English Language and Literature Commons^™

Challenging Society In Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist And Bleak House, Adrienne Oliver

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The purpose of this honors project is to explore the challenging social system of Dickens’s Victorian London, specifically through the perspective of Dickens’s social philosophy characterized by the need for reformative action in the fractured society represented in both Oliver Twist and Bleak House. Divided into two documents, the first component, an annotated bibliography, focuses on the scholarly discussion of negligent and criminal institutions in Oliver Twist. The second section, an analytical paper, concentrates on Bleak House and Dickens’s representation of the city as a divided space between the gentility and isolated, vulnerable groups demonstrated by at risk …

The Phenomenological Beat: Allen Ginsberg's Many Multitudes, Joseph Karwin

English Department Theses

A considerable amount of critical commentary about Allen Ginsberg has focused on his public persona and on his relationship with the Beat Generation. This focus runs counter to Ginsberg’s own wishes, as he wished to be studied as a poet first, a serious poet, and a poet speaking for a new American voice. By focusing on the poetry and on Ginsberg’s extensive amount of self-analysis, this paper details the main strategies and techniques Ginsberg employed in his poetics, and how he used those techniques to form a modern American voice in poetry.

The paper specifically looks at Ginsberg’s relationship to …

The Novel Mystique: Depictions Of Women In Novels Of The 1950s, Sarah Fender

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Racial Classifications: Exploring Race In The Critical Dystopia, Meghan Hartnett

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Complex Humanity Of Henry V, Kaitlynn Willette

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Forgotten Fairies: Traditional English Folklore In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Alexandra Larkin

The Criterion

While the fairies shown in the play would have been known by Shakespeare’s audience, there was a clear difference between the fairies of traditional folklore and the fairies that Shakespeare describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In traditional English folklore, fairies were “made” for, and by, the middle and lower classes; their stories were most believed and the most encounters were experienced by these people. Fairies in folklore were alternatingly deadly and wildly helpful, giving humans who stumbled upon them presents or death. In the play, Shakespeare departs from more traditional depictions of fairies and instead characterizes these magical creatures …

Something In Nothing: A Discussion Of Madness And Wisdom In King Lear, Leela Mennillo

The Criterion

This essay argues against Shakespeare critic David Kastan’s nihilistic reading of King Lear. While I agree that nothingness lies at the heart of the tragedy, I maintain that the recurring theme of nothing does not depict a world devoid of meaning. Rather, Shakespeare suggests that the recognition of the abyss is necessary in the quest for higher meaning. I approach this debate through various philosophical lenses, presenting a reading that equates wisdom and nothingness. Cordelia’s recognition of the limitations of human knowledge first introduces this idea. I detect elements of the divine nature of nothingness in the seemingly nonsensical speeches …

Race, Slavery, And Evasion: Whitman And Melville’S Changing Perspectives And Their Glancing Poetic Treatment Of The Core Civil War Issue, Said Hail Fallaha

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Whitman and Melville’s poetry about the Civil War is almost completely silent when it comes to slavery. Both writers depict a newly emancipated person in their poems about the Civil War, but they seem to do so almost as an afterthought. Both Whitman's “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors” and Melville's “Formerly a Slave” represent an elderly African American woman. These poems stand alone in their representation of an African American. Peter J. Bellis argues that both writers were concerned with how to negotiate national emotions and policies by the end of the war and these “emotions” and “policies” were vital to …

Enemy Life: Theorizing Exile Through Milton, Shelley And Byron, Robert L. Berger

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation investigates the contemporary discourse and conceptions of exile as it is presented by Milton, Shelley and Byron. Utilizing biopolitical theory as a lens, it posits that the Satanic iteration or narrative of exile embodies the reality of worldly exile. As such the dissertation explores the complex framing and subsequent deconstruction of Satanic and human subjectivities found in Paradise Lost, Prometheus Unbound, Manfred and Don Juan. The dissertation examines Paradise Lost for its competing narratives of exile, Adam and Satan, and explores notions of home, transgression, the purification rituals which are the origin of sovereign Power and the …

"'Violent Love': Jane Austen And Eighteenth-Century Marriage Laws", Brianna Bicho

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In several of Jane Austen’s novels, her heroines are confronted more than once with the proposition of marriage. Many of the primary proposal scenes in these tales contain violent language seemingly at odds with the romantic context, and the romance convention, of a proposal scene. Austen’s rhetoric of violence functions as a critique of contemporary laws defining and regulating marriage, particularly Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765. These laws negated a woman’s ownership – both personal and financial – upon her marriage: they outlined both the illegality of a wedded female to own property and the …

Time, Memory, And Consciousness In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And Between The Acts, Nicole Olivotti

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway emerges as a character gripped by the notion and passage of time. Woolf represents the chronological aspect of time through images such as Big Ben and its relentless chimes as well as the various references to clocks or bells throughout the novel. To the Lighthouse also thematically and narratively explores constructions of time, particularly by focusing on elements such as inaction and delay. The journey to the Lighthouse, for example, does not occur until the end of the novel. Both texts underscore the tension between the linear timeframe of the novel and …

Review Of The Making Of Jane Austen, Mary Beth Tegan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Minds In Motion, Anna K. Sagal

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Anne Thell's Minds in Motion.

Review Of The Shelley-Godwin Archive, Stacey L. Kikendall

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of The Shelley-Godwin Archive

Review Of The Ladies Of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, And The Legacies Of Criticism, Dawn M. Goode

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism. Bucknell UP, 2017. xxxvi + 331pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-6114-8761-9.

Review Of Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre Production Of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem, Tanya M. Caldwell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article reviews the production of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem directed by Tony Cownie and produced for the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in February and March 2018. In setting the play in Edinburgh and placing emphasis on its women characters, Cownie underscores the universal and timeless relevance of Cowley's play as well as its performance versatility.

Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Anna Larpent (1758-1832) is a crucial figure in theater history and the reception of Shakespeare since drama was a central part of her life. Larpent was a meticulous diarist: the Huntington Library holds seventeen volumes of her journal covering the period 1773-1830. These diaries shed significant light on the part Shakespeare played in her life and contain her detailed opinions of his works as she experienced them both on the page and on the stage in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Larpent experienced Shakespeare’s works in a variety of forms: she sees Shakespeare’s plays performed, both professionally and by …

Wishing For The Watch Face In Jonathan Swift’S “The Progress Of Beauty”, Jantina Ellens

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article illuminates the technological underpinnings of Jonathan Swift’s satire, “The Progress of Beauty” (1719), by exploring how eighteenth-century poetics of beauty and scientific progress pit human against automaton. This article ranges from the ego of masculine technological display to women’s self-identification with the automaton to suggest that Swift’s speaker blazons the aging prostitute’s body with the hope that it might resurrect a lost ideal, the beautiful watch face. Instead, readers are confronted with the vision of Celia who, with her chipped paint, greasy joints, and faulty mechanisms, reminds them that humanity continues to break through its enamel. When readers …

Final Ma Portfolio, Stacey Magri

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A Final Portfolio Submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English with a specialization in English Teaching. An identity focused research and pedagogy portfolio that explores the concept of and creation of identity through self-conscious thought, as well as through gender and familial relations.

The Impact Of Morphological Awareness On The Reading Development Of Children With Developmental Dyslexia, Christina Bloom

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The effects of phonological awareness on reading development have been widely researched and are understood and recognized by both educators and linguists. The effects of morphological awareness on reading, though, have been comparatively under-researched until the past fifteen to twenty years. Recent studies have shown that morphological awareness plays a significant role in children’s reading development, and an awareness of morphology makes a significant impact on the spelling, vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension skills of typically-developing children that is independent of the contribution made by phonological awareness. Children with developmental dyslexia struggle with a morphological deficit. These children do not …