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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

A Reckless Verisimilitude: The Archive In James Ellroy’S Fiction, Bradley J. Wiles Jul 2018

A Reckless Verisimilitude: The Archive In James Ellroy’S Fiction, Bradley J. Wiles

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The archive as both plot element and narrative presentation factors significantly into the work of James Ellroy’s novels in the L.A. Quartet and USA Underworld Trilogy series. This article examines the important role of the archive as a source of information and evidence that Ellroy’s characters utilize in their attempts at either maintaining or attacking the status quo. Through these novels, Ellroy conveys the potential power archives wield over the trajectory of history and our understanding of it by demonstrating how the historical record is often shaped in favor of the powerful. Yet even if the archive is a manifestation …


A Fast-Moving Storm, Amanda Kelley Corbin Jan 2017

A Fast-Moving Storm, Amanda Kelley Corbin

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection of linked short stories follows a young woman who takes on a job as a property manager in Lexington, Kentucky after the death of her parents. These stories explore a cast of characters she encounters as well as her struggle to adjust to her new life.


Comanche Boys, Benjamin D. Honea Jan 2016

Comanche Boys, Benjamin D. Honea

Theses and Dissertations--English

Comanche Boys is a novel that was written and revised during Benjamin Honea’s time at the University of Kentucky. The novel focuses on Brandon, who lives in rural southwest Oklahoma, and how the arrival of two people in his life, one old and one new, changes his future irrevocably. Taking place at the intersections of modern American and Native American life, the narrative explores history, culture, mythology, faith, despair, racism, poverty, vengeance, and justice. The struggles of the past and present, the lost and reclaimed, propel and pervade the lives of the characters.


Increases In Perspective Embedding Increase Reading Time Even With Typical Text Presentation: Implications For The Reading Of Literature, D. H. Whalen, Lisa Zunshine, Michael Holquist Nov 2015

Increases In Perspective Embedding Increase Reading Time Even With Typical Text Presentation: Implications For The Reading Of Literature, D. H. Whalen, Lisa Zunshine, Michael Holquist

English Faculty Publications

Reading fiction is a major component of intellectual life, yet it has proven difficult to study experimentally. One aspect of literature that has recently come to light is perspective embedding ("she thought I left" embedding her perspective on "I left"), which seems to be a defining feature of fiction. Previous work (Whalen et al., 2012) has shown that increasing levels of embedment affects the time that it takes readers to read and understand short vignettes in a moving window paradigm. With increasing levels of embedment from 1 to 5, reading times in a moving window paradigm rose almost linearly. However, …


Fashioning Mobility: Navigating Space In Victorian Fiction, Mary C. Jones Jan 2015

Fashioning Mobility: Navigating Space In Victorian Fiction, Mary C. Jones

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation examines how heroines in nineteenth-century British Literature manipulate conventional objects of feminine culture in ways which depart from uses associated with Victorian marriage plots. Rather than use fashionable objects to gain male attention or secure positions as wives or mothers, female characters deploy self-fashioning tactics to travel under the guise of unthreatening femininity, while skirting past thresholds of domestic space. Whereas recent Victorian literary and cultural criticism identifies female pleasure in the form of consumption and homosocial/erotic desire, my readings of Victorian fiction, from doll stories to the novels of Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and Marie Corelli, consider …


A Public Duty: Medicine And Commerce In Nineteenth-Century American Literature And Culture, Heather E. Chacon Jan 2015

A Public Duty: Medicine And Commerce In Nineteenth-Century American Literature And Culture, Heather E. Chacon

Theses and Dissertations--English

Using recent criticism on speculation and disability in addition to archival materials, “A Public Duty: Medicine and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture” demonstrates that reform-minded nineteenth-century authors drew upon the representational power of public health to express excitement and anxiety about the United States’ emerging economic and political prominence. Breaking with a critical tradition holding that the professionalization of medicine and authorship served primarily to support and define an ascending middle class, I argue that the authors such as Robert Montgomery Bird, Fanny Fern, George Washington Cable, and Pauline Hopkins fuse the rhetoric of economic policy and public …


Randomness, Uncertainty, And Economic Behavior: The Life Of Money In Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Devjani Roy Jan 2013

Randomness, Uncertainty, And Economic Behavior: The Life Of Money In Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Devjani Roy

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation argues that fiction produced in England during the frequent financial crises and political volatility experienced between 1770 and 1820 both reflected and shaped the cultural anxiety occasioned by a seemingly random and increasingly uncertain world. The project begins within the historical framework of the multiple financial crises that occurred in the late eighteenth century: seven crises took place between 1760 and 1797 alone, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and creating a climate of financial meltdown. But how did the awareness of economic turbulence filter into the creative consciousness? Through an interdisciplinary focus on cultural studies and behavioral economics, …


Finding Myself In Fiction, Lori D'Angelo Jan 2012

Finding Myself In Fiction, Lori D'Angelo

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.


Literary Africa: Spanish Reflections Of Morocco, Western Sahara, And Equatorial Guinea In The Contemporary Novel, 1990-2010, Mahan L. Ellison Jan 2012

Literary Africa: Spanish Reflections Of Morocco, Western Sahara, And Equatorial Guinea In The Contemporary Novel, 1990-2010, Mahan L. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the strategies that Spanish and Hispano-African authors employ when writing about Africa in the contemporary novel (1990-2010). Focusing on the former Spanish colonial territories of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Equatorial Guinea, I analyze the post-colonial literary discourse about these regions. This study examines the new ways of conceptualizing Africa that depart from an Orientalist framework as advanced by the novelists Lorenzo Silva, Concha López Sarasúa, Ramón Mayrata, María Dueñas, Fernando Gamboa, Montserrat Abumalham, Javier Reverte, Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, and Donato Ndongo. Their works are representative of a recent trend in Spanish letters that signals a literary focus on …


Veracity: A Work Of Fiction, Allison Perry Jan 2003

Veracity: A Work Of Fiction, Allison Perry

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.


Jorge Luis Borges: Fiction And Reading, Steven Mathews Jan 1989

Jorge Luis Borges: Fiction And Reading, Steven Mathews

Ariel

No abstract provided.