From Hell (Or Not): Representations Of Merlin And His Origins In The Comics,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
From Hell (Or Not): Representations Of Merlin And His Origins In The Comics, Michael A. Torregrossa
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The Arthurian figure of Merlin has a long literary history, but he never seems able to shake off the effects of his parentage. In medieval tradition, Merlin is sired by inhuman powers: first a seemingly benign dæmon and then a decidedly wicked demon. This preternatural aspect to his conception grants Merlin the skills and powers he uses to support the realm, yet it also taints him as someone potentially dangerous. Although Merlin’s background cannot be changed, creative artists often choose to ignore or alter his origins, especially when retelling his story for mass audiences. In contrast, other creators, usually those …
Denethor’S Descent Into Hell,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Denethor’S Descent Into Hell, Craig Boyd
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
One character in Tolkien’s Legendarium stands out as one of the more morally sad and complicated individuals: Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Although he tries to defend the kingdom he cares for, his own significant moral weaknesses subvert even the best of his intentions. His despair, provoked by the death of his favorite son—and the apparent death of his other son—sends him into a spiral of self-destructive harm from which there is no return. What accounts for this are three factors. First, his self-imposed isolation from others cuts him off from the necessary fellowship that could sustain his character; his …
Feasting At The Threshold: Transubstantiation, Queer Desire, And Homonationalism In Diane Duane’S The Tale Of The Five,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Feasting At The Threshold: Transubstantiation, Queer Desire, And Homonationalism In Diane Duane’S The Tale Of The Five, Taylor Driggers
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Diane Duane’s ongoing pulp fantasy series The Tale of the Five (1979- ) is set in a world marked by constant bodily transgressions and surprises, where a human and dragon can occupy the same body and become lovers and a one-night stand can bring one face-to-face with God. This essay will argue that Duane’s series articulates eroticism in a manner comparable to Linn Marie Tonstad’s (2016) queer re-visioning of transubstantiation and bodily and spiritual transformation through the Eucharist. Acts of eating and drinking serve to highlight how characters’ pansexual, polyamorous relations with each other and the love of the Goddess …
The Underworld As The Heroine’S Journey Home: Marvel, Xena, And Mythic Reimaginings,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
The Underworld As The Heroine’S Journey Home: Marvel, Xena, And Mythic Reimaginings, Valerie Estelle Frankel
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Hell is traditionally a place of torment, where the young heroine, like Persephone or Eurydice, is kidnapped by the patriarchy, leaving others to rescue her. The last few decades, however, have offered a model closer to Sumerian Inanna, in which the heroine is enlightened by hell or even conquers it. Angela, Queen of Hel: Journey to the Funderworld by Marguerite Bennett (2016) gives its heroine this path. Winning back her beloved, Angela, sister of Thor and Loki, becomes queen of the underworld but then prefers to bring Sera back to earth in a flip on Eurydice. The Xena episode “Fallen …
Infernal Landscape In Jacob’S Ladder (1990) In Light Of Carl G. Jung’S Theory Of Individuation,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Infernal Landscape In Jacob’S Ladder (1990) In Light Of Carl G. Jung’S Theory Of Individuation, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Carl G. Jung’s conception of the human psyche as an inner realm that gives access to profound, numinous experiences inspired many artists and popular culture authors to portray heaven and hell as symbolic expressions of the opposite forces within the human psyche rather than cosmological or supernatural regions. In my paper, I will concentrate on how the Hollywood film Jacob’s Ladder (1990) directed by Adrian Lyne, by portraying the main character’s descent into a deathbed vision depicted as hellish reality, reflects Jung’s theory of individuation, a process of self-realization that aims at reconciling various elements of the psyche and achieving …
Hell On His Mind: Dean Winchester’S Journey To Hell And Back,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Hell On His Mind: Dean Winchester’S Journey To Hell And Back, Anna Caterino
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Season three of Supernatural (2005-2020) closes with a shot of Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in Hell. The place has no discernible features and resembles neither the long waiting line nor the gothic castle of later seasons. The few elements that do characterize it, however, make it look like a brain, the labyrinth of ropes reminiscent of neurons. This association introduces Hell as a place that exists first and foremost in Dean’s dead. The lack of establishing shots and the abstract terms used to discuss Hell, damnation, and Dean’s experience further support this claim, working in its favor. After all, the …
The Righteousness Of The Damned In Jeffrey Konvitz’S The Sentinel,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
The Righteousness Of The Damned In Jeffrey Konvitz’S The Sentinel, Raymond G. Falgui
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The paper will examine the nature of the damned in Jeffrey Konvitz’s 1970s pulp horror novel The Sentinel by using a framework utilized by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, wherein damnation involves a species of spiritual blindness that masquerades as righteousness and shields the damned (for a time) from an awareness of their ultimate condition. Specifically, the paper will provide a character analysis of the co-protagonist Michael, arguably one of Konvitz’s more complex literary creations, and the role he plays in briefly elevating a generic genre-contrived plot into the realm of true spiritual horror. While making such a …
Welcome And Announcements,
2023
Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Welcome And Announcements, Mythsoc Stewards
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Welcome and Announcements
Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!
Observant Dominican Nuns’ Processionals In Fifteenth-Century Germany: Evidence From Manuscripts Of The Beinecke Library,
2023
University of Limerick
Observant Dominican Nuns’ Processionals In Fifteenth-Century Germany: Evidence From Manuscripts Of The Beinecke Library, Eleanor J. Giraud
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article examines three Dominican processionals held in the Beinecke Library: Ms. 205, Music Deposit 60 and Music Deposit 61, all of which can be linked to the Observant Dominican convent of St Catherine in Nuremberg. Ms. 205 was undoubtedly used in Nuremberg, while Music Deposit 60 and 61 were likely copied from a Nuremberg Processional but made for use elsewhere, probably Regensburg. This small collection presents the opportunity to consider the Observant experience of procession, the dissemination of Observant liturgical books, and the relationship between the practices of Dominican nuns and friars. To a vast extent, these manuscripts reveal …
Reading Suffering Between The Lines: Trauma And Witnessing In Old And Middle English Literature,
2023
University of South Florida
Reading Suffering Between The Lines: Trauma And Witnessing In Old And Middle English Literature, Anca Olguta Giorgiana Garcia
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Both literary trauma theorists and medieval literature scholars generally avoid analyzing Old and Middle English literature through the lens of trauma studies. There are multiple reasons for this reluctance, and perhaps the most elementary one is the misconception that medieval society was numb to pain because they experienced it more often than people today do. Another reason is the fact that trauma in general is seen as a product of the Industrial Revolution and of the interactions between humans and machines. Its terminology and diagnostic methods have only developed in the last two centuries, so applying modern concepts on medieval …
What Could A Trans Book History Look Like? Toward Trans Codicology,
2023
University of Limerick
What Could A Trans Book History Look Like? Toward Trans Codicology, J D. Sargan
Criticism
This article draws on critical trans studies and queer archival practice to propose a book historical mode that extends what we know about the premodern trans experience beyond the recovery of individual biographies. Instead of turning to textual sources for the identification of transness, the author looks to Susan Stryker’s call for the “recuperat[ion of] embodied knowing as a formally legitimated basis of knowledge production.” Bibliography, he suggests, makes claims of objectivity that engender a particular reluctance to respond to such calls. But the lived reality of archival research is one of affective embodiment. Affect theory is an area that, …
A Presence Of P____ And W__Th,
2023
Rhode Island School of Design
A Presence Of P____ And W__Th, Riley Wilson
Masters Theses
This body of work examines the involvement of association as it relates to our cultural interpretations of natural phenomena. Flowers and animals, both real and imagined, have been used as symbols for human morality since the beginning of human history. Two sources with which I drew inspiration from are medieval bestiaries and the Victorian practice of flower language. By combining elements from these references, I aim to pair this idea about the human need for classification with my own considerations about my identity. In combination, I also aim to highlight the responsibility that is intrinsic to curiosity. When faced with …
What Our Hearts Crave For: An Examination Of The Paradoxical Attraction To Dante’S Inferno,
2023
Seattle Pacific University
What Our Hearts Crave For: An Examination Of The Paradoxical Attraction To Dante’S Inferno, Ketzalt E. Marquez
Honors Projects
This paper serves to analyze and explain why audiences are attracted to stories with elements of Horror in them, using Dante’s Inferno as the vehicle for this conversation, as the Inferno’s setting is in the worse possible place imaginable. Horror narratives arise feelings of fear and disgust in its audiences through the use of monsters, as audiences relate to the fear and disgust the positive characters in the narratives are feeling because of the monster’s presence. Since these emotions arise in a safe space, such as in literature or film, where the source of the emotions is not endangering the …
Envisioning A World Without Rape In Late Fifteenth-Century Dream Narratives,
2023
CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College
Envisioning A World Without Rape In Late Fifteenth-Century Dream Narratives, Boyda J. Johnstone
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
Recent scholarship has been preoccupied with questions of rape and consent in late medieval literature, partly influenced by the Me Too movement while we continue to grapple with Geoffrey Chaucer’s allegation of raptus. In such a climate, medieval texts that likewise challenge the normalization of rape in literature and society require renewed attention and critical interest. The three fifteenth-century poems I examine in this article, The Assembly of Ladies, The Floure and the Leafe, and The Isle of Ladies, push Chaucer’s dream vision tradition in a new direction, presenting us with female-centered models of cooperation, care, and governance. …
Selecting Authority: The Compiler And Female Mystical Sources In Speculum Devotorum,
2023
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Selecting Authority: The Compiler And Female Mystical Sources In Speculum Devotorum, Caitlin J. Branumthrash
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
The fifteenth-century Speculum devotorum, or Mirror to Devout People, is best known for incorporating the texts of mystical women into its narrative of the life of Christ, likely because it has an explicitly stated female audience—a nun of Syon. Rather than considering how the female audience may have perceived the female sources in Speculum devotorum, this article investigates the compiler’s views of his female sources based on how he incorporates them into his work. I argue that the compiler treats his female sources as full auctores, but he only includes their works when he addresses what he considers female …
Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature,
2023
CUNY Graduate Center
Haunting At Troy: Troy Narratives, Trauma, And Desire For The Past In Late Medieval English Literature, Woo Ree Heor
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The mythical city of Troy functioned as an imagined point of origin for many medieval nations, providing a tangible connection to the legendary past and nation-building tools useful for the ruling class. Troy provided a convenient foundation narrative upon which ideas of collective identity could be built for these nations, and England, where construction of a homogeneous past was difficult due to frequent ruptures in its development of communal identity, was an eager producer and consumer of such a legitimizing device. However, the trauma of war and destruction intrinsic in Troy narratives also generates potent political anxiety about the reanimated …
The Fight Against The Threat Of Witchcraft And Paganism In Anglo-Saxon England,
2023
Taylor University
The Fight Against The Threat Of Witchcraft And Paganism In Anglo-Saxon England, Russell I. Knapp
Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars
Unlike the general assumption that England was completely Christianized after Augustine’s mission to the island, witchcraft and paganism thrived all throughout the Christian period of Anglo-Saxon history. Sources condemning witchcraft and paganism increased during the Danish raids in the mid-ninth century and beyond due to an increased sense of a perceived threat of paganism. King Alfred himself reacted to this threat by doing everything he could to strengthen his people in their Christian beliefs through education reform and his law code. The Church battled against the perceived threat through penitentials–which they used to discourage pagan practices. Lay-people fought against …
Queer Not: Medieval Romance's Toll On Queerness,
2023
Seton Hall University
Queer Not: Medieval Romance's Toll On Queerness, Kyle Gaydo
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
How does a contemporary audience handle medieval queerness? What, exactly, constitutes medieval queerness, and how does the medieval literary genre of romance impact it? This thesis attempts to grapple with these questions, and many more, utilizing the 13th-century Old French romance Le Roman de Silence by Heldris de Cornuälle. Medieval romances are particularly fruitful for this analysis because, on one hand, the genre consistently re/turns to cisheteronormativity, and, on the other, because scholarship generally has not applied queer theory to the study of romance. Silence follows Silence, a young Englishwoman who is raised as a boy to protect her family’s …
"Beowulf": Interpretation And Supplementation,
2023
University of Mississippi
"Beowulf": Interpretation And Supplementation, Abigail Martin
Honors Theses
This thesis investigates the various ways in which Beowulf has been interpreted across time, explaining how factors, called paratexts, have played a large part in shaping these interpretations and how, especially in reading the Beowulf manuscript, we inherit the sum of these influences. In order to demonstrate this, I present a variety of arguments and perspectives on the text that have been developed by scholars over the years based on different types of paratexts (physical, intangible, and translational) in the absence of a known author. At each stage of Beowulf’s life, there have been opportunities for individuals with authority …
Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture,
2023
Washington University in St. Louis
Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb
MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture
This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …
