Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“Wall Of Force”: Analyzing The Partition Of India And Pakistan In Haroun And The Sea Of The Stories, Grace Mowery

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Literary scholars have often interpreted Salman Rushdie’s children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a critique of censorship, but Eva König’s postcolonial analysis provides an alternate interpretation of the book. This essay builds upon König’s work and argues that the book instead critiques the damaged relationship between India and Pakistan following the 1947 partition. König’s inclusion of Edward Said’s views of othering in her analysis strengthens her argument, but she does not account for Rushdie’s context. Contextualizing the book within the history of the partition and accounting for Rushdie’s condemnation of it allows scholars to compare the fictionalized …

Strained Differentiation: Negotiating Grief With Maternal Foundations In Laird Hunt’S Neverhome, Heidie L. Raine

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

The intertwinement of mother-daughter psyches throughout the early developmental process bonds maternal and filial parties up unto differentiation, at which point the child comes to understand her status as an individual and her mother’s status as a separate entity. However, when trauma is introduced midway through the differentiation process, this psychological phenomenon may be hindered, stunting the advanced personal development of the daughter. Abandoned by loss, she may subconsciously fall victim to repressive defenses, insufficient socialization, and destructive behaviors.

In his 2016 novel Neverhome, Laird Hunt explores these psychological factors through a traumatized and unreliable female protagonist situated in …

The Long Defeat – Glimpses Of Final Victory: The Years Of The Locust, Evan B. Lanning

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

An examination of Tolkien’s conception of history, the crisis of unpreparedness preceding the Second World War, and a relating of the story of Churchill’s warnings and eventual ascension to the position of Prime Minister. This study will compare the historical perspective of Tolkien, as represented in his fictional works, with the turmoil that transpired during the early days of WWII. Mostly, it will demonstrate how Tolkien’s view of history manifested itself within the context of the very perilous realities leading up to WWII. Nonetheless, a larger portrait of the nation of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and their joint struggle to …

J.R.R. Tolkien And The Music Of Middle Earth, Emily Sulka

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Often referred to as “the Father of Modern Fantasy,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy between 1937 and 1949. Selling millions of copies each year, the Lord of the Rings is one of the bestselling books to date, and between the four books, six movies have been produced in an effort to relay the story of Middle Earth. However, movies do not stand alone as the only other art based off the trilogy. Throughout the novels, Tolkien includes poems that his characters sing, and in 1967, Donald Swann, after collaborating with the author, published a song cycle …

Encountering The Phantasmagoria: Pre-Raphaelite Aesthetics As The Antidote For Victorian Decadence In Robert Browning’S “My Last Duchess”, Matthew K. Werneburg

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” engages with ‘the problem of Raphael,’ a Victorian aesthetic debate into which Browning enters in order to address Victorian society’s spiritual impotence, which he connects to the societal emphasis on external appearances of virtue and nobility. This emphasis on appearances is reflected in Raphaelite aesthetics, for Victorians understood Raphael’s paintings as representational pictures intended to cause viewers to contemplate spiritual states. The Raphaelite school of aesthetics saw Raphael’s works as the pinnacle of the Christian visual art tradition, while the pre-Raphaelites sought to dissolve the distinction between sacred and secular, painting human bodies as they …