American Literature Commons^™

Contents (Volume 6), Robert Penn Warren Studies

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

Vampires In Literature: A Postmodern Study Of Bram Stoker And Anne Rice, Christina Marie Link

Theses & Dissertations

M. H. Abrams explains that postmodern authors "blend literary genres, cultural and stylistic levels, the serious and the playful, [and] that they resist classification according to traditional literary rubrics". Bram Stoker and Anne Rice both fall into this category of postmodernism. Bram Stoker puts his own spin on the literary vampire, changing the vampire from an aristocratic figure into a monster and adding such features as shape-shifting. He also utilizes various styles throughout the novel under the pretense of several different narrators and narration sources, since Dracula is an epistolary novel that combines the different characters' journals, letters, and even …

Review Of Fledgling, By Octavia Butler, Michael Dean Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Oy Science Fiction: On Genre, Criticism, And Alien Love: An Interview With Marleen S. Barr, Marlene S. Barr, Ximena Gallardo C., C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph of Abstract]

Marleen S. Barr is a pioneer of feminist science fiction criticism and a leader in the fight against the ghettoizing influences of genre-labeling in literary criticism. While the noteworthy Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction (University of Iowa Press, 1992) has been praised as Barr's seminal work in feminist science fiction criticism and theory, it is in Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies (U of Iowa P, 2000) where she takes on literary critics' discriminatory practices against genre fiction in general and fantasy and science fiction in particular.

Review Of Mizora: A Prophecy, By Mary E. Bradley Lane, Melissa Purdue

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

The "Essential Renewing Fantasy": The Vietnam Experience In American Literature, Jeffrey Gross

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I employ the idea of postmodern naturalism to illustrate how Tim O'Brien addresses the postmodern era following the Vietnam War, which he achieves through form and characterization, and how he blends in a naturalistic framework where events and powers beyond his characters' control affect their lives. Such a study of six of O'Brien's novels-Northern Lights, Going After Cacciato, The Nuclear Age, The Things They Carried, In the Lake of the Woods, and July, July-is important because it unveils common motifs and structural strategies employed by O'Brien in developing an evolved and postmodern version of naturalism. Rather than …

Resurrected: An In-Depth Study Of Fitzgerald's Female Found In The Basil Stories And The Great Gatsby, Therese Fields

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

When people hear the name F. Scott Fitzgerald they quickly think of his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's Gatsby is the great American novel. Why? It withstands time and the changes of contemporary society. This novel moves us, shakes us, and reminds us of our enlightening dreams and the realistic truths behind them. Why do readers connect with and feel empathy for the flawed Jay Gatsby? We, like Gatsby, hope for the green light and all that it holds in store for us. Gatsby is driven by the green light, which represents his hope to change the past. It is …

On Bill Brown's A Sense Of Things And Things, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

If he were not already well-established within the academic world (George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, co-editor of Critical Inquiry), Bill Brown’s 2003 and 2004 might begin to look like Jacques Derrida’s 1967. A Sense of Things comes equipped with jacket praise from Simon During of Johns Hopkins, Alan Trachtenberg of Yale University, Julia Stern of Northwestern University, and Michael Taussig of Columbia University. Not surprisingly, two of these individuals (in addition to Bill) appear in the edited volume Things, based on a Critical Inquiry special issue devoted to the topic. …

On Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'S Player Piano, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

I always get suspicious when a book I'm looking for is hard to find. If I'm feeling paranoid in a post-Patriot Act sort of way, I imagine vast memory holes being stuffed with the writings of people like George Orwell and Philip K. Dick by legions of aspiring yuppies-- fit, good-looking, and totally uninterested in anything that requires reading. A gaggle of Cheneyesque men do a walkthrough, to make sure that they are destroying our intellectual heritage efficiently, and to remind them all that if they destroy enough knowledge, they might get promoted (even as the suits make …

Melville, Slavery, And The Failure Of The Judicial Process, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Sabbatical Report, Neil Archer

Sabbaticals

In the fall of 2002, I was awarded a sabbatical leave for the spring of 2004 to study early American history and literature. I chose this topic out of personal interest, but also to prepare myself to teach my department’s early American literature course, an area of study in which I had little previous experience.

My project proposal consisted of two main parts. One was simply to read a selection of historical and literary works that are ordinarily taught in or used as background for that literature course. The other was to pursue original research into a family legend—my family—and …

The Description Of The Characters In Herman Melville's White-Jacket, Or The World In A Man-Of-War, Toru Nishiura

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Many characters who have various personalities app ear in Herman Melville’s White-Jacket . However, few critics have comprehensively examined the action and the characteristics of them in detail. In this thesis, I explore Melville’s depiction of the battleship world in this novel by clarifying the narrator ’s standard to judge ot her characters. In White-Jacket, the whole story is narrated by White-Jacket; therefore, the characteristics of his narrative clarify the theme of this novel. I start with an analysis of his narrative and examine whether he is a reliable narrator or not. Then, I explore the relationship between the battleship …

Linking Genesis To Modern Day Castaway Narratives, Shawndra Russell

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis analyzes two castaway novels, Lord of the Flies and John Dollar, and compares these novels to segments of Genesis, focusing primarily on the story of Adam and Eve. To compare and contrast these three works, I pulled out eleven similar ideas found in each text which formed eleven different chapters. This project evolved into offering an alternative way to interpret these castaway narratives as retellings of the creation story. The characters in John Dollar and Lord of the Flies become Adam and Eve type figures as they try to survive on Edenlike islands. At the same time, this …

Canary In The Dark, Andrea Fekete

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

I began researching Appalachian culture in 1998. I wanted to tell a story about conflict and beauty while revealing my vision of who my people were/are. I strived to create a fiction not unlike poetry with realistic and minimalist features to give Appalachia the most accurate face possible as perceived by me through my own lens.

I wanted to explore the idea of beauty: Virginia’s (the main character) ideas about her beauty, her culture and other cultures. What is beauty? Who defines it? Can it be found everywhere? How? What does it look like when it is somewhere you wouldn’t …

Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, And The Southern Literary Tradition, Joseph Blotner

Robert Penn Warren Studies

The illustrious biographer of Faulkner and Warren provides an overview of the role the Southern tradition in American letters played in the making of Warren and Brooks, both of whom he knew as friends as well as subjects of professional interest.

A Son Remembers, Gabriel Warren

Robert Penn Warren Studies

The Warrens’ son, a sculptor with a keen eye for natural forms, recalls the important role of place in his family’s life and shares a sequence of evocative photos.

Note: Supplemental content above is a scanned version of the original publication which includes images.

Warren’S Willie Talos: Reflections On The Name, Harold L. Weatherby

Robert Penn Warren Studies

In choosing Willie Talos as the original name for his strongman governor in All the King’s Men,Warrenwas explicitly drawing upon Edmund Spenser, but his allusion to the Faerie Queene remains puzzling. Spenser’s “robotic” character would seem to have more in common with a dehumanized figure in the novel like Sugar Boy, who is often presented in mechanistic imagery.Warren’s ultimate decision to change Willie’s name from Talos to Stark seems a wise one.

Book Revew: Rewriting White, By Todd Vogel, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Contents (Volume 5), Robert Penn Warren Studies

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

At Home In The City: Urban Domesticity In American Literature And Culture, 1850-1930, Elizabeth Klima

University of New Hampshire Press: Open Access Books

An interdisciplinary study of urban literature and domestic architecture in the United States from 1850-1930. With chapters on the hotel, Central Park, tenement houses, and apartment buildings, At Home in the City juxtaposes literary criticism with a history of the built environment to show the inception of American modernity. Works treated include: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern, The Bostonians by Henry James, How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist urban utopias, and Nella Larsen's Quicksand.

Questions Of Swimming, 1935, Peter Davison

Robert Penn Warren Studies

In an eloquent meditative lyric, one of our leading poets pays tribute to a friend and mentor he knew from childhood.

The Robert Penn Warren Collection At Emory University: A Personal Account, Richard Schuchard

Robert Penn Warren Studies

The Special Collections division of the Emory library is home to a vast array of materials of remarkable value to the study of Robert Penn Warren, and this account provides a useful running guide to those extensive holdings.

About The Birthplace (Volume 5), Robert Penn Warren Studies

Robert Penn Warren Studies

No abstract provided.

Style: A New Perspective On Kate Chopin, Daniel Arredondo

Theses Digitization Project

Uses Edward Corbett's theory of style to help define Chopin's style and expose her rhetorical strategies (sentence and paragraph length, diction, tropes, scheme, etc.) in the short story "The Story of an Hour ." Examines the controversy over using literature to teach composition and provides an analysis of the reasons for and against using literature in composition classes. Finally, defends the use of literature in writing classrooms.

The Literacy Event Horizon: Examining Orality And Literacy In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, AndréA Diane Davis

Theses Digitization Project

Applies James Gee's concept of Discourses to illustrate how literacy and orality thematically constitute hybrid identity in Silko's novel Ceremony. Then, applies Wallace Chafe's linguistic framework of integration and involvement showing that the novel is a linguistic hybrid, not just a text that thematically elevates hybridity. Unlike other Native American authors who create half-breed characters merely as bridges between two cultures, Silko creates her character Tayo as an embodiment of an emergent hybrid culture.

R. P. Blackmur And Randall Jarrell On Literary Magazines: An Exchange, Stephen Burt

Robert Penn Warren Studies

Letters between Warren’s acquaintance Blackmur and his close friend and onetime protégé Jarrell on the state of American literary magazines enrich our sense of the literary milieu in which the three worked.

Purity, Panic, And Pasiphaë In Brother To Dragons, John Burt

Robert Penn Warren Studies

Brother to Dragons is a poem that turns chiefly upon guilt over racism and slavery, but many of its most intense passages concern sexual guilt. The poem returns obsessively to the subject of sex because sex provides it with a way of thinking about how the highest and lowest aspect of human nature are inextricably bound together in it. The inextricable duality of love is a model for a similar inextricable duality the poem discusses in political idealism. The way the desire for purity shades into sadism is a model for the ways efforts to purify the political world also …

Divorcing Robert Penn Warren From The South, Paul Murphy

Robert Penn Warren Studies

The author considersWarren’s place in American intellectual history, which is at present problematic. He argues thatWarrenmust be seen as more than a “Southerner.” Though he dealt with Southern materials and saw himself as an uprooted exile and wanderer,Warrenemerged from a modernist ethos and went on to write in an existentialist idiom. His career was played out on a world stage.

A Conversation With Lewis P. Simpson, William Bedford Clark, James A. Grimshaw Jr.

Robert Penn Warren Studies

The co-editors of this journal interview Professor Simpson on a wide range of issues pertaining toWarren, his place in the American canon, and the present state of literature in the academy and the culture at large.

Robert Penn Warren And The South, Lewis P. Simpson

Robert Penn Warren Studies

One of the most acclaimed students of the Southern mind, a critic and editor who came to know Warren well and earned his deep respect, revisits the importance of region and identity in the author’s life and work.