English Language and Literature Commons^™

Familiar Creatures: Witchcraft, Female Bodies, And Early Modern Animals, Christopher Clary

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Something Is Rotten In The Unreal City: Hamlet In The Waste Land, Aimee Valentine

The Hilltop Review

T.S. Eliot’s poem of 1922, “The Waste Land,” lays philosophical and stylistic ground for the Modern literary movement in which human experience takes the performative shape of inner dialog (or soliloquy) for the benefit of the reader/audience. This essay will argue that Eliot’s poem is an existentialist work that is not merely informed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet (the earliest example of British existentialism), but is directly modeled after it, in Eliot’s attempt to rectify the play’s perceived failings. Existentialism as a key to unlocking the mood of Modern literature is overlooked by those critics who relegate existentialist literature to the …

Philosophical Romance: Figures Of Venus In “The Knight's Tale”, Caleb Molstad

The Hilltop Review

This essay examines Chaucer's use of the Roman goddess Venus in “The Knight's Tale.” It looks at the astrological, mythological, and allegorical meanings that he gives to the figure of Venus in the poem. The essay also considers imaginative techniques, including ekphrasis and allegory, that Chaucer uses to express philosophical ideas within a chivalric romance. Ultimately, it argues that Chaucer uses Venus in “The Knight's Tale” to imaginatively unfold the Boethian idea that love governs the world.

Books, Theology, And Hens: The Correspondence And Friendship Of C. S. Lewis And Dorothy L. Sayers, Laura K. Simmons, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

"That Lewis and Sayers had much in common and that their lives intersected in a number of interesting ways throughout their careers is common knowledge for even the casual follower of either author. What does not seem to have been appreciated or explained sufficiently in the scholarship to date is the nature of the friendship between these two influential Christian authors. Therefore, it is this friendship we wish to shed light on, using as our primary source the correspondence between Lewis and Sayers from 1942-1957. In addition, we look at what the biographers of each author have to say about …

The Struggle To Communicate: Art, Embodiment, And Overcoming Isolation In The Text And Illustrations Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Hallie Anne Brinkman

Honors Projects

The following paper, at its heart, consists of an exploration of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as of three sets of its illustrations by Gustave Doré, Hunt Emerson, and Ed Young. This task is approached with a few central questions in mind, questions drawn both from Coleridge’s other philosophical works and, primarily, from the poem itself: is a work of art a “thought” or a “thing”? How do human beings, isolated in their physical bodies, communicate and connect? How might an exploration of the poem in conjunction with its illustrations – a layering of …

Playing With Matches: Matchmaking As Authorship In The Nineteenth-Century Marriage Plot, Colleen Cusick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the narrative treatment of matchmakers in British marriage plots across the nineteenth century. In an era of increasing state control over marriage and the rising ideology of romantic marriage, the matchmaker represents the communal courtship practices of the past. As such, she offers both a threat to the emerging status quo and a reminder of the persistence of superseded cultural forms in the modern marriage system. Simultaneously, she constitutes an image of female creativity and authority that speaks to concerns about the professionalization of novel-writing and the place of women writers within that profession. Through this focus …

Heavy Expectations: Reading Pregnancy In The Victorian Novel, Livia Arndal Woods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation articulates the tendency of Victorian novels to make legible only the pregnant bodies of immodest characters who transgress gendered ideologies while the pregnant bodies of modest characters tend to go undescribed. Tracing the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth over the course of the long nineteenth century, my chapters demonstrate the function of moralizing narrative conventions in the representation of pregnancy in mid-Victorian novels, of a self-conscious use of free indirect diagnosis in high-Victorian fiction, and a shift at the fin-de-siècle from pregnancy as a signifier of morality to a symptom of unstable minds. The novels I read closely …

The W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Lecture: Who Wrote The Scots Musical Museum? Challenging Editorial Practice In The Presence Of Authorial Absence, Murray Pittock

Studies in Scottish Literature

James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, published in six parts in Edinburgh over the period 1787-1803, is now inextricably linked to its greatest contributor, the poet, song-writer and song-collector Robert Burns. This lecture builds from Murray Pittock’s recent editorial work on Johnson’s collection, forthcoming in the new multivolume Oxford Edition of Robert Burns, based at the University of Glasgow. The lecture shows that the apparently-innocent question “Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum?” is a complex one, raising very fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and editorship in the necessarily collaborative and social enterprise of song publication, and it …

Tam O' Shanter And Aesthetic Cultural Nationalism, Gerard Lee Mckeever

Studies in Scottish Literature

Drawing on recent debates about Burns and Scottish romanticism, particularly comments by Murray Pittock, Nigel Leask, and Ian Duncan, discusses the pivotal scene in Robert Burns's poem "Tam o' Shanter," in which Tam's vision of the witches' carnival is framed by the window of Alloway Kirk, and argues that this can be read as a framing and aestheticization not only of folk heritage, but of a national self-image, a recalibration of nationhood.

James Hogg's The Brownie Of Bodsbeck: An Unconventional National Tale, Barbara Leonardi

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses James Hogg's historical novel The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818), set in the time of the religious Covenanters in late 17th century Scotland, with particular attention to the central woman character, Katharine Laidlaw; traces contemporary comment on the novel; and contrasts Hogg's distinctive portrayal of marriage with its use by other writers (particularly Scott) to plot national (and historical) reconciliation, arguing that Hogg uses the marriage plot to critique the emergent ideology of the national tale.

"A Flame That Is Burning The World": Edwin Muir, War, And History, Margery Palmer Mcculloch

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the impact of successive wars on the Scottish poet, translator and critic Edwin Muir (1887-1959), with especial focus on his experiences in post-World War II Prague and his response to the threat of nuclear warfare and human annihilation.

Recovering The Reformation Heritage In George Mackay Brown's Greenvoe, Richard Rankin Russell

Studies in Scottish Literature

Suggests that attitudes to Presbyterianism and the Scottish Kirk in much 20th century Scottish literary criticism have been too negative, and explores the religious heritage and selected writings of the Orcadian poet and novelist George Mackay Brown (1921-1996), a Catholic convert, to argue that Brown's best-known novel, Greenvoe (1972), draws not only on Catholic, and older pagan, symbolism, but also on aspects of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition.

'As I Walk'd By Mysel': A Burns Autograph Manuscript And The Problem Of Attribution, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes and illustrates Robert Burns's autograph manuscript of the song "As I walk'd by mysel'" (Kinsley 686), reviews the issues and problems in attributing manuscript songs to Burns, traces the provenance of the unique manuscript, and compares the Burns version to that published by David Herd's Antient and Modern Scotish Songs (1776 etc.), concluding that the manuscript was sent by Burns to James Johnson for possible inclusion in the Scots Musical Museum, and that, while the song is not original with Burns, he may have tinkered with specific phrases to improve it.

Scotland In European Perspective: The Mainz-Germersheim Conference Before The Referendum, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews the published papers on political, literary, and cultural aspects of Scottish cultural identity from a conference held at Johnannes Gutenberg University-Mainz at Germersheim, Germany, in October 2013, before the narrowly-unsuccessful Scottish Independence referendum of the following year ["Indyref"], and discusses their continuing relevance in Scottish attitudes to the upcoming United Kingdom referendum on British withdrawal from the European Union ["Brexit"].

Adam Smith For Our Time, I: Necroeconomics, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews a wide-ranging new American study of the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), examining its treatment of Smith as critic and rhetorical theorist, as well as of his better-known writings on moral philosophy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and economic theory in The Wealth of Nations (1776), and discusses briefly the value for Scottish cultural history of interpretative practices developed originally in other national traditions, concluding that the book is "important for scholars of 18^th century Scottish literature... because it approaches Smith’s work through disciplinary practices that are common enough in other literary fields but …

Books Noted And Received, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Brief reviews of twenty-five recent publications in Scottish literary studies, including editions of works by Burns, Hogg, and Stevenson, and biographies of John Moore, John Pinkerton, and Alexander Smith.

Preface To Ssl 42:1, Patrick G. Scott, Anthony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

“Recognizable Goodness” A Response To Beversluis’ Understanding Of God’S Goodness, Emily Mccarty

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

In her rebuttal to John Beversluis’ C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, Emily McCarty makes the following arguments. Lewis maintains throughout these three works that God’s goodness is recognizable. In The Problem of Pain, what seems unlike or even not good to us, is upon reflection, good. In fact, there are similar human examples that show God’s goodness is not so very unlike our own. In “The Poison of Subjectivism,” Lewis does not empty good of meaning: rather he sources that meaning in the divine so that our morals have enduring meaning. In A Grief Observed …

Wilde's Final Act, Justine Ilissa Sha

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, the prison-written letter to his ex-lover, as a work created with the signature Wildean dramatic conventions of composition, style, the writing process, and formal structure of which make up Wilde’s theatrical plays “Lady Windermere’s Fan” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” This shows how De Profundis was written not as an autobiographical work, a love letter, or a portrait of a tormented, imprisoned mind, but as a performance: paradoxical play in the same style as his dramatic repertoire, and desperately intended for publication. First, the Wilde’s dramatic writing process is examined. Then, using …

“Names Portable As Alter Stones”: Nomadic Movement And Recollection In Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Norah Toomey Hatch

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Seamus Heaney’s acknowledgement of the names of the places in his poems serve as a map, but a map that demonstrates the deterritorializing nature of memory and therefore meaning itself. The places become points of departure, places of transit, motivators of unstable memories, and catalysts for changing perspectives. Heaney’s use of location anticipates a future that is not bogged down by static meaning as the speakers in the poems face their own memories clouded by history, politics, and myth. Grappling with connotation, though, does not offer any closure from the multiplicity of meaning that the naming or visiting of certain …

An Almost Threesome: Erotic Love Triangles And Authorial Choice In Malory’S Le Morte D’ Arthur, Maria L. Avery

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

It seems to be nearly a critically unanimous consensus that when translating Chretien de Troyes’ romance of the glorious King Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, in his Le Morte Darthur, approaches the narrative of Sir Lancelot with the unwavering attitude that Lancelot must not only sustain the status of Arthur’s most revered knight and truest friend, but also be a true and ideal lover for Guenevere. This deep sense of friendship and comraderie between Lancelot and his king is also reflected in nearly all of the relationships between Arthur’s knights; which is, similar to de Troyes a very important component …

Talking Some Sense Into Chaucer: Bodies In “The Miller’S Prologue” And “The Miller’S Tale”, Jacqueline Joewono

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

If there is one question that underpins the evaluation of any great literary work, it is the following: How does the text make us feel? Through affect and textural studies, the answer becomes more complicated than any old adage might readily convey, for “feeling” here becomes a matter of simultaneous tactility and sentiment. Under this lens, perhaps no historical period becomes more desirable to feel than the Middle Ages; it is here, after all, that readers’ responsibilities with texts are pluralized: readers move from listeners born from oral traditions to participants of all kinds. Feeling, then, may be found in …

Chaucer's Collision Montage, Brandon Simmons

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of collision montage can be applied to The Canterbury Tales because Chaucer’s writing is highly visual and often unconventional. This study analyzes several portraits and tales to demonstrate Chaucer’s literary collision montage technique. The opening lines of the General Prologue present the juxtaposition of the tripartite plant and humans to suggest commoners’ social immobility. The interruption of the Miller’s Tale clashes with the Knight’s to suggest the possibility of social mobility and to challenge traditional patriarchy. The latter half of the narrator’s description in the Wife of Bath’s portrait indicates a sexualized subtext through the juxtaposition of …

Slaying Hybridity: The “Uncreated” Monstrous Doubles In The The Saga Of The Volsungs, Nibelungenlied, And Kudrun, Kyle Augustyniak

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper examines anxieties about gender and gender in a thirteenth-century Old Norse text, The Saga of the Volsungs, and two Middle High German texts, the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun. All three exhibit a similar uneasiness about gender performance. In these epics, fears about gender fluidity are founded on the slaying of hybrid mythological creatures (dragons and griffons) and are perpetuated by various media: blood, tears, clothing, promises, and lies. These monsters threaten the established order within the text, a patriarchal order defined by feudal society. Once the hero defeats the monster—whose very essence is simultaneously an embodiment of the perceived …

The Enclosure Of Eden: John Clare And The Politics Of Place And Past, Amanda Labriola

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Virgin Beauty Queen: Gender, Productivity, And Modernity In Martin Mcdonagh's Ireland, Hannah Green

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

A Dickensian Utilitarianism, Zachary Allentuck

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper argues that Charles Dickens' political and world views were in sympathy with Utilitarianism, as defined by Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarianism Dickens attacked in A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit was not real utilitarianism; it was utilitarianism appropriated by England's middle-class.

Plays And Punks; Or, Aphra Behn And The Restoration Woman, Amanda J. Thompson

Theses & Honors Papers

In many ways, the Restoration Period in England (1660-1700) is defined by its interest in sexuality. Following the Interregnum (1649-1660), sexuality became a mechanism to distinguish royalists from the “puritanical followers” of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), particularly through the emergence of the libertine (Novak 56). Libertinism “made the senses a primary source of knowledge,” which challenged “conventional morality” through ritualistic fornication, drunkenness, and adultery (Staves 20). Men, like John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) wrote bawdy poetry celebrating their sexual conquests. Libertines were also regularly featured in Restoration drama, with playwrights like William Wycherley (1640-1716) and George Etherege (1636-1692) …

The World Of The Cat's Table: Literature Through Production Design Analysis, Andrea J. Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje is a rich piece of literature that has a diverse set of characters confined to one pivotal location, a ship. Just as the novel builds a world around its characters, in this project I attempted to build a space around immersive design choices.

Production Design is a visual response to analytic reading. By taking a written piece or concept and creating the physical/visual atmosphere for the work, a production designer’s job is to create the overall look and tone of a creative production, be it for a film, play, or museum space. This is …

Diagnoses By Gender: The Consequences Of Treatment Of The Mentally Ill In Virginia Woolf's The Waves And Mrs. Dalloway 2016, Erika Nichole Jackson

Master's Theses

“Insanity is purely a disease of the brain…The physician is now the responsible guardian of the lunatic, and must ever remain so.” Sir John Charles Bucknill (1897)

Mental illness has consistently been and continues to be a subject that is viewed as taboo by society, especially when it comes to diagnosing a patient. Instead of acknowledging a person’s actions, thoughts, and words, society continually disregards mental illness as something that is negative and to be feared. The fact that this area of medicine can be difficult and distressing makes it all the more important to continue research. It is true …