English Language and Literature | Open Access Articles

The “Sighan, Cantan, Grace-Proud Faces”: Robert Burns And The Kirk, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A sympathetic examination of Burns's kirk satires and his attitude to religion.

Robert Burns And “Clarinda”, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A sympathetic introduction to Burns's relationship with Mrs Agnes (Nancy) McLehose, and their correspondence under the names "Sylvander" and "Clarinda"

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“Tam O’ Shanter”, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A short introduction to the background and history of one of Burns's greatest and most dramatic poems

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"Auld Lang Syne", G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A short introductory account of the background, sources, and music, of one of the best-known Burns songs.

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Poems And Songs Spuriously Attributed To Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A broad-ranging discussion of poems not written by Burns that have been wrongly attributed to him by later writers and editors, with quoted examples.

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"The Mair They Talk, I'M Kend The Better": Poems About Robert Burns To 1859, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A broad-ranging discussion, with quoted examples, of the many poems written to and about Burns from his lifetime up to the centenary of his birth in 1859.

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Editing Burns's Letters In The Twentieth Century, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Discusses the history of Burns's letters, the major groups and collections, their editors, and the editions done by J. deLancey Ferguson (1931) and Ross Roy himself (1985).

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Collecting Burns: A Conversation, G. Ross Roy, Patrick Scott

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Illustrated transcript of extended interview made in which Ross Roy discusses the development of the G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns, at the University of South Carolina, with comments on some important individual items and the story of how he acquired them. Interview videotaped in December 2008, at the University of South Carolina; first shown at a plenary session at the University of Glasgow’s Robert Burns 250th Anniversary conference, January 2009, and again during the South Carolina conference in April. The illustrations here are selected from those in the published catalogue of the Roy Collection by Elizabeth Sudduth (University …

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Index To Selected Essays On Robert Burns, By G. Ross Roy, Elizabeth Sudduth, Jo C. Durant

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

A full index to the poems, songs, books, people, and places referenced in Selected Essays on Robert Burns, by G. Ross Roy (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Scottish Literature Series, 2018).

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The Gawain-Poet And The Fourteenth-Century English Anticlerical Tradition, Ethan Campbell

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

In this fresh reading of the Gawain-poet's Middle English works (Cleanness, Patience, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Ethan Campbell argues that a central feature of their moral rhetoric is anticlerical critique. Written in an era when clerical corruption was a key concern for polemicists such as Richard FitzRalph and John Wyclif, as well as satirical poets such as John Gower, William Langland, and Geoffrey Chaucer, the Gawain poems feature an explicit attack on hypocritical priests in the opening lines of Cleanness as well as more subtle critiques embedded within depictions of …

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Shakespeare, Antony And Cleopatra, And The Nature Of Fame, Robert A. Logan

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Nature of Fame is a characterological study, presenting new perspectives on Antony and Cleopatra, the most ambiguous of Shakespeare's plays. It offers fresh insights into Shakespeare's understanding of the attributes of fame, the process by which it occurs, and the significance of being famous—and into the origins and nature of the playwright's own imperishable fame. Inclusive and enlarging, the study considers a fresh method of dealing with the longstanding difficulties theater-goers and readers have had in responding to the characters of Shakespeare's plays, the seventeenth-century contexts of the play that the playwright …

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Environmental Humanities: Voices From The Anthropocene By Serpil Oppermann And Serenella Iovino, Pamela Banting

The Goose

Review of Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene by Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, eds.

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Tragedy And Theodicy: The Role Of The Sufferer From Job To Ahab, Nora Carroll

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The character of Job starts in literature, a trope and archetype of the suffering man who potentially gains wisdom through suffering. Job’s characterization informs a comparison to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and finally Melville’s Moby-Dick. These versions of Job rally, fight, and rebel against a universe that was once loving and fair towards a more chaotic and nihilistic one. Job’s suffering is on the mark of all tragedy because he not only experiences a downfall, he gains wisdom through universalizing his torment. The Job trope not only stresses the role of suffering, it …

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"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study focuses on the discovery of subjectivity through the recovery of lost paradise in Milton’s late poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This theme revolves around the tension between the affective and the empirical, which also configure the spheres of the sacred and the profane. I explore how the irresistibly emancipatory impulse of recovering lost paradise compels Miltonic subjects to seek ways to return to their originary state or the divine ensemble. During this process, the subject is engaged with his own incapacity or privation while reaching into the sphere of unknown potentiality. In …

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Flora Of Middle-Earth (2017) By Walter S. Judd And Graham A. Judd, Martin Simonson

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Martin Simonson of Flora of Middle-earth (2017) by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd

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Frankenstein And “The Labours Of Men Of Genius”: Science And Medical Ethics In The Early 19th Century, Allison Lemley

Grand Valley Journal of History

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818, used a sprawling network of allusions to contemporary literary and scientific works, which strongly reflected Romantic scientific and literary ideology. The robust connections between Romantic artistic and scientific circles included personal and professional relationships, scientists writing literary works, and authors discussing scientific advances. The closely linked scientific and artistic community helped define science and the nature of life in the new era. Medical historians have not fully discussed the debate concerning medical ethics in this period, detailing earlier Enlightenment medical ethics and later Romantic medical developments, which more closely resemble modern scientific …

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Intersex And The Pardoner’S Body, Kim Zarins

Accessus

Most scholars today have retreated from reading into the Pardoner's body in favor of more figurative readings that emphasize his lack of masculinity, and such lack is then linked to his dejection and despair. Other, more affirming readings center the Pardoner's performance, which allows him to model any sort of body desired through figuration. While such positions dominate and older theories like Beryl Rowland's proposal of an intersex Pardoner are dismissed, in fact, an intersex reading might be a more life-affirming interpretation, not only in terms of reframing the Pardoner's body as manifesting variation as opposed to lack, but also …

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Finding Aid To The Collection Of John Lane Materials, John Lane, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

John Lane (1854-1925) was a British publisher who was co-founder of The Bodley Head, initially specializing in antiquarian books. As a publisher Lane became noted for printing provocative and controversial works. Some of his publications were "The Yellow Book" and the famous "Keynotes" series, with covers by Aubrey Beardsley. Lane was married to the author Annie Philippine King and subsequently published several of her works. Lane's nephew Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935. The Collection contains correspondence to other British literary figures, two publisher statements to Violet Paget, and a published article on Anatole France's visit to England.

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Finding Aid To The Collection Of Sir Edmund William Gosse Materials, Sir Edmund William Gosse, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was an English biographer and critic. He was lecturer in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge (1884–90) and librarian of the House of Lords (1904–14). Although he wrote with enthusiasm and wit, his scholarship was often inaccurate and thus much of his critical work has been superseded. He did, however, introduce English readers to Ibsen and other Scandinavian writers as well as to some modern French writers and painters. Among the many biographies he wrote were those of Gray (1882), Donne (1899), Sir Thomas Browne (1905), Ibsen (1907), Swinburne (1917), and Congreve (rev. ed. 1924). …

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A.S. Byatt And The ‘Perpetual Traveller’: A Reading Practice For New British Fiction, Nicole Flynn

English Faculty Publications

While most readers enjoyed, or at least admired A.S. Byatt’s Booker prize-winning novel Possession, many are puzzled by her work before and since. This essay argues that the problem is not the novels themselves, but rather the way that reader approaches them. Conventional reading practices for experimental or postmodern fiction do not enable the reader to understand and enjoy her dense, dizzying work. By examining the intertexts in her novella “Morpho Eugenia,” in particular two imaginary texts written by the protagonist William Adamson, this essay demonstrates how the novella generates a different kind of reading practice. Using Byatt’s metaphor, the …

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A Hateful Cawing Of The Crows: W. E. Aytoun's Satirical Misfire, Mischa Willett

SPU Works

W. E. AYTOUN’S SATIRICAL VERSE DRAMA, Firmilian (1854), an anti-radical, scattershot missive meant to re-align British poetic tastes1 by reversing the aesthetic gains made by Romanticism in the decades prior to its publication, has been called “one of the most successful pieces of literary criticism ever written” (Morton 849). Despite its broad ambitions, however, it has often been read as a narrow attack on the individual poets popular during the summer of its appearance, creating a school where one had not existed before, turning the poets Philip James Bailey, Alexander Smith, Sydney Dobell and others into “the Spasmodic School.” But, …

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Gestural Ekphrasis: Toward A Phenomenology Of The Moving Body In Joyce And Woolf, Lauren Nicole Benke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This theoretical project seeks to introduce a new critical methodology for evaluating gesture - both represented in text and paratextual - in the works of Virginia Woolf - specifically The Voyage Out (1915), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941) - and James Joyce - particularly Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Though gesture studies has developed significantly as an interdisciplinary field in recent decades and performance studies has elaborated on the moving body's significance to both text and performance, literary scholarship itself has not yet adequately incorporated possibilities for specific critical attention to gesture. Gesture is …

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Chatter And Chant: Religion And Community On The Renaissance English Stage, Rachel Dunleavy Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines moments in five English Renaissance plays when characters employ religious language in bids to consolidate or to fracture communities. The plays are John Bale's King Johan (c. 1538, revised c. 1560), Nathaniel Woodes' Conflict of Conscience (c. 1581); Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603); Shakespeare's Cymbeline (1611); and John Webster's The White Devil (1612). The types of communities examined most closely are those of a small scale - relationships of individuals to God, marriages, families, friendships, households, parishes, courts - but these appear against the backdrop of much larger communities such as the nation …

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Frankenstein: A Feminist Birth Myth Of Morbid Conception, Madison R. Rahner

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In the context of Mary Shelley’s biography and prose style, the theme and structure of Frankenstein indicate that, in addition to being an esteemed work of gothic horror, the novel is a feminist birth myth: a perverse story of maternity and a scathing critique of patriarchal dominance over the feminine. Frankenstein, as a maternal figure, repeatedly seeks to smother female sexuality and usurp heterosexual reproduction through grotesque and unnatural means. The ensuing death and violence are consequences of Frankenstein’s inadequacy as a mother and the insufficiency of masculinity. The monster’s morbid conception and subsequent murders intertwine birth and death in …

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In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

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“The Deepest Blush”: Bodily States Of Emotions In Jane Austen’S Novels, Nadya Abdelfattah

ETD Archive

During the eighteenth-century, philosophers gave primacy to rationality specifying that reason could and should control emotions; they observed a friction between thought and feeling, rational and irrational, emotion and cognition, mind and body, which competed and united in a way that influenced the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century thought and experience on many sides. As an early nineteenth-century novelist, Jane Austen explores the relationship between emotion and cognition. I argue that Austen shows the importance of bodily experience of emotion in moral development. Deploying affect theory will illuminate Austen’s depiction of emotions as a mode of understanding of how the body becomes …

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Theology, Phenomenology, And The Divine In King Lear, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"In what follows, then, I would like to think through Levinas's ideas on transcendence and ethics in such a way as to map out a new pathway for approaching Shakespeare's great tragedy. As unorthodox as it may sound, I propose to shed light on the darkling religiosity of King Lear by turning-not to the theological doctrines of early modem Christians-but to the postmodern ethics of a twentieth-century Jew."

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Review Of W. B. Patterson, Thomas Fuller: Discovering England’S Religious Past, Brooke Conti

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Renaissance Revenge And The Age Of Interiority, Riley Meachem

English Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

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Balance Of Limits And Experimentation, Viangri Sontay L.

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

In science, there is an equilibrium between advancements in knowledge, ethics, and reason. Equilibrium is when two contrary sides are in balance and, typically, once one side becomes disproportionate, there will be a disturbance. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrays how going beyond the limits of science can cause a disturbance to human nature. One of the main characters, Victor Frankenstein, fabricated a living creature out of unliving parts. Victor is displeased with the result, leaving the Creature neglected and destined to feel loathing toward his creator. The consequences of seeking glory brought about torture. Aside from providing entertainment, …

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

The “Sighan, Cantan, Grace-Proud Faces”: Robert Burns And The Kirk, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Robert Burns And “Clarinda”, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

“Tam O’ Shanter”, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

"Auld Lang Syne", G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Poems And Songs Spuriously Attributed To Robert Burns, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

"The Mair They Talk, I'M Kend The Better": Poems About Robert Burns To 1859, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Editing Burns's Letters In The Twentieth Century, G. Ross Roy

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Collecting Burns: A Conversation, G. Ross Roy, Patrick Scott

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

Index To Selected Essays On Robert Burns, By G. Ross Roy, Elizabeth Sudduth, Jo C. Durant

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy

The Gawain-Poet And The Fourteenth-Century English Anticlerical Tradition, Ethan Campbell

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Shakespeare, Antony And Cleopatra, And The Nature Of Fame, Robert A. Logan

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Environmental Humanities: Voices From The Anthropocene By Serpil Oppermann And Serenella Iovino, Pamela Banting

The Goose

Tragedy And Theodicy: The Role Of The Sufferer From Job To Ahab, Nora Carroll

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Flora Of Middle-Earth (2017) By Walter S. Judd And Graham A. Judd, Martin Simonson

Journal of Tolkien Research

Frankenstein And “The Labours Of Men Of Genius”: Science And Medical Ethics In The Early 19th Century, Allison Lemley

Grand Valley Journal of History

Intersex And The Pardoner’S Body, Kim Zarins

Accessus

Finding Aid To The Collection Of John Lane Materials, John Lane, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Sir Edmund William Gosse Materials, Sir Edmund William Gosse, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

A.S. Byatt And The ‘Perpetual Traveller’: A Reading Practice For New British Fiction, Nicole Flynn

English Faculty Publications

A Hateful Cawing Of The Crows: W. E. Aytoun's Satirical Misfire, Mischa Willett

SPU Works

Gestural Ekphrasis: Toward A Phenomenology Of The Moving Body In Joyce And Woolf, Lauren Nicole Benke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Chatter And Chant: Religion And Community On The Renaissance English Stage, Rachel Dunleavy Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Frankenstein: A Feminist Birth Myth Of Morbid Conception, Madison R. Rahner

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

“The Deepest Blush”: Bodily States Of Emotions In Jane Austen’S Novels, Nadya Abdelfattah

ETD Archive

Theology, Phenomenology, And The Divine In King Lear, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Review Of W. B. Patterson, Thomas Fuller: Discovering England’S Religious Past, Brooke Conti

English Faculty Publications

Renaissance Revenge And The Age Of Interiority, Riley Meachem

English Honors Papers

Balance Of Limits And Experimentation, Viangri Sontay L.

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects