Is Love A “Pathological Condition Of The Soul”? Joyce Carol Oates's Beasts And Rape: A Love Story,
2025
University of Aix-Marseille
Is Love A “Pathological Condition Of The Soul”? Joyce Carol Oates's Beasts And Rape: A Love Story, Nicolas P. Boileau
Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies
This paper seeks to address the question of Oates’s relation to feminist and gender theories by looking at two novellas published consecutively, Beasts and Rape: A Love Story in the beginning of the 2000s. The short texts share a common storyline based on rape, which is far from uncommon in Oates’s fiction. However, I argue that there is something very specific in these two novellas in the way Oates chooses to handle the testimony of the rape, both overtly and covertly, both in graphic details and in repressed forms of expression, giving way to a reflection on women’s vulnerable position …
Joyce Carol Oates And Feminism: Facts Found And Foundered,
2025
Bath Spa University
Joyce Carol Oates And Feminism: Facts Found And Foundered, Gavin J. Cologne-Brookes
Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies
This essay explores the nuanced relationship between Joyce Carol Oates and feminism, distinguishing between Oates as an individual and “JCO” as the authorial process. Through analysis of novels like Babysitter, the essay argues that Oates’s fiction resists fixed labels, instead foregrounding ambiguity, interpretation, and the limitations of categorization. Drawing on philosophical and literary contexts, it contends that while Oates’s work invites feminist readings, her narrative style deliberately undermines definitive conclusions. Ultimately, the essay suggests that JCO’s writing stimulates inquiry and self-reflection, positioning art as a process of response rather than a vehicle for asserting categorical truths—including those of feminism.
Exploring Specters Of Feminism In The Work Of Joyce Carol Oates,
2025
University of Aix-Marseille
Exploring Specters Of Feminism In The Work Of Joyce Carol Oates, Nicolas P. Boileau, Tanya L. Tromble
Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies
This collection originates from the international conference “Specters of Feminism in the Work of Joyce Carol Oates,” held at Aix-Marseille Université in March 2024 as part of the broader project “Women and the F-Word: Thinking about Women’s Resistance to Feminism.” The introduction situates Oates’s vast and varied oeuvre within evolving feminist discourses, highlighting her ambivalent personal stance toward feminism and the critical consensus that her work engages deeply with feminist themes, especially sexual violence, trauma, and the complexities of gendered power. The essays gathered here explore how Oates’s stylistic experimentation, intertextuality, and representations of female agency and victimhood simultaneously reflect, …
Fantasy And Faith: Lewis And Tolkien On Magic In Fantastical Literature,
2025
Liberty University
Fantasy And Faith: Lewis And Tolkien On Magic In Fantastical Literature, Zion Lang
Senior Honors Theses
Despite biblical warnings against the occult, Christian authors C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien incorporated many kinds of magic into their works of fantasy. These authors had an orthodox view of the occult, but they also believed that fantasy magic differs from the esoteric: its purpose is imaginative, rather than power-seeking, and it is usually part of the imagined laws of the fantasy world. Lewis focused on the mythic side of fantasy and included more ambiguous magic. Tolkien focused on fantasy as eucatastrophic fairy tale, and his works include somewhat divine supernatural forces. Nonetheless, both authors saw fantasy …
I Am Guillotine,
2025
Georgia College
I Am Guillotine, Nathanael Joseph Williams
Fiction MFA Theses
63 years after the Mad War, an exchange of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, a twelve-year old girl wakes up on a train. She has no memory of where she comes from or who she was before the train, but when it stops, there is no doubt that she is now a slave. Brought to the town of Bludgeonburg in chains, she is sold off, along with a boy named Mohawk, to a man named Aabrax as a pit slave. The odd are firmly against Aabrax, and Gilly is not expected to survive, but by a stroke of luck, she …
Kutztown University 2025 Composition Conference Program,
2025
Kutztown University
Kutztown University 2025 Composition Conference Program, English Department, Kutztown University
KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference
Program Booklet
Human Dignity And Prostitution,
2025
Harding University
Human Dignity And Prostitution, Clara Kernodle
Harding Undergraduate Research Conference
In the twenty-first century, it is common to see feminists and pro-sex work voices lauding prostitution and other forms of the sex industry as viable expressions of women’s sexual and financial agency. As long as every participating party consents, they argue, sex work is not only tolerable, but admirable and positive – a form of transaction or service deserving license, protection, and respect in the name of individual freedom and female agency. Such voices argue that prostitution can even be dignified, as the sex industry supposedly allows participants full freedom to express their sexuality. In this paper, I offer an …
Magic, Magicians And Detective Fiction: Essays On Intersecting Modes Of Mystery, Edited By Rebecca Josephy,
2025
Independent Scholar
Magic, Magicians And Detective Fiction: Essays On Intersecting Modes Of Mystery, Edited By Rebecca Josephy, G. Connor Salter
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction edited by Rebecca Josephy considers how magic appears in detective stories, from the seemingly miraculous exploits of Arsene Lupin to the moral dilemmas of occult detective Elvis Infante.
Harry Potter And The Myth Of Milennials: Identity, Reception, And Politics By Priscilla Hobbs,
2025
Begin type...
Harry Potter And The Myth Of Milennials: Identity, Reception, And Politics By Priscilla Hobbs, Dominic Nardi
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
Art And Enchantment: How Wonder Works By Patrick Curry,
2025
Signum University
Art And Enchantment: How Wonder Works By Patrick Curry, N. Trevor Brierly
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Patrick Curry has written extensively on Tolkien, art and enchantment, and Art and Enchantment is his most academic in nature on these subjects, and the most fully developed and detailed. Curry describes and analyzes both enchantment and disenchantment. He focuses on art, artists and artistic movements and whether they might be more, or less, conducive to enchantment. In particular he notes that modernism is largely hostile to enchantment.
Mapping A Sense Of Humor: Narrative And Space In Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels By Daniel Lüthi,
2025
University of Northern Iowa
Mapping A Sense Of Humor: Narrative And Space In Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels By Daniel Lüthi, Susan Moore
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
Harry Potter And Resistance By Beth Sutton-Ramspeck,
2025
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Harry Potter And Resistance By Beth Sutton-Ramspeck, Douglas Charles Kane
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
Potterversity: Essays Exploring The World Of Harry Potter Edited By Kathryn Mcdaniel And Emily Strand, And The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, And Beyond: More Essays On The Works Of J.K. Rowling Edited By Lana Whited,
2025
Stony Brook University
Potterversity: Essays Exploring The World Of Harry Potter Edited By Kathryn Mcdaniel And Emily Strand, And The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, And Beyond: More Essays On The Works Of J.K. Rowling Edited By Lana Whited, Liam Butchart
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
Mimetic Theory & Middle-Earth: Untangling Desire In Tolkien’S Legendarium By Matthew J. Distefano,
2025
Hope College
Mimetic Theory & Middle-Earth: Untangling Desire In Tolkien’S Legendarium By Matthew J. Distefano, Curtis Gruenler
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Matthew Distefano’s friendly volume extends considerably the conversation about resonances between two twentieth-century literary giants, J. R. R. Tolkien and René Girard. Distefano not only clarifies essential aspects of Tolkien’s work by reading it through the lens of Girard’s mimetic theory but also, through his particular interest in how Hobbits provide models of positive mimetic desire, highlights, extends, and one might even say enacts aspects of Girard’s theory that are easily overlooked.
Diary Of An Old Soul By George Macdonald, Annotated Edition,
2025
Independent Scholar
Diary Of An Old Soul By George Macdonald, Annotated Edition, Tiffany Brooke Martin
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Book Review of Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald. Annotated edition with introd. and notes by Timothy Larsen. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2024.
Tolkien’S Cosmology: Divine Beings And Middle-Earth By Sam Mcbride,
2025
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Tolkien’S Cosmology: Divine Beings And Middle-Earth By Sam Mcbride, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Sam McBride writes the following in his Introduction to Tolkien’s Cosmology: Divine Beings and Middle-earth “Exploring Tolkien’s legendarium will show the cosmological structure of Middle-earth, but also reveal moments in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when the metaphysical impacts the physical.” (p. x) The book delivers on its promise to show the reader places within the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings likely to be influenced by spiritual beings who are described in The Silmarillion and the other volumes of the Legendarium. McBride’s book gives the reader a convincing description of the divine …
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction By Matthew Townend,
2025
Trinity Western University
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction By Matthew Townend, Laura N. Van Dyke
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
“Perilous And Fair” In “A Bleak, Barren Land”: A Feminist Responds To Dylan Lee Henderson’S Essay,
2025
Independent Scholar
“Perilous And Fair” In “A Bleak, Barren Land”: A Feminist Responds To Dylan Lee Henderson’S Essay, Robin A. Reid
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Dylan Lee Henderson’s 2023 essay in Mythlore (vol. 42, no. 1) titled “A Bleak, Barren Land’: Women and Fertility in The Lord of the Rings,” claims that “many feminist scholars [since 1971] have condemned Tolkien’s depiction of women as inadequate and denounced Tolkien himself as a misogynist” (88). In my response, I argue that Henderson’s essay reduces a fifty-plus year history of scholarship (much of it by feminists) exploring the complex, contradictory issues of Tolkien’s female characters to a single negative stereotype. I described that stereotype in my 2015 essay in Perilous and Fair (Croft and Donovan) in my conclusion …
What Will We Do With The Christmas Pudding?: Joy Davidman, William Lindsay Gresham, And "Christmas In The Workhouse",
2025
Independent Scholar
What Will We Do With The Christmas Pudding?: Joy Davidman, William Lindsay Gresham, And "Christmas In The Workhouse", Gabriel C. Salter, Clark Sheldon
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
The poem "Christmas in the Workhouse" archived in William Lindsay Gresham's papers at first appears to be a random transcript in his files. Exploring the work's publication history and Gresham's contributions to War Poems of the United Nations, a book edited by his second wife Joy Davidman, suggests that in fact "Christmas in the Workhouse" is part of the larger story of how they informed each other's work in the 1940s.
Weaving Wikipedia’S Middle-Earth Web,
2025
Independent
Weaving Wikipedia’S Middle-Earth Web, Ian F. Alexander
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy writing has become extremely popular, and has been extensively studied by scholars. Part of the demand for information on the subject is met by Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with a large readership. I have extended its coverage of Middle-earth subjects to more than 200 Good Articles, divided roughly equally between in-universe subjects such as “Aragorn” and more scholarly subjects such as “Heroism in The Lord of the Rings”. Each article is required to stand alone as a notable topic in its own right, as demonstrated by its citations to reliable sources. Other sites like Tolkien Gateway …
