Women's Self-Definition Through Poetry,
2020
James Madison University
Women's Self-Definition Through Poetry, Olivia Samimy
MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference
This project looks at five female poets across history – Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Forough Farrokhzad, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath – to explore the various challenges they faced writing in their patriarchal societies. Further, it looks at the way they each used their poetry to define themselves and their own identity. This project seeks to explain why this act of self-definition is significant, and why it so often drew criticism from the writers’ respective societies. What was discovered, is that the act of a woman crafting her own self-definition through poetry is a privilege in a patriarchal society, where …
Renderings Of The Self: The Inception Of Autobiographical Writing In Robinson, Wollstonecraft, And Wordsworth,
2020
Seattle Pacific University
Renderings Of The Self: The Inception Of Autobiographical Writing In Robinson, Wollstonecraft, And Wordsworth, Hannah M. Dewitt
Honors Projects
This paper covers the origination of British autobiography and investigates why authors began to write autobiographically through the analysis of three pioneering autobiographical works: The Prelude by William Wordsworth, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft, and Memoirs of Mary Robinson, “Perdita,” by Mary Robinson. In each section of this paper, I examine these stories and authors individually and attempt to unearth what pushed each author toward autobiographical writing in relation to what drove them to publish their work. I argue that autobiography is centered around rendering oneself, and that self-renderings …
Index To The Journal Of Tolkien Research Volume 1 Through Volume 9 Issue 1,
2020
Independent Scholar
Index To The Journal Of Tolkien Research Volume 1 Through Volume 9 Issue 1, Douglas A. Anderson
Journal of Tolkien Research
An Index to The Journal of Tolkien Research from Volume 1 through Volume 9 issue 1
Utopian And Dystopian Themes In Tolkien's Legendarium (2020), By Mark Doyle,
2020
independent scholar
Utopian And Dystopian Themes In Tolkien's Legendarium (2020), By Mark Doyle, John D. Rateliff
Journal of Tolkien Research
Book review by John D. Rateliff of Utopian and Dystopian Themes in Tolkien's Legendarium (2020) by Mark Doyle
'Where Many Paths And Errands Meet': Travel Writing In The Lord Of The Rings,
2020
Boston University
'Where Many Paths And Errands Meet': Travel Writing In The Lord Of The Rings, Will Glover
Journal of Tolkien Research
In this paper I examine The Lord of the Rings through the lens of genre criticism. I take issue with the commonplace characterisation of the work as an ‘epic’ or a ‘romance’, a tendency that has restricted interpretations of the work and tied criticism of it too exclusively to that of medieval literature. I argue that the work should be viewed as a modern novel: an open-ended and capacious text comprised of numerous generic traditions, including the previously overlooked genre of travel literature. After establishing a working definition of travel writing, I analyse The Lord of the Rings's paratextual …
Sartorial Subversion: Eliza Haywood’S Fantomina And The Literary Tradition Of Women’S Community,
2020
CUNY New York City College of Technology
Sartorial Subversion: Eliza Haywood’S Fantomina And The Literary Tradition Of Women’S Community, Ruth Garcia
Publications and Research
This article locates Fantomina in a literary tradition that proposes all-female communities, such as convents and monasteries, as liberating and empowering spaces. I argue that the novella implies a virtual community rather than an actual one, as the heroine collectively embodies many different women, all of distinct social ranks: the heroine is both one woman and a variety of women brought together under the auspices of a single body, much the way discrete individuals together compose a community. Then, too, Beauplaisir, the object of the heroine’s desire, treats all the personae the same, no matter their social station. This emphasis …
Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics,
2020
CUNY Graduate Center
Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics, Amir Dagan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation is intended as a correction to the almost universal contemporary assumption that beauty is either nonexistent or a tool of oppression, and that the arts should be judged less by their aesthetic value than their social, political, or moral dimensions. This dissertation will propose a fivefold argument. First, I will assert that the experience of beauty is real, pleasurable, and not in any way culturally determined, second, that beauty is the most significant and characteristic feature of art, third, that the rejection of the reality of beauty is motivated more by the fragility of the mass man’s ego …
British Romanticism And The Paradoxes Of Natural Education,
2020
CUNY Graduate Center
British Romanticism And The Paradoxes Of Natural Education, Catherine S. Engh
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“British Romanticism and the Paradoxes of Natural Education” offers a distinct perspective on Romantic-era ideas on “natural” education and human development. Though the Romantic retreat into nature has long been understood as a break from the Enlightenment’s programmatic commitment to the progress of reason, I contend that the ideas on natural development of four canonical Romantic authors—Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley—actually originate in the ideas of one of the foremost figures of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Natural education is doomed to failure in Rousseau’s thought because “nature” is paradoxically a social construct. I argue that …
Crafting Girlhoods,
2020
CUNY Graduate Center
Crafting Girlhoods, Elissa E. Myers
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Crafting Girlhoods emphasizes nineteenth and early twentieth century British and American girls' agency and creativity within the prescribed limits of educational crafts—including sewing and periodical-making. My first section shows how girls use psychological means to resist the cultural and gendered imperatives of sewing and tidiness, while my second section shows how girls resisted the censorship and harassment that the newspaper and periodical forms allowed by creating intimate communities in the pages of their periodicals that could help them negotiate these difficulties. In both cases, I will show how the craft forms themselves were their own antidote to the constricting force …
Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale,
2020
CUNY Graduate Center
Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …
Shakespeare's Problem Comedies As Self-Critique,
2020
CUNY Graduate Center
Shakespeare's Problem Comedies As Self-Critique, John-Paul Spiro
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
I argue that Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well reveal underexplored features common to Shakespeare’s comedies. Often interpreted as “problem plays,” they are more representative of the genre than previously acknowledged. I suggest that Shakespeare wrote them to de-nature and de-familiarize his own practices. The plays present the coercion inherent in the normativizing of marriage as the basis for social and political order. The “happiness” achieved—or at least gestured towards—at the end of Shakespearean comedy restricts human possibilities and is often presented as an imposition or injunction rather than a reflection of spontaneous, collective emotion. In particular, …
"The Sweet And The Bitter": Death And Dying In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings (2018) By Amy Amendt-Raduege; And Fantasies Of Time And Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) By Anna Vaninskaya,
2020
University of Glasgow
"The Sweet And The Bitter": Death And Dying In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings (2018) By Amy Amendt-Raduege; And Fantasies Of Time And Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) By Anna Vaninskaya, Kris Swank
Journal of Tolkien Research
Book reviews by Kris Swank of "The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (2018) by Amy Amendt-Raduege; and Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) by Anna Vaninskaya
Bombadil And Bible Stories: A Biblical Function For Tom Bombadil Within Frodo’S Quest,
2020
Independent scholar
Bombadil And Bible Stories: A Biblical Function For Tom Bombadil Within Frodo’S Quest, Clive Shergold
Journal of Tolkien Research
This essay probes the purpose of the encounter between Tom Bombadil and Frodo and his friends, within the overall narrative of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It asks: Why do the hobbits encounter Tom at this point in their journey? Why does Tom rescue, care for, equip and send them on? Why does Tom not accompany them further, and why does he never meet them again? Then it proposes an explanation based on comparisons with Bible stories that include theophanies and angelic appearances, and shown to provide answers to the questions, and suggestions for Tom Bombadil’s wider …
Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past),
2020
The University of Sydney
Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
This paper considers the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine from the late Middle English romance Melusine. By invoking contemporary leadership theory, this paper identifies leadership maneuvers in Melusine that are similar to those often practiced by women today, but the discourses of gender identity then ultimately render Melusine’s leadership invisible, just as leadership discourses today often render female leadership invisible. By uncovering the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine and identifying commonalities with the leadership of women today, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the contemporary problem of the marked …
Matrons, Mothers, And Monsters: The Heroine In Beowulf, Grendel, And The Mere Wife,
2020
College of the Holy Cross
Matrons, Mothers, And Monsters: The Heroine In Beowulf, Grendel, And The Mere Wife, Grace Lucier
College Honors Program
This thesis examines the relationship between gender and heroism in the Beowulf tale and two of its modern retellings. It includes an exploration of the medieval gender roles of the original epic using Seamus Heaney and E. Talbot Donaldson’s translations. This thesis also addresses the ways in which some characters disturb gender binaries and social roles — especially in the case of Grendel’s mother. The second and third chapters focus on two retellings of the Beowulf text respectively: John Gardner’s Grendel , told from the perspective of the monster Grendel; and Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife , which is …
Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem,
2020
CUNY Hunter College
Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem, Luke C. Widlund
Theses and Dissertations
My MA thesis examines sixteenth and seventeeth-century lyric poetry by the male poets Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Thomas Carew, and Andrew Marvell. These poets make use of different lyric genres and forms, including Petrarchan sonnets and carpe diem arguments, to torture the purported female mistresses. A close examination of specific works, including Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Donne’s “The Apparition”, Carew’s “Song: Persuasion to Enjoy”, and Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” demonstrates that they all share a preoccupation with weaponizing poetry in their depiction of mistresses and female lovers in pain and punishment. Poetry functions as a tool for imposing …
An Anthology Of Irish Nationalism: Music, Verse, Speeches, And Interviews Regarding The Betterment Of The State Of Ireland, From The Sixth Century Until The Liberation Of Ireland,
2020
LSU New Orleans
An Anthology Of Irish Nationalism: Music, Verse, Speeches, And Interviews Regarding The Betterment Of The State Of Ireland, From The Sixth Century Until The Liberation Of Ireland, Sofia J. Gilmore-Montero
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
When I started this project because in my extensive amount of research into Irish literature, I found that the common theme in many of the works was nationalism and the desire to have a free state. I could not find any books that focused on nationalistic literature over the lengthy history of Ireland, only collections that pertained to a specific time period. This thesis project proposes introductory material and a potential table of contents to an anthology that would be centered around the theme of Irish nationalism in literature between the ninth century and the liberation of Ireland. It covers …
More Human Than Human: Artificial People In Literature And Media,
2020
University of New Orleans
More Human Than Human: Artificial People In Literature And Media, Taylor P. Amalfitano
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Though Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein over two hundred years ago, many of the main themes of alienation and revenge featured in Shelley’s novel reappear in HBO’s Westworld in 2016. This thesis establishes a genealogy for the stories of artificial people and analyzes the relationship between human beings and artificial life, as it is portrayed in speculative fiction and popular media. The popularity of robots and cyborgs is associated with people’s fear of technology, but their stories are often used as an allegory to explain aspects of the human experience that are unknown or difficult to understand. As artificial intelligence becomes …
A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights,
2020
City University of New York (CUNY)
A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights, Jordan Cymrot
Student Theses and Dissertations
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847 at a point of collision between Romantic thought and Victorian ideals. Her novel exemplifies a developed and deliberate effort to represent a world ruled by forces out of one’s control, the most evident example of this being the supernatural force that overtakes the novel. In her precise focus on the language and natural landscape that bind this novel together, her characters emerge as representative of the psychological complexity produced by the coexistence of the mundane and the extraordinary. My thesis focuses on the effects of the natural landscape and the forces that …
“Lay Down My Soul At Stake”: Of Female Friendship In The Merchant Of Venice, Othello, And The Winter’S Tale,
2020
CUNY Bernard M Baruch College
“Lay Down My Soul At Stake”: Of Female Friendship In The Merchant Of Venice, Othello, And The Winter’S Tale, Audrey-Melody Cubas
Student Theses and Dissertations
In this project, I will not only shift a critical eye on both male and female friendship, but more specifically and extensively, I will examine how Shakespeare treats female friendship in three of his plays: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. The female pairs of focus, in play order, will be Portia and Nerissa, Desdemona and Emilia, and Hermione and Paulina. Additionally, I will give an overlook of the history of Renaissance friendship portrayal in both the literary and historical accounts. This historical background will serve to highlight the clear contrast between the emphasized …
