Digital Commons Network^™

Subverting Blackface And The Epistemology Of American Identity In John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs, Amy Rosby

ETD Archive

John Berryman has been criticized for his employment of white performance of blackface minstrelsy's conventions and dialect in 77 Dream Songs because of the complex history of this tradition of blackface's problematic performance of racial fantasy and because of Berryman's designation as a white, confessional poet. However, when one observes the history of this tradition of minstrelsy, its initial reception, its "transcodification" into the white American racial ideology, and subsequent scholarly analyses of its implications, it is evident that Berryman creates an anti-model of minstrelsy which consequently becomes a minstrelsy of "whiteness." Through this anti-model, which shifts the public gaze …

Simulation In Dave Eggers's Memoir, Judit Slager

ETD Archive

The genre of the American memoir has been altered through the centuries since Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. By the twentieth century one of the strongest influential elements has become the simulation of reality. In a memoir as much as an autobiographer reveals about society, also social demands or cultural transactions influence the author as he writes. Modern society has replaced reality and meaning with symbols and signs. With other words simulation seems to be a part of social demand. As Jean Baudrillard explains it our perception is entangled in prepackaged media perspectives. When Dave Eggers writes his autobiography he attempts to …

Parnassus 2008

Parnassus

The 2008 edition of the student literary journal, Parnassus, published by Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

A.S. Byatt's "Morpho Eugenia": Prolegomena To Any Future Theory, Michael Lackey

English Publications

The traditional view holds that love and knowledge are only possible if a person can transcend the human—love is that which overcomes biological urges like lust, while knowledge is that which gets beyond self-interested perception. In the nineteenth century, when theories about anthropomorphism came to dominate, the traditional views of love and knowledge were exposed as incoherent. In "Morpho Eugenia," A.S. Byatt brilliantly dramatizes how these intellectual developments impacted the lives of a wide range of nineteenth-century characters—some sunk into nihilistic despair, some became dogmatic scientists, some became tortured existentialists, and some tried to build a new and more reasonable …

Seeking The Greatest Miracle: Psychological Mythology In Ibsen’S A Doll House, Joshua Lavender

The Corinthian

Nora’s obstacle is her marriage, which out of its specific character prevents her from becoming fully human. Nora and Torvald have built their marriage and lives around a shared mythology, based loosely on Christian concepts of morality, sin, and redemption, in which Nora idolizes Torvald as a god in whose presence she must submit and behind whose back she lives a secret, “sinful” existence.

Hemingway And Bullshit, Nathan R. L. Eilers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit as a lens to re-examine Ernest Hemingway's aesthetic of factual details and omission. Frankfurt argues that bullshit consists of speech made with indifference to its veracity, and one who makes a habit of bullshitting may lose touch with reality. By studying three works across the author's career, "Big Two-Hearted River," "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and The Old Man and the Sea, one sees that Hemingway's prose style evolves and eventually contradicts his artistic statements. Given the fact that he promotes his aesthetic while discarding it, his theory becomes bullshit. …

Pipe Dream: Eugene O'Neill's Rhetoric Of Tragedy, Ryan Francis Murphy

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis applies a rhetorical lens to the work of Eugene O'Neill, specifically, those plays written between the years 1939 and 1942-the height of his dramatic genius. This thesis works to reimagine Eugene O'Neill, often looked upon as "lacking rhetorical exuberance," as a distinctive and successful rhetor, in addition to installing the "pipe dream" as his foremost rhetorical device.

The Rhetoric Of Dean Koontz's Intensity, Krista Michelle Wagner

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines the revision of eighteenth century gothic fiction by Dean Koontz's twentieth century horror novel, Intensity. In particular, the novel invites Aristotelian rhetorical analysis through the competing appeals staged by its antagonist, Vess, and its protagonist, Chyna.

The Activist Wpa: Changing Stories About Writing And Writers, Linda Adler-Kassner

All USU Press Publications

One wonders if there is any academic field that doesn't suffer from the way it is portrayed by the media, by politicians, by pundits and other publics. How well scholars in a discipline articulate their own definition can influence not only issues of image but the very success of the discipline in serving students and its other constituencies. The Activist WPA is an effort to address this range of issues for the field of English composition in the aftermath of No Child Left Behind and the Spellings Commission. Drawing on recent developments in framing theory and the resurgent traditions of …

Ua37/2 Faculty Personal Papers Small Collections, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Small donations from individual faculty and staff members. These are generally one or two items housed in a single folder. Papers range from gradebooks and syllabi to funeral cards and obituaries. The existing records are arranged in alphabetical order by donor surname. Future donations will be arranged in the order in which they are received.

'This Text Deletes Itself’: Traumatic Memory And Space-Time In Zoe Wicomb’S David’S Story, Shane Graham

English Faculty Publications

The group of cultural and literary theorists whom I would loosely categorize as practitioners of “trauma theory”–including, most notably, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, and Dominick LaCapra–share several assumptions. Their ideas all derive to a large extent from Freudian conceptions of memory and trauma, and they all emphasize the temporal aspects of psychic trauma: Caruth, for instance, describes the traumatic encounter as “a break in the mind’s experience of time” (61). Implicit in this conception of trauma, as well, is the assumption that trauma is an individual and private phenomenon. And they all suggest, moreover, that trauma manifests itself …

Sarah Kane's Cruelty: Subversive Performance And Gender, Rebecca L. Dluback

ETD Archive

Sarah Kane uses cruelty in her plays Blasted and Cleansed to shock the audience out of their indifference, which will then allow Kane to subvert gender norms, through performed acts on stage, and the heterosexual patriarchal authority that creates the Other in society. Kane uses the theories of Antonin Artaud and Judith Butler to create a new style that melds these two theories while bringing a fresh take to the theater. Kane was twenty-three when her first play, Blasted, opened at the Royal Court Theater Upstairs on January 12, 1995. It was met with hostility by the critics when it …

Losing Everything In David Wong Louie's "In A World Small Enough", Ibis Gómez-Vega

Short Story

No abstract provided.

George Eliot's Poetry Of The Soul, Gregory Tate

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The poetic epigraph to Daniel Deranda, written by George Eliot herself, anticipates and encapsulates the novel's interest in the complex processes that make up human psychology:

Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throngs of hurrying desires That trample on the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhalations laden with slow death, And o’r the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence.

The epigraph describes psychological phenomena that will feature prominently throughout Daniel Deranda: the multiple and contradictory elements of individual character; the often self-defeating nature of human thought and …

The Thirty-Sixth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2007: Scenes And After, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Folio Society's cosmetic edition of George Eliot's fiction, which was published in 1999, has no place on any spine of its seven-volume set for Scenes of Clerical Life. A search of the actual texts, however, reveals George Eliot's first published fiction bedded together with Silas Marner, the pair sharing a neat introduction by Jill Paton-Walsh. I pondered at the time if spine exclusion meant that Scenes was just too minor for remark, or whether, as is the way with publishers, getting things wrong can be ignored once the books are on the shelves or, as with the Folio edition, …

Notes On Contributors 2008

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathleen Adams was Secretary of the Fellowship from 1968 until her retirement in the spring of this year. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Juliette Atkinson is a teaching assistant at University College London, where she recently completed her PhD thesis on Victorian Biography and the Representation of 'Obscure' Lives, which is partly concerned with the manner in which Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot influenced nineteenth-century life-writing.

Michael …

Women's Poetic Response To The Male Gaze: Cutting Them Down, Nadine Yonka

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

At The Hands Of Becky Sharp: (In)Visible Manipulation And Vanity Fair, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Victorian sartorial convention allowed for the routine inspection of only two body parts: the head and the hands. While it is well-documented that the perceptual codes of phrenology and physiognomy shaped psychological, aesthetic and fictional conventions by the middle of the nineteenth century, the hand has attracted relatively little attention. One would be hard-pressed, for example, to identify a critic of Vanity Fair who does not comment on the relationship between Becky Sharp's facial expressions and the pervasiveness of her manipulative temperament. However, even within the heavily sifted topic of "manipulation" in Vanity Fair, critics have overlooked the extent …

Three Screenplays, Geoffrey Abruzzi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Three original screenplays set in a fictional southwestern town, dealing with subjects of hope, desire, truth and deception.

An Annotated Bibliography Of Stephen King Criticism, Tyler Cobabe

Library Research Grants

No abstract provided.

Behold Thy Doom Is Mine: The Evolution Of Guinevere In The Eorks Of Chrétien De Troyes, Sir Thomas Malory, And Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Stephanie R. Comer

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Guinevere has existed in literature for nearly a millennium, evolving to suit societal values and mores. She has metamorphosed from Arthur’s noble queen to Lancelot’s jealous lover, from a motherly sovereign to a vindictive adulteress as each author struggled to apply his own literary and societal conventions to a character that is both inherited and created.

In addressing the evolution of Guinevere, this thesis has followed her progression through three works: The Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes, Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, and The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In addition, this …

Riding A Broomstick Out Of Plato’S Cave: Elements Of Plato Found In J.K. Rowling’S Harry Potter Series, Camille Winegar Parker

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become a cultural phenomenon. An analysis of the Harry Potter series reveals that underneath the phenomenon status there is great depth. This paper looks at aspects of the novels that mirror elements found in Plato’s The Republic, specifically his allegory of the cave in Book Seven. Plato’s allegory of the cave can be broken down into “four stages,” and in the Harry Potter novels there are characters who fall in each of these four stages. Through the characters in the four stages we see that the “highest form of knowledge” (Plato 246) to …

The Believing Game Or Methodological Believing, Peter Elbow

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Three arguments why we need the believing game: to help us find flaws in our thinking, to help us choose among competing claims, and to achieve goals that the doubting game neglects.

Front Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Empathy: Ethical Foundations Of Dialogical Communication, Nathaniel Teich

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Peter Elbow's "Believing Game" can function as an ethical strategy and can be understood in terms of humanistic rhetorical traditions from Martin Buber to Carl Rogers and Michael Polanyi.

Jaepl, Vol. 14, Winter 2008-2009, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Linda T. Calendrillo

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Essays

Peter Elbow - The Believing Game or Methodological Believing

Nathaniel Teich - The Rhetoric of Empathy: Ethical Foundations of Dialogical Communication

Mary Rose O'Reily - Splitting the Cartesian Hair

Patricia Bizzell - Faith-Based World Views as a Challenge to the Believing Game

Gina Briefs-Elgin - Lessons With the Mystics: Refreshing Our Vision in Mid/Late Career

Gesa E. Kirsch - Creating Spaces for Listening, Learning, and Sustaining the Inner Lives of Students

Sue Hum - The Persuasiveness of Pleasure: Play, Reciprocity, and Persuasion in Online Discussions

Reviews

Brad E. Lucas - Teaching Multi writing: Researching and Composing with Multiple Genres, …

Creating Spaces For Listening, Learning, And Sustaining The Inner Lives Of Students, Gesa E. Kirsch

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay explores what it takes to "create a space in the classroom that allows students the freedom to nourish their inner lives," an issue raised by Mary Rose O'Reilly in Radical Presence. The author draws on work in composition studies, education, and her own teaching practices to illustrate the importance of creating such spaces.

Lessons With The Mystics: Refreshing Our Vision In Mid/Late Career, Gina Briefs-Elgin

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This paper explores surprising and restorative responses to mid/late career burnout from the perspective of four of the world's great Eastern mystical traditions: Hinduism, Sufism, Zen, and Kabbalah.

The Persuasiveness Of Pleasure: Play, Reciprocity, And Persuasion In Online Discussions, Sue Hum

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay explores the role of pleasure in facilitating diverse modes of rhetorical participation in online discussion.

Faith-Based Worldviews As A Challenge To The Believing Game, Patricia Bizzell

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Elbow's "Believing Game" may help to make room in the academy for religious frames of mind, which encompass particularly dense networks of ideas and emotions.