Containing The Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference In The Old English Wonders Of The East,
2020
University of Southern Mississippi
Containing The Blemmye: Anxiety Towards Congenital Difference In The Old English Wonders Of The East, Jessica L. Carrell
Master's Theses
This thesis aims to illuminate early medieval anxieties about sex, procreation, and congenital physical difference by applying a lens of critical disability theory to the Old English Wonders of the East, primarily as it survives in the eleventh-century manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v. This thesis focuses on the textual and illustrative representation of one Wonder, the Blemmye—an approximately eight-foot-tall, eight-foot-wide androgynous humanoid, whose eyes and mouth are in their chest and who does not possess a head—as a historic embodiment of what disability meant in relation to the early medieval English worldview. This thesis considers the …
‘Yon High Mossy Mountains’: A Burns Song Manuscript From The Roy Collection,
2020
University of South Carolina - Columbia
‘Yon High Mossy Mountains’: A Burns Song Manuscript From The Roy Collection, Patrick Scott
Studies in Scottish Literature
Discusses and collates variants from a second autograph manuscript of Burns's song "Yon High..." or "Yon Wild Mossy Mountains," in the Roy Collection, University of South Carolina, reviewing the evidence on provenance, and assessing the purpose of the variants in the Roy manuscript.
Fantastic Borderlands And Masonic Meta-Religion In Rudyard Kipling’S “The Man Who Would Be King”,
2020
CUNY New York City College of Technology
Fantastic Borderlands And Masonic Meta-Religion In Rudyard Kipling’S “The Man Who Would Be King”, Lucas Kwong
Publications and Research
This article examines Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King” through the lens of Freemasonry’s interreligious ideology. In British India, members of “The Craft” offered what scholar James Laine calls a meta-religion, a fraternity whose emphasis on interreligious tolerance masks power relations between colonizers and colonized. When he became a Freemason, Kipling’s lifelong fascination with India’s religious diversity translated into enthusiasm for the sect’s unifying aspirations. In this context, “The Man Who Would Be King” stands out for how sharply it contests that enthusiasm. The story’s Masonic protagonists determine to find glory and riches in Kafiristan, a borderland region known …
From Erotic Conquest To The Ravishing Other: Imperial Intercourse In Shakespeare's Drama And Anglo-Spanish Rivalry,
2020
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
From Erotic Conquest To The Ravishing Other: Imperial Intercourse In Shakespeare's Drama And Anglo-Spanish Rivalry, Eder Jaramillo
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This dissertation examines how shifts in Anglo-Spanish relations from attraction to fear fashioned early modern cross-cultural encounters in imperialist terms. In discussion with recent inter-imperial studies of Mediterranean rivalries, I argue that as Anglo-Spanish relations engaged in what I refer to as imperial intercourse, one country’s expansionist ambitions become a double-edged sword, namely as said country is subsequently haunted by the threat of invasion from other rivals. This dissertation focuses on dramatic and colonialist texts representing the threat of invasion in the trope of the ravishing Other—a term with a play on words that illustrates the shift in …
Wherein To Catch The Conscience Of The Queen: Dystopian Politics In Elizabethan Drama,
2020
Liberty University
Wherein To Catch The Conscience Of The Queen: Dystopian Politics In Elizabethan Drama, Helen Fielding
Senior Honors Theses
Though established English history portrays Elizabeth I (1533-1603) as uniting England under the new Protestant religion, recent historical evidence reveals that extensive counter-currents still existed. This thesis examines how the politico-religious beliefs of Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights manifest themselves in their drama, particularly through imagery and allusions. It draws especially from Frances Yates to assert that imagery of white magic, Christian Cabala, and alchemy in these dramatists’ works refers to the pure imperial reform movement of Elizabeth’s reign, and also from Clare Asquith to illuminate a reading of Shakespeare as a playwright who encoded in his plays a Catholic message …
Hysteria, Perversion, And Paranoia In The Canterbury Tales: "Wild" Analysis And The Symptomatic Storyteller,
2020
University of South Alabama
Hysteria, Perversion, And Paranoia In The Canterbury Tales: "Wild" Analysis And The Symptomatic Storyteller, Becky Renee Mclaughlin
Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Beginning with the spectacle of hysteria, moving through the perversions of fetishism, masochism, and sadism, and ending with paranoia and psychosis, this book explores the ways that conflicts with the Oedipal law erupt on the body and in language in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for Chaucer’s tales are rife with issues of mastery and control that emerge as conflicts not only between authority and experience but also between power and knowledge, word and flesh, rule books and reason, man and woman, same and other—conflicts that erupt in a macabre sprawl of broken bones, dismembered bodies, cut throats, and decapitations. Like …
The Ego At An Impasse: Aesthetic Empathy And The Abject D’Art In Fin De Siècle Supernatural Fiction,
2020
University of New Mexico - Main Campus
The Ego At An Impasse: Aesthetic Empathy And The Abject D’Art In Fin De Siècle Supernatural Fiction, Leandra E. Binder
English Language and Literature ETDs
This dissertation examines the symbol of an art object which represents a corpse or dead person’s identity, what I call the abject d’art, as it appears in fin de siècle supernatural fiction by Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) to identify late Victorian notions of Kristevan abjection, avant la lettre. Lee’s aesthetic philosophy informs her use of the abject d’art, especially her examination of the empathetic process as part of aesthetics to explain how individuals represent and respond to objects mentally and emotionally. Through her analysis of empathy, Lee identifies the ego as a fallible moderator of an individual’s …
Sex, Lies, And Murder: Feminized Detective Fiction And The English Estate Novel,
2020
College of the Holy Cross
Sex, Lies, And Murder: Feminized Detective Fiction And The English Estate Novel, Meaghan Lanctot
The Criterion
In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Ian McEwan’s Atonement, the protagonists unravel the events of egregious crimes and their own complicity with the central tragedies. Set against the backdrop of crumbling English estates, the crimes highlight the erosion of the British ruling class at the onset of the 20th century. The unnamed narrator of Rebecca and Briony, the narrator of Atonement, are bound by their youth, age, and gender in their respective investigations into the sinister events that plague the history of Manderley and the Tallis estate, respectively. We see how the English estate is a hotbed of illicit …
Knowing The World: Shakespeare On Travel In As You Like It And Othello,
2020
Capital University
Knowing The World: Shakespeare On Travel In As You Like It And Othello, David Summers
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
No abstract provided.
John Ogilby’S Atlas Chinensis: Anglo-Dutch Exchange And The (Re)Printing Of China,
2020
Wright State University - Main Campus
John Ogilby’S Atlas Chinensis: Anglo-Dutch Exchange And The (Re)Printing Of China, Carol Mejia Laperle
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
No abstract provided.
Misogyny In The Sonnets: Connections Between Hell And Female Sexuality,
2020
University of South Florida
Misogyny In The Sonnets: Connections Between Hell And Female Sexuality, Jordan Kohn-Foley
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
No abstract provided.
Front Matter,
2020
Heidelberg University
Front Matter, Emily Isaacson
Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference
No abstract provided.
The Magic Of Love: Love Magic In Medieval Romance,
2020
University of New Mexico
The Magic Of Love: Love Magic In Medieval Romance, Dalicia Raymond
English Language and Literature ETDs
This project examines authorial representations of the morality of three functions of love magic: to induce, to disrupt, and to facilitate love in twelfth- through fifteenth-century Middle High German, Old French, and Middle English romances. Using a cultural studies approach with close textual analysis and informed by gender studies, it investigates medieval romance authors’ discomfort with love inducing magic and asserts that this discomfort is a response to the magic’s violation of free will, a central tenet of medieval theology. I find that authors condemn love inducing magic but mark specific instances acceptable through explicit clarification of divine approval. Love …
From Wordsworth’S Poetic Problem To Puzzleless Interactive Fiction,
2020
SUNY Stony Brook
From Wordsworth’S Poetic Problem To Puzzleless Interactive Fiction, Timothy Wilcox
Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020
Steve Meretzky’s 1985 A Mind Forever Voyaging functions as the first major text-adventure which does not structure its interactions around challenging, often cryptic, puzzles. Instead, the work allows readers to observe and record social change leisurely, requiring one to match wits with one’s imagination more so than the computer. This development of puzzleless interactive fiction has had forward-leaning influence. Chris Klimas’ development of Twine traces back in design philosophy to Meretzky’s innovations here, and autobiographic explorations in the medium develop then from this shift away from puzzles toward more subjective experiences. In addition to this forward influence, however, I trace …
Boethian Variations: Musical Thought In Sir Orfeo, Troilus And Criseyde, And Robert Henryson’S Orpheus And Eurydice,
2020
Western Michigan University
Boethian Variations: Musical Thought In Sir Orfeo, Troilus And Criseyde, And Robert Henryson’S Orpheus And Eurydice, Joshua T. Parks
Masters Theses
This study approaches three poems from the late medieval British Isles—the Middle English Breton lay Sir Orfeo, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice—through the lens of medieval music theory. The most important authority for medieval music theorists was the late antique philosopher Boethius, who held to a Neoplatonic philosophy of music that valued reason, theory, and contemplation of the music of the spheres. Later medieval theorists cited Boethius extensively while also adapting his thought to suit their own purposes. In particular, the early fourteenth-century French theorist Johannes de Grocheio, influenced by Aristotle, departed …
The Canons Of Fantasy: Lands Of High Adventure (2019) By Patrick Moran,
2020
The University of Glasgow
The Canons Of Fantasy: Lands Of High Adventure (2019) By Patrick Moran, Mariana Rios Maldonado
Journal of Tolkien Research
Book review, by Mariana Rios Maldonado, of The Canons of Fantasy: Lands of High Adventure (2019), by Patrick Moran
Interiority And Narrative Temporality In Jane Austen’S Persuasion,
2020
College of the Holy Cross
Interiority And Narrative Temporality In Jane Austen’S Persuasion, Margaret Flahery
The Criterion
Jane Austen’s last completed work, Persuasion, explores protagonist Anne Elliot’s female agency through use of free indirect discourse and time shifts. In the novel, published in 1817, Austen mediates between different time periods — the present day and seven years prior — to demonstrate Anne’s maturity and the evolved perspective of a woman’s status in society. Anne’s shifting interiority reflects what it means to be a woman in the Regency era, and, perhaps, across time, as she breaks out of the mediated and subjective perceptions placed upon her by herself and other characters. The result is a revolutionary conception of …
Examining Fatherhood Through Historical Empathy In Tristram Shandy,
2020
College of the Holy Cross
Examining Fatherhood Through Historical Empathy In Tristram Shandy, Marygrace King
The Criterion
Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy follows the tangential musings of Tristram Shandy — musings so roundabout and convoluted that they force modern readers either to eyerolls of frustration or to a reconceived sense of humor. Within this essay, I explore the character of Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, through a lens of historical empathy. To twenty-first century standards, Walter’s fatherhood is lacking and distant, even uncaring; yet when viewed through the lens of an eighteenth-century perspective, Walter’s motivations and eccentricities begin to make sense in the context of eighteenth-century mortality rates. I explore his unorthodox …
Creation And Beauty In Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study Of The Influence Of Neoplatonsim In J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy Of Life As “Being And Gift” (2020) By Michael John Halsall,
2020
The Hill School, Emeritus, Pottstown, Pennsylvania
Creation And Beauty In Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study Of The Influence Of Neoplatonsim In J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy Of Life As “Being And Gift” (2020) By Michael John Halsall, John Wm. Houghton
Journal of Tolkien Research
Book review by John Wm. Houghton of Creation and Beauty in Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study of the Influence of Neoplatonsim in J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy of Life as “Being and Gift” by Michael John Halsall
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People,
2020
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
“Aspects of Character” uses quantitative evidence to trace new timelines in the literary history of characterization. The guiding premise of this work is that digital libraries and mathematical perspectives can shed new light on the practices used to configure fictional people. Using texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, this dissertation analyzes how different aspects of characters have transformed throughout history, coordinating quantitative experiments with the critical perspectives of literary scholars. This project begins by analyzing the characterization used in works of fiction that were reviewed by prestigious publications. This first experiment pushes back on a historical truism about “well-crafted” …
