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Genre And Gender In Charles Bukowski's Notes Of A Dirty Old Man, Kallisto J. Vimr

ETD Archive

Charles Bukowski's notes of a dirty old man is a genre-blurring, gender-blending "start" to the perpetual "work-in-progress" that constitutes his oeuvre. Bukowski's genre heterogeneity provides a literal shape-shifting that allows the Bukowski-character to experiment with his a fluid, indeterminate subjectivity, helping unravel the tight myth that binds him as a "dirty old man." Examining one of the vignettes in the book, the column recounting Bukowski meeting Neal Cassady, showcases Bukowski's engagement with autobiography and creative nonfiction in order to respond to constructions of verisimilitude this is inextricably linked to other organized constructions Bukowski must work in--or out from--namely the hierarchy …

On The Brink Of The Waters Of Life And Truth, We Are Miserably Dying: Ralph Waldo Emerson As A Predecessor To Deconstruction And Postmodernism, Michael A. Deery

ETD Archive

Between his pivotal essays "Nature" in 1836 and "The Poet" in 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson's increasingly negative and distrustful view of language can best be described as a precursor to deconstruction and postmodernism. Contemporary critics are too quick to dismiss a deconstructionist Emerson. There is evidence within his major essays that Emerson's understanding of language not only leads him to public and private displays of pessimism, but also to feelings of internal solipsism, agnosticism, and epistemological anxiety. Emerson demanded that mankind should utilize nature and aesthetics to experience the sublime and an immediate and original relationship with God. Yet, Emerson's …

"The Stance Of A Last Survivor": C. S. Lewis And The Modern World (Chapter One Of The Rhetoric Of Certitude), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "As professor and scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature, C. S. Lewis wrote and published well-respected and influential literary criticism. At the same time, following his conversion to Christianity around 1930, he felt a duty to apply his argumentative and philosophical skills to the writing of Christian apologetics-defenses of traditional Christian principles against the attacks of skeptics and religious liberals. More important, Lewis lived in an age largely hostile to his attitudes and thought, both in literature and Christianity. In a period that s.aw such startling literary productions as The Waste Land and Ulysses, Lewis chose to defend traditional …

The Visual Experience Of Image Metaphor: Cognitive Insights Into Imagist Figures, Daniel W. Gleason

Faculty Publications & Research

In this essay I investigate how image metaphors – metaphors that link one concrete object to another, such as “her spread hand was a starfish” – promote visualization in the reader. Focusing on image metaphors in Imagist poetry, I assert that the two terms (e.g., the hand and the starfish) of many of these metaphors are similar in shape, and that this “structural correspondence” encourages the reader to visualize those metaphors. Readers may spontaneously form a “visual template,” a schematic middle ground that mediates between those similar shapes, in order to smoothly move between the two images within each metaphor. …

What's So Funny? Letters As Comedic Devices In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night And Love's Labor's Lost, Pamela Tracy

English Theses - Archive

While letters and writing appear in many of Shakespeare's plays, his comedies Twelfth Night and Love's Labor's Lost use letter-writing uniquely, as a medium of linguistic-stylistic humor to attack Elizabethan anxieties and procure laughter from his audience. Maria's forged letter to Malvolio is commonly regarded as the humorous center of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, as the cleverly penned epistle leads its recipient to act in a ridiculous manner; in Love's Labor's Lost letters often lead to comic results, especially as the king and his men, who have taken a vow to avoid women, unwittingly reveal to each other that they have …

Review Of Victorian Turns, Neovictorian Returns: Essays On Fiction And Culture, Penny Gay, Judith Johnston, Catherine Waters

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The inside of this volume offers exactly the pleasurable variety and range of interest promised by its outside (the beautifully reproduced cover image is Ernest Dudley Heath's Piccadilly Circus at Night, 1893). As its title suggests, the volume, divided into two sections, seeks to capture, in Part One, the diverse ways in which the Victorians explored in fiction the multiple 'turns' in new directions the age was taking, and, in Part Two, the imaginative updatings of these fictions, in literature, film and theatre, as well as in scholarship, in the burgeoning afterlife of Victorianism.

The editors note in their introduction …

Chaos Is The Poetry: From Outcomes To Inquiry In Service-Learning Pedagogy, Shari J. Stenberg, Darby Arant Whealy

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that the contemporary university values a model of efficiency, of tangible, quantifiable outcomes. Jan Currie and Lesley Vidovich (qtd. in Downing, Hurlbert, Mathieu 9) contend that since the 1980s, the boundaries between higher education, government, and business have largely deteriorated, and business discourse of "excellence" has come to dominate university culture. Consequently, output, outcomes, and efficiency are valorized over and above process, inquiry, and the inevitable tensions of learning. Stanley Aronowitz puts it this way: "[A]cademic leaders chant the mantra of excellence . . . [which] means ... all parts of the university 'perform' and are …

Bloudy Tygrisses: Murderous Women In Early Modern English Drama And Popular Literature, Alexandra Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines artistic and literary images of murderous women in popular print published in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. The construction of murderous women in criminal narratives, published between 1558 and 1625 in pamphlet, ballad, and play form, is examined in the context of contemporary historical records and cultural discourse. Chapter One features a literature review of the topic in recent scholarship. Chapter Two, comprised of two subsections, discusses representations of early modern women in contemporary literature and criminal archives. The subsections in Chapter Two examine early modern treatises, sermons, and essays concerning the nature of women, the roles and …

World Englishes: Practical Implications For Teaching And Research, Fatima Esseili, Kyle Mcintosh, Cindy Torres, Elena Lawrick, Cristine Mcmartin-Miller, Shih-Yu Chang

English Faculty Publications

With the emergence of World Englishes (WE) and the continuous flow of international students into universities in the United States, issues surrounding the tolerance and acceptance of varieties of English, the notion of standards, and the concept of nativeness all come to the forefront of research and pedagogy. Since English is the dominant language of international academic publication and since it has been adapted and adopted by a number of countries for various instrumental, institutional, innovative/imaginative, and interpersonal functions (Kachru, 1984), it is essential for teachers and administrators to be aware of the pluricentricity of English and their students’ different …

(Re)Closure In The Short Story Sequence: Vietnam Revisited In Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, Robert M. Luscher

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Translating Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Foreignized Translations Of The Seafarer And The Wanderer, Andrew Timothy Eichel

Masters Theses

Few scholars argue that medieval literature retains the same prestige today it once held as the foundation of almost every school's English literature/language department. One reason for this fall could be the lack of proper integration of newer literary approaches into the field. Why, despite the recent swell in the use of more contemporary schools of theory-Marxism, feminism, and deconstructionism, for example-do many medieval scholars still endorse traditional strategies of historical and empirical analysis? Focusing on the translation methodology of foreignization, I present Ezra Pound's translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer" and my translation of "The Wanderer." Both serve …

The Letters Of Elizabeth I: Rhetoric For Ruling, Anna M. Patton

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of the rhetorical skill of Elizabeth I of England, focusing primarily on her letters. Elizabeth's rhetorical prowess is well documented; scholars have spent ample time dissecting her political speeches as well as her historical significance in literary, political and historical studies. Although her speeches provide a firm foundation from which to examine Elizabeth and her relationships with her people, her letters are even more pertinent when examining those relationships Elizabeth sought to establish during her reign. Elizabeth's politics and relationships are enhanced and developed by her ability to manipulate those around her with her words. …

Structured Revision: A New Model In Rethinking, Rewriting, And Reiterating Text, Tom Henry

The Utah English Journal

Many procedures offered by textbooks, including the process model itself, fall short of actually encouraging students to successfully revise and/or make significant changes to their texts. Yet a form of revision which is more carefully structured may help students to make more specific changes while improving the quality of their diction, syntax, paragraphing, and the overall quality of their writing.

Before Belief: Embodiment And The “Trying Game”, Donna Strickland

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

I use my experience of teaching "Mindful Writing" to reflect on the pre-cognitive act of "trying out" new ideas. It seems that there's an important piece of the believing game that happens before the cognitive act of belief and that involves the body as much as the mind.

Specular Subjects : Technologies Of Vision In The Transatlantic Novel, 1719-1850, Matthew Henry Pangborn

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Scholars of the long eighteenth century have traced the rise in modern Anglophone culture of an observational, episto-factual standard of truth and value, new techniques of surveillance and disciplinarity, image-based and global networks of consumption and exchange, and a mass culture honing its ostensibly comprehensive power of sight through new media of text and image. While debate has occurred over the origins and meanings of the ascendancy of such an overwhelmingly visual mode of engagement with the world, scholars have tended to examine such topics in isolation, with little attention to the ethical and political consequences of the material practices …

Reading Joycean Comedy And Faulknerian Tragedy: Exploring The Significance Of Location, Literary Influence And The Possibilities Of Heroism With Leopold Bloom In Joyce’S Ulysses And Quentin Compson In Faulkner’S The Sound And The Fury And Absalom, Absalom!, Colin R. Cummings

Honors Theses

The distinct similarity between Joyce’s and Faulkner’s philosophical concerns (the affirmation of life in spite of its myriad difficulties), and the striking disjuncture between their aesthetic approaches (comedy for Joyce and tragedy for Faulkner), is where my interest in this project began. I sought to explore the lives and works of both writers in order to get a sense of how two artists could attempt to convey a similar message through such different means. The first thing I explore is a number of similarities between Joyce’s and Faulkner’s personal worlds (particularly their intimate connections to location) and their sources of …

A Review Of Poetry And Ecology In The Age Of Milton And Marvell By Diane Kelsey Mccolley, Nicolle M. Jordan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Here Tunggë Made Here Slayn: Dangerous Speech Acts In Four Exempla From Robert Mannyng Of Brunne’S Handlyng Synne, Emily Russell

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I consider four exempla from Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne: “The Tale of the Bloody Child,” “The Tale of the Sacrilegious Carolers of Colbek,” “The Tale of the Midwife Who Christened the Child Wrongly,” and “St. Gregory’s Tale of the Nun Who Spoke Naughty Words.” I read these exempla through the theoretical texts of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and Mary Douglas, as well as others, and conclude that speech acts, whether deviant or sanctioned, make identity at any level (de)constructable. I hope to show that while this is particularly noticeable against the historical …

Blood Culture And The Problem Of Decadence, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

This paper examines the commodification of hunting practices via the deterritorializing function of capitalism described by Deleuze and Guattari. It also studies counter trends-- predicted by or consistent with Deleuzean theory--that indicate a subtending authenticity displayed by certain hunting practices apparently resistant to commercial exploitation. "Blood culture" is my term for inauthentic hunting activity--a distinction drawn directly by Deleuze in his televised interviews with Claire Parnet. Aspects of "becoming-animal" and other transversal and cross-disciplinary flows of thought are also of course in play. As in some of my former work, I again argue for a Deleuzean cultural mechanics of the …

Cosmological Vision(S) : History, Modernism, And American Renewal In Hart Crane's The Bridge, Lauren Grewe

Honors Theses

With the help of recent Crane studies, along with my own ear, I intend to prove the worth of Crane's myth of bridging as a way of responding to and eventually reforming the Elitonian vision of the modem world. The Bridge counters Eliot as a way to offer hope to the modem world in place of despair, as a way to offer a system of belief that is neither dogmatic nor futile, that incorporates a vision of the future just as much as a vision of the past.

Why Floods Be Served To Us In Bowls: Emily Dickinson's Souvenirs, Hannah Lee

Honors Papers

This paper examines the uncanny object in Emily Dickinson's poems and letters through the lens of critic Susan Stewart's writing on souvenirs.

Exile: The Implications Of Separation From Language During Genocide, Kehan Desousa

Honors Papers

This essay examines the function of language during a time of genocide as displayed in Imre Kertesz's novel Fatelessness, the story of a young Hungarian's experiences in Auschwitz. Language provides the tool for fate's imposition, here the imposition of an identity, a history, and a future upon an individual that does not necessarily cohere with the experience of the individual. Since language provides the mechanism for the unwinding of fate, a fate ultimately hostile to victims of genocide, the old language (the native language of the victim, whether it be French, Yiddish, Hungarian, etc.) becomes an inadequate vehicle of communication—but …

Spectrogenetic Translation In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things And Elsewhere, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

South Asians, in their attempts to articulate post-colonial subjectivity, have themselves only reinscribed various aspects of colonial exoticism in their work. South Asian author Arundhati Roy’s rendering of untouchability in terms of godliness in The God of Small Things resonates with colonial ideologies that read “subalterns” as objects, not as subjects. Roy’s invocation of colonial methods of translation envisions untouchability in “absolutist terms”—a strategy that may ultimately mitigate against a recognition of the highly varied experiences, social agencies, and subjectivities of dalits living in South Asia and abroad.

The Significance Of The Sublime In Thomas Gray’S “Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College”, Sophie Condon

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 11 Fall 2009

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

A Language Of Grief: Spectacular, Textual, And Violent Expression In Titus Andronicus, Connor Guy

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Saltwater Sacraments And Backwoods Sins: Contemporary Atlantic Canadian Literature And The Rise Of Literary Catholicism, Andrew Peter Atkinson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the 1990s, Canadian readers were offered a new literary trend: the Atlantic Canadian Catholic novel. In this dissertation, I examine works from six authors whose writing reflects the scope of this trend and I argue for a consideration of their collective impact on our social imaginary. The bulk of my argument is devoted to an examination of the Catholic religious content in the five novels and one memoir: David Adams Richards’ Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998); Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1996); Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven (1996); Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion: A Memoir (1999); Patrick Kavanagh’s Gaff …

Anxiety Of Synecdoche: Displacing The Essential In Invisible Man, Benjamin Bascom

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

An Unruly Member: Attacking The King’S Two Bodies Through Speech In Richard Ii, Shannon Adams

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Phantoms Of Old Forms: The Gothic Mode In The Dramatic Verse Of Tennyson And Browning, Michael E. Ackerman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

My dissertation, “Phantoms of Old Forms: The Gothic Mode in the Dramatic Verse of Tennyson and Browning” situates Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning within a lineage of writers who experimented with the Gothic mode in dramatic and verse forms. This study is, in the first instance, an experiment in applying a specific strain of Gothic critical theory, one that addresses issues of gender, to canonical literary materials not ordinarily approached in that light. Definitions of the Gothic are notoriously elusive, and this project is not an assertion that the Gothic is always, in all of its manifestations, about gender. …