many critics have shown the extent to which the Iberian uprising against the tyranny of Napoleon galvanized the British people, united the British nation, and afforded Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge a renewed opportunity to sympathize with the cause of …

Elizabeth Kent’S New Tales Of Botanical Friendship, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

Elizabeth Kent has been considered a rather minor figure in the Leigh Hunt circle. However, this examination of her previously unknown children’s tales illuminates how Kent’s generic crossings establish a common emphasis on observation in the realms of botany, pedagogy, and poetry while suggesting that what happens beyond the observable world might be equally generative. Taken as a whole, Kent’s work constitutes a previously unacknowledged challenge to the Cockney School’s almost fetishistic attachment to the social. The identification of New Tales brings into focus Kent’s efforts to systematize friendship through her writing and clarifies her ambiguous response to Cockney amiability.

A Journal Of The Plague Year As A Sequel To Robinson Crusoe, Ala Alryyes

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Synthesizing The Sublime And Beautiful: Aesthetics In Shelley's "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty", Christopher T. Lough

Student Publications

As a Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley bristled at rationalistic attempts to definitively categorize the human condition. Taking Edmund Burke’s treatise “On the Sublime and Beautiful” as his chief foil, Shelley explored aesthetic categories that certain strains of Enlightenment thought had held apart from one another. In my brief exegesis of his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” from 1816, I build on Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous and the work of intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit to argue that Shelley presents a holistic account of experience with the ineffable.

Music Terminology And Context In Robert Browning’S “A Toccata Of Galuppi’S”, Natalie M. Dolan

Student Publications

In his poem describing a performance of a Baldassare Galuppi toccata, Robert Browning uses music theory terminology and historical context to explain the emotions inspired by the piece. Browning’s 19th-century narrator reflects on the lives of past audiences and on his own mortality as he addresses the deceased composer. This paper analyzes the use of musical references in explaining the narrator’s response to the performance. The analysis includes an examination of Galuppi’s compositional period and a discussion of the specific terminology that Browning uses to convey his narrator’s wariness of death.

Gender In Literature, Various, Carrie Lewis Miller, Firdavs Khaydarov, Odbayar Batsaikhan

All Resources

Openly licensed anthology focused on the theme of the Gender Roles portrayed in Literature. Contains Anna Lombard by Victoria Cross; The Beth Book by Sarah Grand; King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The Blood of the Vampire by Florence Marryat; The Beetle by Richard March; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

The Works Of The Brontë Sisters, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Carrie Lewis Miller, Firdavs Khaydarov, Odbayar Batsaikhan

All Resources

Openly licensed anthology focused on the theme of the Brontë Sisters' writings. Contains Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; Villette by Charlotte Brontë; Shirley by Charlotte Brontë; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

18th-20th Century British Literature, Various, Carrie Lewis Miller, Firdavs Khaydarov, Odbayar Batsaikhan

All Resources

Openly licensed anthology focused on the theme of 18th-20th Century British Literature. Contains Persuasion by Jane Austen; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë; Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E. Braddon; Middlemarch by George Eliot; A Passage to India by E.M. Forster; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; Pamela by Samuel Richardson; Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

The Wisdom Of Exeter: Anglo-Saxon Studies In Honor Of Patrick W. Conner, Edward J. Christie

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in literary criticism and literary theory, philology, codicology, metrics, and art history. Composed by prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline. As a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator and innovator, Pat has contributed to Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades. It is hard to say which of his legacies is most profound.

Tolkien's Work On The Oxford English Dictionary: Some New Evidence From Quotation Slips, Rachel A. Fletcher

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article presents previously undiscussed material, in the form of citation slips, relating to Tolkien’s work on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The separation of these slips from the OED archives means that they have been almost entirely overlooked, and their relevance to Tolkien studies has not been recognised. Nevertheless, they have the potential to be a valuable resource, especially for understanding the specialist skills Tolkien brought to the dictionary as a scholar of Old English. One item is of particular biographical interest, as it suggests that Tolkien was carrying out work for the OED earlier than previously …

‘Written In A Fair Hand’: The Living Tradition Of Medieval Scripts In J.R.R. Tolkien’S Calligraphy, Eduardo B. Kumamoto

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper examines J.R.R. Tolkien’s calligraphic work in the light of the medieval scripts that possibly or certainly inspired him, aiming to demonstrate how his art was informed by the philological and paleographical dimensions. At first, we explore the context in which Tolkien’s calligraphic skills flourished. After that, the influence of the Anglo-Saxon Square Minuscule, the Insular Half-uncial, and the Uncial scripts is investigated by means of examples taken from Tolkien’s illustrations and manuscripts. The impact of the English Carolingian Minuscule, via Edward Johnston’s Foundational Hand, is also discussed. In the last section, the lettering in the maps prepared for …

Building A Pillar Of Fame, Robert W. Witt

Studies in English

No abstract provided.

Thomas More And Lucian: A Study In Satiric Influence And Technique, Warren W. Wooden

Studies in English

No abstract provided.

Villainy In Scott’S Fiction, George W. Boswell

Studies in English

No abstract provided.