English Language and Literature Commons^™

Humphry Davy: Science, Authorship, And The Changing Romantic, Marianne Lind Baker

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid to late 1700s, men of letters became more and more interested in the natural world. From studies in astronomy to biology, chemistry, and medicine, these "philosophers" pioneered what would become our current scientific categories. While the significance of their contributions to these fields has been widely appreciated historically, the interconnection between these men and their literary counterparts has not. A study of the "Romantic man of science" reveals how much that figure has in common with the traditional "Romantic" literary figure embodied by poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This thesis interrogates connections between Romantic …

Pierced Through The Ear: Poetic Villainy In Othello, Kathleen Emerald Somers

Theses and Dissertations

The paper examines Othello as metapoetry. Throughout the play, key points of comparison between Iago and Shakespeare's methodologies for employing allegory, symbolism, and mimetic plot and character construction shed light upon Shakespeare's self-reflexive use of poetry as an art of imitation. More specifically, the contrast between Shakespeare and Iago's poetry delineates between dynamic and reductive uses of allegory, emphasizes an Aristotelian model of mimesis that makes reason integral to plot and character formation, and underscores an ethical function to poetry generally. In consequence of the division between Iago and Shakespeare as unethical and ethical poets respectively, critical contention concerning the …

"Who Would Keep An Ancient Form?": In Memoriam And The Metrical Ghost Of Horace, Ryan D. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Although Alfred Tennyson's 1850 elegy, In Memoriam, has long been regarded for the quality of its grief and its doubt, the deepened sense of struggle and doubt produced by his allusions to Horace in both the matter and the meter of the poem have not been considered. Attending to both syntactical/tonal allusions and metrical allusions to Horace's Odes in In Memoriam, I will examine Horace's role in creating meaning in Tennyson's poem. Drawing on various critics and Tennyson's own works, I argue that Tennyson was uncommonly familiar with Horace's Odes and Horatian Alcaic (the most common meter of …

The Enduring Austen Heroine: Self-Awareness And Moral Maturity In Jane Austen's Emma And In Modern Austen Fan-Fiction, Brittany A. Meng

Masters Theses

Jane Austen's novels continue to be popular in the twenty-first century because her heroines are both delightful and instructive; they can be viewed as role models of personal growth due to their honest self-examination and commitment to high moral standards. Chapter one establishes the patterns of personal growth that uniquely characterizes Austen's heroines in each of her six novels. Chapter two tests these conclusions by carefully examining the character of Emma Woodhouse. Though Emma is a unique heroine due to her wealth and social privileges, she follows the principles of personal growth possessed by Austen's other heroines. Chapter three further …

Reading Holiness: Agnes Grey, Ælfric, And The Augustinian Hermeneutic, Jessica Caroline Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Although Anne Brontë's first novel, Agnes Grey, presents itself as a didactic treatise, Brontë's work departs from many accepted Evangelical tropes in the portrayal of its moral protagonist. These departures create an exemplary figure whose flaws potentially subvert the novel's didactic purposes. The character of Agnes is not necessarily meant to be directly emulated, yet Brontë's governess is presented as a tool of moral instruction. The conflict between the novel's self-proclaimed didactic purpose and the form in which it presents that purpose raises a number of interpretive questions. I argue that many of these questions can be answered through …

Footnotes, Issue 7, Nov.-Dec. 2010, Department Of English

Footnotes: Department of English Newsletter (2008-2012)

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam Karl Heinz Göller (May 13, 1924 - April 22, 2009), Richard Utz

Medieval Institute Affiliated Faculty & Staff Publications

Eulogy on academic teacher, adviser, and mentor; founding dean of the College of Languages and Literatures at the University of Regensburg, Germany; and founder and honorary president of the German Medieval Academy (Mediävistenverband).

Poem No. 104, November 2010, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Reading, Writing, And Thinking About Disability Issues, Tammie M. Kennedy, Tracey Menten

English Faculty Publications

Nearly all secondary educators are required to take at least one special education course to become certified. However, the focus of this course is generally on how to teach Special Education (SPED) students, not how to teach about disability issues and culture. In fact, much attention is given to keeping Learning Disabled/Emotional Disorder/Behavioral Disorder (LD/ED/BD) students’ disabilities invisible. Teachers learn how to modify lesson plans so as not to expose these disabilities as well as to increase a sense of inclusion for the SPED student. While we believe that the emphasis on privacy rights and inclusion is essential, we also …

Emily And Annie: Doris Lessing's And Jamaica Kincaid's Portraits Of The Mothers They Remember And The Mothers That Might Have Been, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In 2008 at the age of eighty-nine, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing returned to the mother who has haunted her life and her literature in order to rewrite a fictional account of the life that might have been and a biographical account of the life that she actually lived in Alfred & Emily. Her efforts to finally exorcise the powerful and hated figure that has hounded her for most of her eighty-nine years call to mind similar efforts throughout the canon of fifty-nine-year-old celebrated Antiguan-American novelist Jamaica Kincaid to free herself. Both writers take advantage of and seek to find …

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Professional Writing: What You Already Know, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article offers the authors' insights on professional writing that are taught in the English classroom, in which it is defined as writing within professional context with genres such as formal reports, directives, and proposals. They state that many teachers learn professional writing not only from advice, but also from experience and practice. They also mention that professional writing can be integrated in all fields of English language arts classrooms that can be taught to students.

Keep Going, Jeff Lacey

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Keep Going is a collection of poetry whose themes include life in modern America, man’s relationship with the natural world, and living in the Midwest. The collection includes both free verse and metric poetry and both narrative and lyric poetry.

William Carlos Williams, David Raphael Wang, And The Dynamic Of East/West Collaboration, Zhaoming Qian

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mentorship: Invited Remarks At Red Tassel/Mortarboard Dinner, Sally E. Parry

Faculty Publications – English

Invited talk at the Red Tassel/Mortarboard Dinner, Illinois State University, October 19, 2010.

Letters, Douglas A. Anderson, Pierre H. Berube

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A Footnote to Tales Before Narnia by Douglas A. Anderson: Suggests an addition to the list of recommended reading in the author’s Tales Before Narnia: M.P. Shiel. C.S. Lewis was known to have owned several books by this author.

The Origins of Dwarves by Pierre H. Berube: Following on Helios de Rosario Martinez’s article in Mythlore 109/110, suggests several avenues of exploration for the popular folkloric concept of dwarves as miners.

The Company They Didn't Keep: Collaborative Women In The Letters Of C.S. Lewis, Sam Mcbride

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Building on the work of Diana Pavlac Glyer to establish a framework and set of terms for understanding the collaborative nature of the Inklings, McBride takes us outside their exclusively masculine circle to look at women who influenced Lewis’s writing. His study introduces us to women who served Lewis as, in Glyer’s terms, Resonators, Opponents, Conductors, and so on, from anonymous fans to well-known names like Pitter and Sayers.

Simbelmynë: Mortality And Memory In Middle-Earth, William H. Stoddard

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Elegiac contemplation of the function of memory in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and the complex intersections of memory, loss, immortality, consolation, and creativity made flesh in Tolkien’s depictions of the races of Elves and Men and their interactions.

Corrupting Beauty: Rape Narrative In The Silmarillion, Lynn Whitaker

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Describes the themes and traditions Tolkien was drawing on as a storyteller in the tales of Aredhel and Lúthien, but more importantly, examines the theological implications suggested by his depictions of the women in these stories and how these “rape narratives” serve to underscore the sacredness of the created world in Tolkien’s legendarium.

Reviews, Joe R. Christopher, Janet Brennan Croft, Jason Fisher, Priscilla Hobbs, Emily A. Moniz, David D. Oberhelman, Harley J. Sims

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. Dimitra Fimi. Reviewed by Jason Fisher.

Charles Williams and his Contemporaries. Suzanne Bray and Richard Sturch, eds. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. Arika Okrent. Reviewed by Harley J. Sims.

Millennial Mythmaking: Essays on the Power of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Films and Games. John Perlich & David Whitt, eds. Reviewed by Priscilla Hobbs

Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien. Bradford Lee Eden, ed. Reviewed by …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.