Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
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 …