American Literature Commons^™

Walt Whitman: A Man Of Compassion, Kaitlyn Cyr

Excellence in Research Awards

Although Walt Whitman was such a complex man, I focused on his time in the Civil War which showed what a caring, compassionate man he was and proved that he was more than a poet

Persephone In The River Phlegethon; Or, The Women At Gettysburg, Brenda A. Ayres

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper identifies the heroic women who participated in the Battle of Gettysburg, both on the homefront and on the battlefield.

Hamilton, Weston A. - Collector (Sc 118), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 118. Militia drill meeting notice scheduled in Russellville, Kentucky, 1818; slave bill of sale, Logan County, Kentucky, 1860; a young woman’s letter to a friend, 1875; letter written by Kate Bosher, 1910; and letter written by Cale Young Rice, 1926, regarding biographical data, with a postscript by Alice Hegan Rice.

Ellis, James Tandy, 1868-1942 (Sc 110), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 110. Letters, 1897-1939 (16 items), written to James Tandy Ellis, poet, humorist, columnist, and lecturer of Ghent, Kentucky. Also includes Ellis' poems and writings, 1891 (5); printed items; clippings; commissions as Assistant Adjutant and Adjutant General of Kentucky; and miscellaneous items.

Spence, Ruth Potts, 1894-1988 (Sc 1840), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1840. Letters from Alice Hegan Rice (4), Cale Young Rice (13) and Laban Lacy Rice (1) to Ruth Potts Spence, who met the Rices at Camp Nakanawa in Mayland, Tennessee and maintained a friendship with the couple. The letters discuss writing, current events, family matters, and grief.

Cobb, Irvin Shrewsbury, 1876-1944 (Sc 82), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 82. Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb's original manuscript of an editorial, "A Leaf From a Memory Book," which appeared in "Kentucky Progress Magazine" (Spring 1933), and two letters concerning the manuscript.

Allison, Young Ewing, Jr., 1890-1965 (Sc 80), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 80. Letter written by Young Ewing Allison, Jr., Louisville, Kentucky, to Miss Julia Neal, Auburn, Kentucky, in reply to an inquiry concerning Lucy Furman.

Review Of Kate Field: The Many Lives Of A Nineteenth-Century American Journalist And Maria Mitchell And The Sexing Of Science: An Astronomer Among The American Romantics, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Literary historians writing biographies have increasingly shifted from critical biography (the author’s life as a means to interpret his or her literary works) to cultural biography (an author’s life and works in various cultural contexts). As literary historians whose biographical subjects (both nineteenth-century American women) are not primarily literary figures, Bergland and Scharnhorst represent a further step away from critical biography.

As a journalist (and popular lecturer, advocate of reform, playwright, and actress), Kate Field is a more literary figure than astronomer Maria Mitchell, but Scharnhorst has produced neither a critical nor a cultural biography. Instead, he presents a chronological …

Review Of Axes: Willa Cather And William Faulkner And Violence, The Arts, And Willa Cather, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Willa Cather and William Faulkner represent an intriguing and potentially productive pairing for comparative study. Their works and careers are located at the rich intersection between regional ism and modernism, and both early 20th-century writers often looked back to the 19th century in their fiction. Even in the absence of influence or intertextual reference, these commonalities would give a literary historian much to say. However, in her study of these two authors, Merrill Maguire Skaggs exhaustively catalogs similarities and differences as proof of a decades-long competition between the authors at the expense of depth and subtlety in her analysis of …

Female Captivity Narratives In Colonial America, Kathryn O'Hara

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The female captivity narrative provides a complex view of colonial American history by recounting the experiences of women captured from their colonial homes by Native Americans. Male editors, often family friends or town ministers, generally compiled the experiences of female captives, and separating the voice of the female captive from influence of the male editor presents a challenge. Puritan captivity narratives in particular demonstrate conflict between attempts by Puritan ministers to impose a unified religious message in the sagas and the captives’ individual experiences, which often contradicted Puritan doctrine. During the early colonial era, ministers’ attempts to promote the Puritan …

Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 1779), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1779. Letter, 11 October 1904, from author Alice Hegan Rice to the editor of Outlook magazine commenting on books that she enjoyed as a child and young adult.

Richards, Frances, 1893-1991 (Sc 1781), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1781. Paper titled "Bowling Green's Literary History," presented by WKU English teacher Frances Richards to the Samuel Davies Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 8 October 1938.

Hays, William Shakespeare, 1837-1907 (Sc 1790), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1790. Research material, including news clippings and several letters, related to William Shakespeare Hays, a Kentucky musician and journalist. Also includes typescripts of poems written by Hays under the pseudonym Hayseed.

Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 1780), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1780. Brief letter, 9 June 1917, from author Alice Hegan Rice, Louisville, Kentucky, to a Miss Stearns complimenting her on the attractiveness of her book plate.

Boyd, George Robert, 1906-1993 (Sc 1759), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1759. Poetry by George Robert Boyd, a Simpson County, Kentucky native and educator; also, material related to the Boyd family.

Bibliography Of Works By And About Imre Kertész, Nobel Laureate In Literature 2002, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Guthrie, Charles Snow, 1922-2000 (Sc 1604), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1604. Copy of speech given by Charles Snow Guthrie, professor of English at Western Kentucky University, to the Kentucky Philological Association, Morehead, Kentucky, 4 March 1988, entitled "Eighteenth Century Kentucky Writing."

The Study Of Literature And Culture Online (Theory And Application), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Dickerson And Venable Families (Sc 1574), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1574. Genealogical charts, news clippings, and photographs of members of the Dickerson and Venable families of Warren County, Kentucky. Also includes a news clipping from the Park City Daily News, 9 January 1947, about author Rosa Praigg Dickerson, who published under the name Violet Woods, and a pre-1911 photo and program from a production of "Mrs. Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch" performed at Woodburn College.

Drake, Leah Bodine, 1904-1964 (Sc 1575), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1575. Letters from poet Leah Bodine Drake, Evansville, Indiana, to Fletcher and Grace Stewart, Santa Ana, California, related to the publication of her poetry, awards for her poetry, and possible television appearances.

Morton, David, 1886-1957 (Mss 50), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 50. Correspondence of David Morton, correspondence concerning Morton Collection, speeches, essays, MSS: "Entries for a Diary," and MSS: "The Amateur Listener" -- diary, poems, pamphlets, and miscellaneous items of Morton, a poet and English professor born in Elkton, Kentucky.

History Of Ricl: Research Institute For Comparative Literature, University Of Alberta 1985-1999, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Stuart, Jesse Hilton, 1907-1984 (Sc 1557), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1557. Letter, 10 March 1976, from Kentucky author Jesse Hilton Stuart, W-Hollow, Greenup, Kentucky, to John Howard Spurlock, Bowling Green, Kentucky, related to "He Sings for Us", Spurlock's book about Stuart's writings.

Hochstrasser, Maud Adelaide, 1900-1994 (Sc 1552), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1552. Letters to Maud Adelaide Hochstrasser, many concerning the establishment of the Maud Adelaide "Addie" Hochstrasser Fund honoring Jesse Stuart at Western Kentucky University. Includes letters from Naomi Deane Stuart, Jesse Stuart's widow.

Review Of Women And Authorship In Revolutionary America And Learning To Stand And Speak: Women, Education, And Public Life In America’S Republic, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Two books the 1980s had a deep influence on the study of American women novelists of the early republic and the antebellum era. Mary Kelley’s Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (1984) presented twelve popular women novelists as deeply conflicted about their role as public producers of culture. The chapters in Cathy Davidson’s Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (1986) that treat women novelists and their readers as worthy of serious analysis significantly altered the course of scholarship on the early American novel. Angela Vietto clearly frames Women and Authorship in Revolutionary …

Thomas Collection (Mss 31), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 31. Manuscripts, letters, writings, etc., of the Thomas family of Bowling Green, Kentucky, including sermons and speeches of Frank Morehead Thomas, Methodist minister (1868-1921); and poems, essays and newspaper articles written by his mother, Elizabeth (Wright) Thomas (1842-1931). Full-text scans are available (Click on "Additional Files" below) for the Spanish-American War letters that Frank Thomas sent home to his family.

Calvert-Obenchain-Younglove Collection (Mss 30), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans of selected items (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 30. Correspondence, diaries, writings, business papers, scrapbooks, clippings, genealogical notes, weather records, and photographs of the Calvert, Obenchain, and Younglove families of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 1539), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1539. Note from Corinne C. McCormack, Bowling Green, Kentucky, thanking Lida Calvert Obenchain (pen name "Eliza Calvert Hall") for the donation of her book, "A Book of Hand Woven Coverlets" to the Woman's Library, and Obenchain's reply.

Obenchain, Josephine (Stephenson), 1864-1953 (Sc 1536), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1536. Whimsical paper written in dialect by Josephine Obenchain titled "History of the Kentucky Club of Dallas, Inc."

Faulkner In The Fifties: The Making Of The Faulkner Canon, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

First three paragraphs:

As many commentators of the period noted, one of the most significant events of early post-war literary culture in the United States was William Faulkner’s sudden rise to international fame. The most extensive investigation of this dramatic revaluation of cultural status was carried out by Lawrence D. Schwartz in his Creating Faulkner’s Reputation: The Politics of Modern Literary Criticism. Schwartz examines in detail the cultural and political processes that led to Faulkner’s discovery in the 1940s after the primarily negative reception of his works in the 1930s by leftist critics. He argues that Faulkner’s entry into …