English Language and Literature Commons^™

Dear Son Of Memory: Milton's Engagement With Shakespeare, Bradley Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dear Son of Memory establishes new lines of inquiry into Milton’s engagement with Shakespeare, exploring explicit verbal allusions to Shakespeare’s plays in Milton’s works, as well as echoes of characters, scenes, and themes. It argues that Milton viewed Shakespeare sympathetically, rather than as a rival and it therefore revises the legacy of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” model, which still dominates scholarship in Milton studies today. More specifically, this project offers evidence from Milton’s early poems to show that Milton regarded Shakespeare as a fellow vatic poet and a friendly influence who helped him to dramatize the two central tenets …

Diagnosing The Will To Suffer: Lovesickness In The Medical And Literary Traditions, Jane Shmidt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout Western medical history, unconsummated, unreturned, or otherwise failed love was believed to generate a disorder of the mind and body that manifested in physiological and psychological symptoms. This study traces the medical and literary history of lovesickness from antiquity through the 19^th century, emphasizing significant moments in the development of the medical discourse on love. The project is part of the recent academic focus on the intersection between the humanities and the medical sciences, and it situates literary texts in concurrent medical and philosophical debates on afflictions of the psyche. By contextualizing the fictional works within the scientific …

Shakespeare And Chaucer: Dream Visions And Dramatic Designs, Michael Plunkett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores echoes of Chaucer's dream visions in two of Shakespeare's late plays, Cymbeline and The Tempest, and in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare turns to Chaucer's dream visions, particularly The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame, not to use them as narrative sources, but to appropriate conventional elements of artistic self-exploration and self-definition in them. Chaucer's dreamers, who are also writers, read classic stories in bed, dream dreams that react to those stories, and then wake up and write new poems that report on what they have read …

“Dyrne Langað”: Secret Longing And Homo-Amory In Beowulf And J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Christopher Vaccaro

Journal of Tolkien Research

“‘Dyrne Langað’: Secret Longing and Homo-amory in Beowulf and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” investigates the close “homoamorous” relationship between Frodo and Samwise, employing a close reading of select passages from the eighth-century English poem, Beowulf. The argument begins with a clarification of terms. Afterwards, it focuses upon the cruces related to a key scene involving Beowulf’s departure and compares the intensity of the unspoken love Hroðgar has for Beowulf to the love Sam has for Frodo at the Grey Havens. Ultimately, the essay argues for a new way of reading both departure scenes.

The Shaping Of Sir Walter Raleigh's Colonial Ideology In The Discovery Of The Large, Rich, And Beautiful Empire Of Guiana, Jeremy Blasiole

Agora

This essay seeks to elaborate how Sir Walter Raleigh's sense of self serves to construct his colonial ideology as he depicts it in The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana. This essay considers scholarship which illustrates Raleigh's background as well as overarching Early Modern English conceptions of self as a colonial power. In examining the text through such a lens, the text depicts Raleigh's sense of self as incessant in the colonial ideology he portrays through his literary construction of a Guiana he never truly visited or understood.

Thinking Continental: Writing The Planet One Place At A Time By Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, And O. Alan Weltzien, Cory Willard

The Goose

Review of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time by Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, and O. Alan Weltzien, eds.

Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives In An Age Of Crisis By Molly Wallace And David Carruthers, Bryant Scott

The Goose

Review of Molly Wallace and David Carruthers' Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis.

Mumbai Macbeth: Gender And Identity In Bollywood Adaptations, Rashmila Maiti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzes adaptation in the Hindi film industry and how the concepts of gender and identity have changed from the original text to the contemporary adaptation. The original texts include religious epics, Shakespeare’s plays, Bengali novels which were written pre-independence, and Hollywood films. This venture uses adaptation theory as well as postmodernist and postcolonial theories to examine how women and men are represented in the adaptations as well as how contemporary audience expectations help to create the identity of the characters in the films. Ultimately, this project hopes to fulfil the gap in scholarship on adaptations in Bollywood.

Ethics, Aesthetics, And The Representation Of Intellectual Disability In The Realist Narrative, Elizabeth Wells

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue for a renewed approach to realist texts that rely on conventional perspective and minor characters in their representation of intellectually disabled characters. While disability studies' concepts like narrative prosthesis and the normate have done essential work in arguing for the need for disability's representation from the perspective of the disabled, these ideologies have also negatively influenced the critical reception of texts that do not respond to this need in an immediate or obvious way. By offering new readings of novels with disabled characters whose representations have been frequently questioned, my aim is to complicate the …

On The Fringes: The Monsters, The Voiceless, The Abominations, And The Exiled, Virginia Davis Wyeth

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Peripheral characters/characteristics frequently serve to highlight the problematic societal situation of marginalized groups, even though these characters on the fringes of the text or main characters with unusual attributes are seemingly irrelevant to the primary plot. This portfolio examines, through a teaching unit, the monster archetype and its representation as a means to suppress Other or other within ourselves. The literary analysis pieces also examine the repression of historically marginalized groups, such as women, homosexuals, and children. And the last piece even takes a look at what happens when powerful groups are usurped by socio-economic and cultural shifts.

Women & Tolkien: Amazons, Valkyries, Feminists, And Slashers, Robin A. Reid Dr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper reports on an early pilot project that asks women who self identify as readers or fans of Tolkien's work and/or teachers who have taught Tolkien's work, and/or scholars who have published on Tolkien's work to answer a few open-ended questions about their reasons for enjoying his work. By "women," I mean anybody who identifies as a woman. By "Tolkien's work," I mean any of his published novels, stories, poems, or academic essays. The study arises from the question that is often asked of fans of Tolkien's work: why do women so enjoy it, given the relatively minor narrative …

Elizabeth I, The Subversion Of Flattery, And John Lyly's Court Plays And Entertainments, Theodora A. Jankowski

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

This study considers how John Lyly's characters who are allegorical representations of Elizabeth validate the queen, but at the same time raise troubling issues as to her true nature. Theodora Jankowski looks at both the light and the dark side of the Elizabeth character in each of Lyly's court plays, while at the same time considering how that allegory works in terms of the various issues Lyly debates within the plays. She reveals the fraught nature of John Lyly's relationship to Queen Elizabeth. He was not the first creative artist to introduce subversive undercurrents in entertainments designed to flatter the …

Book Review: Of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind The Writings Of C.S. Lewis. By Donald T. Williams., Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C.S. Lewis is both exciting and engaging in its exploration of Christian thought in general and Christian themes in particular, found in the fictional and nonfictional works of C.S. Lewis. This book would sit comfortably on the shelf with other first-rate Evangelical Christian interpretations of the works of individual Inklings, such as Ralph Wood’s The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth or the works of Matthew Dickerson including his Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The Environmental Vision of C.S. Lewis. Like the authors of these books, Donald …

Questioning Gynocentric Utopia: Nature As Addict In “Description Of Cookeham”, Liberty S. Stanavage

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In her 1610 “The Description of Cookeham,” Amelia Lanyer presents Cookeham as a space in which women and nature exist in poetry-inducing harmony until the intervention of man. Lanyer’s poem highlights the deference of both the animals (who “sport . . . in her eye” and “attend”), and the landscape to Clifford: the hills “descend” to meet her footstep and then raise themselves again at her whim. This alignment frequently leads critics to describe Cookeham as a utopian feminist landscape that aligns women and nature against an antagonistic masculine influence.

However, this utopian vision dramatizes a landscape that is not …

Belligerent Mothers And The Power Of Feminine Speech In _The Owl And The Nightingale_, Wendy A. Matlock

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale famously records the dispute between a hostile Nightingale and a bellicose Owl. Within that dialogue the birds reproduce themselves in word and egg, in rhetoric and body. Their digressions on bodies and scatology and on childbearing and childrearing become fertilizer that expands maternal authority into public, intellectual discourse. In addition to calling forth their own communicative powers, both characters aggressively recount narratives best known from the work of Marie de France, a voice feminist scholars have successfully restored to the canon, to condemn their foe. In this light, I argue, The …

“Compassion And Benignytee”: A Reassessment Of The Relationship Between Canacee And The Falcon In Chaucer’S “Squire’S Tale”, Melissa Ridley Elmes

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Among its many elements, Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale” includes an emotionally-charged dialogue between two aristocratic female figures: the human daughter of a king, Canacee, and the wounded falcon she meets in the wood. Scholars have debated the nature of this relationship in interspecial, gendered, and specifically feminist and ecofeminist terms. This essay provides a brief retrospective on some of the most recent scholarship examining their relationship—van Dyke (2005); Kordecki (2011); Crane (2012); and Schotland (2012 and 2015)—leading into a reassessment in two parts: first, that the affinity- and experience-driven bond these female figures develop supports a reading of this scene that …

Dadless: Dead Dads In Hamlet And The Effects On Their Children, Erin Diiorio

Honors College Theses

This research is a close look at the methods of grief as depicted by the children who lose their fathers in William Shakespeare's classic Hamlet.. The goal is to track each child's reaction to the sudden bereavement in a variety of physical and emotional manifestations. This has been done by first examining current literature on the text, followed by a review of historical context of the period in which the play was written, and finally analyzing each character's behavior. In doing so, this research seeks to highlight the importance of the presence of fathers within Hamlet and provide insight as …

British Literature Ii: Romantic Era To The Twentieth Century And Beyond, Bonnie J. Robinson

English Open Textbooks

The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you British Literature II: Romantic Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond.

Featuring 37 authors and full texts of their works, the selections in this open anthology represent the literature developed within and developing through their respective eras. This completely-open anthology will connect students to the conversation of literature that has captivated readers in the past and still holds us now.

Features:

• Contextualizing introductions to the Romantic era; the Victorian era; and the Twentieth Century and beyond
• Over 90 historical images
• In-depth biographies of each author
• Instructional Design …

Something Rotten: Space, Place, And The Nation In Hamlet And As You Like It, Mikaela Lafave

English MA Theses

Ecocriticism has been defined as literature that concretely concerns the environment, which can be obviously applied to those of Shakespeare’s that directly depict natural disaster. This creates a prototype of a Shakespearean Ecocritical canon. My thesis addresses the limitation of this initial definition, and applies ecocritical theory to other works by Shakespeare. Ecocriticism is no longer confined to only the natural as critics expand the field through examinations of built environments and urban interaction with the natural. This widening of the field encourages the addition of further Ecocritical Shakespeare. How can audiences see the unnatural as natural, and conversely the …

Who Is Tom Bombadil?: Interpreting The Light In Frodo Baggins And Tom Bombadil's Role In The Healing Of Traumatic Memory In J.R.R. Tolkien's _Lord Of The Rings_, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

In Rivendell, after Frodo has been attacked by Ringwraiths and is healing from the removal of the splinter from a Morgul-blade that had been making its way toward his heart, Gandalf regards Frodo and contemplates a “clear light” that is visible through Frodo to “eyes to see that can.” Samwise Gamgee later sees this light in Frodo when Frodo is resting in Ithilien. The first half of this essay considers questions about this light: how does Frodo become transparent, and why, and what is the nature of the light that fills him? As recourse to Tolkien’s letters shows, the light …

James Joyce: I. Am. A. Discover Dublin By Reading And Running, Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space.

James Joyce (Ulysses,p.31).

In Ulysses, on the morning of the 16th June 1904, Stephen Dedalus is striding on Sandymount strand, thinking about time and place as he moves. Later in the day, Leopold Bloom writes I. AM. A.with a stick in the sand on the same Sandymount strand. His scrubbed words will wash away with the tide but remain forever in the novel.

Using geotracking, I recreated the same ephemeral I. AM. …

"Our Shouts Echoed In The Silent Street": Paralysis, Symbol, And Implication In James Joyce's "Araby", Luke R. Farquhar

Honors Projects

Critics, scholars, and readers commonly use paralysis as a means of interpreting James Joyce’s Dubliners. However, paralysis is ambiguously defined and can have a vague connection to the actual stories. This paper puts forward an interpretation of paralysis, that paralysis is a failed attempt at filling spiritual absence with presence. In order to examine our definition more fully, we then explore occurrences of absence and presence in James Joyce’s “Araby.” “Araby” depicts absence as a decaying, draining, and oppressive home existence, and it finds presence in romantic or mythic symbol. The illusory, nonexistent, and insufficient nature of these symbols …

Iago The Moor Killer: The Geo-Political Context Behind Shakespeare's Othello, Elisha A. Hamlin

Honors Projects

Shakespeare’s Othello is often viewed as an example of seventeenth century Renaissance binaries. Critics make distinctions when reading the play between hero and villain, Moors and Europeans, and between civilization and barbarity. These definitions are all complicated by Iago’s presence in the play. Iago, whose name implies he is actually a Spaniard, frames the play in a geo-political context. Because of Iago’s presence, Othello provides a picture of England’s position in the seventeenth century geo-political climate. Shakespeare is giving his English audience a particular political message.

Jane Austen's Hidden Bodies: Adaptation As Critical Commentary, Elizabeth Gilliland

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Much of adaptation theory calls for a shift away from fidelity discourse, arguing that an adaptation does not need to be a faithful translation of the original, but should rather be viewed as literature in its own right. As such, adaptations are often studied separately from their source texts; yet even so, an unofficial hierarchy sometimes remains in deeming some types of adaptations more ripe for study than others. Further, in separating the adaptation from the original, some of the more radical alterations can be routinely dismissed as an “added” element to the text, rather than exploring what commentary these …

Treehouses: Civilizing The Wildness Of Men And Nature, Courtney Mckinney

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

In this paper, I explore how treehouses operate symbolically in tandem with culture. Through an analysis of British and American print culture, I argue that the treehouse building project became bound to boyhood at the turn of the twentieth century as the naturalist movement spread and youth organizations embraced treehouses as part of their vision for the development of boys. Parents and youth leaders intend for treehouse projects to build self-reliance, independence, imagination, and courage in their boys. Congruously, this activity associated with a child’s personal growth takes place in an actual growing organism. I analyze how treehouses juxtapose humans …

Sacramental Anxiety In Richard Ii And The Comedy Of Errors, Aria Casey

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Following England’s break from the Catholic Church in 1534, Protestant thought gradually transformed the English Church’s understanding of sacraments. The influence of Reformation thinkers such as Thomas Cranmer, the author of The Book of Common Prayer, propelled the idea that that a ritual is only as good as the worthiness of a recipient. Ritual, the “outer” component of a sacrament, now had the potential to be distant from divine favor, the “inner” component of a sacrament. This potential distance caused anxiety over the authenticity of sacraments, affecting English thought well into Shakespeare’s day. Shakespeare’s plays Richard II and The Comedy …

I Can't Hear You: Queering And Hearing In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Miranda Lynn Hajduk

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis project attempts to prove that the Wife of Bath’s deafness is the key to understanding her text, and the ways in which both her Prologue and Tale play with the constructions of gender and normativity. The Wife of Bath’s deafness is one of her most prominent characteristics. Not only is it the first thing which Chaucer describes about her in the General Prologue, but the whole of the Wife’s own prologue builds toward and ultimately concludes with the Wife’s story of how she was struck deaf by her husband Jankyn. As a result of this act of violence, …

"I Believe In Sherlock Holmes": Fans, Readers, And The Problem Of Serial Character, Mary Katherine Evans

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Through the connections between Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s series Sherlock, this thesis examines the phenomenon of fan fictions and fan works, which constitutes a type of seriality distinct from serial fictions and television series.The project pursues the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes in order to better understand fan culture and the “virtual reality” created by original fans of the written works and fans of Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes represents a different model of characterization; he is presented across timelines, although he doesn’t always bear the name “Sherlock Holmes,” he is just as recognizable …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

Eomer Gets Poetic: Tolkien's Alliterative Versecraft, James Shelton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Throughout Tolkien's professional career he dealt with a great number of texts that had varying views on the heroic, the romantic, the everyday world, and the role of Faerie. One consistent tendency among them, though, is to treat the past, and particularly Anglo-Saxon heritage, with a great deal of respect while trying to find ways to incorporate themes or ideas from that time into his own imaginative subcreations. Tolkien's use of alliterative verse serves to re-contextualize an ancient heroic ethos in a way that shows how heroism has changed, and must change, for the modern world. This paper examines Tolkien’s …