Digital Commons Network^™

"Quham Dowis Thow Scot?" Scottish Identity In Blind Hary's Wallace, Stefan Thomas Hall

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

“So That The Nations May Become Genuine Indian”: Nativism And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Ceremony, Dennis Cutchins

Faculty Publications

Leslie Marmon Silko’s (mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo) Ceremony is a powerful novel that tells the story of Tayo, a mixed-blood Pueblo war veteran who returns to Laguna mentally crippled by his wartime experiences. As Tayo struggles to overcome the alienation his military service has created, he must also face the shame of his own mixed heritage. His suffering eventually leads him off the pueblo to a Navajo healer, Betonie, who helps Tayo create a new historical paradigm based on Navajo and Laguna mythology. Betonie’s fictional re-vision of history is, perhaps, the novel’s most important accomplishment. Through Betonie, Silko creates an alternative …

Routes Of Freedom: Slave Resistance And The Politics Of Literary Geography, Judith Louise Kemerait

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation integrates rhetorical, historical, and spatial analysis in an effort to expand our understanding of the cultural work performed by antebellum narratives that take slavery in the United States as their subject matter. Specifically, it focuses on the complicated relationship between place and human praxis as revealed in five texts: The Confessions of Nat Turner, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred, Martin R. Delany’s Blake, Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave,” and Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. In my attention to literary geographies, I trace spatial patterns in which considerations of organized resistance and slave rebellion are repeatedly placed in “wild-spaces” such as …

To Glory Or To Ruin : Guinevere And Vivien In Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, Alfred Tennyson's Idylls Of The King, And Edwin Arlington Robinson's Merlin And Lancelot, Eunice W. Carwile

English & Modern Languages: Theses, Dissertations & Student Publications

From Malory's Morte Darthur, through Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and through Robinson's Merlin and Lancelot, Guinevere and Vivien evolve from mere servants of a masculine plot and theme to well-rounded characters who struggle with the same problems that confront their male counterparts. Malory's world is about knights, warfare, and a holy quest, with women acting or reacting in certain ways only to move the plot along. While Tennyson develops female characters more fully than Malory, the great Victorian pays no homage to Arthurian womankind, bringing to his work a philosophy of sin-weakness-destruction that makes Vivien an evil seductress and …

John Milton, Blackfriars Spectator?: "Elegia Prima" And Ben Jonson's The Staple Of News, Timothy J. Burbery

English Faculty Research

In the spring of 1626 John Milton was temporarily expelled from Cambridge University, perhaps over a quarrel with his tutor William Chappell, and sent home to London, where he remained for at least several weeks. There, the seventeen-year-old poet composed his first elegy, a Latin verse-letter to his closest friend, Charles Diodati. In it, Milton claims to be enjoying his unexpected holiday by reading, girl watching, and attending the theater. Milton scholars have never reached consensus about his alleged playgoing, for while the young man speaks as a spectator, the plots and characters he mentions-these include comic types such as …

Imprisoned And Empowered: The Women Of Edith Wharton's Supernatural Fiction., Tonya Faye Stansberry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By focusing on the status and state of women as represented in selected supernatural fiction by Edith Wharton, we explore the socio-gender relationships, as well as the gender roles of women in general as they existed in the early part of the twentieth century. These associations are discussed, as is the influence Henry James may have had on Wharton’s writing style within the genre of the ghostly tale.

The conclusions made within this study lead the reader of the tales to believe that Wharton expressed different feminist perspectives based on how she was developing as a person and as a …

Eiu 4106g-021: War Stories, John Kilgore

Summer 2003

No abstract provided.

The Dragon The Raven And The Ring, Michael Vorsino

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Violence And Vigilantism In Modern Irish Literature, Janet Carmichael

ETD Archive

Many authors of modern Irish literary works challenge the rhetoric used to justify the continuation of conflict in Northern Ireland. One effective method used to accomplish this challenge is the dramatic depiction of violence. The depictions are notable in that they are designed to fall outside of, run counter to, or exceed the normative frameworks perpetuated by the dominant ideologies. They are formulated to promote social change by attacking the foundational fallacies used to validate the structural hegemony. Eoin McNamee and Kate O'Riordan use graphic depictions of violence and human destruction in their novels to expose some of the fallacies …

Stephen King, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Stephen King, popularly known as “The King of Horror,” is one of the more prolific and successful writers of the twentieth century. Despite a reputation for writing only horror and gore, however, King has written works that do not qualify as either horror or supernatural but rather are thoughtful, intricate slices of human experience that often cause us to reflect on our own childhoods, not always with fond nostalgia. He encourages his readers to get in touch with their own memories of what being a child really means, and innocence has little to do with King's version of childhood. Believing …

The Soldier's Strife: An Introspective View Through The Work Of Tim O'Brien, Mandy Solomon

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Handbuch Zur Lateinischen Sprache Des Mittelalters, 2: Bedeutungswandel Und Wortbildung, Scott Gwara

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dramatic Relocation: The Time And Place For Shakespeare On Film, Lydia Lunning

Honors Papers

"Doing Shakespeare is simply harder than anything else," Colm Feore says to his interviewer, while apparently on break from rehearsing his role as Marcus Andronicus before principal photography begins for Julie Taymor's film, Titus (1999). "It's harder than Chekov, it's harder than Moliere, it's harder than Racine, it's harder than .. . anything!" ("The Making of Titus," DVD Special Features). The team involved in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000) as well as that of Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1995) didn't have it any easier. By all accounts of each filmmaking process, none of the films to be discussed here had the …

Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer

English Faculty Research

John Cumming (1807-1881) was the popular minister of the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London's Covent Garden. This article examines his views on the end times and the Roman Catholic Church, two of the favorite subjects of his preaching.

The Temple Of Morality: Thomas Holcroft And The Swerve Of Melodrama, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Tyranny Of Sentimental Form: Wollstonecraft’S Mary And The Gendering Of Anxiety, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Mermaid's Dress: Marriage And Empire In The Voyage Out And Mrs Dalloway, Melissa Wharton-Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how socio-historical influences shape the protagonists of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925)-- Rachel Vinrace and Clarissa Dalloway. During the writing of these two novels, attitudes about roles for women before and after World War I shifted as pre-war domestic strife was replaced by a post-war push to return to normalcy. Throughout the period, imperialist ideology demanded that women conform to traditional gender roles by marrying and reproducing. Woolf depicts this pressure as it affects her two protagonists.

In The Voyage Out, the British Empire's imposing presence is exhibited through the setting of …

Love, Violence, And Creation: Modernist Mediums Of Transcendence In Sylvia Plath's Poetry And Prose, Autumn Williams

Masters Theses

Many critics who study Sylvia Plath's works discuss the autobiographical significance of her poetry and prose, labeling her art as primarily confessional. My research shows that Sylvia Plath's awareness of and sensitivity to contemporary and historical cultural events, along with her acute sense of literary tradition, shape her art and widen the scope of critical interpretation. My study, although conceding that aspects of her writing are autobiographical, focuses on the modernist elements in her poetry and prose. By identifying her writing through the lens of modernism, I view her art in terms of its cultural, historical, political, and aesthetic qualities. …

Facade Of A Romantic: Benjamin Disraeli And Coningsby Or The New Generation, Sybil Or The Two Nations, And Tancred Or The New Crusade, Peggy Pope

Masters Theses

Dismissed by contemporary critics as a second-rate writer, Benjamin Disraeli has been undervalued for over a hundred and fifty years. Writing in 1979, D.R. Schwarz rued that no recent full-length study of his novels had been undertaken, while other, even more minor novelists have been regularly exhumed. A substantial reassessment may be underway, as Paul Smith notes, particularly in the area of Disraeli's Jewishness. Bernard Glassman's volume, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (2003), and Disraeli's Jewishness (2002), by Todd Endelman and Tony Kushner, attest to this new interest. A recent general study, Disraeli (2000), by Edgar …

"Above The Noise And The Glory": Tiers Of Propaganda In Great War Literature, Margaret L. Clark

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

"Above the Noise and the Glory:" Tiers of Propaganda in Great War Literature illuminates the literary responses of Rupert Brooke, Mary Borden, Alice-Dunbar Nelson and Willa Cather to the manner in which the threat to one's cultural community, as well as personal and physical landscape, transforms a nation's, and even a world's, people from a state of complacency or purposelessness to one of jingoistic fervor. Prompted and inspired by personal, political and cultural forces, these writers mobilized early twentieth-century private citizens' spirits of nationalistic pride and solidarity. Individual chapters place within historical and literary contexts how war propaganda, particularly British …

Folk Medicine In Southern Appalachian Fiction., Catherine Benson Strain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The region of Southern Appalachia, long known for its colorful storytellers, is also rich in folk medical lore and practice. In their Appalachian novels, Lucy Furman, Emma Bell Miles, Mildred Haun, Catherine Marshall, Harriette Arnow, Lee Smith, and Charles Frazier, feature folk medicine prominently in their narratives. The novels studied, set against the backdrop of the rise of official medicine, are divided into three major time periods that correspond to important chapters in the history of American medicine: the 1890s through the 1930s; the 1940s through the 1960s; and the 1970s through the present. The study of folk medicine, a …

The Great War And Tolkien's Memory: An Examination Of World War I Themes In The Hobbit And The Lord Of The Rings, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Examines Tolkien’s experiences during World War I and typical WWI themes in his writings: the pastoral moment, ritual and romance, and the sense of national literature. Looks at how Tolkien mythologized his war experiences in his fiction.

Creating A New Genre: Mary Rowlandson And Hher Narrative Of Indian Captivity., Rachel Bailey De Luise

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the aftermath of King Philip's War, Puritan Mary Rowlandson recorded her experiences as an Indian captive. In a vivid story that recollects the details of these events, Rowlandson attempts to impart a message to her community through the use of a variety of literary techniques. The genre of the Indian captivity narrative is a literary construct that she develops out of the following literary forms that existed at the time of her writing. These are the spiritual autobiography, a documentary method meant to archive spiritual and emotional growth through a record of daily activities; the conversion narrative, which made …

On Alan Moore And Eddie Campbell's From Hell (1996) And The Hughes Brothers' From Hell, Rodney Sharkey

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Allen and Albert Hughes' film version of From Hell is visually striking and strong on memorable images. For those who enjoy attending films based on graphic novels they have read, the first framed shot of a London skyline beneath a scarlet sky is superbly reminiscent of the menacing and yet enticing comic world of the novel. Moreover, the film develops its theme visually as well as narratively; the impulse behind the ripper murders is chillingly realized in some ensemble scenes at the Royal College of Physicians and police barracks where single female victims are counter-pointed against a metaphorical …

Blending Of Strengths: The Convergence Of Christian Themes And Epic Motifs In Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, And Paradise Lost, Aysha Inankur

Capstone Research Projects

No abstract provided.

Representations Of Scotland In Edwin Morgan's Poetry, Theresa Fernandez Mendoza-Kovich

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis is an examination of the poetry of Edwin Morgan. It is a cultural analysis of Morgan's poetry as representation of the Scottish people. Morgan's poetry represents the Scottish people as determined and persistent in dealing with life's adversities while maintaining hope in a better future.

Igbo As An Endangered Language, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

At first sight, the question "Is Igbo an endangered language," would appear to be grossly misplaced, since the survival of the language seems to be well guaranteed by its status both as one of the three main languages of Nigeria and one of the major languages of literature, education, and commerce in Africa. Furthermore, with its well over 25 million native speakers who live in one of the most densely populated areas of the world with an exceptionally high fertility rate and a traditional world view and culture that promote the raising of large families, it would appear that there …

It Came From Outer Space: The Virus, Cultural Anxiety, And Speculative Fiction, Anne-Marie Thomas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study seeks to explore and interrogate the “viral reality” of the 1990s, in which the virus, heavily indebted to representations of AIDS for its metaphorical power, emerged as a prominent agent in science and popular culture. What becomes apparent in both fictional and non-fictional texts of this era, however, is that the designation of “virus” transcends specific and material viral phenomena, making the virus itself a touchstone for modern preoccupations with self and other. As constituted by the human body’s interaction with pathogenic agents, the binary of self and other may be deconstructed by an interrogation of the virus …

Explaining The Explanation: Byron's Notes To Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cristina M. Caminita

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis, I show that Lord Byron's notes to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are an integral part of the poem itself, not to be read as added material, but to be read as material that comments upon and deconstructs the poem. I examine the first two cantos of the poem, reading the notes as Byron's own answers and questions to the stylistic and political ramifications of the romance verse. By scrutinizing Byron's use of the romantic hero, the romance verse, the romantic quest and the text of romance for his reading public, I show Byron's own subversion and questioning of …

This Man's Heart: Masculinity In The Poetry Of E.E. Cummings, Willis John Whitesell Iii

Masters Theses

"This Man's Heart: Masculinity in the Poetry of E.E. Cummings" explores changing masculinity in the life and poetry of E.E. Cummings. The relationship between Cummings and his father, his first male role model, became strained when Cummings was a teenager finding his own male identity. As he rebelled against his father, a Unitarian minister, he began writing poetry in a modernist style under the direction of a new mentor, Ezra Pound.

Cummings' early modernist poems criticize conventional male roles and configurations of masculinity as outdated. As Cummings continued to grow as a man and writer, he confronted new realities which …