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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain
Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain
English Honors Theses
In this thesis I wanted to explore the ways that masculinity has been written in history through the genre of fiction. The first chapter discusses traumatized white masculinity in Kurt Vonnegut's novel SlaughterHouse Five and Oliver Stone's film Born On The Fourth of July. The second chapter deals with the female Black experience in response to the white patriarchy in Toni Morrison's novel Home and HBO's television series LoveCraft Country. And finally chapter 3 deals with mythologized masculinity redeemed through violence in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver and Frank Miller's comic book series The Dark Knight Returns. …
Performance, Theatricality, And Identity In Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Nina Masin-Moyer
Performance, Theatricality, And Identity In Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Nina Masin-Moyer
College Honors Program
William Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew is a curious and often controversial play due to its depiction of spousal abuse and female subordination. But despite that charged reputation, it continues to be produced on stages around the world, with creative choices that suggest an attempt to change a supposedly un-feminist play into a feminist one. My thesis argues that this play already features notable feminist elements at the level of the text itself, stemming in particular from its thematic and structural investment in performance and theatricality and in the roles that these elements play in constructing gender and …
Women, Writing, And Storytelling In Medieval England And The Canterbury Tales, Sadie O'Conor
Women, Writing, And Storytelling In Medieval England And The Canterbury Tales, Sadie O'Conor
The Criterion
For a woman to succeed in an academic sphere, it is never enough for her to be clever-- she must be brilliant. “The Second Nun’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales explores the metaphorical brilliance (in sexual purity, intelligence, and faith) of St. Cecilia. The tale is also a mechanism for the Second Nun to advocate for her own vocation of “holy work,” for the sake of the learned religious women who preserved such writings. The themes of her tale are quite different from those espoused by the Wife of Bath, but the Wife also argues to have her voice …
Injustice In Childhood: Jane Eyre And The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Christian Barkman
Injustice In Childhood: Jane Eyre And The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Christian Barkman
The Criterion
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are autobiographical novels narrated by the fictional Jane Eyre and the real Frederick Douglass. Both stories evoke an outpouring of pity for their respective narrator: Jane, for the unmerited abuses dealt against her by family and school administrators, but most of all Douglass, who reserves the greater portion of lament on account of his dreadful persecution under the evil of slavery. The environments Jane and Douglass inhabit throughout their childhood inflict an immense burden on their physical body and psyche. This essay specially examines the …
18th Century Theater And The Legitimacy Of The Lower Classes, Nina Masin-Moyer
18th Century Theater And The Legitimacy Of The Lower Classes, Nina Masin-Moyer
The Criterion
18th century theater developed alongside the expanding role of the lower and middle classes. George Lillo’s working-class tragedy The London Merchant and John Gay’s comedic satire The Beggar’s Opera exemplify how both drama and comedy can bring awareness and legitimacy to the struggles of working-class people. The London Merchant uses cultural references and religious language to elevate the struggles of its titular merchant’s apprentice whereas The Beggar’s Opera uses language of honor and nobility to draw parallels between the criminal underground and high society, both in service of using the medium of theater to acknowledge the middle and lower classes’ …
Gawain, Women, And The Hunts: How The Body Influences Human-Animal Relationships In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Meghan Gavis
Gawain, Women, And The Hunts: How The Body Influences Human-Animal Relationships In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Meghan Gavis
The Criterion
In the narrative poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, women and animals appear, on the surface, to function in a quintessential medieval sense — as physical objects to bolster Sir Gawain’s chivalric image. However, the dynamics between women, animals, and Gawain in this text challenge the human hierarchy presented by other medieval standards. By reading the ritualized hunts as devolving in honorable attention to the animal body and mapping their language onto the Lady’s temptations in Gawain’s bedroom, a feminine reclamation of the body appears. Though Gawain undercuts the Lady and Morgan by reducing them to physical presences, …
The Author Of A Fictional Slave Advertisement, Nathaniel Jablonski
The Author Of A Fictional Slave Advertisement, Nathaniel Jablonski
The Criterion
Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, describes the adventures of Cora, a runaway slave from a Georgian plantation. Although a historical entity, Whitehead’s railroad deviates from history’s figurative railroad to a physical one. While Whitehead’s interpretation of the underground railroad is divergent from historical fact, he still grounds his work with the inclusion of all but one authentic runaway slave advertisement. My focus within this essay is centered on Whitehead's final advertisement, which is for Cora. In examining the poster and the unique characteristics of Ridgeway (the slave-catcher), Homer (Ridgeway’s companion), Cora, and Terrance Randall (owner of the Georgia …
Marilynne Robinson’S Housekeeping Read Through The Conceptual Prism Of “Tethers”, Sarah Street
Marilynne Robinson’S Housekeeping Read Through The Conceptual Prism Of “Tethers”, Sarah Street
The Criterion
Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Housekeeping, follows her central protagonist, Ruth, her sister Lucille, and her aunt Sylvie as they work to establish their place up against a greater surround. This paper attempts to read the novel through the conceptual prism of the word “tethers.” I argue that the characters' relationships with the surround shifts as they work through their trauma and grapple with the notion of impermanence by reconciling with both those things that tether them, those tethers that do not exist or have been released, and the tethers from which they want to break free. Ultimately I argue that …
Shakespeare’S Staging And The Self In The Sonnets, Xiani Zhu
Shakespeare’S Staging And The Self In The Sonnets, Xiani Zhu
The Criterion
This essay examines the theatricality of Shakespeare’s young man sonnets and how he uses the “stage” as a shortcut to deliver abstract ideas such as the concept of beauty, time, and love that are otherwise difficult to express. On a micro level, he frames each individual sonnet as a stage, where each specific setting and scenario allows dramatic tension to arise between the characters on stage, and from there, abstract ideas and emotions are naturally presented without being directly stated. On a macro level, the entire young-man sonnet sub-sequence — being in love with a beautiful young man — itself …
Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher
Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher
The Criterion
This paper examines several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe that feature the motif of immurement, the practice of imprisoning a victim within walls. Poe uses immurement in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to suggest psychological suppression as the narrators physically hide their victims while simultaneously hiding their own self-destructive natures, which he refers to as “perversity.” His stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado” convey that attempting to suppress one’s capacity for self-destruction only guarantees self-destruction. Poe’s motif of immurement demonstrates how human beings tend to ignore their inherent perversity, but his stories …
“His Own Was Ampler:” Dickinson And Whitman’S Sunset Poetry, Devyn Forcina
“His Own Was Ampler:” Dickinson And Whitman’S Sunset Poetry, Devyn Forcina
The Criterion
Although they are utterly dissimilar poets, Dickinson and Whitman made sunsets frequent subjects of their work. Dickinsonian sunset poetry attempts to imitate the natural phenomena and evokes tension and competition. A kind of closure is forced upon her unwilling speaker, who struggles against the inevitable ending of the day. In contrast, Whitmanian sunset poetry sings and celebrates the finale of the setting sun and delights in the cyclical nature of time. While Dickinson acknowledges the temporary quality of a single sunset, Whitman rejoices in their immortal occurrence. Both poets preserve the imagery of sunsets as photographers would, while imbuing them …