Fiction Commons^™

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Sandstorm Spring 2022, Leslie Malland

Sandstorm: A Journal of Arts and Letters

Full Manuscript

A Pandemic Of Greed And A Disease Of Poverty In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death", Benjamin Herrick

Master's Theses

The breakers tripped. Again. The breakers, a mandatory halt to trading on the floor of the stock exchange in response to the S&P falling more than 7% from the previous close. This was instituted after the Crash of 1987 to calm the markets before trading is allowed to resume. They are supposed to mitigate a drastic crash. They have only ever triggered once before, in 1997. Not for the tech bubble. Not even in the crash of 2008. All trading stops for fifteen minutes when the Level One breaker trips. If it drops further in the same day, the Level …

The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn

All Theses

This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to …

Poof!, Kathie Giorgio

Bryant Literary Review

When I was nine years old, a boy socked me on the arm at recess. He hit hard, enough to cause me to cry out, to bring tears to my eyes, though I wouldn’t let them escape.

Come, Gentle Night., Michael Washburn

Bryant Literary Review

Arthur took one look at the forlorn stranger standing by the stone wall at the base of the hill in the cool evening and thought: Gordon Comstock.

The Unvanquished, Marlene Olin

Bryant Literary Review

“Retirement is overrated,” said Morris.

Beyond Poland, Rosalind Goldsmith

Bryant Literary Review

Her body can’t escape the cold but her mind can. It casts up through the night, scattering itself into the sky over the Atlantic Ocean.

Adelaster, Deborah S. Prespare

Bryant Literary Review

To prevent herself from slipping into another chaotic downward cycle of panicked anxiety, she squashes the rising tide, drops in the toilet her pill-shaped companions, and sizing up her failing reflection, chooses the last-ditch, arduous path left to an imprisoned soul.

Night In The City Looks Pretty To Me, Roger Logan

Bryant Literary Review

Allison was trying to come up with a version of that old joke. A kangaroo or whatever walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Say, we don’t get many kangaroos in here.”

Not A Piece Of Furniture, Alex Smith

Bryant Literary Review

On the first day of the first job I got after Javier was deported, I tried to ignore the couple’s fighting.

Night Terrors, Patrick Bernhard

Bryant Literary Review

Kara turned away from the TV and glanced at the glowing wall clock. 2:56. She had now passed her previous record for staying up watching Night Terrors, which was 2:37.

Annual Faculty Research Symposium 2022, Oakwood University

Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Satori 2022, Abigail Perlinger, Brianna Strohbehn, Elise Modjeski, Gabriel Hathaway, Gabriela Wallberg, Grace Menke, Jennifer Wendt, Kaysey Price, Keaton Riebel, Louisa Shirmacher, Madi Bonebright, Madison Grove, Mckenna Scherer, Page Sutton, Rae Peter, Savannah Egger, Sophia Sailer, Trianna Douglas, Van Herman

Satori Literary Magazine

The Satori is a student literary publication that expresses the artistic spirit of the students of Winona State University. Student poetry, prose, and graphic art are published in the Satori every spring since 1970.

The Satori 2022 editors are Matthew Pearson, Jasmyne Taylor, and Emily Venne. the Satori 2022 faculty advisor is Dr. Jim Armstrong, Professor of English.

The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biographers of George Eliot, when writing about her childhood, have focused on her close and complicated relationships with two of the most important men in her life, her father Robert Evans and brother Isaac Evans. Less discussed are Eliot’s relationships with her immediate female family members, her mother Christiana Pearson Evans and her sister Christiana (Chrissey) Evans Clarke. This thesis reviews the predominant interpretations of Eliot’s relations with her father and brother. It also pulls together the known information about Christiana and Chrissey from several major biographies and adds new insights from Eliot's letters in combination with two of her …

Wave By Wave: A Fantasy Author's Guide For Refining A Creative Writing Style, Michael Bose

Senior Honors Theses

Writing a novel is a great undertaking. Many would-be writers have set out to create a novel and give up halfway through, uncertain where or how they failed. This project aims to help prospective authors get past that barrier. By analyzing one’s own writing style, a writer can ascertain greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work and therefore help rectify mistakes one might make otherwise, or learn to see a chapter from a new angle. The author will demonstrate this method on himself first by way of focused revisions. A sample chapter of a fantasy novel, …

Among The Bedouins, A Knife Is Never Just A Knife: On Nourishment, Betrayal, And Finding Family Histories, Diana Abu-Jaber

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is an essay about family relationships from the perspective of a fiction writer, written in the context of the author's book, Fencing with the King.

Boston Discusses The Massacre, Jean C. O'Connor

The Montana English Journal

Teachers may use this chapter from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution as a short story for grades 7 – 12., to explore themes of interpersonal conflict, conflict resolution, and the value of law.

The chapter “Boston Discusses the Massacre” is taken from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution (Knox Press, 2020), and used with permission. James Lovell, teacher at the Boston Latin School, discusses the pivotal events of March 5, 1770. As the conflicts that become the American Revolution begin a group of …

Space And Identity In J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times Of Michael K, Joshua Baker

University Honors Theses

Occupying colonial governments establish and maintain power through the demarcation and control of space, a process Sara Upstone terms "overwriting". In Life & Times of Michael K, Coetzee imagines the complication of establishing and maintaining a self-identity amid the strict control of space in post-apartheid, wartime South Africa, and it is this conflict of identity which comprises the novel’s subplot. The reader follows Michael K's odyssey over hundreds of miles in his quest to find the farm on which his mother was born and raised. His journey is repeatedly thwarted by state actors who enforce a strict control of movement …

Volume 54 (2022), C V. Davis, Meredith Bridges, Sarah Goode, Sarianna Miranda-Rosado

The Broad River Review

The 2022 edition of The Broad River Review was edited by C. V. Davis, Meredith Bridges, Sarah Goode, Sarianna Miranda-Rosado, and Hannah Travis.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: Lex Lucius, Majestic Horses: Pancho Close-Ups 1 & 2

THE 2022 RASH AWARD IN FICTION: Maureen Sherbondy, Rules of the Rich

THE 2022 RASH AWARD IN POETRY: Stephen Benz, Uncle Jerry, Missing in Action

THE 2022 FOOTHILLS POETRY AWARD: Neha Patel, Too Close to the Lights

THE 2022 J. CALVIN KOONTS POETRY AWARD: Hannah Ray, Aubade for the Boatman

POETRY: Jeffrey Alfier, Downcoast at Hampton Roads; George Bandy, Counting Back; Tina Barr, Still Life With …

The Tragedy Of Krudhog The Cruel: A Horrid Tale Best Never Told At All, Eric Ramos

4610 English: Individual Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien

What have I to tell you, unlucky one, of this vision brought before me? Hear it here that I, Othur Lokbrok, do not speak with a voice of my own, but rather echo the Sisters Weird, come to me one night in a passion and fury beyond all earthly resemblance. Thereupon that cursed night was I, awake and trembling, for out of a dream my spirit raised itself vigilant, as hushed voices seemed to seep and slither eerily through my window. Then in the dark at the foot of my bed a dampened candle glowed red hot as three faces, …

Zephyrus, Western Kentucky University

Student Creative Writing

The fine arts magazine of Western Kentucky University at Bowling Green.

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Middle American Gothic, Jordan Heisler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Though Gothicism has evolved since its inception in the eighteenth century, its most common tropes—such as deteriorating settings, supernatural figures, and foreboding atmospheres—have remained integral to the genre. While, the following fictional collection, Middle American Gothic, draws inspiration from these familiar Gothic tropes, it substitutes the grandeur of crumbling castles, monasteries, and sprawling estates for a common town within the rural Midwest. Similarly, while the collection nods to the existence of supernatural beings, none of its stories actually rely on anything otherworldly as a source of terror. Its setting, while not traditionally Gothic, features a series of decaying, outdated homes …

Short Story Collection, Kevin Bond

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis consists of four pieces of short fiction workshopped as part of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of Kentucky. Themes and topics explored include familial dynamics, depictions of childhood and coming of age, solitude, adverse psychological effects of toxic masculinity, natural sphere as sanctuary and source of spiritual renewal, and sense of place.

Femininity Reclaiming Chivalry In The Harry Potter Series, Ashley M. Watson

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper focuses on the reclaiming of chivalric values by female characters in the Harry Potter series by comparing them to Arthurian characters. Scholars have extensively compared the narrative of the Knights of the Round Table to the global phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, but in this paper I explore, through a feminist lens, a character comparison of the Harry Potter novels and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. I will show how female characters in modern literature reclaim chivalry. This is important because it exemplifies a shift in the position of women into a more active role. I …

Snapshots Of A Fictional Past: Photographic Nostalgia In The Early 20th Century Art Novel., Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue that the proliferation of a mass codependent relationship with nostalgia in the twentieth century shares a parallel history with the widespread adoption of the reproducible image being used by collective audiences as a supplement for natural memory, or what Proust names “voluntary memory.” This conflict between nostalgia-hungry consumers and artists inspired groups such as Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists and artistically minded authors like Henry James, who employed increasingly complex photographic and literary practices to resist the images’ tendency to debase the aesthetic quality of their own work. Authors such as Marcel Proust and William Faulkner used …

Agatha Christie: A Look Into Criminal Procedure And Gender, Carmella Monico

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

With 2020 being the 100^th year since Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published, it seems fitting to celebrate such an accomplished author with a deeper look into the inner workings of her novels. While she wrote mystery novels that involved many detectives, the two most popular are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This paper will examine these two detectives in regard to the criminal procedure each uses to solve their respective cases. Would her detectives’ work hold up in court then or even today? Additionally, the difference in gender between Poirot and Marple …

Through Critique And Beyond: Speculative Fiction As A Tool Of Critical Pedagogy, Syd Thorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field projects centers around the issue of hopelessness among teachers and students and examines the genre of speculative fiction as a potential tool for cultivating critical hope in the classroom and as an asset to critical pedagogy. Utopian pedagogy and critical pedagogy make up the theoretical framework of this research and project development. The research explores the use of speculative fiction in three areas: activism and identity, student engagement, and utopian performance. The review of the literature demonstrates that the use of speculative fiction in the classroom has the potential to engage students in conversations about social justice and …

Shadowcrest Manor, Michaela Bishop

The Tuxedo Archives

A soft cold breeze flowed throughout the whole house, it carried the scent of the Sea Island cotton and seawater, taking away the smell of dust and stillness. Shadowrest Manor was to become our new home here in Charleston. The manor had been vacant for a while since its last owner had passed away and leaving no will or surviving heir, the plantation was shut down. The outside was a little bit weather damaged however, Father is having the whole house repainted a colonial white, the front columns will be a nice off white to balance the main color. The …