American Literature Commons^™

Appalachia In The Anthropocene: An Approach To Understanding Neo Appalachian Narratives As An Affective Ecology, Rachel Michel Bates

English Theses & Dissertations

Appalachia is all too often a commodified and mythologized place in the American consciousness. Yet the lived experience of Appalachia is one complicated by widescale ecological devastation, high poverty rates, and most recently, a devastating opioid crisis. Though much of Appalachian literature continues to dwell in an old vision of Appalachia, an endeavor Zackary Vernon terms post-Appalachian, I argue that a subset of texts published around the turn of the millennium, a time when many of the labor-dependent, exploitative industries such as logging, hydro damming, and coal mining were no longer at work in the region, reveal a shift in …

Seeking Sabbath In Annie Dillard's Holy The Firm, Olivia Grace Dycus

English Theses & Dissertations

Annie Dillard’s third-ever publication, Holy the Firm, asks why an omniscient God allows natural evil to occur. In this deeply poetic and mystical series of essays, Dillard explores the relationship between time, artistry, and God in the face of devastating chaos. This thesis argues that Dillard’s emphasis on the importance of time reflects a Jewish notion of Sabbath as defined by Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel. Dillard offers time and creation as medium through which to commune with God just as Heschel does in his book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Heschel defines Sabbath as the coming …

Her Precious White Body/Her Tender Black Flesh: The Gothic Link To Black Women's (Mis)Treatment In Real Life And On The Page, Madisty R. Thomas

English Theses & Dissertations

As a work in progress, this thesis explores the interplay between historical and contemporary devaluation of and violence against Black women, materially and discursively, including visual mediums and written text. Specifically, I focus on the gothic novel to illuminate the impact race-based inventions such as chattel slavery and human exhibitions, as well as the generic tropes of the Gothic, have had on Black women’s representation and lived experience via a wide-ranging introduction and close examination of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle. Additionally, the conclusion attempts to suggest how Black women and girls might survive in this antiblack world, thus escape …

Terrorists, Zombies, And Robots: The Political Unconscious, Thematics, And Affectual Structures Of The Post-9/11 American Fear Narrative, Nathanael J. Cloyd

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the post-9/11 American fear narrative across media and genre. First, it proposes the concepts of the fear narrative, the primary fear theme, and the secondary fear theme. Second, it proposes that the fear narrative has a long tradition in American culture, in which its themes have adapted and evolved in historically sedimented layers of development. Third, it proposes that American fear themes change depending on its historical context of production, its cultural regime, its genre, and the form of media in which it is expressed. To help uncover the political unconsciousness of the American fear narrative, it …

American Exceptionalism And The Historical Fiction Of Chabon And Delillo: Media Identity Commodification And The Truth Of Lies, Samm Yeakel

English Theses & Dissertations

At the heart of any democratic nation lie the individuals that inhabit its borders, heed allegiance to its flag, comprise its political and economical bodies, and fight the very wars that disrupt its political ideals. Max Weber, who is revered not merely as a great sociologist, but the sociologist, contends that any sociological explanation regarding the w1derlying will and motives of these individuals must relate to their self-conscious actions. But, however self-conscious these actions may appear, they are decidedly influenced by external factors, and, as will be shown, a well-constructed novel captures the interplay between the individual, the nation, and …

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …

Genre, Database, And The Anatomy Of The Digital Archive, Elizabeth J. Vincelette

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to define shared characteristics of literary digital archives, specifically to explore how conceptual and structural qualities of such archives express generic qualities. In order to describe digital media such as database or digital archives, scholars resort to metaphors, and this study offers the metaphor of anatomy as a generic inscription with historical and methodological implications. The definition of the anatomy genre draws from Northrop Frye's in Anatomy of Criticism, in which Frye describes how anatomies are characterized by proliferating lists, the mixing of prose and non-prose forms, and self-reflexivity--under the guise of knowledge …

Ideological Transference In The Barbary Captivity Literature Of Post-Revolutionary America, Jason Scott Cooke

English Theses & Dissertations

The outbreak of Barbary captivity in the post-revolutionary period was one of the first significant challenges to American statehood and, more importantly, the rhetoric of liberty that had initially unified and galvanized the otherwise fractioned colonies. The Barbary nations, through politically hostile acts such as piracy and seizure, thus ironically participated in the rendering of abstract democratic principles, embodied by America' military victory over England, into the pragmatic functioning of a new republic. However, the process by which Barbary captivity assisted in the public enunciation of an idealized rhetoric of liberty or language of rights owes more to the cultural …

Lynching The White Imagination: Changing The Dynamics Of Lynching And Rewriting The Cult Of True Womanhood In Grimke, Johnson, And Terrell, Melissa L. Antonucci

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite critics'ack and forth argument over the merits, or lack thereof, of a uniquely black theatre experience, black women playwrights, much like their male counterparts, were once wholly invisible to the white community. But what makes their invisibility unique is their absence in the black world and in literary scholarship. Unfortunately, modern scholarship has oftentimes dismissed these exceptionally powerful plays, cataloging them as poorly written and lacking stylistic and formal elements. It was only recently that they were included in a highly male-dominated history of African American theatre and art. The question of their use of sentimentality, however, remains unanswered. …

"Fictual" Reportage And (Virtual) Reality: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood And Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, Rania M. Mahmoud

English Theses & Dissertations

This study discusses Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. using Jean Baudrillard's theory of the four stages of the image and John Hellmann's notion of the transforming power of consciousness. Examining two landmarks of what is widely referred to as the nonfiction novel, or creative nonfiction, the study suggests that any attempt to record reality ends up as fabulation, whereby the writer produces his/her own version of reality. Thus, we have multiple realities or, in other words, fables woven out of the interpretive consciousness of individual writers. Taking this a step further, since all our …

Bakhtin And The Rhetoric Of The Modern Western Novel, Douglas J. Massey

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis uses examples of temporal and spatial intersections (chronotope) provided by noted rhetorician, Mikhail Bakhtin, applying them to a modem Western novel. Bakhtin identifies three primary types of historical chronotope: Ancient Greek Romance, Chivalric Romance, and Rabelasian. The Ancient Greek Romance has three basic types: the adventure novel of ordeal, the adventure novel of everyday life, and ancient biography and autobiography. Certain elements of these three basic types are distinct characteristics that are readily identifiable and, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, "have a direct and unmediated relationship to time,'* (86) which is the dominant principle in the chronotope.

The Chivalric …

Good Grief: Representations Of The Death Of Children In Early American Writings, Lisa M. Murray

English Theses & Dissertations

From the spare journals of John Winthrop and William Bradford to the Day of Doom exhortation of Michael Wigglesworth, one can see the basis for a commonly held image of the early Puritan colonists as being a stern, humorless community. This is not inconsistent with the theological underpinnings of the Puritans' faith. Further, some research, such as that by John Demos and Karin Calvert, has concluded that the children of these colonists were not accorded the status of individuals; rather they were variously held at an emotional distance or otherwise marginalized, in part because of the very real threat of …

American Indian-White Miscegenation In Early Nineteenth Century American Literature, Elisabeth Michaelis Simmons

English Theses & Dissertations

The mixing of races has been a controversial issue ever since the first European settlers came to North America. This paper focuses on Native Americans and whites and examines how these two races are represented in early nineteenth century American literature. Specifically, it seeks to trace American authors' motivations and goals in their use of Indian-white miscegenation.

This thesis discusses novels, short stories, and plays by James Nelson Barker, Charlotte Barnes, Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Ann Sophia Stephens. All analyzed texts were published between 1808 and 1844 and were written by white authors for …

A View Of Melville's Piazza Tales From The Piazza, Amy Nadine Vanek

English Theses & Dissertations

Literary critics have tended to view Melville's short stories as individual units, though sometimes also in relation to his other major works. However, six of his short stories were collected in The Piazza Tales and republished as a unit. This was not just an arbitrary association, but a carefully designed collection established by Melville with the agreement of his publisher. Significantly, the first story, "The Piazza," was never published independently, only as a specific introduction to this combined work. Some critics have noted the important role that "The Piazza" then assumes. However, limited criticism and analysis is currently available which …

The Nautical Quest, Bradford S. Warner

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite crossing genres and continents, strong literary connections exist between Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Poe's novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Melville's novel Moby Dick or the Whale. The works are similar in terms of plot, symbolism, and other artistic devices. Ties between any two of the works have been mentioned in literary scholarship over the last century, yet I have located none involving all three.

None of the present criticism has revealed that each work utilizes several important literary devices, such as a quality of incorporation of source material (including travel …

The Creation And Destruction Of Surrogate Worlds In Montana Literature, Julie Lyn Mcmurray

English Theses & Dissertations

Montana writers create surrogate worlds where their characters escape the oppressiveness of the real world. The vast and varied landscape of Montana is more than a setting for many of these authors. It becomes symbolic of a national mind set that the open land will offer redemption or inner peace. Therefore, many characters become one with their natural environment. However, the writers destroy their alternative worlds by introducing emotion or real world problems into it.

Four Montana writers will be examined in detail. In Chapter II, I discuss Myron Brinig's Wide Open Town and his use of surrogate worlds. Brinig …

Expressions Of Oppression Or Power? Reconsidering The Texts Of Hannah Webster Foster And Tabitha Gilman Tenney, Debra Anne Akgun

English Theses & Dissertations

Hannah Webster Foster and Tabitha Gilman Tenney were early American novelists writing in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Each author wrote a sentimental novel and a traditional conduct book. The Coquette and The Boarding School by Foster and Female Quixotism and The New Pleasing Instructor by Tenney, have scarcely been understood in relation to each other. This project attempts to view these texts as in the eighteenth-century society might have.

The introductory chapter identifies the problem with the typical feminist critical reading. It also explores many of the popular genres of literature during the eighteenth-century. Included are explorations …

Willa Cather's Death Comes For The Archbishop: Narrative And Historical Inspiration, Melissa L. Hamilton

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to look at Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop and investigate Cather's use of history as both a foundation and inspiration for her narrative. Cather uses several "historical" documents for the structure of her book, ranging from the biography of Father Joseph P. Machebeuf to the frescoes of St. Genevieve by the Puvis de Chavannes. It has also been commonly argued that Cather's representations of some historical figures in this narrative do not accurately reflect historical record. This study will examine Cather's representation of certain historical figures against the commonly held historical images …

Stephen Crane And "The Subtle Brotherhood Of Men", Christian Robert Weisser

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the development of the works of Stephen Crane. Most critical studies define his philosophy strictly within the boundaries of Naturalism. A close examination of his novels and short stories shows a development towards a more melioristic view of mankind, one which endorses the value of brotherhood and group relations. Based on certain biographical, philosophical and cultural factors, Crane's work emerges as progressively more and more concerned with the possibility of effective human solidarity.

No Other Track: Russell Hoban And The Literary Pilgrim, Eric G. Waggoner

English Theses & Dissertations

This study will examine the novels of Russell Hoban, an American-born writer living and working in London, and their consistent engagement of the idea of pilgrimage: the spiritual and geographical travel towards a particular goal as found in early Christian writing, as well as extant writings of other religions and cultures. After briefly tracing the social and literary history of the pilgrimage, I will examine each of Hoban's novels with an eye towards their secular revision of the pilgrimage motif, a revision which nonetheless retains a measure of spirituality.

A Literary Evaluation Of Black Female Interaction In Toni Morrison's "Beloved", "Sula," "Jazz", Carol Ann Davenport

English Theses & Dissertations

This Master's thesis consists of three chapters that examine the roles, circumstances and effects of racism and sexism on the black female characters in three of Toni Morrison's novels, Beloved, Sula and Jazz. I propose that the elements of racism and sexism have left the female characters, Sethe, Denver, Ella, etc. in Beloved with few choices in life. Further, I suggest that the theme of "choice versus no choice" perpetuates hatred and self-hatred among black women and results in "metaphoric scarring." I explore in the characters, Sula, Eva, Hannah, Nel, and the black Bottom women, the damage inflicted on black …

It's A Family Affair: Choices In Kinship Configurations As Represented In Fried Green Tomatoes And Bastard Out Of Carolina, Mary Elizabeth Wright

English Theses & Dissertations

Fictional representations of familial paradigms are changing. This discussion charts the variations that occur in family makeup; such as the single-parent, the lesbian parent, and the guardian parent households. While the nuclear family situation is missing from this selection, it is not absent from these novels. What is different in both Fried Green Tomatoes and Bastard out of Carolina is choice. People make choices concerning who they want to live with. Writers, like Flagg and Allison, make choices concerning their characters' familial configurations, but they do· not require their characters or their readers to determine that one should eradicate the …

American Christianity And Its Role In The Denigration Of The African-American Identity As Found In African-American Literature, Zelda Lockhart

English Theses & Dissertations

The positive effects of American Christianity on the African-American from slavery to present day are often analyzed in African-American literature, which depicts black characters who are grateful to God, mostly for giving them the strength to endure the many social and psychological abuses inflicted by American institutions. African-American literature, however, also depicts characters whose relationship with Christianity subordinates them in American society.

The following chapters will explore the downfalls and ironies of an African-American/Christian dichotomy, and show how the historical events of America have influenced African-American Christianity.

Chapter One gives a historical account of America's involvement in the Transatlantic slave …

The American Schoolyard: A Critical Study Of Charles Bukowski's Short Fiction, Jonathan D. Weiss

English Theses & Dissertations

Charles Bukowski is one of America's most prolific writers. He has published forty-five books of poetry and prose and is translated in over a dozen languages, Recently he wrote the screenplay for the movie Barfly. However, despite his accomplishments, Bukowski has received little critical attention from the academic world. It is thought that his works are too violent or too pornographic to be deserving of critical attention. In this thesis, I attempt to show that this is not the case. Using Marxist, feminist, and Freudian analyses of Bukowski's short fiction, I show that Bukowski's work is, without a doubt, worthy …

Wising Up The Marks: The Later Works Of William S. Burroughs, Stephen L. Starck

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the later works of Williams. Burroughs, focusing on them as they articulate his theories of the individual. Following a brief look at each work (The Wild Boys, Exterminator!, Port of Saints, Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands) is a discussion of Burroughs' concerns about the individual, as expressed in his theories of government, religion, the body, and language. Burroughs instructs individuals, attempting to educate them to all the restraints imposed by society. The overall narrative structure of these six works is also discussed and then …

A Record Of The Present Moment: A Comparison Of The Early And Later Narrative Work Of Gertrude Stein, Elisa Stuber Cohen

English Theses & Dissertations

Gertrude Stein began and ended her literary career with the narrative, a mode of discourse which she reworked and altered to fit her vision of twentieth-century reality. In her early work with the narrative (Three Lives and The Making of Americans), she reevaluated traditional techniques of plot, theme, and character and began to emphasize the textual surface over referential meaning. But feeling restricted by the narrative, Stein left it behind in search of the value of the individual word, which she thought was lost in nineteenth-century rhetoric. For the next twenty-five years, she concentrated on poetry, plays, and …

Mothers And Daughters: A Study Of Edith Wharton, Patricia K. Waller

English Theses & Dissertations

Whether due to her own mother's coldness, or to the fact that she herself did not have children, or to some other factor or combination of factors, Edith Wharton seemed unable to envision a warm, satisfying mother-daughter relationship. The mothers in her fiction are often detached and/or absent, and the daughters suffer from the faulty or nonexistent relationships with their mothers. The "motherless" daughters--Lily Bart, Mattie Silver, and Charity Royall--never achieve adulthood in any real sense. They lack autonomy and remain dependent on others. Other daughters--Nona Manford and Judith Wheater--must take over the parental role when their mothers fail to …

Faulkner: Misogynist Or Philogynist?, Imane Nejjar

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.

"A Terror And A Dream": Domestic Imagery In The Poetry Of Anne Sexton, Frances S. Waters

English Theses & Dissertations

Women writers often experience a conflict between traditional feminine roles and the less traditional role of the female writer. And for those writers, like Anne Sexton, who choose not to choose between roles, the result is conflict. This conflict, recognized by previous critics and evident in Sexton's biography and poetry, results in a domestic imagery expressing this vacillation. In this study, submitted in partial fulfillment for the M. A. degree in English, I provide an in-depth study of Sexton's domestic imagery. I concern myself with two imagery patterns: one, in which the symbolic image's meaning changes randomly with no controlling …

Poe's Humor In Theory And Practice, Celinda V. Claxton

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.