Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Honors Theses
In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …
The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter
The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter
Honors Theses
Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …
[Introduction To] The Cambridge Companion To Paradise Lost, Louis Schwartz
[Introduction To] The Cambridge Companion To Paradise Lost, Louis Schwartz
Bookshelf
This Companion presents fifteen short, accessible essays exploring the most important topics and themes in John Milton's masterpiece, Paradise Lost. The essays invite readers to begin their own independent exploration of the poem by equipping them with useful background knowledge, introducing them to key passages, and acquainting them with the current state of critical debates. Chapters are arranged to mirror the way the poem itself unfolds, offering exactly what readers need as they approach each movement of its grand design. Essays in Part I introduce the characters who frame the poem's story and set its plot and theological dynamics …
Cosmological Vision(S) : History, Modernism, And American Renewal In Hart Crane's The Bridge, Lauren Grewe
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.
The "Beyondness Of Things" In The Buccaneers: Vernon Lee's Influence On Edith Wharton's Sense Of Places, Suzanne W. Jones
The "Beyondness Of Things" In The Buccaneers: Vernon Lee's Influence On Edith Wharton's Sense Of Places, Suzanne W. Jones
English Faculty Publications
Since its publication in 1938, readers have been at odds in their assessment of The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton's only novel set in England. While her literary executor, Gaillard Lapsley, and many early reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic saw great promise in the unfinished novel, a few critics like Edmund Wilson wrote the work off as 'an old-fashioned story for girls' and judged Wharton's skill 'dulled' in this her last book. In the 1980's, however, feminist critics found much to value in the novel: from protagonist Annabel St. George's self-actualization to the comradeship of the American girls and the …
[Introduction To] Growing Up In The South: An Anthology Of Modern Southern Literature, Suzanne W. Jones
[Introduction To] Growing Up In The South: An Anthology Of Modern Southern Literature, Suzanne W. Jones
Bookshelf
Something about the South has inspired the imaginations of an extraordinary number of America’s best storytellers—and greatest writers. That quality may be a rich, unequivocal sense of place, a living connection with the past, or the contradictions and passions that endow this region with awesome beauty and equally awesome tragedy. The stories in this superb collection of modern Southern writing are about childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood—in other words, about growing up in the South. Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” set in a South that remains segregated even after segregation is declared illegal, is the story of a …
Plotting The Mother: Caroline Norton, Helen Huntingdon, And Isabel Vane, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
Plotting The Mother: Caroline Norton, Helen Huntingdon, And Isabel Vane, Elisabeth Rose Gruner
English Faculty Publications
The proper Victorian heroine neither acts nor plots. Heroines as disparate as Fanny Price of Mansfield Park and Gwendolen Harleth of Daniel Deronda prove their virtue by failing as actresses. When Fanny protests, “Indeed, I cannot act,” we know that it is because she cannot be other than what she is: virtuous. Gwendolen Harleth’s aborted attempt to make a career as an actress seems, in Daniel Deronda, to signal her essential difference from the Princess Halm-Eberstein, the mother who has abandoned Daniel in order to pursue her acting career. Gwendolen is flawed, but at least she is not an …