Comparative Literature Commons^™

Allen D. Breck Award (2014)

Quidditas

Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Causality In La Mort Le Roi Artu: Free Will, Accident, And Moral Failure, David S. King

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The thirteenth-century French La Mort le Roi Artu indicates forthrightly how the Arthurian world comes to an end, but the text leaves less clear what motivates the disaster. Many critics attribute the cause to an external force, God or the goddess Fortune, that obliges Arthur and others to pursue their own destruction. A few offer greater insight into the nature of causality in the romance. They see the characters as exercising some degree of free will or even complete liberty. But these critics err in alienating the notion of free choice from moral concerns. In their reading, the heroes suffer …

The Intersection Of Music Philosophy, Performance And Genre In The Middle English Breton Lay Sir Orfeo, Lisa Myers

Quidditas

The Middle English romance Sir Orfeo is a dynamic and creative retelling of the classical Orpheus myth in which the wife of the English king, Orfeo, is abducted by fairies but eventually restored to her position and husband through Orfeo’s musical prowess. While any retelling of the Orpheus myth would necessarily contain references to music and would, therefore, likely use music as an important cue within the text, the poet of Sir Orfeo displays a sophisticated understanding of musical philosophy, composition and performance, as well as the Breton lay genre. The intersection of these elements all work together not only …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

The Pilgrim’S Intuitive Cognition In Pèlerinage De La Vie Humaine, David Strong

Quidditas

This article maintains that the Pilgrim in Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegorical dream vision, Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, acquires a previously unrecognized importance through his cognitive abilities. Each personified figure’s significance depends not upon a general introduction, but the Pilgrim’s ability to identify those traits unique to their person. This mode of intellection mirrors the late Scholastic epistemology of intuitive cognition as championed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. This theory allows the Pilgrim to grasp a particular object’s certitude without relying upon universals. Since this philosophy extols intellectual surety, it serves as a framework for interpreting the …

Visual Representations Of Prester John And His Kingdom, Michael E. Brooks

Quidditas

The mythical figure of the priest-king known to late medieval and early modern Europeans as Prester John fascinated literate Europeans for many centuries. Historians have weighed in on textual depictions of the legendary figure, but visual interpretations by European artists of the physical appearance of this eastern potentate have not been examined in any significant depth. These portrayals primarily took the form of map and book illustrations, and this essay examines the evolving visual representations that European artists developed of Prester John. In general, there was a gradual evolution over time in European artistic depictions of the legendary Prester John, …

Public Shaming: Milton And The English People, Courtney O. Carlisle

Quidditas

“Public Shaming: Milton and the English People” discusses the role of shame and its performance in John Milton’s First and Second Defence of the People of England. As Milton attempts to shame Salmasius and More, he focuses on bodies and their relationship to shame. For Milton, shame should be morally productive—it is meant to produce a sense of self-consciousness and an appropriate moral awareness. Milton argues that Salmasius and More are shameless and therefore not self-conscious or morally aware. Involved with shame and self-consciousness is a profound awareness of one’s body and its relationship to others and to the environment. …

The End Of An Era: John E. Wills Jr’S 1688: A Global History As A Capstone, Nikolas O. Hoel

Quidditas

When designing a course, an appropriate question is how to end it. What great primary or secondary source will send students off into the larger academic world, outside the immediate class at hand with a better understanding of the period they had just been studying? The quandary is important in every medieval or early modern course; for example, does one end the medieval survey with Dante or Petrarch, or even Erasmus? The necessity for a capstone is no less great in classes that are entitled “England to 1688,” which populate many university course catalogues today. Many monographs and articles have …

Resolving Exeter Book Riddles 74 And 33: Stormy Allomorphs Of Water, Thomas Klein, William F. Klein, David Delehanty

Quidditas

The following article argues that the idea of the allomorph is a productive way to view two “transformation” riddles from the Old English collection of riddles in the Exeter Book. In the view of the authors, Riddles 74 and 33 should both be solved generally as “water,” and specifically as “in the form of a thunderstorm.” Both riddles dramatize the multiple forms that water may take, and meditate on the divinely-ordained grandeur of the storm and the particular paradox of a thing being both immensely violent and necessary for life on earth. Understanding how these riddles play out these truths …

Was Frederick Barbarossa The First Holy Roman Emperor?, Thomas Renna

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Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90) was the first German emperor—later to be called the Holy Roman Emperor—who gave considerable attention to the three terms of the imperial title. His own registers and contemporary chronicles reveal frequent references to the three components of both his title and the Holy Roman Empire. I argue that Barbarossa was the first to attempt to integrate them into the German traditions of the empire, in particular the method of electing the king of the Romans, the historical ties with Charlemagne, and the concept of the empire as an amalgam of smaller principalities. He was the first to …

John Bale’S Kynge Johan As English Nationalist Propaganda, G. D. George

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John Bale is generally associated with the English Reformation rather than the Tudor government. It may be that Bale’s well-know protestant polemics tend to overshadow his place in Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda machine, and that Bale’s Kynge Johan is more a propaganda piece for the Tudor monarchy than it is just another of his Protestant dramas..

Delno C. West Award Winner (2014)

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David Strong

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Going The Distance: Themes Of The Hero In Disney's Hercules, Amy Elizabeth Burchfield

Theses and Dissertations

Disney's Hercules is an apt modern reception of the ancient mythology of Herakles, acknowledging ancient and modern sources surrounding three types of classical hero: the archetypal hero, influenced by the ideas of Joseph Campbell; the Pan-Hellenic hero, distilled from ancient Greek exempla of heroism from epic and other genres of ancient literature; and the tragic hero, inspired by the heroic criteria presented in Aristotle's Poetics. By adapting these heroic types from their traditional ancient source myths, Disney's Hercules produces a new, contemporary definition of heroism—one informed by modern, Western family values. This adaptation renews the power of the myth of …

Blood And Water: Unity In The Gospel Of John (1), Matthew G. Ancell, Dr. V. Stanley Benfell

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The stated purpose of the Gospel of John is that the reader or hearer “may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20.31) (2). Regardless of whether the Fourth Gospel is written to a community of believers or to convert the unbelieving, as is debated, this verse points to life through Jesus Christ as the focus of the book. Each of the four Gospels offers a testimony of Jesus as the Christ. Culminating in the passion and resurrection narratives, each version presents a unique …

Carmen De Bello Actiaco (Pherc 817): The Illumination Of A Two Thousand Year-Old Papyrus With A 21st Century Eureka, Stewart Tanner, Dr. Roger Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The days when scholars of the Classics refuted the ability of technology to contribute to their discipline are a memory of the past. From archaeology to papyrology the study of the Ancients through the lens of tomorrow advances daily. Such was my experience with the revolutionary breakthrough of multi-spectral imaging (MSI) on a remnant from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.: A charred, millennia-old piece of papyrus (PHerc 817) from Herculaneum, Italy treating the famous Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. From Provo to Palo Alto, from Naples to Oxford, the ORCA Grant provided me with the necessary …

Liu Yuxi In The Paradox Of The Sign, Kyle David Anderson, Dr. Steven P. Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Western perspectives on Chinese literature and poetics have generally been overly mystified (or even nonexistent). This fledgling view of the knowledge and literary achievements of China is to be anticipated during the beginnings of a cultural exchange between the East and the West.

Something Written In The State Of Denmark: Contemporary Danish Literature, Kevin C. Brimhall, Dr. Steven Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The works of such well-known authors as H.C. Andersen and Karen Blixen are relatively accessible in the original Danish, but have the disadvantage of failing to reflect contemporary spellings, syntax, and word usage common in present-day Danish. Like all languages, Danish is constantly changing and the passage of over a century has certainly left its mark on Danish literature. Unlike, older Danish works, contemporary Danish literary works are relatively hard to come by, which poses a problem for those interested in learning Danish as its written and spoken today. Consequently, the purpose of this project was to compile and supplement …

A Downright Dilemma For Danish Ducklings: The Development Of Additional Instructional Resources For Byu’S Danish Program, George Bailey, Dr. Steven Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Danish is an important language for many who wish to make a study of family history and genealogy. Opportunities to learn Danish are very rare, and BYU is one of only several universities in the United States that offers courses in Danish. Due to this scarce availability of Danish classes, resources for Danish teaching and learning are likewise difficult to come by. To this point in time, BYU has been using Danish for Ducklings for its first-year course. However, this textbook not only has an insufficient amount of material to cover the first year, but it is also geared towards …

The Influence Of Dorothea Lange On American Culture, Heather Heyman, Dr. Allen J. Christenson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When America experienced the Great Depression during the 1930’s, a large number of people struggled to survive each day. Countless men and women were unemployed, and therefore, had no means of providing for their families. The migrant workers of the west were hit the hardest, and their former lives of simplicity became a serious fight for existence. At this same time, however, a portrait photographer in San Francisco, named Dorothea Lange, captured city conditions with her camera. Out of curiosity and boldness, Lange began to take pictures of citizens in San Francisco. These photographs documented the results of the chaotic …

Baroque Influence In Tongan Church Music, Sara Black, Dr. Larry Shumway

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In Tongan culture, music is very much a part of the natural expression of the people. In the Western tradition, musical experience is often limited to a setting in which an isolated group of performers presents a work to the general public, who observe as an outside audience. In Tongan culture, members of the general public are both audience and performer. Large groups of people are gathered together to present a work of both music and dance. In this setting, performance is not so much dependent upon isolated skills developed by a few, but it is a more democratic experience …

Henry David Thoreau: Perpetuating The Myth Of Paradoxical Environmentalism, Rachelle Koenen, Dr. Kerry Soper

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The knowledge that I have of Thoreau began with an interest early in my life, developed into a Thesis Proposal one year ago, and intensified with research at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. In addition to the research I did there, I also spent upwards of 40 hours reading and talking with professors about this man. Initially I wanted to discover the “true” Thoreau—find out what he was really saying and disprove all other theories—but I quickly realized that the subject was too complex and that at best all I could to would be to present the complexity and do …

Herculaneum Disegni, Nick Frederick, Julie Frederick, Dr. Roger T. Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Thanks to the BYU multi-spectral images, scholars around the world have been able to access the Herculaneum scrolls without having to travel to Naples. Those images greatly facilitated scholarship by both their readability and availability. Because of the availability of the multi-spectral images, the necessity and benefit of having other related resources available in digital from became apparent.

Megacities: A Survey And Prognosis, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

David J. Rosner, Conservatism And Crisi, The Anti-Modernist Perspective In Twentieth-Century German Philosophy., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Europe As A Civilization: The Revolution Of The Middle Ages & The Rise Of The Universities, Toby E. Huff

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Richard Lynn And Tatu Vanhanen, Intelligence: A Unifying Concept For The Social Sciences., Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Digitization Of Neapolitan Disegni For The Byu Herculaneum Papyrus, Seth M. Reynolds, Dr. Roger Macfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In 1999 CPART began working with the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples to create a database of the unique materials which they possessed. These are the remains of the papyri which were found in the archaeological excavations of Herculaneum. Herculaneum was a town along the Bay of Naples which was destroyed in the same eruption that buried Pompeii. However, the eruption destroyed these two towns in different ways. Whereas Pompeii was buried in layers of pumice and ash, Herculaneum was buried in a super-heated landslide known as a pyroclastic flow. These different modes of destruction led to different modes of preservation. …

Dr. Nancy Debloois’ Translation Of Seneca’S Agamemnon, Frank E. Kelland, Dr. Roger Mcfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Under Dr. Roger Macfarlane’s tutelage, I have established the baseline Latin text that serves as the foundation for Dr. DeBloois’ translation.

Swahili 102 Online Lesson Supplement, K. Marcus Cardon, Dr. Michael Bush

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Swahili is the most extensively spoken language of the hundreds of Bantu languages in sub-Saharan Africa. It is considered to be the closest language in Africa to a native lingua franca and is essential for effective communication in the East Africa region. As the national language of both Tanzania and Kenya, the importance of Swahili is significant, prompting the NSEP, National Security Education Program, to list Swahili as one of the languages critical to national security.

Reflections On A Changing Regime: Looking Back At The Bourguiba Era Through The Lens Of The Francophone Tunisian Novel, R. Quinn Mecham, Dr. Arnold H. Green

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The research for this grant formed the basis for my Honors Thesis, which was completed August 1997. The completed thesis was a total of 133 pages in length and parts of the thesis will be submitted for journal publication. The project took approximately 300 hours to complete and involved one research trip to UCLA in addition to extensive support from interlibrary loan at BYU.