Comparative Literature Commons^™

Style, Discourse, And The Completion Of The Vernacular Style In Modern Japanese Literature, Jacob Zan Adachi Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Many histories of modern Japanese literature see the "completion" of the modern vernacular style in the writings of Shiga Naoya (1883--1971), Mushakōji Saneatsu (1885--1976) and Takamura Kōtarō (1883--1956). Why and how this critical-historical perception of stylistic normalcy arose and still continues is better understood, I propose, through a close reading of key texts that identifies instances and patterns of creative manipulation of-as opposed to mere determination by or complicity with-certain philosophical, social, and historical discourses.How this creative manipulation plays out varies in prose and poetry and from text to text. In Mushakōji's Omedetaki hito (1911; The Simpleton), temporal and generic …

Methods Of Manuscript Analysis For The Recovery Of Lost Text, Claire Monson, Dr. Roger Mcfarlane

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my application for an ORCA Grant was to collaborate with Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 950: Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, located in Hamburg, Germany. Using their resources and the expertise of Professor Roger T. Macfarlane, we were able to make important movement forward in the research surrounding a medieval manuscript in the holdings of BYU’s Special Collections.

Russian Demographics, Mack Whitehead, Dr. Tony Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The goal of the project was to establish correlation between a Russian person’s demographics, their emotional views and reactions regarding nuclear threats in 1999 and 2012. Research will include the interrupting of the data that is already present, and research will include looking into the political establishments in 1999. The benefits of the research are: establishing an understanding between nations and being able to view the post-Soviet Russian mindset concerning nuclear war.

The Impact Of Different Learning Styles On Language Study And The Formation Of Long Term Memory, Benjamin Black, Dr. Masakazu Watabe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my ORCA project has been to research different methods of language study and ultimately shed light on the method of study that will best engage the student in the target language, keep their motivation to study as high as possible and result in efficient storage of studied materials into the long term memory where it will be available for later retrieval. Through studying the effectiveness of different types of foreign language study my hope is to facilitate a faster and deeper learning of a foreign language by students perusing secondary languages.

Leadership In The Humanities A Look At Practical Applications Of Humanities Education, Susanne Mcgann, Dr. Gregory Clark

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The initial aim of my project was 1) to evaluate the transferable skills of a Humanities education in the job market and 2) to help Humanities students recognize, articulate, and apply their knowledge and skills to future careers.

Collecting Folklore, Trent Leinenbach, Dr. Stephen Tuttle

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Our purpose in collecting folklore was to examine what happens to a society when the people can no longer identify themselves by nationality. Transylvania is a particularly good case study, because the borders have been disputed between Hungarians and Romanians essentially for as long as both nations have existed—so you’ve had plenty of time for national borders to sink deep into the social consciousness and subconscious. There have been generations of tradition, folklore, and education to instill a strong sense of nation-and-boundary-based identity. Within the borders of Hungary, there was a real sense of “Being Hungarian,” and a real sense …

Hope Rises In The Leprosy Colonies Of India: Examining The Mission And Success Of Rising Star Outreach, Kelsey Elayne Holloway Murdoch, Dr. Francesca Lawson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I began my quest to graduate with University Honors during my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I was encouraged by friends, family, and professors, and I loved the challenge of the Honors Courses and the cultural exploration stimulated by the Great Works requirements. But like nearly every student involved in BYU’s Honors Program, the thesis looming as the last hurdle before graduation was a daunting and baffling task. I wanted to write a thesis that would do more than check off a final requirement and sit on a special shelf in the Harold B. Lee Library, honor though that …

Giving Birth To Empowerment: Motherhood And Autonomy In Greek Tragedy, Maggie Sharon Hoyt

Theses and Dissertations

The Greek tragedies of Classical Athens frequently portray mothers in central roles, but despite this significance, the relationship between mother and child has long been overshadowed in secondary scholarship by the relationship between husband and wife. This study demonstrates the direct relationship between a female character's active possession of her children and her autonomy, or her ability to act in her own interests, in three plays of Euripides: Electra, Medea, and Ion. In general, women who internalize their ownership of their children, expressed on stage both in word and action, have greater influence over the men around them and the …

The Boreal Borges, Jonathan C. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Jorge Luis Borges's story "El Zahir" describes a moment where the protagonist finds rest from his monomania by reworking one of the central texts in Old Germanic myth, the story of Sigurd and Brynhild. The approach taken here by the protagonist is the paradigm used in this thesis for understanding Borges's own strong readings of Old Germanic literature, specifically Old Scandinavian texts. In chapter one, a brief outline of the myth of Sigurd and Brynhild, with a particular emphasis on Gram, the sword that lied between them, is provided and juxtaposed with Borges's own family history, focusing on the family's …

Devastating Diva: Pauline Viardot And Rewriting The Image Of Women In Nineteenth-Century French Opera Culture, Rebecca Bennett Fairbank

Theses and Dissertations

Historically vilified, the vocalizing woman developed a stereotyped image with the emergence of the prima donna in eighteenth-century opera. By the nineteenth century, the prima donna became the focal point for socio-cultural polemics: women sought financial and social independence through a career on the operatic stage while society attempted to maintain through various means the socio-cultural stability now threatened by women's mobility. The prima donna represented both a positive ideal for women as well as a great threat to western patriarchy. A discourse emerged in which the symbol of female independence and success ”the prima donna" became the site of …

A Comparative History Of Nordic Literary Cultures, Dr. Steven Sondrup

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I received a MEG in December of 2009 and, thus, pursued the goals outlined in that application during 2010 and am continuing through 2011. The proposal was to have selected students work closely with me on preparing a manuscript on the comparative history of Nordic literary culture for publication by John Benjamins under the aegis of the Publications Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA).

Book Reviews, Laina Farhat-Holzman, Bertil Haggman, Pedro Geiger, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

On Reading Julian Of Norwich, Luke William Mills

Quidditas

This essay focuses on Julian’s intended audience, claiming that it is more limited than one might at first assume. This leads to a discussion of Julian’s use of paradox, her abrupt changes in modes of discourse, and the conclusion that unless her work is read according to the Augustinian rubric of love, it will be misunderstood.

Teaching Witchcraft In The Digital Age: Adventures In An Online Village, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Perhaps nothing is more valued in the modern classroom than student engagement. Pedagogical strategies and exercises for encouraging active learning are both wide-ranging and plentiful. Among the most popular at present is Barnard College’s Reacting to the Past (RTTP) role-playing games: “Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Delno C. West Award (2013)

Quidditas

Ginger L. Smoak

The Delno C. West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper presented by a senior scholar at the annual Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference.

“Nothing But Sit, And Sit, And Eat, And Eat”: The Cantankerous Teacher In The Taming Of The Shrew, Eric L. De Barros

Quidditas

By definition, all comedies must end by praising and/or celebrating the elimination of a serious threat to the patriarchy order, and Shakespeare sets up the final scene of The Taming of the Shrew, one of his earliest comedies, to do just that. In short, by the time we reach Lucentio and Bianca’s wedding banquet, Petruccio has effectively tamed Katherine of her shrewishness. However, despite this scene of and cause for celebration, Petruccio remains oddly dissatisfied, as he responds to Lucentio’s encouragement of the sitting, chatting, and eating appropriate to such a festive occasion with these mood-killing words: “Nothing but …

Aethelflaed: History And Legend, Kim Klimek

Quidditas

This paper examines the place of Aethelflaed, Queen of the Mercians, in the written historical record. Looking at works like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Irish Annals, we find a woman whose rule acted as both a complement to and a corruption against the consolidations of Alfred the Great and Edward’s rule in Anglo-Saxon England. The alternative histories written by the Mercians and the Celtic areas of Ireland and Wales show us an alternative view to the colonization and solidification of West-Saxon rule.

Shylock And Joachim Gaunse: And A Real Jew, Michael T. Walton

Quidditas

Joachim Gaunse, a Bohemian metallurgist, was brought to England to help evaluate the resources of the New World. During a visit to Bristol in 1589, he defended his Jewish rejection of Jesus. The reaction of those who heard this real Jew gives some indication of how theater audiences may have responded to Shakespeare’s Shylock.

The Several Faces Of Late-Gothic Eve: Gender And Marriage In The Mystery Creation And Fall Plays, Thomas Flanigan

Quidditas

The critical drive to make fundamental, substantive distinctions between Catholic and Protestant dogma and culture has always been central to early modern English studies, but over the past fifty years a prominent contingent of literary and historical scholars has endeavored more specifically to identify and articulate significant differences between Catholic and Protestant perceptions of women and marriage. According to one familiar, now widely accepted theory advanced primarily by Miltonists, a relatively feminist and pro-marriage Protestant ethic emerged in response to the extreme, aggressively misogynistic attitudes attributed to late-medieval Catholic thought. This paper will seek to demonstrate, through a close comparative …

Imagining Pregnancy: The Fünfbilderserie And Images Of “Pregnant Disease Woman” In Medieval Medical Manuscripts, Ginger L. Smoak

Quidditas

The Fünfbilderserie consists of anatomic schematics utilized in medical school dissections beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Anatomists would create these mnemonics to help students envision the internal systems of the body. Besides the standard five male pictures, an additional image, the “Pregnant Disease Woman” acted as a means to understand the reproductive system and organs of the pregnant woman. This paper argues, however, that despite the empirical observation of the anatomy of the gravid woman, they continued to visualize and “imagine” it, largely due to the existing classical ideas these anatomist retained about women, their natures, and their …

Holy Places & Imagined Hellscapes: Qualifying Comments On Loca Sancta Sermon Studies—Christian Conversion In Northern Europe & Scandinavia, C. 500-1300, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

The paper uses methods from medieval sermon studies to argue that an insularity in “monastic consciousness” can be traced to earlier centuries than the more generally discussed (and better documented) scholastic environments of 13th century monastic and cathedral schools. It assesses how a monastic discourse reliant on Biblical typologies informed the Christian conversion of northern Germanic and Scandinavian peoples (c. 500-1300, including the British Isles and Iceland). Moments of encounter between Christian missionaries and pagan cultures helped delineate this discourse, most apparent in extant records that reveal Christian and Norse perceptions of geography, holy places, deity worship, and eschatological expectations. …

Classifying Early Modern Sexuality: Christopher Marlowe, Edward Ii, And The Politics Of Sexuality, Michael John Lee

Quidditas

This paper argues that Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (1594) questions gender expectations and sexuality. The analysis finds that the same-sex attraction and affective relationship that develops between King Edward and Gaveston can be seen as neither simply sodomy nor exclusively as male friendship. Instead, the emotional bonds and marriage-like relationship between the king and his minion suggest that their identities are, in part, formed by their same-sex attraction.

Building The New Rome: Charles Cameron As The Architect Of Catherine The Great's New Eternal City, Inna A. Bell

Theses and Dissertations

Catherine the Great, The Empress of Russia, considered herself to be an enlightened ruler. Like many enlightened minds of the eighteenth century, she was fascinated with classical antiquity, especially with ancient Rome. In 1779, she invited a Scottish architect named Charles Cameron to complete a series of building projects for her that would create a "second Rome" in Tsarskoye Selo and in Pavlovsk, Russia. Cameron, an expert on classical antiquity because of his studies of the Roman ruins and the publication of his book, The Baths of the Romans, had a special interest in and a dedication to classical …

Haunting The Imagination: The Haunted House As A Figure Of Dark Space In American Culture, Amanda Bingham Solomon

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary America the haunted house appears regularly as a figure in literature, film, and tourism. The increasing popularity of the haunted house is in direct correlation with the disintegration of the home as a refuge from the harsh elements of the world. The mass media populates society with dark images and subjects, portraying America as a dark place to live. Americans create fictional narratives of terror and violence as a means of coping with their own modern horrors. Their horrors are psychologically displaced within these narratives. The haunted house is therefore a manifestation of contemporary anxieties surrounding the dissolution …

Caesar's Bellum Gallicum Book 1 With Vocabulary, Notes, And Clause Subordination, James A. Stephens

Theses and Dissertations

Efficiency in the presentation of a Latin text and its study-aids is the key to assisting intermediate students, who frequently become overwhelmed with the amount of vocabulary and grammar that needs to be simultaneously understood in order to read with any accuracy. This text breaks down the first book of Caesar's Bellum Gallicum in both a visual and a conceptual manner to aid students in learning intermediate Latin efficiently. The text is comprised of five parts. The first section contains the text as found in DuPontet's edition of Caesar's Bellum Gallicum. The second section has grammar notes that explain tense …

Horace's Ideal Italy: Sabines And Sabellians In Odes 1-3, Keith R. Fairbank

Theses and Dissertations

Within Odes 1-3 Horace consistently locates an idealized version of Rome in Sabinum and Italia. The former had long been a moral foil for Rome. The latter consisted of the regions of Italy that rebelled against Rome during the Social War and fought on the side of Marius in the civil wars that followed. Horace joins these two groups with the term Sabellians and places them together in moral opposition to the corruption and decadence of the late first century BC. Thus Horace elevates the formerly rebellious and still foreign Italici into Roman politics in the lofty position of …

Richard Rudgley, Lost Civilisations Of The Stone Age., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Monsters And Mayhem: Physical And Moral Survival In Stephen King's Universe, Jaime L. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of my thesis is to analyze physical and moral survival in three novels from King's oeuvre. Scholars have attributed survival in King's universe to factors such as innocence, imaginative capacity, and career choice. Although their arguments are convincing, I believe that physical and moral survival ultimately depends on a character's knowledge of the dark side of human nature and an understanding of moral agency. I have chosen three novels that span several decades of Kings work-'Salem's Lot, Needful Things, and Desperation-to illustrate the relationship between knowledge and survival. In 'Salem's Lot, King uses the main character's interest in …