Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Illuminating The Need For Fiction To Love Within A Postmodern Reality, Alexandria Lightsey

English

Jonathan Safran Foer in his novel Everything is Illuminated (2002), engages and overturns traditional notions of love. In his work, love, as an exalted feeling, does not exist outside of animalistic desire. Instead, as Foer proposes through the numerous and complex relationships of his characters, love exists in an illusion as the individual defines and creates it. To love is to willfully choose to believe in this idealism. For this idealism, whose existence is impossible within the broken nature of this world, must be sustained in an artifice once-removed from reality. Everything is Illuminated thus suggests that without fiction, reality …

The Cyborg Griffin: A Speculative Fiction Literary Journal, Hollins University

Cyborg Griffin: a Speculative Fiction Literary Journal

Notes:

copyrighted

Hollins Student Publication

Scope: short stories, artwork, poetry, essays, and comics

Paper copies shelved in University Archives.

"Atlas Shrugged" And Third-Wave Feminism: An Unlikely Alliance, Paul Mcmahan

MA in English Theses

Ayn Rand and her work are often ignored by feminist critics because of Rand's personal life, her views on sex, and her vehement rejections of collectivism. Feminism has moved through overlapping waves known as first, second, and third-wave feminism. Throughout its life feminism has been marked by two strands: relational and individual. The strand of individual feminism has been more prevalent in Anglo-American feminism while relational feminism has been more predominant in European feminism. Atlas Shrugged was published six years prior to Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique , a text generally agreed upon as the starting point for second-wave feminism. …

Smallpox Inoculation And Race Relations In Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century America, Kristen Schaibly

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Science Fiction And Lyric Poetry, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This piece explores connections between science fiction and lyric poetry.

Modelos Masculinos Y Violencia En Sanctuary Y Crónica De Una Muerte Anunciada, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

This essay analyzes how two novels, William Faulkner’s Sanctuary and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, present masculine models that juxtapose power and violence during times of social crisis. Both novels present violent masculinities that overcome peaceful masculinities, in conflicts that result in murders and rapes; but rather than acuse the individuals responsible for the violent acts, the texts point out the social mechanisms that inexorably move the authors of the crimes. In both works we also see violence against women and resulting public deaths of men wrongly accused, which happen due to an inability to adapt to …

Pax Ecclesia: Globalization And Catholic Literary Modernism, Christopher Wachal

Dissertations

The transnational turn in literary studies has brought new rubrics and critical vocabularies to the study of cultures experiencing the destabilizing effects of globalization. It gives special attention to the ways cultural forms, including literature, must be reformulated in the absence of the coherence of the nation-state. Often unremarked upon, however, is the role of religion in providing other channels of affinity around which to cohere. Many writers in the 20th century respond to the shocks of globalizing modernity by writing in light of particular faith traditions, especially the aesthetic strategies and thematic concerns that characterize the Catholic literary tradition. …

"Introduction" To Conjuring The Real: The Role Of Architecture In Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Rumiko Handa, James Potter

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Buildings give an immediate presence to the historical or fictional world, which otherwise is unknown or unfamiliar to the audience. The portrayal of a building’s concrete and specific substance makes the world come alive, although the building itself is a mere segment of the world that it represents. This book will trace the genealogy of this representational role of architecture, going back through the history of film and then further in literature, art, and theater, and identify its pedigree in the nineteenth century, where authors, artists, and stage managers used thorough depictions of buildings to effectively feed the audience’s historical …

Whence Comes Black Art?: The Construction And Application Of “Black Motivation”, Derrell Acon

Lawrence University Honors Projects

George Schuyler, in his tragically misguided 1926 essay for The Nation magazine, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” suggests that the only difference between Blacks and Whites is the color of skin, and that both races experience the same social, psychological and educational forces in America. He blatantly disregards American racism and inequality, and in his attempt to put forth his advocacy of color-blindness he merely projects and perpetuates the most racist of ideals within our country. Schuyler views the concept of Black Art very narrowly and insists on the impossibility of such an idea because of the supposed Americanness of the art. …

Reassessing Whitman's Hegelian Affinities, Brian Glaser

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article explores Walt Whitman's Hegelian beliefs.

Pomp And Circumstances: A Film, Danielle Melissovas Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Since this is a thesis project about film, I thought it appropriate to acknowledge wellknown films about film in my chapter titles. In their own way, each of these films enhance audiences' understanding of the film industry and the creative and technical skills required in filmmaking. Writing about making my own film has had a similar effect on me because it has made me more aware of my choices and expectations about the film, as well as the collaboration that made it all possible. My thesis project began with a desire to experience every stage of the independent filmmaking process: …

Purpose Found: Conditions Of Meaningful Existence, Selfhood And The Role Of The Other In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Anna Sawch

Honors Theses

While Biblical interpretations of Genesis posit God as omnipotent creator and teacher, in John Milton's Paradise Lost it is Adam and Eve‟s relationship and interactions with one another that make them who they are and mold them into who they become. The Adam and Eve of Paradise Lost are true characters, and dynamic ones at that. Rather than serve an allegory or work to create a lofty moral lesson, Adam and Eve grow through speech, desire, and language, interfacing with one another in the spirit of true human curiosity and self-discovery. I first explored this observation that Milton's Adam and …

The Power Of Words: The Use Of Language In Ethan Frome, Heather Faye Spear

Masters Theses

Edith Wharton's novel, Ethan Frome, has been sharply criticized for its tragic ending, yet Wharton's compelling storytelling which depicts universal conditions of mankind accomplishes something powerful through its narrative: it defends language. The complicated relationship between the three main characters, Zeena, Ethan, and Mattie is rooted in their utilization of language. Using a combination of close reading for textual analysis and identifying a communicative style for each character, this thesis asserts that how the characters in this novel utilize language contests the meaninglessness and relativity supported by deconstructionists. Wharton clearly illustrates Zeena's linguistic power over both Ethan and Mattie, and …

"I Had Never Before ... Heard Of Him At All": William Gilmore Simms, The Elusive William North, And A Lost Simms Novel About American Authorship, Patrick G. Scott

Faculty Publications

Examines a review by the antebellum Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms of a new book by the English writer William North (1825-1854), North's posthumous novel The Slave of the Lamp (1855), discusses possible reasons for Simms's hostility to North such as North's links to the New York Bohemians and his anti-professionalism, and explores what the review reveals about a now-lost Simms novel, with the same title, that gave a different perspective on mid-19th century changes in the conditions and profession of authorship in America.

Dishonest Abe Scholarship: The Lincoln Biography Plagiarism Scandal, Robert Bray, Michael Burlingame

Scholarship

'Dishonest Abe Scholarship' is a narrative/analytical account of the controversy surrounding charges of plagiarism in Stephen B. Oates' biography of Abraham Lincoln, 'With Malice Toward None.' It is written by (and of course from the point of view of) two of the scholars who first made the case against Oates, Robert Bray and Michael Burlingame.

‘The Stones I Shaped Endure’: Dickinsonian Pastiche In A.S. Byatt’S Possession, Robert Bray

Scholarship

This is a previously unpublished meditation on A. S. Byatt's use of Emily Dickinson-like pastiche poetry in the novel 'Possession.'

Pecan Grove Review Volume 12, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

Duplicities Of Power: Amiri Baraka’S And Lorenzo Thomas’S Responses To September 11, John Gery

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Principles Of Thomas Pynchon's Literary Realities, Ira Anthony Walker

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Thomas Pynchon's literature is unique in subject and style. Postmodern by definition, Pynchon illustrates physics as a societal metaphor; Guy Debord's text The Society of the Spectacle suggests that these societal, literary, metaphors constitute and/or lead to a Spectacle. Through the analysis of an unpublished text: Minstrel Island, an early written short story: "Entropy," and a short novel: The Crying of Lot 49 the reader is capable of seeing a developing theme of physics as metaphor constituting multiple Spectacles. The narrative devices offered by Thomas Pynchon become Spectacular in nature and reflect the characteristics and environment of the tumultuous 1960s …

Front Matter, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.