Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Friend Or Foe: Chaucer’S Depiction Of Women In Troilus And Criseyde, Vanessa Balis 20

Honor Scholar Theses

Often considered the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340s-1400 CE) produced a number of famous poems during his lifetime, the most famous arguably being The Canterbury Tales. But another of his works, Troilus and Criseyde, is often considered the best example of both his poetic ability and his creative use of sources.1 In this thesis, I will be considering whether Chaucer supports or subverts a patriarchal social structure, specifically by looking at his representation of women in Troilus and Criseyde in comparison to his source Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato. Instead of resorting to the assumptive rhetoric of …

The Fall Of Gondolin, By J.R.R. Tolkien, Edited By Christopher Tolkien, Illustrated By Alan Lee. Reviewed By Ryder W. Miller., Ryder W. Miller

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Beowulf : A Translation In Blank Verse, Alexander Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a translation into modern English blank verse of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. The bulk of the thesis is the poem itself, which represents not only the academic work of Old English translation, literary interpretation, and the study of early Germanic culture, but also the artistic work of creating poetry and adapting the poem’s content to modern language and contexts. Included with the translation is an introduction placing it in conversation with other prominent modern translations of Beowulf, and analyzing the translation choices made at macro and micro levels. It is shown through this analysis that …

A Return To Turtle Island: Eco-Cosmopolitics In American Indian Literature, 1880-1920, Kristen Brown

Theses and Dissertations

During opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), the Lakota words mni wičoni, “water is life,” came to define the ongoing movement at Standing Rock and serve as a reminder of not only humans’ dependence on interconnected ecological communities, but also of the vitality and sentience in more-than-human beings. Looking to Indigenous author-activists producing texts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries— when colonial ideologies of land exploitation and Indigenous dispossession were codified by federal policy—provides valuable insight into the tensions between these land-ascommodity and land-as-community worldviews. While scholars like literary and cultural theorist Joni Adamson and anthropologist Marisol …

The Logic Of Capital And The Possibility Of Resistance In Chris Abani’S Graceland, Caleb Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that Chris Abani’s GraceLand, in the structuring both of the novel’s diegetic and non-diegetic materials and of the presence of labor in the narrative, offers a model of how particularity can effect resistance to capital through iterative survival. The argument begins with a close explication of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s deconstructive reading of Capital, demonstrating how the phenomenon of capital operates and proliferates through a logical structure that simultaneously necessitates and must eradicate the particular labors and histories that ‘precede’ any given instance of capital. With this theoretical framework in hand, the argument looks to James. M. …

Text Mining Contemporary Popular Fiction: Natural Language Processing-Derived Themes Across Over 1,000 New York Times Bestsellers And Genre Fiction Novels, Morgan Lundy

Theses and Dissertations

This study endeavors to apply computational methods to a large dataset of popular fictional material, to see what topics emerge when viewed across genre lines and from a new, “machine” perspective. The dataset consists of 1,136 popular and commercially successful novels published between 2005 and 2016, including New York Times bestsellers and “genre fiction,” including science fiction, young adult, romance and mystery novels. Methods are discussed, including dataset preparation, LDA topic modeling and topic number optimization, qualitative topic interpretation, data analysis and visualization. The experiment was conducted in two parts, with the "document" or unit of analysis as each full …

Septentrionalism: Whiteness And 19th Century Representations Of Scandinavia, Madison Elisabeth Boland

Theses and Dissertations

During the nineteenth century, the British Empire grappled with a rapidly changing world, both in terms of the industrializing landscape at home and the multi-ethnic nature of their expanding empire. With native white British making up the privileged minority, the understanding of what a subject of the British Empire looked like began to change, contributing to racial anxieties and a rise in British nationalism. To consolidate and strengthen their sense of national identity, many white Victorians sought to define Britishness upon racially exclusive lines, prioritizing a Germanic or Anglo-Saxon ethnicity above all others, including other European ethnicities. One way the …

“That Confusion Of Who Is Who, Flesh And Flesh”: Mothers, Daughters, And The Body In Postwar And Contemporary American Literature, Jennifer Renee Blevins

Theses and Dissertations

In “That confusion of who is who, flesh and flesh”: Mothers, Daughters, and the Body in Postwar and Contemporary American Literature, I investigate how the body limits, disrupts, ruptures, or recuperates the mother/daughter relationship in postwar and contemporary texts by twentieth-century US women writers. These narratives portray the construction of female subjectivity when the feminine self seems insufficiently distinct from the mother (or daughter). In four chapters arranged chronologically by decade, I examine texts by Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Edwidge Danticat. On the one hand, mothers in these texts …

The Mosaic Of Aesthetics: The Manifestation Of Clive Bell's And Roger Fry's Theories In The Waves, Nina Katarina Štular

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Clichéd Language And Commonplace Faith, Gavin Wride

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Contributors List

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Ireland In Double Vision: The Allegory Of Seamus Heaney's "Come To The Bower", Janaya Tanner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Curing Beauty's Stockholm Syndrome, Erin Lee

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

"She Was Never Property": The Underground Railroad And John Locke's Labor Theory Of Property, Samuel Christensen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

A Poem On The Late Massacre In Virginia. With Particular Mention Of Those Men Of Note That Suffered In That Disaster, Christopher Brooke

English 144 Class Projects

No abstract provided.

Daenerys Targaryen: Mad Or Madly Ended? A Feminist Analysis Of Her Downfall, Barbara Yauss

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The release of the final episodes of Game of Thrones was met with uproar, particularly in response to David Benioff and Weiss’s ending for the beloved Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke. Her descent into madness has sparked controversy over whether she deserved this fate, with the unexplained slaughter of Kings Landing being yet another example of the showrunners rushing through the eighth and final season. Popular belief agrees either way that Dany’s downfall is attributed to the madness that runs through Targaryen bloodlines. I argue, however, that it is patriarchal impositions that lead to her demise. Jon Snow, as …

Hamlet As Music: A Study In The Semantics Of Symphonic Poetry, Mckenzie C. Alons

Selected Honors Theses

Symphonic poetry, a widely overlooked genre in musico-literary scholarship, provides a unique focal point into the relationship between music and extramusical texts. Invented by Franz Liszt in the mid-19th century, symphonic poems (or ‘tone poems’) interpret literary texts or ideas through short orchestral works. Thus, the symphonic poem invites close analysis of the semiotic relationship between music and literature. Using Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Liszt’s Symphonic Poem No. 10 (“Hamlet”), this thesis examines the relationship between the Shakespearean tragedy and Lisztian symphonic poetry. This focus is a microcosm for the musico-literary relationship and, henceforth, an undiscovered niche that involves disciplines as …

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol. 28, No. 2, The Sinclair Lewis Society

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter

“Lewis and Thompson and the Writers’ War Board,” by Robert L. McLaughlin, Illinois State University

“The Filming of Free Air”

“An Interview with Ken Cuthbertson, Author of Inside: The Biography of John Gunther,” by Susan O’Brien

“Sinclair Lewis as Seen through the Eyes of Ernest Hemingway’s Biographers,” by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University

“Sinclair Lewis, Dante, and the Jews,” a discussion by Mark Bernheim, Sally E. Parry, and Ralph Goldstein

“Sinclair Lewis,” by George Simmers from Great War Fiction Plus

Entertainment Media Perceptions Of Minorities In Young Adult Adaptations, Kynnadie Bennett

Honors College Theses

This is an exploration of stereotypical and racist portrayals of minorities, specifically African-American, Latinx, and Native American communities, in film and television in the past and how that has affected representation in film adaptations of young adult literature. Young adult literature is one of the highest-selling genres in literature, purchased by both young adults and actual adults. In recent years, young adult literature has been adapted into film and television series and while representation has improved since the early years of entertainment history, there are still problems in the industry: many of the stereotypes remain, some minorities lack representation, and …

I Know These Things & Other Lies, Jordan Elliott Charlton

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

I KNOW THESE THINGS AND OTHER LIES is a thesis comprised of an Ars Poetica essay and a collection of poems. The essay addresses my history with poetry, thoughts on how I view the act of writing, my reading inspirations, and how this collection began to be formed. The poems in this collection delve into the realities of black identity to observe the tensions between speech and silence, between memory and perpetuity. These poems address my cultural and personal history and take aim at the silences attributed to masculinity, black masculinity specifically. A sample of these poems is included here. …

The Art Of The Game: Issues In Adapting Video Games, Sydney K. Baty

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On the face of things, movies and video games are similar mediums. Both engage extensively in visuals and audio, both can indulge in speculative fiction, and there is a healthy amount of sharing of inspiration and content. However, this does not guarantee successful adaptations from one form to another. Movies adapted from video games are notorious for being simply terrible, but little academic attention has been paid as to why these adaptations in particular seem so unsuccessful in every way, from audience reception, critical response, and monetary returns. This issue is based on fundamental differences in the medium. Games are, …

Thresholds Of Curating: Literary Space And Material Culture In The Works Of Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, And Willa Cather 1870–1920, Lindsay N. Andrews

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores the polycentric intersections between material and literary culture in four case studies spanning 1870-1920. Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Willa Cather are four women whose work reflects a capacity to defy the genre-specific boundaries for which they are canonically renown. Harriet Prescott Spofford was an important contributor to the interior design movement in the early Gilded Age following challenges to finding publication resources for her fiction within a male-dominated publishing community. Edith Wharton’s ties to material culture are well known, but less attention is granted to the ways in which her own expertise …

The White Album As Neo-Victorian Fiction Of Loss, Lucas Kwong

Publications and Research

Although much has been written about the Beatles' celebration of Victorian culture on the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, little scholarship, if any, has focused on the White Album’s relationship to the late Victorian period. This paper examines the White Album through the lens of what Victorian studies scholar Stephen Arata has called “fictions of loss,” a body of late Victorian texts depicting intertwined processes of “national, biological, [and] aesthetic” decline. Through examining songs like "Helter Skelter" and "Revolution Number 9," I argue that the White Album deserves consideration alongside Dracula and She as a “fiction of loss,” …

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer (2019) By John M. Bowers, Nelson Goering

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Nelson Goering of Tolkien's Lost Chaucer (2019) by John M. Bowers

The Lens Of Truth: A Critical Response To The Role Of Rinehart In Ellison's Invisible Man, Michael Cudmore

Georgia College Student Research Events

After exploring several different critical evaluations of Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, I discovered that multiple scholars paint the figure Rinehart in a positive light, believing he represents the benefits and possibility of an African-American man living in an urban environment. Other critics posited that Rinehart serves more as a representation of a lack of morality and the deception of others, but they often only mentioned this point briefly or without substantial supporting evidence. This paper aims to not only argue that Rinehart serves as a more negative figure than many scholars believe, but also to build upon the arguments …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Edgar Allan Poe's Use Of Concealment, Alyssa Hubbard

Scholars Week

In his short stories “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses the act and outcomes of concealment as a way to deal with guilt and introduce consequence. By examining each of these examples, we can see that how and where Poe's narrators hide the bodies of their victims directly impacts their mental health and how quickly their crimes are discovered.

Hawthorne’S Beautiful Women And Hideous Men: Ecofeminism In “The Birthmark” And “Rappaccini’S Daughter”, Olivia Shelton

Scholars Week

This paper aims to compare Georgiana and Beatrice’s beauty through an Eco-feminist lens. It examines how the men in each story set unrealistic beauty standards for women in order to be dominant. The men use science to create these standards and destroy nature or the women’s natural beauty and they kill them in the process. This paper argues that Hawthorne addresses Eco-feminist ideas within “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” through the destruction of Georgiana and Beatrice. The paper includes background information, a definition, and other key ideas involved with Ecofeminism. The paper focuses on the association of men with society …

Family Influences And Intersections: Adelaide F. Samuels Bassett And Susan Blagge Caldwell Samuels Marcy (Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels), Deidre Johnson

English Faculty Publications

A number of women who created children's series came from writing families – generally, mothers and daughters (like the two Elizabeth Stuart Phelpses) or sisters (like Julia A. Mathews and Joanna Hone Mathews). Adelaide F. Samuels and Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels offer a somewhat different example of this category in that they were sisters-in-law rather than biological relatives. Both women wrote professionally for only a short period: Susan Samuels is also among those authors who produced only one series before abandoning the genre. (Adelaide penned two and a standalone sequel.)

Writing Center Space The First Frontier, J. Benjamin Howell

Tutor's Column

This paper discusses the influence of writing center spaces on the impressions of tutors and students. First, the importance of creating a “homey” space is introduced, then followed by an example of a writing center thought by its denizens to be particularly welcoming and effective. An analysis of another writing center’s evolution and subsequent changes in impressions and use is included. Finally, scale is introduced as a foundational principle in the architectural field with particular application in creating a desired impression.

The Intricacies Of Tutoring Personal Narratives, Hailey Hunt

Tutor's Column

In order to effectively tutor personal narratives, tutors must be aware of the different tutoring strategies for academic papers and personal narratives. This essay offers several different tutoring strategies that remain the same for academic papers and personal narratives, and several that are different. These strategies prepare the tutor to empower, educate, and validate the student’s unique and vulnerable personal histories, while also being sensitive to each individual student’s needs.