Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Awful Nearness: Rape And The English Novel, 1740–1900, Erin A. Spampinato

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Awful Nearness: Rape and the History of the English Novel, 1740-1900,” argues that representations of rape and sexual violence have played an unrecognized role in the history of the novel, indeed that such plots epitomize the most important epistemological questions with which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel grappled. This project is both literary historical and presentist; while it describes a new genealogy of the British novel, it also traces how representations of rape have substantively shaped our contemporary understanding and rhetoric of sexual violence.

Drawing on the work of a wide array of feminist thinkers, I argue that novelistic rape …

The Picturesque And Its Decay: The Travel Writing And Journals Of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, And Mary Shelley, Gabrielle Kappes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project puts forth the argument that when the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature and picturesque tourism had peaked, writers following in the picturesque tradition grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. In the chapters that follow, I present three authors, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley, who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden Journal (1798) demonstrates the nuances of the picturesque instability where distinctions between nature and the cultural production of nature have become muddied. I then examine three tour narratives in order to draw attention to how …

Failures Of Grace: Limits Of Tragedy In The Late Nineteenth-Century Novel, Anick S. Rolland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Failures of Grace argues that nineteenth-century novelists challenge the hegemonies of literary form and the value of personal suffering through what I call the trans-genre tragic novel. This new form is emblematic of a period in which values hang in the balance and places traditional values at odds with themselves by combining the low form of the novel with the highest mimetic mode in the Western tradition: tragedy. It simultaneously proposes the most vulnerable members of society as tragic heroes in contrast to the noble figures who previously were presumed to define the genre.

Through close readings of works by …

Flower Unfurling: Buddhist Modernism And The Early Writing Of James Joyce, Erin Garrow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the history of the references to Buddhism in Stephen Hero, James Joyce’s first and unpublished novel, through the author’s previous writing, his sources, and his context, in order to determine how—if at all—the tradition bore upon his earliest depiction of consciousness. Acknowledging that Joyce habitually revisited and refined earlier ideas and prose, it attends to previous essays, notebooks, book reviews, conversations, letters, epiphanies, poems, and autobiographical prose; to available material, bibliographical, and biographical evidence about the specific volumes and performances to which Joyce had access; to language and paratext—including advertisements, introductions, and appended essays—in those volumes; …

The Leap And The Gap: Writing Suicide In Modernist Britain, Aaron Botwick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Suicide is integral to the history of British literature, and yet the subject has yielded scant scholarly attention. This study attempts to partially rectify the absence by identifying a transformation in English suicide discourse between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I argue that, informed by both rationalism and cause-and-effect reasoning, Victorian literature—including poems, triple-decker novels, broadsheets, and sermons—largely conceived of suicide as a public phenomenon. The action, rather than the actor, is the object of study, and as a result what Andrew Bennett calls “the phenomenology, the lived experience … of suicide” is abandoned in favor of social …

Feminist Theology And The Fantastic In Jewish Poetics And Children's Literature (1960s–Present), Meira S. Levinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the development of Jewish fantasy rhetoric in post-WWII British and American literature, focusing on three genres: kabbalistic Beat poetry, children’s fantasy, and graphic novels/comics. Despite increasing scholarly attention to all these areas, little work has focused on fantasy rhetoric or issues of gender and sexuality within non-canonical Jewish literature, or on interplays of religion and fantasy in children’s literature. Jewish kabbalistic poetry and children’s fantasy speak to each other in their mutual engagements with the otherworldly, mystical and monstrous, interrogations of gender, and complex portrayals of feminist theological potentialities. I identify and analyze Jewish-hermeneutic themes and methodologies …

Outlandish People: Gypsies, Race, And Fantasies Of National Identity In Early Modern England, Sydnee Wagner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the arrival of Romani people in England in the 16th century, the figure of the Gypsy has been a staple of English literature and culture. My dissertation, Outlandish People: Gypsies, Race, and Fantasies of National Identity in Early Modern England, argues that representations of Gypsies, from Shakespeare’s Othello and Antony and Cleopatra to Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphosed, served as a foil for English writers to create a distinctly white early modern English subject. By investigating the racialization of the Gypsy, this project considers technologies of race that lie within the parameters of England itself. Though the English …

Material Culture And Remembering The 1857 Indian Uprising, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Remembering the 1857 Indian Uprising in Civic Celebrations

A Personal Reflection On Colin Manlove And Stephen Prickett, John Pennington

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

Letters From The “Gentlemen Of The Press,” 1810-1845, David E. Latane

English Publications

A collection of letters by men and women associated with the periodical press in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, transcribed, annotated, and presented with scans of the original letters. Notable contributors include Times editors Thomas Barnes and John Delane, Fraser's Magazine writers William Maginn and John Heraud, Charles Molloy Westmacott editor of The Age, Stanley Lees Giffard of The Standard , and Mary Russell Mitford.

Living Words; Dying Flesh: The Truth And Testimonies Of Desdemona In Othello And Pompilia In The Ring And The Book, Martha Clare Brinkman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways in which Desdemona in William Shakespeare’s Othello (1603/4) and Pompilia in Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868) exemplify female characters whose testimonies highlight their souls’ salvation and demonstrate that they ultimately transcend their domestic roles. This thesis engages historical scholars who discuss the tensions between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and the state in early modern and Victorian England, and literary scholars who focus on Desdemona and Pompilia as either submissive or possessing agency. This thesis includes the work of developmental psychologist, Carol Gilligan, to show how Desdemona and Pompilia emphasize care …

Debt Letters: Epistolary Economies In Early Modern England, Laura Kolb

Publications and Research

This essay tracks the emergence of ‘debt letters’, an epistolary sub-genre in seventeenth-century letter-writing manuals. Debt letters ask for money, offer funds and excuse the inability to make (or repay) loans. The rhetorical strategies evident in sample debt letters point to a cultural emphasis on friendship as a site of financial stability through reciprocal lending. Moreover, these rhetorical strategies serve multiple goals, which at times conflict: the short-term goal of navigating particular debt arrangements, and the long-term goal of maintaining an amicable bond over time.

The Miseducation Of Marianne Dashwood: Jane Austen’S Politicization Of Sentimental Discourse, Kevin Frazelis

Dissertations and Theses

Examining the love triangle between Marianne Dashwood, Colonel Brandon, and John Willoughby provides new insight into how Austen decided to politicize the notion of the novel to demonstrate the inherent flaw in how sentimental novels to depicted romances bared a threat to women. I work against the conventional opposition of "good" versions of masculinity versus "poor" versions to posit a notion that instead, most masculinities are unstable and a detriment to the fairer sex. In this essay, I will argue that Sense and Sensibility disclose Austen's anxieties regarding sentimentalism because, from this perspective, Marianne Dashwood's character arc illustrates the author's …

Milton's Plant Eyes: Minimal Cognition, Similitude, And Sexuality In The Garden, Perry Guevara

English and Creative Writing | Faculty Scholarship

This essay turns to minimal cognition, a theoretical extension of embodied cognition, to argue for plant sentience in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton imagines plants as minimally cognitive beings within an affective ecosystem, where they readily enter into the epic poem’s complex circuits of desire with appetites of their own. Specifically, the essay claims that botanical cognition arises at the convergence of two seventeenth-century philosophical systems: the first, Milton’s materialist monism, and the second, Paracelsian medicine, which avers a plant’s therapeutic effect on a human body part sharing morphological resemblance. The essay concludes that Milton’s eroticization of similitude enables a …

‘Framed And Clothed With Variety’: Print Culture, Multimodality, And Visual Design In John Derricke’S Image Of Irelande, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

This chapter argues that the twelve illustrative plates in John Derricke's Image of Ireland (1581) were the author's primary focus, aimed at readers who practiced the kinds of ‘laudable exercises’ demanded of committed Protestants: a kind of reading that was recursive, studious, and dynamic. This essay contextualises Derricke’s Image in relation to printer John Day’s output in the late sixteenth century as well as to contemporary illustrated texts from which Derricke may have drawn inspiration as a reader and woodcarver. I focus on the seven plates containing small alphabetical keys and their impact on how and in what order we …

Too Young Or Too Old? Age And The Politics Of Performing King Lear - Successfully!, Jim B. Wallace

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

“It is sometimes said that the problem with the part of Lear is that by the time you are old enough to play it, you are too old to play it.” (Jonathan Bate)

Theatre critics rarely see an outstanding performance of King Lear. The thesis of this paper is that it is possible to successfully perform the role of Lear however it takes much more than excellent acting skills to do so. To successfully play Lear requires a visceral understanding of the profound psychological and physical changes that generally begin around age sixty-five. This paper demonstrates that what one learns …

"'In A Distant Unknown Country': A New Historicist Look At James Joyce’S “Eveline,” Argentina, And The Zwi Migdal In The Early 1900s.", M Laura Barberan Reinares

Publications and Research

This article analyzes James Joyce’s story “Eveline” (1904) looking at the moral panic about “white slavery” in Europe and the new continent, especially focusing on Argentina, the foremost recipient of trafficked women between 1880 and 1930 (and, of course, Joyce’s destination of choice for Eveline). It was precisely at the turn of the twentieth century that, along with the popularity of transatlantic migration, sex trafficking went fully global and news about international “dangers” for single white women reached the general public, provoking all kinds of repressive reactions through what became known as the “social purity” movement.

Dracula As Inter-American Film Icon: Universal Pictures And Cinematográfica Absa, Antonio Barrenechea

English & Linguistics Articles

My essay explores the vampire cinema of Hollywood and Mexico. In particular, I trace the relationship between Universal Pictures as the progenitor of horror during the Great Depression and Cinematográfica ABSA's "mexploitation" practices. The latter resulted in the first vampire film in Latin America--"El vampiro" (1957). Rather than strengthening separatist national cinemas, the unintended consequences of genre film production make this a case of inter-American scope.

Counterfactuals And Prefactuals In Shakespeare: Understanding The Human Mind And Human Behavior Through The Literary Analysis Of Conditional Mental Simulation Thoughts In The Narratives Of Plays, Cierra R. Cowan

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Review Of "Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Catalogue", Joshua S. Reid

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Catalogue (RCCC) database, edited by Brenda Hosington.