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The Substance Of Reality: Moral Perfectionism In Shakespeare's Hamlet., David Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through a selection of and close reading of key passages, I offer an interpretation of Hamlet that seeks to illuminate the play as an important work of moral philosophy, and to situate the play within a strand of moral philosophy named moral perfectionism by Stanley Cavell. Indeed, Hamlet is a masterpiece of Renaissance drama, but when read with attention to moral perfectionism, the play yields additional layers of meaning. Hamlet is a “philosophical drama” that navigates the “moral calling of philosophy”—a text that seems to, almost uncannily, elicit the audience to think reflectively, to ask fundamental human questions along …

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

He Is The Master Of Wood, Water, And Hill: Is Tom Bombadil The True Key Keeper Of The Old Forest?, Noelia Ramos

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tom Bombadil, with his iconic singing―”Hey! Come merry doll! Derry doll and merry-o!―has captivated scholars worldwide, due to the enigmatic nature Tolkien intentionally left unexplained. This deliberate mystery has fuelled extensive debate, leading many to explore possible mythological and cultural frameworks that might decode Bombadil’s origins. Among these hypotheses, a Celtic interpretation has often been dismissed despite its potential relevance. This paper, thereby, seeks to analyse Bombadil’s function within the Old Forest and his interactions with the hobbits during their forest episode, presenting fresh insights into his role as a Celtic-inspired guide and druidic figure.

To support this analysis, primary …

The Enduring Enigma Of Tom Bombadil: From Riddlic Styling To Metaphorical Encounter, Derek Simon

Journal of Tolkien Research

Conversationalists and critics alike continue to take delight in Tom Bombadil, yet remain perplexed by his enduring enigma. Interpretive positioning appears to be determined by the semantics of the term enigma deployed and how it intersects with any of the several textual standpoints adopted. The primary contention of this article is that the enigma is intentionally both a riddle (noun) and a riddling (verb). Reading the enigma through literary features of the Old English riddle-song can yield an alternate interpretation of Tom Bombadil that has received scant attention in critical commentary. In support of this contention, I propose to read …

Blake’S Green Symbols Of Humanity, Society, And Spirituality, Angela J. Heagy

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

William Blake is an exemplar of Romantic poetry characterized by depictions of the occult, the divine, and human nature. Despite Blake’s reputation as a Romantic poet, many critics claim that there is not sufficient evidence to consider him a nature writer. As a result, Blake’s name is frequently omitted from ecological discussions; some scholars go so far as to claim that Blake’s poetry demonstrates a disregard for nature altogether. This article argues that an eco-critical analysis of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience reveals nature to be Blake’s continual source of inspiration. Within this collection, nature represents the struggles …

Discourse And Discography: The Pushback Of Female Writers, Characters, And Pop Stars, Amara D. Stroud

Honors College Theses

In my senior thesis, I will be analyzing and comparing early modern literature and “pop” music in order to follow the development of women’s ability to gain power. Throughout history, there has been an ongoing struggle for women’s equity in education, publishing, and socially acceptable actions. While it may seem that comparing literature from the 17^th Century to current pop lyrics, there are major connections that show a consistent female struggle - the inability to voice one’s true feelings due to the reaction of an educated man or an unchanging society. My thesis will focus on literary works such …

Discourse And Discography: The Pushback Of Female Writers, Characters, And Pop Stars, Amara D. Stroud

Honors College Theses

In my senior thesis, I will be analyzing and comparing early modern literature and contemporary popular music in order to follow the development of women’s ability to gain power. Throughout history, there has been an ongoing struggle for women’s equity in education, publishing, and socially acceptable actions. Though the connection between literature and pop music is unordinary, there are major connections that show a consistent female struggle - the inability to voice one’s true feelings due to the reaction of an educated man or an unchanging society. Overall, the response of female characters, authors, and artists is to show their …

Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …

Sexual And Erotic Transgression Through Aesthetic History: A Study Of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ronny F. Ford

Beyond the Margins: A Journal of Graduate Literary Scholarship

This article examines the relationship between Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poetic writing and history, especially in regards to how he explores sexual transgressions. The article begins with how aestheticism works in tangent with history to further these transgressions within a historical context and especially within the realm of Victorian Christianity. Next, Swinburne’s medieval aesthetics in “The Leper” will be analyzed in regards specifically necrophilia and the taking care of a leper, and how the writing of this poem was both a condemnation of Christianity and an accidental upholding of it. The violent homoeroticism and monstrous femininity of “Anactoria” are also looked …

Gavin Douglas's Aeneados: Caxton's English And 'Our Scottis Langage', Jacquelyn Hendricks

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scots poet Gavin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Aeneid into Scots, and Douglas's treatment of his predecessor William Caxton's translation of Virgil into English, arguing that Douglas associates Caxton's English with a barbaric world of monsters and beasts, in contrast to Scots which is seen as expressing civilized classical values, and that Douglas's translation, by enhancing and showcasing the literary power of Scots for a wider audience, successfully resisted for at least forty years the linguistic standardization initiated by the burgeoning print industry.

Digital Resources For Scottish Neo-Latin Literature, Ralph Mclean

Studies in Scottish Literature

Provides an annotated guide to the Scottish neo-Latin texts and translations now available in two major digital projects, the Philological Museum (University of Birmingham) and Bridging the Continental Divide (University of Glasgow), with briefer notes on other related print and digital resources, commenting on the importance of fully-annotated editorial and translation projects now fewer students and researchers can tackle such texts in the original Latin.

Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …

Shakespeare's "Honest And Vertuous" Ensigns: Transgressing The Military/Domestic Divide In The Henriad And Othello, Matthew R. Wentz

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores how the military service of the ensign disrupts and ultimately obliterates domestic life in Shakespeare’s Henriad and Othello. The rank of the ensign held expectations of honesty and honor, yet Shakespeare portrays his only two ensign characters, Ancient Pistol and Iago, as ironically failing to adhere to these standards. The received view of Pistol that results from his portrayal in 2 Henry IV as a stock braggadocio is challenged by a sympathetic reading of his character, especially in Henry V. Although Pistol occasionally behaves with honor in Henry V, his military service results in …

An Analysis Of The Aristocratic Material Culture Described In The Old English Epic Beowulf, Rachel Munson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Bravery, Honor, And Loyalty As Morals In Beowulf, Eleanor Cory '12

2010 Fall Semester

Since it originated in oral tradition, the epic Beowulf has no known author. It does, however, serve as a representation of the Anglo-Saxon culture it originates from. As a work of art, it also serves its purpose of moral instruction, today serving as a demonstration of what values were important to the Anglo-Saxon people. Especially seen through the characters of Beowulf and Wiglaf, the poem Beowulf illustrates three important morals of its time: bravery, honor, and loyalty.

Lies Breathed Through Silver: Mythological Constructs In Tolkien’S Works, Joshua Mccrowell

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

It’s not hard to imagine the English air being warm the night John Ronald Reuel Tolkien brought Clive Staples Lewis hard won into Christianity. The image of their lengthy midnight talk has since become almost mythic to those who study those two authors because of the impact that Christianity (and the other) had on each other’s lives. Lewis’ most famous works - everything from Narnia to his Space Trilogy to his apologetics - all are based on and inspired by his faith. Similarly, Tolkien once said that “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic …

Famous Infidelity: Geoffrey Chaucer's Criseyde And Robert Henryson's Cresseid, Erin R. Johnson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors program.

The Biological Terminology Required For The Intelligent Reading Of High School Classics, Sister Mary Joan Kirchner

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Phantastes Chapter 12: A Threefold Cord, Unknown

German Romantic and Other Influences

This poem appears in MacDonald’s A Threefold Cord (1883), where MacDonald is credited as contributor and editor. In this volume, individual authors are not credited. While some have thought that this passage is by MacDonald himself, Nick Page persuasively argues that the poem should be attributed to MacDonald’s friend Greville Ewing Matheson. See Page, Phantastes: Special Annotated Edition (Paternoster, 2008)

The New England Primer Improved, Unknown

Albert A. Howard Book History Collection

Full title: The New England primer improved, for the more easy attaining the true reading of English. To which is added the Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton's catechism. Boston, Printed by E. Draper and sold by J. Boyle, 1777

Find this item in the library catalog.

The Wonder Of Wonders, Or, The Remarkable Discovery Of An American Hermit; : Who Lived Upwards Of 200 Years, James Buckland, John Fielding

Albert A. Howard Book History Collection

Chapbook description:

The hermit was purportedly discovered by Capt. James Buckland and Mr. John Fielding, who in 1785 "agreed to travel into the western parts of this vast country, to explore the regions which belong to the United States which are yet unknown to us."

Printed in Kennebunk prior to Maine's statehood.

For more information, please refer to the library catalog.

Phantastes Chapter 9: Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

German Romantic and Other Influences

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" (lines 47-49 and 53-58). Coleridge published the poem in 1802.

Phantastes Chapter 13: I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart, John Suckling

German Romantic and Other Influences

Lines 13-18 from “I prithee send me back my heart” by the poet Sir John Suckling. Suckling (1609-1641) is associated with the Cavalier Poets, poets who supported King Charles I. Suckling is the inventor of the card game cribbage.

Phantastes Chapter 19: The Innocent Iii, Abraham Cowley

German Romantic and Other Influences

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was an English poet whose work echoes the metaphysical wit of John Donne. The lines quoted are lines 5-8 of “The Innocent III” (1647).

Phantastes Chapter 14: Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare

German Romantic and Other Influences

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Winter’s Tale, published in 1623 in the First Folio.

Phantastes Chapter 20: The Faithful Shepherdess, John Fletcher

German Romantic and Other Influences

John Fletcher (1579-1625) was a contemporary of William Shakespeare and followed him as main playwright for the King’s Men. The Faithful Shepherdess (produced in 1608, probably published in 1609) is also important for Fletcher’s definition of tragicomedy, which highlights the importance of near-death to the genre.

Phantastes Chapter 22: The Revenger's Tragedy, Cyril Tourneur

German Romantic and Other Influences

Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626) was an English dramatist, a contemporary of Shakespeare; Tourneur was also a soldier and politician. The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607), as its name implies, is a revenge tragedy, and comments on the battle to avenge the destruction by the giants that lead to the brothers’ deaths. Literary critics now believe that the play was written by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627).

Phantastes Chapter 24: The Honest Whore, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton

German Romantic and Other Influences

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632) was a dramatist and writer of popular pamphlets describing London life. This line comes from the play The Honest Whore, Part II (1605 or 1606). The Honest Whore, Part I, a collaboration between Dekker and Thomas Middleton, was performed in 1604.

Phantastes Chapter 13: The Water Is Wide, Unknown

German Romantic and Other Influences

Lines are from an old Scottish ballad, “The Water is Wide,” dating from the seventeenth century. We note, for interest’s sake, that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sing a version of this song in the 1975 film Renaldo and Clara.

Phantastes Chapter 23: Astrophel: An Elegy, Or Friend’S Passion, For His Astrophill, Matthew Roydon

German Romantic and Other Influences

Matthew Roydon (1580-1622), Elizabethan poet and friend of Sidney’s. In 1593, Roydon published his elegy for Sidney: “Astrophel: An Elegy, or Friend’s Passion, for His Astrophill.” MacDonald quotes lines 103-106. “The lineaments of Gospell bookes,” suggests that Sidney’s face exhibited a spirituality of a kind found in the four gospels of the New Testament