Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Who Is Still Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?, Laura Decrane Dec 2012

Who Is Still Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?, Laura Decrane

Honors Theses

One of the most well known villains of all time is the Big Bad Wolf. Usually a male entity, he has been present in child and adult literature for centuries and continues to unsettle readers in the twenty-first century. The Big Bad Wolf is consistently portrayed in a negative light because he originated in a time when wolves were feared, making him the perfect example to terrify village children. Over time, as a result of social and cultural changes, writers have transformed the wolf so that he is no longer the terror that plagued the nineteenth century. Instead, the Big …


Gilded Age Travelers: Transatlantic Marriages And The Anglophone Divide In Burnett's The Shuttle, Rebecca L. Peterson Jul 2012

Gilded Age Travelers: Transatlantic Marriages And The Anglophone Divide In Burnett's The Shuttle, Rebecca L. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1907 novel, The Shuttle, is an important contribution to turn-of-the-century transatlantic literature because it offers a unifying perspective on Anglo-American relations. Rather than a conventional emphasis on the problematic tensions between the U.S. and Britain, Burnett tells a second story of complementary national traits that highlights the dynamic aspect of transatlantic relations and affords each nation a share of their Anglophone heritage. Burnett employs transatlantic travel to advance her notion of a common heritage. As a tool for understanding the narrative logic of The Shuttle, Michel de Certeau's theory of narrative space explains how Burnett uses movement …


Identification Through Inhabitation In Literature, Film, And Video Games, Charlotte Palfreyman Smith Jun 2012

Identification Through Inhabitation In Literature, Film, And Video Games, Charlotte Palfreyman Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In real life we each experience the world separately through our individual bodies, which necessitates what Kenneth Burke calls "identification." In this paper, I assert that as artistic media have structured our aesthetic experience in a way that increasingly resembles our lived, embodied experiences, our identification with fictional characters requires less imaginative effort and is more automatic and powerful. I will show this by analyzing how we inhabit characters through sensory engagement, point of view, and narrative form in literature, film, and video games (specifically action/adventure games, RPGs, and MMORPGs). I will then build off of Burke's foundational theory to …


How Should I Act?: Shakespeare And The Theatrical Code Of Conduct, Ann E. Garner May 2012

How Should I Act?: Shakespeare And The Theatrical Code Of Conduct, Ann E. Garner

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the intersection of English Renaissance drama and conduct literature. Current scholarship on this intersection usually interprets plays as illustrations of cultural behavioral norms who find their model and justification in courtly norms. In this dissertation, I argue that plays present behavioral norms that emerge from this nascent profession and that were thus influenced by this profession and the concerns of the people who worked in it, rather than by the court. To do so, I examine three behavioral norms that were important to courtiers, specifically Disguise, Moderation and Wit through the work of the English Renaissance theater’s …


Dante Gabriel Rossetti And The Romance Of Loss, Jane N. Cooper May 2012

Dante Gabriel Rossetti And The Romance Of Loss, Jane N. Cooper

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Through paired poems and paintings, Dante Gabriel Rossetti explored the nature of Love—both physical and spiritual—as made evident by distance or absence. Influenced early by his familiarity with Dante Alighieri and a confluence of changing social and artistic attitudes, Rossetti transformed the dialogue around him to a more personal internal conversation, revealed by pen and brush. This paper examines the dynamic of that pervasive thread in Rossetti’s work through a discussion of the influences upon the artist, the artist’s effect upon important figures of mid- to late nineteenth century England, and the important relationships that shaped his discourse. In addition, …


The Unbought Grace Of Life: Chivalry In Western Literature, Richard N. Boggs May 2012

The Unbought Grace Of Life: Chivalry In Western Literature, Richard N. Boggs

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The code of chivalry has a rich literary history. From the violence and misogyny of pre-chivalric ancient Greece and Rome, the chivalric code was constructed in a deliberate effort to curb and improve the most violent aspects of male behavior. The chivalric male ideal was built upon the tripartite foundation of the ancient archaic virtues, the gallantry of Germanic barbarians, and the Christian beatitudes. Chivalry sought a male ideal which brought raw strength and power under the concept of legitimate authority. By casting the literary male ideal – the knight – into the role of the defender of the weak …


The Bicycle In Western Literature: Transformations On Two Wheels, Nanci J. Adler May 2012

The Bicycle In Western Literature: Transformations On Two Wheels, Nanci J. Adler

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Since the invention of the modern bicycle in the 1880s, bicycles have played an integral role in western culture. As a reflection of its cultural significance and impact on individuals, many novelists have incorporated bicycles into their works in both realistic and symbolic ways. This paper focuses on the use of bicycles in western literature from the bicycle boom decade of the 1890s to the mid-twentieth century and includes works of H. G. Wells, Émile Zola, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Richardson, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Luigi Bartolini and L. P. Hartley. …


The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn May 2012

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …


Evoking Unity: Toward A Communal Phenomenology In Virginia Woolf And William Faulkner, Phillip Douglas Bandy May 2012

Evoking Unity: Toward A Communal Phenomenology In Virginia Woolf And William Faulkner, Phillip Douglas Bandy

Masters Theses

Contemporary readings of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf typically situate these canonical authors within their historical contexts as exponents of the material conditions of modernity or as the literary precursors of postmodernism, as writers of indeterminacy and linguistic play. In this thesis, I argue for a mode of reading Woolf and Faulkner grounded not in history or language, but in consciousness as the irreducible basis of human experience. That is, by invoking the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, I claim that both authors attempted to engage more fully with not simply a historical moment called “modernity,” but a human reality characterized …


Adaptation: Is The Book Really Better Than The...Television Series?, Jane F. Eberts Apr 2012

Adaptation: Is The Book Really Better Than The...Television Series?, Jane F. Eberts

Scripps Senior Theses

When the topic of ‘adaptation’ is brought up, more often than not the coupling of a novel and its most recent Hollywood hit come to mind. Although it may not be at the forefront of the general population’s mind, adaptation is something that we encounter often, and consciously or not, we all have our own theory on the subject. While it may seem that the evolution of book series, to film adaptation, to booming franchise may be recently trending with the acceleration of blockbusters such as Harry Potter, adaptation has been a fundamental part of the advancement of media. …


An Opposing Self, Christine M. Gamache Jan 2012

An Opposing Self, Christine M. Gamache

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

People have always been both frightened and fascinated by the unknown, and themes touching on the existence of things beyond human understanding have longevity in the literary arena as well as in popular culture. One such theme is that of the doppelgänger, or double, which has been around for centuries but was first made popular by Jean-Paul’s (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) work Hesperus in 1795. Due to a resurgence in the nineteenth century in the popularity of Gothic literature, doppelgängers, or variations of this double motif, found their way into some of the most famous works of literature …


The Assertion Of Identity: Storytelling And Testimony In The Works Of Edwidge Danticat, Michael R. Kurban Jan 2012

The Assertion Of Identity: Storytelling And Testimony In The Works Of Edwidge Danticat, Michael R. Kurban

Honors Theses

Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat evokes the Haitian tradition of storytelling in many of her novels and short story collections. A tradition formulated by vodou religion and the amalgamation of African cultures, storytelling acts to entertain, educate and enlighten the people of Haiti. Additionally, her novels are often written in the context of traumatic events in Haitian history. While Danticat's works have been studied with focus on their depiction of storytelling and of trauma, little has been done on the restorative power that storytelling provides. In this thesis, I seek to examine the potential for Danticat's characters and works to create …