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The Time Machine And Heart Of Darkness: H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, And The Fin De Siecle, Haili Ann Vinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much work has been done on the relationship between fin de siècle authors H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Ford Madox Ford. As Nicholas Delbanco explains, these writers lived closely to one another in Kent during the transition into the Twentieth Century. While scholars have stressed the collaboration between Conrad and Ford and the disagreements between Wells and James, fewer have treated the relationship of Wells and Conrad. Their most widely read works, The Time Machine and Heart of Darkness, share remarkable similarities that reveal common topical influences on both writers. Furthermore, I argue that Wells …

Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. ISBN 90-420-0534-3 299 pages, bibliography, index. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature and applies the framework in audience studies, film and literature, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts. Copyright release to the author in 2006.

A Parody Of Nature Or The Nature Of Parody; Melville As Critic Of Emerson And Darwin, Benjamin Barber Rose

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Haitian Literature; A Case Study In Collective Trauma, Sarah Fehder

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Violence, Christianity, And The Anglo-Saxon Charms, Laurajan G. Gallardo

Masters Theses

Concentration in Literary Studies

The thesis focuses on violence reinterpreted through the Anglo-Saxon charms that exhibit a fusion of Christian and pagan elements. In order to comprehend the impact of this fusion, I provide ecclesiastical and social histories of the Anglo-Saxons, stressing upon the interconnectedness of both-an essential concept in understanding the AngloSaxon view of the world. This interconnectedness is seen in the Anglo-Saxon perception of magic, which in their understanding was synonymous to science or religion. I provide a brief introduction on magical practices and beliefs that applied to the charms, shedding light on how they were expected to …

Colorism In The Spanish Caribbean: Legacies Of Race And Racism In Dominican And Puerto Rican Literature, Malinda Marie Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the impact of colorism on Spanish Caribbean literature--more specifically, works of fiction and memoir by both island and diaspora writers from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Colorism, or discrimination based on the shading of skin, manifests itself in Spanish Caribbean literature in a variety of ways. It is often used as a marker of class and/or class difference; it may reflect and/or play a part in shaping cultural standards of beauty or attractiveness; and it signifies the entrenched complexities of the Spanish Caribbean's history of conquest and colonization. Colorism appears in these texts as both a …

On The Good Name Of The Dead: Peace, Liberty, And Empire In Robert Morehead's Waterloo Sermon, Bob Tennant

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

On Sunday, July 2, 1815, a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo, the Scottish Episcopalian minister Robert Morehead ( 1777-1842) preached a sermon- On the Good Name of the Dead [Ecclesiastes 7:1]-which displayed many of the components of a theory of Christian empire and combined them with the radically new approach to pulpit oratory that Morehead was helping to develop. The present essay offers a method of exploring the connection between ideology and rhetoric based on tools belonging to linguistic analysis rather than conventional historiography. Thus it is hoped that the evidential base available to historians may be extended. …

Jonathan Edwards's Metaphors Of Sin In Indian Country, Joy A. J. Howard

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

T he move to Indian country was an uncommon one for a preacher of Jonathan Edwards's status and age, but the seven years he lived in Stockbridge preaching to Mohawks, Mahicans, and colonial settlers proved to be some of the most fruitful of his career. Jonathan Edwards accepted the position in Stockbridge after his Northampton congregation voted to dismiss him in 1750 and, after visiting the mission town multiple times, he was officially installed as pastor in August of 1751. Edwards valued Protestant mission imperatives, and although the pastorate was remote and he faced a significant language barrier between him …

Vice, Virtue, And Industry: The Church Of Scotland's Employment Of Political Economy, C. 1700-C. 1750, Ryan K. Frace

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

When describing the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge in 1750, Edinburgh's minister Hugh Blair proclaimed:

It must be the interest of every good man, of every Briton, to encourage this design tending so evidently to make us a happy, a free, and a united nation. Religion and liberty, industry and joy, are sisters, and never appear to such advantage as when in company [together], so that now, Religion and Industry go hand in hand, strengthen and establish one another.

Blair's comment illustrates an intriguing and important development: by the mid-eighteenth century, political economy-a central component of the Scottish Enlightenment-had …

Full Issue

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment

No abstract provided.

Language Difference In Writing : Toward A Translingual Approach., Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, John Trimbur

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening.

Principles Of Thomas Pynchon's Literary Realities, Ira Anthony Walker

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Thomas Pynchon's literature is unique in subject and style. Postmodern by definition, Pynchon illustrates physics as a societal metaphor; Guy Debord's text The Society of the Spectacle suggests that these societal, literary, metaphors constitute and/or lead to a Spectacle. Through the analysis of an unpublished text: Minstrel Island, an early written short story: "Entropy," and a short novel: The Crying of Lot 49 the reader is capable of seeing a developing theme of physics as metaphor constituting multiple Spectacles. The narrative devices offered by Thomas Pynchon become Spectacular in nature and reflect the characteristics and environment of the tumultuous 1960s …

A City Fragmented, Arturo Javier Lechuga

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A City Fragmented, is an explorartion of the city of El Paso and its various districts. Through this a fragmentation within the city is found. This fragmentation gives El Paso a unique character, one that threads each distric together which creates a connection. A City Fragmented, revolves around the themes of loss and want, which look to help find an identity for El Paso, the speaker and the poet.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Integrating Sequential Narratives Into An English Language Learner's Curriculum, Cira Michelle Montoya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following thesis aims to explore the subject of using comics in the classroom, particularly with English Language Learner (ELL) students. Do the images, vocabulary, and contextual cues found within comics and graphic novels positively affect language comprehension and writing skills of ELL students when these texts are integrated into a tailored curriculum? Within my research I have composed an extensive literature review comprised of two major sections. The first section aims to highlight the use of comics to assist struggling readers, again focusing on ELL students. The second section compiles a list of comics and graphic novels I reviewed …

Nothing But A Pack Of Cards: Semi-Fictitious Persons And Flopping Jellyfish In Elizabeth Bowen, Renée C. Hoogland

English Faculty Research Publications

Taking the wildly conflicting critical evaluations of Elizabeth Bowen's final novel, Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes (1969) as its starting-point, this essay argues against 'interpreting' both the novel and its 'monstrous' heroine in conventional representational terms, to argue, instead, for an appreciation, or experience, of both novel and protagonist as instantiations of a process of becoming along Deleuzian lines. Rather than seeing Bowen's final novel as a (failed) attempt to do what the Anglo-Irish writer's previous work would have suggested this text to do as well, the novel and its eponymous heroine are approached as Bowen's rigorously ethical effort to, …

Book Review: Exile And Journey In Seventeenth-Century Literature By Christopher D'Addario, Anne Cotterill

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Modelos Masculinos Y Violencia En Sanctuary Y Crónica De Una Muerte Anunciada, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

This essay analyzes how two novels, William Faulkner’s Sanctuary and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, present masculine models that juxtapose power and violence during times of social crisis. Both novels present violent masculinities that overcome peaceful masculinities, in conflicts that result in murders and rapes; but rather than acuse the individuals responsible for the violent acts, the texts point out the social mechanisms that inexorably move the authors of the crimes. In both works we also see violence against women and resulting public deaths of men wrongly accused, which happen due to an inability to adapt to …

An African American Discourse Community In Black & White: The New Orleans Tribune, Kristi Richard Melancon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In An African American Discourse Community in Black & White: The New Orleans Tribune, an archival study of the first black-owned daily newspaper in the United States, I argue that the newspaper rhetorically constructed a literate African American discourse community worthy of citizenship and equal political rights within the public sphere of Reconstruction United States. Although contemporaneous media in the South depicted blacks as both unable to read and write and as culturally illiterate, I demonstrate how articles across the lifespan of the Tribune represented, as well as encouraged and enabled, multiple literacies within the African American community. I ultimately …

"The Colossal Vitality Of His Illusion": The Myth Of The American Dream In The Modern American Novel, James E. Ayers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the American dream is a large-scale cultural myth, and that through an analysis of the dream’s mythic structure we can locate a paradigm according to which both American literature and American culture are organized. The American dream has maintained unique relevance across the historical, regional, and cultural diversity of the American nation, in part because it always remains abstract and resists firm definition. Nevertheless, by breaking the broad myth into its most basic elemental parts we can begin to see patterns across the many distinctive versions of the American dream, such that we can identify the …

Review: Riddles Of Belonging: India In Translation And Other Tales Of Possession, Anuradha Needham

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constructing Hindu Religioscapes: Guruism And Identity In South Asian Diasporic Fiction, Sukanya Gupta

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project draws attention to the modern phenomenon of Guruism. I demonstrate that gurus in South Asian fiction are no longer adopting Guruism for the purposes of religion alone. In the novels I analyze, gurus use religion as a tool to resist dominant power structures, to strengthen/protect themselves in communities that stereotype, to access social/financial mobility and to obtain political power. The actions of these religious leaders have both positive and negative effects, as gurus ultimately desire authority to determine how South Asian communities conceive Hinduism, the function of Hindu religious institutions, and the role that Hinduism must play in …

Revolutionary Republics: U.S. National Narratives And The Independence Of Latin America, 1810-1846, James Weldon Long

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Revolutionary Republics analyzes how U.S. literature depicted the independence of Latin America, focusing on the period from the beginning of the Spanish American revolutions in 1810 to the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1846. During this brief timespan, the nation’s literature featured a radical transition in which the independent republics of Latin America shifted from being viewed as “southern brethren” of the United States, a term used by such prominent public figures as Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams, to hostile enemies allegedly in need of assistance from their northern neighbor. This reversal exposes a contradiction between the imperialist …

African Language Publishing For Children In South Africa: Challenges For Translators, Viv Edwards, Jacob Marriote Ngwaru

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

The commitment to multilingualism embedded in the 1996 South African Constitution has wide ranging implications for many aspects of education. This paper focuses on the dearth of teaching and learning materials in African languages required to deliver effective bilingual education, and on the potential role of translation in offering solutions for this problem. Drawing on an analysis of currently available African language books for children and interviews with educators, writers, publishers, translators and organisations concerned with book promotion, it explores issues which have emerged as critical for both the quality and availability of translation. Attention is drawn to the ways …

Ua68/6/1 Potter College Of Arts & Letters English Publications, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Publications created by and about the English Department.

Zephyrus is produced by the English Department and contains student creative writing.

"A literary magazine called Voices had been produced for a number of years prior to that, but in 1969 Professor Gatlin, with the help of Professor Will Fridy, came up with the title Zephyrus, the Roman name for the west wind, because Dr. Wood had asked that "Western" be included in the title." From A Centennial History of the Department of English of Western Kentucky University by James Flynn

"In 1979, Frank [Steele], along with his wife, Peggy, began publishing …

Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

My thesis will closely examine recent trends in criticism of "The Waste Land," namely the ideological rebuttal against the New Critics proposed by recent historicists such as Lawrence Rainey. I will show that Rainey has unfairly characterized the so-called New Critics as supporting a reading of the poem that only sees it for a work of order and unity while in fact they acknowledged many organizational inconsistencies within the text. A central tenet of my thesis will be that ideological characterizations of earlier critics should never substitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. My findings will lead to broader …

A Rhetoric Of Change: Church Growth And Social Change At The Richmond Outreach Center, Rebekah Holbrook

Theses and Dissertations

The Richmond Outreach Center “The ROC” is an independent soulwinning megachurch in Richmond, Virginia. This thesis explores how rhetoric plays a role in the rapid growth of this urban church and considers the church’s response—rhetorically and politically—to the city’s social issues. Through a rhetorical analysis of sermons and written texts by Geronimo Aguilar, the ROC’s founder and pastor, it is concluded that Aguilar has generated a rhetoric of change that says social change must come to Richmond and that everyone, both rich and poor, are responsible for change. Aguilar galvanizes an audience to seek social change because he articulates roles …

Wordsworth's Decline: Self-Editing And Editing The Self, Kenneth E. Morrison

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In critical discourse surrounding the poetry of William Wordsworth, it has become generally acceptable to describe the course of the poet’s career by means of a theory of “decline.” In its most common form, this theory argues that Wordsworth’s best poetry was written during one “Great Decade” (1798-1807)—an isolated epoch of prolificacy and genius. His subsequent works, it is argued, neither surpass nor equal his initial efforts; the course of his career after 1808 may be best described in terms of declivity, ebb, and decline.

Due to its ideological complicity with the very texts it engages, and due to its …

The Conservative Conversation, Heather Hall

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The conservative movement is defined by its ideology as well as its rhetoric. Richard Weaver’s conversion to the Right offers an opportunity to define conservatism and conservative rhetoric through his hierarchy of argumentation, and his examination of Plato’s Phaedrus allows an examination of the speaker’s nature and the nature of rhetoric. Glenn Beck, one of today’s most controversial conservative representatives, also deserves examination for his ideology and rhetoric. Both Richard Weaver and Glenn Beck bear scrutiny as influential members of the conservative movement and the role their rhetoric has in the conservative conversation today.

"I Unsex'd My Dress": Lord Byron's Seduction Of Gender In "The Corsair", "Lara", And "Don Juan", Alexis Spiceland Lee

Dissertations

The goal of this project is to posit a theory of how Byron’s texts, specifically through the development of his hero, construct gender and sexuality as styles of seduction that resist easy classification by binary systems. I propose that Byron’s works characterize gender through ironic performances of seduction that, because they reveal that binary structures lack a stable core, dissolve systemic differentiation and thus fatally complicate any attempt to force the individual into rigid categories of gender or sexual identity. Byron’s works deploy seduction as a tactic of ironic representation of both gender and sexual practice that is necessarily multiplicitous …

Recasting Genre In Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays, Christina Ilona Hunter

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates Tennessee Williams’s earliest full-length plays, also known as the apprentice plays—Candles to the Sun, Fugitive Kind, Not About Nightingales, Spring Storm, and Stairs to the Roof—by comparing, contrasting and contextualizing them in relation to Daniel Chandler’s generic criteria of drama; namely, narrative, characterization, setting, topics, iconography, and staging techniques. The present study also draws upon an extensive body of scholarship pertaining to genre theory, Williams’s cultural contemporaries, and the historical and psychological backdrop of Depression-era America. In these early plays, Williams diverged sharply from the dramatic generic conventions of his day, manipulating them in new …