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Articles 1 - 30 of 37
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Playing Myself: The Gothic's Challenge To Audience Identity, Elena Durant
Playing Myself: The Gothic's Challenge To Audience Identity, Elena Durant
All Theses
This thesis presents close readings of the 2015 video game Bloodborne and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey in order to illuminate how the Gothic genre challenges identity. Both Bloodborne and Northanger Abbey respond to their genres and are preoccupied with the ways that their audiences might interact with them. Bloodborne’s gameplay directly incentivizes players to reflect on the way that they play the game. Northanger Abbey is a parody of the Gothic novel that reflects just as much on the idea of the reader as it does on the conventions of the genre it parodies. Both of these works are …
Cloaked Trannies On The Silver Screen: "Evolutionary Derangement" And Cronenberg's Approach To Shaping A Critical Mindset Towards Trans Bodies, John David Hunter
Cloaked Trannies On The Silver Screen: "Evolutionary Derangement" And Cronenberg's Approach To Shaping A Critical Mindset Towards Trans Bodies, John David Hunter
All Theses
This thesis engages David Cronenberg’s 2022 film, Crimes of the Future, analyzing the text through the lens of Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensten) as a transgender allegory. Through this, the project investigates the way in which Cronenberg’s text visually creates a Deleuzian language of the body, which is the body of becoming. This queer analysis of the film does so by utilizing the perspective of the trans body, through the character of Tenser, which more clearly illustrates the human body as one which is in a continual process of evolution. Following in the footsteps of scholars such as Susan …
The Calling Of Governess, Karissa Maust
The Calling Of Governess, Karissa Maust
All Theses
The governess is a widely discussed figure in literary criticism. However, the motivations that cause literary characters to engage in the profession of governess are not often talked about. This thesis discusses the three primary motivations that inspired women to become governesses—survival, duty, and calling. It begins with a historical discussion of the governess, then illustrates women’s reasons for engaging in this occupation, using literary figures from Emma, Villette, and Jane Eyre to do so. The thesis then ends with a discussion of the modern American teacher—how she differs from the governess but also shares the lack of …
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism, John Gorton
Triumph In The Suburbs: Richard Ford And The Spaces Of New Capitalism, John Gorton
All Theses
In his 1986 book America, Baudrillard noted that “the most banal suburb…is more at the centre of the world than any of the cultural manifestations of old Europe.” My thesis argues that this monumental shift from the suburbs as enclaves at the outer edges of cultural urban centers to “the centre of the world” is at the heart of Richard Ford’s realist project in his Pulitzer Prize winning Bascombe series starting with The Sportswriter in 1986. Emergent twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature scholars have been interested in the schism between the fictionalized representation and the lived experience of suburbia — while …
The Unarticulated Unseen: Britt Bennett’S “The Vanishing Half” And Her Intent On Revealing The Unseen In The Tradition Of Racial Passing, Caroline Maas Rue
The Unarticulated Unseen: Britt Bennett’S “The Vanishing Half” And Her Intent On Revealing The Unseen In The Tradition Of Racial Passing, Caroline Maas Rue
All Theses
Throughout the trajectory of passing literature, there have been varying projections of racial identity as it is intertwined with choice and power. Despite the many commonalities between the archetypal passing novel, the differences in the way that passing is demarcated in various novels is indicative of the racial climate out of which it came. This paper considers Britt Bennett’s 2020 novel, The Vanishing Half, as a socio-political artifact of an allegedly post-racial era. In considering Bennett’s novel as a reflection of post-raciality, a comparative study incorporating Nella Larsen’s Passing, Douglas Sirk’s Adaptation of Imitation of Life, and Danzy …
"Custome Is An Idiot": How Genre Bending Opens New Meanings For Hæc Vir, Or The Womanish Man, Stephen Montgomery-Anderson
"Custome Is An Idiot": How Genre Bending Opens New Meanings For Hæc Vir, Or The Womanish Man, Stephen Montgomery-Anderson
All Theses
Hæc Vir, or the Womanish Man is often conceived of as a satirical pamphlet. Moreover, scholars such as Linda Woodbridge and Simone Chess read the pamphlet as ultimately and explicitly arguing for a normative rendering of gender. Such readings, while acknowledging the rhetorical power and feminist nature of the crossdressed female character Hic Mulier’s arguments, invariably discount them in favor of a supposed return to normalcy. I instead suggest that Hic Mulier’s arguments be read as genuine and potentially altering. I further argue that we should read Hæc Vir as a closet drama. Bending the genre of the …
“People Like They Historical Shit In A Certain Way”: The Civil War Plays Of Suzan-Lori Parks, Or Commercialized Memory And Black Lives, Brandon Eric Fisher
“People Like They Historical Shit In A Certain Way”: The Civil War Plays Of Suzan-Lori Parks, Or Commercialized Memory And Black Lives, Brandon Eric Fisher
All Theses
Suzan-Lori Parks has explored the relationship between Blackness, slavery, and capitalism throughout her career. I argue that Parks’s three works—The America Play (1995), Topdog/Underdog (2001), and Father Comes Home from the Wars (2015)—should receive critical attention as her Civil War plays. By this phrase, I mean that Parks embeds her critiques of racial capitalism in historical narratives about America’s bloodiest conflict. In these three plays, she takes up several white supremacist Civil War tropes—tropes like what scholar Cody Marrs calls the “Father Abraham” story and the “Agrarian Imagination” myth—and criticizes them as narratives that deny African American history. To …
The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn
The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn
All Theses
This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to …
Enclosure In Flesh And Stone: Intermediaries And Access To God In Revelations Of Divine Love, Emily Danuser
Enclosure In Flesh And Stone: Intermediaries And Access To God In Revelations Of Divine Love, Emily Danuser
All Theses
In this thesis, I argue that in Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich uses the topic of enclosure (both in flesh and stone) as a means to delineate her arguments regarding the role of intermediaries and the way they can facilitate access to God while opening opportunities for dialogue within the broader public. Through a close-reading and historical contextualization of her writing on the topic of enclosure, I demonstrate that even some of Julian’s more controversial doctrinal claims can be reconciled if one understands the levels and role she assigned to intermediaries.
How “Interested” Criticism Fueled The Formulation Of Nineteen Eighty-Four’S Cultural Afterlife, John Cameron Bosch
How “Interested” Criticism Fueled The Formulation Of Nineteen Eighty-Four’S Cultural Afterlife, John Cameron Bosch
All Theses
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four carries a “cultural afterlife” as a result of “interested” criticism, which has a set political/practical barometer or motive. While everyone agrees that the novel presents a frightening dystopia, many also consider it a prophetic piece that illuminates the possible corruption of executive power of a nation thanks to this cultural afterlife; the modern and popular term “Orwellian” resulted from these sorts of analyses and have only escalated in the years since its inception. As a result, within the past decade, multiple scholars, analysts, and journalists have referenced Orwell’s novel as a factual representation of this executive …
Formulas Of Fiction: The First World War And The Popular Fiction Of 1914, Caroline Swanson
Formulas Of Fiction: The First World War And The Popular Fiction Of 1914, Caroline Swanson
All Theses
Long have first-hand accounts of fighting men been privileged in studies of the First World War, creating a narrow understanding of life at this influential time. Firsthand narratives of the soldier experience are important and present a complex history of attitudes towards the war that has had a lasting influence on the contemporary view of The First World War. However, it is not the sole experience of the war. As a departure from the narrative of the soldier at the front, many critics turn to later, modernist fiction about the war. These texts are still centered on soldiers and the …
Value And Truth In Literature: The Critic Versus The Reader From Henry James' Perspective As Applied To Reader Response Theory, Marilyn M. Vickery
Value And Truth In Literature: The Critic Versus The Reader From Henry James' Perspective As Applied To Reader Response Theory, Marilyn M. Vickery
All Theses
Based on Reader Response Theory, without an audience and interpretation a piece of literature does not have value and does not elicit a truth. It has to communicate. Further, Henry James in his work is not only saying that interpretation by a reader is of vital importance in creating value and truth, he implies that there are different types of readers and he specifically, in the works cited, seems to differentiate between the role of a literary critic and a casual reader. He creates narrators at varied levels of education and knowledge on purpose to elicit from the reader different …
Gawain The Exile: Reading 'Sir Gawain And The Green Knight' In A Postcolonial Context, Hannah Vaughan
Gawain The Exile: Reading 'Sir Gawain And The Green Knight' In A Postcolonial Context, Hannah Vaughan
All Theses
In his essay 'Reflections on Exile,' Edward Said writes that the experience of the exile transcends definitions that seek to confine it to the traditionally defined post-colonial period, noting that 'in other ages, exiles have similar cross-cultural and transnational visions, suffered the same frustrations and miseries, [and] performed the same elucidating and critical tasks.' This principle, decisive in the articulation of post-colonial theory, nonetheless finds numerous points of resonance in pre-colonial periods. Many texts completed centuries before Said or even colonialism existed seem to demand to be read within postcolonial contexts. The state of exile that Said describes is one …
Conspicuous Consumers: The Victorian Department Store And The Women's Movement, Joslyn Mccraw Vonkaenel
Conspicuous Consumers: The Victorian Department Store And The Women's Movement, Joslyn Mccraw Vonkaenel
All Theses
This project involves examining the influence of the department store and other Victorian inventions on women’s rights. By analyzing the works of Elizabeth Gaskell, Emilé Zola, George Gissing, and Amy Levy, I explore the different representations of shopgirls and consumers in nineteenth century fiction and how they connect to modern women in the online community.
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
The Deception Of Perception: Browning, Childe Roland, And Supersensory Belief, Catherine Blass
All Theses
Browning's fascination with the senses and the mind as determiners of reality floods his work. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,' in particular, offers a more complicated, sincere exploration of this topic that had become central to Victorian debate. As Browning acknowledges repeatedly through his poetry, the debate between sensory data (empiricism) and supersensory belief (idealism) could not be understood in clear-cut categories. In much of his poetry, however, he grounds these questions in deceptively simple discussions of mesmerism or the Victorian philosophy of the mind. Although those two topics may seem disparate to twenty-first century readers, Victorian belief …
The Dark Continent: Europe's Encroachment Upon English Identity In Jane Eyre And Villette, Derek Williams
The Dark Continent: Europe's Encroachment Upon English Identity In Jane Eyre And Villette, Derek Williams
All Theses
ABSTRACT
Although there has been a deafening critical silence regarding Charlotte Bront‘'s representation of Continental identity in Jane Eyre (1847), this thesis argues that the Continental identity, as it appears in Jane Eyre, is a collection of negative cultural traits stereotypical of the Latinate countries and Germany. By creating associations between characters that embody English national identity and those that are an emblem of Continental identity, Bront‘ de-legitimizes the notion of national identity. Furthermore, her novels, specifically Jane Eyre and Villette (1853) highlight the fact that both France and Germany, elements of the Continental identity, are a central presence in …
`Finding Gold In A Gully': Nineteenth-Century Australia In Constructions Of British Domesticity From Sensation Fiction To Realism, Lisa Vandenbossche
`Finding Gold In A Gully': Nineteenth-Century Australia In Constructions Of British Domesticity From Sensation Fiction To Realism, Lisa Vandenbossche
All Theses
This thesis investigates nineteenth-century Australia as a frequently disregarded site of colonial discourse where men and women were able to create wealth but unable to transform economic gains into social currency upon return to England and irrevocably weakened English patriarchal authority when they attempted to do so. Unlike many of the other British colonies such as India and Africa, due to its demographics the Australian colonies by and large remained absent from nineteenth-century racial violence, thus allowing greater possibilities for economic advancement and social rehabilitation of disenfranchised English populations. By combining travel narratives with the sensation fiction of Mary Elizabeth …
Turning `The Angel Of The House' Out Of The House: Privacy In The Nineteenth Century Sensation Novel, Ashley Crider
Turning `The Angel Of The House' Out Of The House: Privacy In The Nineteenth Century Sensation Novel, Ashley Crider
All Theses
This thesis explores nineteenth-century transatlantic sensation fiction. My examination of George Lippard's The Quaker City: Or the Monks of Monk HallThe Quaker City: Or the Monks of Monk Hall (1845) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret investigates the construction of the Angel of the House in both the domestic and public spheres. I pay particular attention to `feminine' spaces such as the boudoir, and how the sensation novel represents physical space and commodity culture to comment on female sexual agency and how nineteenth century classes constructed womanhood. In addition to Braddon and Lippard, my thesis explores such American texts …
Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh, Candace Wiley
Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh, Candace Wiley
All Theses
ABSTRACT
Set in November 2009 in the United States South, Blue Skin, Yellow Flesh will eventually cover eleven days and will be separated into two parts—before and after Thecla's funeral. It begins the Tuesday after Thecla dies and ends the day after Thanksgiving. The major conflict involves Thecla's death, how it affects her family, and how the family deals with the concept of family. Other important conflicts are Tam and Lynn's marriage, JoJo's sexual orientation, Lynn's affect on her children, and Julius's trek toward death. This novel excerpt consists of seven chapters, submitted in partial fulfillment of Clemson University's Master …
Living In (Im) Material Worlds: Modes Of Production And Consumption In Utopian Literature, Pauline Spangler
Living In (Im) Material Worlds: Modes Of Production And Consumption In Utopian Literature, Pauline Spangler
All Theses
My thesis examines and defines 'conditions of production' and 'conditions of consumption' as they apply to both Marxist economic theory and to the more culturally-oriented production and consumption of literary texts according to Pierre Bourdieu. I will establish the relationship between these conditions as cause and effect, complementary, and, finally, mutually necessary depending upon their context and manifestation. Alterations in the conditions of production and consumption affect our treatment of their corresponding, associative dichotomies in the literary tradition - the transcendent and the material, the spiritual and the corporal, the well-wrought art object and the commodity fetish, and, finally, male …
Some Apocalypse, David Hehn Jr.
Some Apocalypse, David Hehn Jr.
All Theses
This creative thesis is comprised of three pieces of traditional fiction, three pieces of flash fiction, and one work that is neither traditional nor flash but positioned somewhere beneath the wide umbrella of creative writing. As partial fulfillment for the degree Master of Arts in English literature, these selections display a solid understanding of the principles of creative fiction and English literature as well as a desire to experiment with form and push the parameters of creative writing. These selections seek to entertain and to become active in the general discourse of literature.
Psyche And History In Shelley And Freud, Brent Robida
Psyche And History In Shelley And Freud, Brent Robida
All Theses
The comfortable thought is over in our psychical relation to Percy Shelley and Sigmund Freud because the line of reasoning it invokes is chaotic, if only because trying to define psyche and history leads to chaotic conclusions, especially at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Shelley and Freud recognized this and were able to channel it into their art, myth, fable, allegory. The events of their lives, their History, produces itself from chaos (Freud writes across two World Wars, Shelley under the shadow of the French Revolution, Jacobin massacres and Napoleonic wars), which means its producer is chaotic, Divine Chaos, …
Ambiguity And Apocalypse: Metafictional Reading Strategies In The Crying Of Lot 49 And One Hundred Years Of Solitude, David Foltz
Ambiguity And Apocalypse: Metafictional Reading Strategies In The Crying Of Lot 49 And One Hundred Years Of Solitude, David Foltz
All Theses
Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gabriel Garc’a M‡rquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude posit reading strategies linked by similar methodologies and complementary conclusions. The exposition in the following chapters examines the novels' methodologies on three levels--the utilization of historical background, the Principle of Uncertainty, and apocalyptic endings--to establish a basis for the novels' shared perspective on narrative and, by default, approaches to engaging narrative. This thesis argues that the novels demonstrate that as uncertainty increases within narrative the potential for meaning increases, and the converse--as uncertainty decreases, the potential for meaning decreases. The resultant apocalyptic endings of …
A Charitable Modernity: Milton And The Democratic Aesthetic, Jonathan Williams
A Charitable Modernity: Milton And The Democratic Aesthetic, Jonathan Williams
All Theses
This thesis traces a narrative of John Milton's modernity. My formulation of a
'charitable modernity' is a paradoxical one, and builds on Marshall Berman's theory of
modern life. Modernity is characterized by both disintegration and possibilities for
renewal. Charity, according to Milton, is the means by which different readers are
allowed to read different meanings into different texts. For Milton, a charitable modernity
is a promising thing, because it makes allowance for a democratic kind of government
where people are allowed to govern themselves in part by the way they each read texts
differently. Milton was not always a poet …
Reversing The Photograph In Persepolis: Metafiction, Marxism, And The Transcience Of Tradition, Lauren Rizzuto
Reversing The Photograph In Persepolis: Metafiction, Marxism, And The Transcience Of Tradition, Lauren Rizzuto
All Theses
Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return together illustrate the growth of an Iranian girl before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution; unlike other historical memoirs, however, Satrapi's books are written entirely in comic strips. Because the author privileges the text-and-image delivery of comics, a genre usually targeted toward adolescents, rather than the ostensibly objective nature of the history book to convey both her family's and her nation's history, Persepolis does not only refute the authority of a Westernized historical record but also challenges the traditional ways in which we …
'The Fire And The Rose Are One': The Coherence Of The Prophetic Voice In The Poetry Of T. S. Eliot, Matthew Fairman
'The Fire And The Rose Are One': The Coherence Of The Prophetic Voice In The Poetry Of T. S. Eliot, Matthew Fairman
All Theses
Contrary to much scholarship on T. S Eliot's poetry, I argue that Eliot's work cannot be divided into the two separate categories of before and after The Waste Land. While most of the imagery of Eliot's earlier poems admittedly tends to be much darker than that of his later poems, it is irresponsible to disregard the general bent of the entirety of Eliot's poetry in order to claim that this difference in imagery reflects a total transformation of Eliot's message from one of strict pessimism to one of faith in the Anglican religion. Rather, much biographical and textual evidence shows …
Becoming Earnest: Oscar Wilde Refracted, Rebecca Howell
Becoming Earnest: Oscar Wilde Refracted, Rebecca Howell
All Theses
This paper explores four Wildean texts, their techniques, and their purposes, beginning with an introduction to Wilde's life, contemporary culture, and his major educational and ideological influences--a familiarity that is necessary to understand his more subtle and subversive meanings. The second chapter deals with Wilde's pre-incarceration texts, 'The Decay of Lying' and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The essay serves almost as a guidebook for the writing of the novel and through similarities in theme and vocabulary, perfectly sets up a comparison with the post-incarceration works--De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol--which will be examined in the third chapter, …
Light Along The River, Matt Turner
Light Along The River, Matt Turner
All Theses
Light along the River is a creative manuscript featuring a collection of ten short stories that loosely connect with each other. The collection is separated into two parts, with each part occurring in a three day span. The stories focus on a group of characters who live in a fictional present-day small Southern town. Each story is a glimpse into a certain character's life. Description of detail is heavily focused on, as well as the actions of each character. Descriptive images and detailed scenes, instead of a specific narrator, are used prevalently in order to tell the story. This collection …
Life And Death In Joyce's Dubliners, Matthew Gallman
Life And Death In Joyce's Dubliners, Matthew Gallman
All Theses
This thesis is an examination of James Joyce's Dubliners as a collection of stories that is unified by an ongoing intersection between life and death. In the collection, the dead often serve to expose a deficiency in the living. The thesis explores four stories that share this theme in particular: 'The Sisters,' 'A Painful Case,' 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room,' and 'The Dead.' Each story is also presented in the context of how each relates to the progression from youth to public life within Dubliners. As such, the thesis also considers how Dubliners exhibits a progression towards isolation and …
Welcoming The Saturated Earth, Adam Million
Welcoming The Saturated Earth, Adam Million
All Theses
Three short pieces of fiction and ten pieces of poetry compose this creative thesis, which has been submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree Master of Arts in English literature. The manuscript demonstrates the highest level of literary comprehension--creation. Through my writing, I move beyond the interpretation of literature and become a participant in both genres. I read therefore to write better. Let my writing be the judge of my knowledge of literature.