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World, Worlds, Worlding: A Review Of Pheng Cheah's What Is A World? On Postcolonial Literature As World Literature, Chris Hall

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Review of Pheng Cheah, What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature. Presents an overview of Cheah's argument regarding normativity and temporality in worlds and worlding, a summary of chapters, and an assessment of the book's contribution to philosophy, world literature, and postcolonial studies.

Decorating The Performative Body In Tender Is The Night, Alyssa Q. Johnson

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

In Tender Is the Night (1934), Fitzgerald uses clothing and fashion to heighten the sense of time period as well as to enhance the ways in which the world, on both sides of the Atlantic, was changing. However, changes on the surface frequently do not reveal a change in underlying motivations for dress. In Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald uses clothing in symbolic ways that allow characters to perform roles to achieve their goals. Through the ways bodies are shaped in the novel, Fitzgerald reveals that clothing, shopping, and perfectly bronzed skin have the power to make great economic …

Going Slumming In Mexico: Rereading Primitivism In Katherine Anne Porter’S Flowering Judas And Other Stories, Annika M. Schadewaldt

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Katherine Anne Porter’s short story collection Flowering Judas and Other Stories from 1935 features most of the author’s engagement with Mexico as a setting and its social realities after the revolution. While most scholars agree that Porter’s experiences during her stays in-Katherine Anne Porter’s short story collection Flowering Judas and Other Stories from 1935 features most of the author’s engagement with Mexico as a setting and its social realities after the revolution. While most scholars agree that Porter’s experiences during her stays in Mexico crucially shaped her artistic vision, there is less agreement on the specificities of her image of …

Sexual And Erotic Transgression Through Aesthetic History: A Study Of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ronny F. Ford

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

This article examines the relationship between Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poetic writing and history, especially in regards to how he explores sexual transgressions. The article begins with how aestheticism works in tangent with history to further these transgressions within a historical context and especially within the realm of Victorian Christianity. Next, Swinburne’s medieval aesthetics in “The Leper” will be analyzed in regards specifically necrophilia and the taking care of a leper, and how the writing of this poem was both a condemnation of Christianity and an accidental upholding of it. The violent homoeroticism and monstrous femininity of “Anactoria” are also looked …

A “Defect Of Justice”: Congregationalism, The Calvinist Problem, And The Unitarian Solution In Sylvester Judd's Margaret, Benjamin M. Woods

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

This article contributes to a small body of criticism concerning Sylvester Judd’s 1845 novel Margaret. Largely described as a “Transcendentalist” novel that critiques the Calvinist theology prevalent in late-eighteenth-early-nineteenth century New England village society, I argue for an interpretation of the novel that is concerned the interaction between Calvinism and the Congregationalist model of social and religious organization over time. Rather than just exposing the negative social ramifications Calvinist doctrines like total depravity can have on New England society, I assert that the novel exposes the limitations in Puritan Congregationalist ideals espoused by early figures such as John Winthrop …

Their Eyes Were Watching A Goddess: Zora Neale Hurston's Vodou Subtext, Laura R. Sheffler

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

Written in Haiti but set in Florida, Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God makes rich use of Haitian religious traditions to empower African American women. Vodou, the religion of the slaves, was both a religious act and a political one in Haiti. African slaves continued to find power in the evocation of their gods to defy the colonial powers. Hurston taps into the subverted powers of the Vodou pantheon and rituals to speak to her American audience, linking the physical rebellions of the earthly world with the spiritual world. One voice of Hurston's double narrative speaks to …

The Transformation Of Tessie Hutchinson: A Character Analysis, Jillian Pitelka

COD Library Student Research and Award Symposium

The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, is not the ordinary lottery we are all used to today. In the beginning it may seem that way but, in the end, it turns into a sort a sacrifice. The main character in this short story is Mrs. Hutchinson (Tessie) and she shows no fear of this lottery like her neighbors do. In my paper, The Transformation of Tessie, I argue that Tessie does not take the lottery seriously until she has a chance as being chosen as the sacrifice. To defend my position, I used support from three literary critics …

Eveline’S Lack Of Love: An Analysis Of “Eveline”, Anna Crosby

COD Library Student Research and Award Symposium

This is a character analysis essay from my English 1101 class. Based off the short story "Eveline" by James Joyce, I analyzed the main character, Eveline. In my essay I argue that Eveline struggles with the fact that she is less interested in Frank, her fiancé, for love but for a way out of her domestic life at home. Throughout my essay I use different critic's opinions from their own analysis articles to help support and defend my thesis statement.

Faculty Sponsor: Robert Dixon-Kolar

The Yellow Belly Anthology: Micro-Films About Humans At Their Least Impressive, Tommy Armstrong

English and Creative Writing Honors Papers

In the fall semester of 2019, I worked with my adviser Dr. Jon Volkmer on writing sixty sixty-second shorts on the theme of human insecurity, based off of real-life experiences and stories. I wrote a series of micro-scripts satirizing human self-consciousness and anxiety — moments that are rushed over or lost in longer-form mass media and film. The scripts show humans at their most indecisive, insecure, and vulnerable. Each of these scripts give glimpses into one or two people’s interior lives as they find themselves in a particular nerve-provoking situation. In all of the shorts, a person must overcome, submit …

Iron Manicures: Sex, Power, And Sedition In Margaret Atwood's Writing, Anna Zarra Aldrich

Honors Scholar Theses

Margaret Atwood has often been criticized as a bad feminist writer for featuring villainous, cruel women. Atwood has combatted this criticism by pointing out that evil women exist in life, so they should in literature as well. Every story requires a villain and a victim, for Atwood these roles are both usually played by women. This thesis will explore the idea of the woman as spectacle in both behavior and body. Women are controlled by the idea that they must care. When they stop caring, they become a threat. At the heart of Atwood’s writing are the relationships between women …

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.

"The Flat Earth Made Round And Tolkien’S Failure To Finish The Silmarillion", John D. Rateliff

Journal of Tolkien Research

Towards the end of his career, J. R. R. Tolkien faced many obstacles both internal and external that stood in the way of his finishing and publishing The Silmarillion. This paper explores the various elements that contributed to his dilemma and concludes that the key factors were twofold.

First came the traumatic breakdown of his efforts to publish the book through Collins, leading to a catastrophic interruption of his work on the book.

In addition, by this time Tolkien had concluded that many of the most iconic elements in his mythology could no longer command evoke secondary belief in …

Utter East, Eugene Warren

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

A Short Bibliography Of Narnia Criticism, Mythopoeic Society Staff

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Narnia As Myth, Peter Kreeft

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Considers various definitions of myth and shows how literary myths deliberately created by an individual differ from myths that develop organically within a society. Concludes the truth within myth is what is important. Includes an extensive quotation from The Last Battle.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

A Comparison Of The Calormenes With The Arabs, Turks, And Ancient Babylonians, David Ralph

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Notes some of the parallels between Lewis’s Calormenes and traditional Arabian society and government, Babylonian religion, Turkish military dress and tactics, and general Middle Eastern geography and architecture.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Lord Of The Beasts: Animal Archetypes In C.S. Lewis, Nancy-Lou Patterson

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Explores Lewis’s use of talking animals in the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy (and even his childhood writings about “clothed animals”). Traces the use of animals in religious and spiritual imagery from prehistoric times through pagan religions and fairy tales and discusses critical theories of Jung, Eliade, and other writers. Finds a parallel between a passage from Carlos Casteneda’s Teachings of Don Juan and Aslan’s post-resurrection romp with Lucy and Susan.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Narnia And The Seven Deadly Sins, David Hulan

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Theorizes that each book in the Chronicles is centrally concerned with one of the medieval Seven Deadly Sins; that in each book, a character commits one of these sins, and generally no other sins are foregrounded in that volume. The author’s theory equates LWW with gluttony, PC with Envy, VDT with Avarice, SC with Sloth, HHB with Lechery, MN with Pride, and LB with Anger. The author feels this was not planned as a major structural theme but was mainl y coincidental.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Lilith In Narnia, Glen Goodknight

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

After examining the history of the figure of Lilith in Judeo-Christian myth, Jungian psychology, and Western literature, this paper discusses the three major Lilith-characters in the Narnia series—the White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, and Jadis, Queen of Charn.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0