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Literature in English, British Isles

Rhode Island College

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Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

"Sufficient To Have Stood, Though Free To Fall": Free Will In John Milton's Paradise Lost, David Martineau Jan 2020

"Sufficient To Have Stood, Though Free To Fall": Free Will In John Milton's Paradise Lost, David Martineau

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

In Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton (1608-1674) asserts his intent to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (Paradise Lost1 I 26), paving the way for a revolutionary discussion of human nature, divinity, and the problem of evil, all couched in an epic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, his temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as recounted in the Book of Genesis. In his treatment of the biblical account, Milton necessarily broaches a variety of subjects which were both relevant during his time and remain relevant in …


Ambassador Between Two Nations: Shakespeare In American Ideology, Nicholas Jaroma Nov 2019

Ambassador Between Two Nations: Shakespeare In American Ideology, Nicholas Jaroma

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

The purpose of this thesis was to examine William Shakespeare’s role in American ideology. Utilizing the theoretical approaches of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, adaptation and appropriation theories, and Critical Race Theory, I argue that Shakespeare is an integral part of American history and culture by how his works factor into American ideologies, particularly within ideologies focusing on race and colonialism. Specific plays and Shakespeare’s texts are analyzed, and I also follow the literary history of Americans in response to these plays. My first chapter looks at the Revolutionary and early republic eras, with particular focus on John Adams, his son …


Thoroughly Under The Skin, Patrick Pride Apr 2014

Thoroughly Under The Skin, Patrick Pride

Honors Projects

This honors project examines the connections between literature and political theory. Specifically I will follow the journey of the British literary critic Raymond Williams. Williams had a very interesting life. He grew up in the Black Mountains of Wales as the son of a railroad worker: a life he memorialized in his autobiographical novel Border Country (1960). In his obituary of Williams in The New Statesman in 1988, Stuart Hall reminds us how Williams’s deep sense of attachment to the Welsh working class border community of inhabited shared commitments in which he grew up. This community of shared commitments was …


Dismantling The Cult Of Manliness, Peter Capalbo May 2010

Dismantling The Cult Of Manliness, Peter Capalbo

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Explores the argument that several of Virginia Woolf's male characters, including Septimus Smith, Mr. Ramsay, and Bernard (in The Waves), challenge traditional male gender expectations in Britain after World War I. Examines Woolf's use of the concept of manliness in structuring her novels and her presentation of a series of men who do not conform to the British ideal of masculinity and who, thereby, allow her to expose the multiple fallacies of that ideal and a culture supported by such a concept. Posits that Woolf's work suggests that a new, more inclusive, understanding of gender is an important first step …


Idealization And Desire In The Hundred Acre Wood: A.A. Milne And Christopher (Robin), Laura E. Bright Apr 2010

Idealization And Desire In The Hundred Acre Wood: A.A. Milne And Christopher (Robin), Laura E. Bright

Honors Projects

Argues that A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner represent the conscious rejection, unconscious reproduction, and re-imaging of the author's traumatic Victorian childhood.


The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli Dec 2009

The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines Virginia Woolf's writing and her anger in historical contexts, revealing that circumstances dictated that she deflect this volatile emotion. Focuses on the ways in which this deflection of anger illuminates the fictional dynamics of Woolf's autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse and analyzes the concept of the Angel in the House, posited to be at the root of Woolf's anger. Argues that anger exists on three levels in the novel and that the main character, Mrs. Ramsay, is a victim of the Angel in the House ideology.


Holy Fools, Liminality And The Visual In Dostoevsky And Dickens, Danielle Marie Lavendier Apr 2009

Holy Fools, Liminality And The Visual In Dostoevsky And Dickens, Danielle Marie Lavendier

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Studies the themes and motifs of holy characters, spaces and places, and artwork in Dostoevsky and Dickens, highlighting connections between Russian and Western literature through these major authors. Primarily focuses on The Idiot and Bleak House.


Putting The Spotlight On Smaug, Casey Pellerin Jan 2009

Putting The Spotlight On Smaug, Casey Pellerin

Honors Projects

Despite its popularity, much of the scholarly criticism available on Tolkien’s works focus on his even more popular and well-known epic, The Lord of the Rings, or his earlier work, The Silmarillion. The Hobbit, due to its traditionally younger audience, does not receive nearly as much attention. Much of the criticism of The Hobbit engenders does not focus on the dragon. Smaug is one of the focal characters in the story, and yet very little has been written about him. Almost all of the critical treatments I have found do not address Smaug as a character, but treat him as …


Jane Austen's Persuasion: A Study In Literary History, Katherine Nadeau Jan 2009

Jane Austen's Persuasion: A Study In Literary History, Katherine Nadeau

Honors Projects

Seeks to explore literary Romanticism and the current debate surrounding this concept as either a useful or an accurate one. It looks to Jane Austen and her novel, Persuasion, around whom some of this debate gathers and how Austen's novel relates to that of a more traditionally accepted Romantic author, Charlotte Bronte, as revealed in Jane Eyre.


Dying Gods And Sacred Prostitutes, Katherine Elizabeth Williamson May 2008

Dying Gods And Sacred Prostitutes, Katherine Elizabeth Williamson

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Explores the ways in which D.H. Lawrence revises and complicates archetypal characters and stories in his fiction. Lawrence's mythic revisions are frequently along gender lines, thus having significant implications for femininst or gendered readings of his works. Focuses mainly on The Rainbow and The Plumed Serpent but also treats some of Lawrence's shorter fiction.


"So I Shall Tell You A Story:" The Subversive Voice In Beatrix Potter's Picture Books, Veronica Bruscini May 2008

"So I Shall Tell You A Story:" The Subversive Voice In Beatrix Potter's Picture Books, Veronica Bruscini

Honors Projects

Describes how recent literary scholarship has begun to interpret the themes and topics found within the children's picture books of Beatrix Potter through the lens of the code-language in Potter's secret journal, deciphered and published by Leslie Linder in 1966. Analyzes three tales from Potter's collection of picture books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and The Tale of Pigling Bland, to illustrate the ways these books continued to represent the social and personal observations, voicing subversive reactions to the excesses and hypocrises of Victorian culture, that Potter first began in her journal.


Living With Dying: Grief And Consolation In The Middle English Pearl, Karen A. Sylvia Jul 2007

Living With Dying: Grief And Consolation In The Middle English Pearl, Karen A. Sylvia

Honors Projects

Analyzes the themes of grief and consolation in the Middle English poem, Pearl, and compares this work to Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy and Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess. Applies the five psychological stages of grieving identified by Kubler-Ross to the poem's Dreamer and concludes that, at the poem's end, the Dreamer has failed to finish the grieving process.


'Many Feign As They Are Dead": The Counterfeit Death In Romeo And Juliet And Much Ado About Nothing, Julie Bowman May 2007

'Many Feign As They Are Dead": The Counterfeit Death In Romeo And Juliet And Much Ado About Nothing, Julie Bowman

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines the function of the trope of the couterfeit death for two Shakespearean heroines, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Hero in Much Ado about Nothing. Using the plays, antecedents, analogues, and cultural materials, argues that the feigned death functions as a strategy for coping with the limitations and strictures of the heroines' cultural environment; it helps them achieve their particular goals, in both cases a desired marriage. Thus, the heroines become active players in the plots, exercising a measure of agency by counterfeiting death, rather than passive victims of the patriarchal culture.


"Twinned Brothers": The Parallel Personalities Of Timon And Hamlet, Amanda Machado Jan 2007

"Twinned Brothers": The Parallel Personalities Of Timon And Hamlet, Amanda Machado

Honors Projects

Examines Shakespeare's play, Timon of Athens, in relation to Hamlet through a psychoanalytical and New Historical comparion of the two protagonists. Shows parallels between these characters in their behavior, illusions of reality, and inability to cope with loss of their illusions. Suggests that Timon may be a later reimagining of Hamlet.


Textual Possession: Manipulating Narratives In Wilkie Collins's Sensation Fiction, Kieran Ayton Apr 2005

Textual Possession: Manipulating Narratives In Wilkie Collins's Sensation Fiction, Kieran Ayton

Honors Projects

Examines the mechanisms through which Collins updated the gothic novel to create the sensation novel, with particular emphasis on The Woman in White, The Law and the Lady, and The Haunted Hotel. Highlights Collins's use of transgressive gender characterization, whereby his main characters use documents to gain social power over other characters. Describes the influence of Ann Radcliffe's gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, on The Woman in White.


Power And The Poet, Spencer Hall Jan 1983

Power And The Poet, Spencer Hall

Faculty Publications

In this examination of the English Romantic poet P. B. Shelley, Spencer Hall takes a new direction into the critical review of this work. Whereas traditional thought expresses a metaphysical belief or revelation in regards to Shelley's Power myth, Hall provides a new perspective of deep-seated skepticism. By focusing on the function of the poem rather than a symbolic meaning, Hall seeks to show that the myth is a subjective attribute of human experience rather than supernatural and should be taken as a metaphor used in a variety of ways.


Shelley's Mont Blanc, Spencer Hall Apr 1973

Shelley's Mont Blanc, Spencer Hall

Faculty Publications

"Mont Blanc" studies the relationship between the poet and the omnipotent. Spencer Hall questions the attribution of the supernatural to Shelley's thinking. Hall sees Shelley as creating a non-transcendental and hybrid confluence of emotions and ideas. Shelley concept of the sublime is not intuited by the poet, but rather constructed and projected by him. It is a process in which the imagination is primary.


Wordworth's "Lucy" Poems, Spencer Hall Jan 1971

Wordworth's "Lucy" Poems, Spencer Hall

Faculty Publications

This essay seeks to provide meaning and a context for interpretation of the Romantic "Lucy" poems by William Wordsworth. Hall argues against two critics' opposing interpretations by suggesting the meaning is humanistic which provides somewhat of a clarity into Wordsworth's poetic development. Hall suggests that his proposed context into these poems isn't merely one dimensional, but multi-faceted and draws upon other critics.