English Language and Literature Commons^™

A Passion For Scholarship & Collecting: The G. Ross Roy Collection Of Robert Burns & Scottish Literature, Thomas Keith

Studies in Scottish Literature

Pays tribute to G. Ross Roy as book collector, describing the origins and growth of the Robert Burns collection begun by his grandfather W. Ormiston Roy (1874-1958), of Montreal, Canada, but greatly developed by Professor Roy, before finding a permanent home in the University's Irvin Department of Rare Books.& Special Collections. Notes the range of Scottish authors now included in the collection and describes briefly many of the most distinctive and important Burns items.

Publications By G. Ross Roy, A Checklist, 1953-2011, Patrick G. Scott, Justin Mellette

Studies in Scottish Literature

This checklist details books and other separate publications, articles, and reviews, published through December 2011 by the Burns scholar G. Ross Roy (1924-2013), longtime professor of English at the University of South Carolina. The list encompasses his work not only on Burns and Scottish poetry, but in Canadian literature, comparative literature, and book history.

Performing Literacy: How Women Read The World In The Late Eighteenth-Century British Novel, Amy Hodges

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersection of sensibility, Social identity, and literacy practices among representations of women readers in four late eighteenth-century British novels. Through an analysis of the authors' use of identity constructs which shaped and were shaped by reading practices, this study documents the rise of Social identity formation as mutually constitutive with the history of reading. The first chapter reveals how Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote uses Arabella's follies as education for readers about the corresponding processes of reading their society and reading novels. The second chapter argues that Frances Burney's Evelina considers women's ability to read others …

An Author And A Bookshop: Publishing Marlowe’S Remains At The Black Bear, Andras Kisery

Publications and Research

Bookshops and the spaces occupied by the early modern book trade have received attention as social environments. This study of the early publication history of Christopher Marlowe's poems -- Hero and Leander, his translation of Lucan, as well as the lyric now known as "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" -- shows that, the bookshops may also turn out to be agents shaping the fate of books, authors, and literary afterlives. Shifting our emphasis from the individual bookseller to the networks of a plurality of human agents and environments allows us to consider the intersections of various commercial and …

"Just A Fool's Hope": J.R.R. Tolkien's Eucatastrophe As The Paradigm Of Christian Hope, Margaret A. Bush

Senior Honors Theses

In his essay titled “On Fairy-Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien uses the term “eucatastrophe” to describe the unexpected, fortunate turn of events for the protagonist in a fantasy story. Tolkien applies the word beyond its literary context to signify the Christian’s experience of joy, especially resulting from the Incarnation and Resurrection. Such an explicit link between fiction and theology seems absent from his more well-known work, The Lord of the Rings. Yet both Tolkien himself and critics of his writing have labeled the novel a modern-day classic of Christian literature. This thesis will defend the Christian label of The Lord of …

A Seat At The Table: William Lisle Bowles And The Development Of Romanticism, Jeremy B. Savage

Lawrence University Honors Projects

A study of the Romantic poet William Lisle Bowles. I challenge the modern critical perception of Bowles in order to argue that his place in the study of Romanticism has been drastically understated. It is my assertion that by reading Bowles thoroughly, paying specific attention to his influence on the beginnings of Romanticism, to his particular influence on Coleridge and to the critical advancements represented by the amalgamation of his actual poetry with his later critical reflections, affords us not only an understanding of Bowles’s active role in the development of Romanticism as it has traditionally been understood, but also …

A Clock And A Companion Poem To Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress', Matthew Harkins

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reanimating The Nation: Patrick Mccabe, Neil Jordan, And The Bog Gothic, Ellen Scheible

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Individual Spirituality And The Canterbury Tales: An Analysis Of The Philosophical Connection Between The Tale Of Melibee And The Parson’S Tale As It Operates Within The Narrative Framework, Chelsea R. Martin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of both the placement and the philosophical connections between The Tale of Melibee and The Parson’s Tale suggests that a highly individual spiritual philosophy is being presented within The Canterbury Tales. This philosophy is exemplified via an analysis of both the role of The Tale of Melibee within the work, and the manner in which it is historically developed. The highest form of individual spirituality is revealed within The Tale of Melibee, through the spiritual developments occurring within the character Melibeus and his wife Prudence. This development serves to unify the exemplified extremes of satire and spirituality …

The Persistence Of Vengeance From Early Modern England To Postmodern New York, Dominic M. Sevieri

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As a passing glance at the popular texts of any given period reveals, the subject of vengeance is nearly inescapable; on billboards, websites, and year end lists, revenge represents a curious constant even amid disparate media. This study explores the cultural commonalities that align revenge texts of the English Renaissance and exploitation films of late 20th century America. As in-depth inquiry reveals, numerous ideas and narrative tropes popularized during the Early Modern period are pushed to their logical extremes in these films. The central factor that aligns London during the Renaissance and New York at the cusp of the 1990s …

The Stage Is The Court And All The Players Merely Copies: Shakespeare's Antony And Cleopatra As Propaganda, Ginnye Cubel

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In 1603 the world as England knew it changed. After forty-five years Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and last surviving Tudor was dead and James VI of Scotland was ascending the throne. Despite several differences between the new king and the old queen, there were similarities in their patronage of the arts. Enthralled by theatrical performances, one of James' first acts as king was to offer royal patronage to William Shakespeare's theatre company and give them the title, The King's Men. But it is likely that James' love of the theatre wasn't his only reason for patronizing Shakespeare's theatre troupe. …

The Galway Rambler: Anthony Raftery And The Roots Of Irish Cultural Identity, Caroline O'Shea

English Student Scholarship

My project looks at the impact of Anthony Raftery, a 19^th century blind poet and fiddle player from Co. Mayo, Ireland, on Ireland’s cultural landscape upon his ‘discovery’ by Irish writers Lady Augusta Gregory and Douglas Hyde, and his influence upon E. B. Yeats. Explorations of Scottish folk collections and Homeric influences upon Raftery’s poetry and the art of folk music preservation are also examined.

Transformational Leadership In The Life And Works Of C.S. Lewis, Crystal L. Hurd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The author of this study explored the works of C.S. Lewis as well as memoirs and scholarship concerning his work to illustrate his transformational leadership. Works reviewed included Lewis's fiction, such as his science fiction trilogy and his children's series, The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as his works of nonfiction, such as essays that addressed social issues. The secondary aim for the author of this study was to determine whether the transformational qualities Lewis exhibited also existed in his characters.

Transformational leadership served as the conceptual framework for the descriptive explanatory qualitative design. Essentially the study analyzed the primary …

Dante Gabriel Rossetti And The Romance Of Loss, Jane N. Cooper

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Through paired poems and paintings, Dante Gabriel Rossetti explored the nature of Love—both physical and spiritual—as made evident by distance or absence. Influenced early by his familiarity with Dante Alighieri and a confluence of changing social and artistic attitudes, Rossetti transformed the dialogue around him to a more personal internal conversation, revealed by pen and brush. This paper examines the dynamic of that pervasive thread in Rossetti’s work through a discussion of the influences upon the artist, the artist’s effect upon important figures of mid- to late nineteenth century England, and the important relationships that shaped his discourse. In addition, …

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …

Don't Take Orpheus Without The Lyre: The Intricacies Of Using Pagan Myths For Christian Purposes In The Divine Comedy And Paradise Lost, Rebekah J. Waltmann

Masters Theses

Because of their universal and artistic nature, the classical myths lend themselves well to use in literature, especially poetry. When used properly, as by Dante and Milton, the myths have the ability to enhance the work; when used poorly, they become gaudy ornamentation. It was, and is, this ability to enhance both the artistry and function of literature that pulled so many poets to the myths, despite the difficulties that could arise when the pagan myths did not quite match the Christian setting. My purpose in this thesis is not to explicate every use of myth within The Divine Comedy …

"Reader" In Jane Eyre, Siruo Li

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis is designed to show the development of feminist power of Jane Eyre, the heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, by examining how her reader is addressed in the totality of this novel. The main body of this thesis will follow the four parts of Jane Eyre’s different period of her life: in childhood, in Thornfield, in Moor House and in Ferndean Manor. The rhetorical instrument of addressing her reader is influenced by her speech and silence, and appears in a gradually increasing frequency in the four parts. In this sense, Jane Eyre’s female voice is also empowered …

Counter-Reformation: The Search For A Unified John Donne, Bailey Susan Fitzgerald

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The agenda of this paper is a re-examination of the de-facto formation of a literary character. John Donne is one of history’s most celebrated metaphysical poets. A quasi-contemporary of William Shakespeare, his biography has been similarly (if obviously to a lesser degree) plumbed. The turn of the 17^th century offers, in terms of hard facts, only tantalizing details left by fortuitous accident, and it has been the realm of biographers and early modern scholars to piece together the fragments. In the case of John Donne, this has manifested as a genealogy of literary biography that frequently melds scant fact, …

Master Of Your Domain: Descriptions Of Interior Space In The Works Of Charles Dickens And Elizabeth Gaskell As Social Justice Commentary, Ryan P. Bowers

English Theses

Abstract

One of the results of the industrialization of Victorian England was a further straining of the relationship between the rich and poor. This was evidenced by events such as the Preston Strike, a prolonged labor battle between the workers and the masters of the cotton mills. Charles Dickens’s periodical Household Words covered the strike on two occasions, with Dickens himself writing the second article on the event. An attempt to bridge this cultural divide between the classes was undertaken by Elizabeth Gaskell in North and South, a novel that first appeared in Household Words and by Dickens himself …

Dickensian Characters In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Alison Mckeever

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

J.K. Rowling includes many Dickensian-esque characters in her Harry Potter series. This thesis compares the characters seen in Rowling's series with many of Charles Dickens's characters, specifically those seen in David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Bleak House. Rowling's work is similar to Dickens's novels in many ways. The most interesting connection between the two is how they treat the characters on the periphery of the societies they have created, most notably their orphans, servants, and women.

Orphans are their most obvious comparison. Each author based their texts on the story of an orphan. However, there is more to their orphan …

Happily Ever After? Redefining Womanhood And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century Novels, Laura Elizabeth Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Henry James challenged patriarchal conventions and assumptions by redefining womanhood and marriage in their novels, particularly by breaking from the traditional marriage ending. While Pride and Prejudice, North and South, and Jane Eyre end in marriage, these novels depict a freely chosen companionate marriage based on equality; Villette replaces the typical marriage ending with complete independence; and Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady both portray the decisive rejection of the marriage ideal for a life of renunciation. This thesis analyzes the ways in which these novels challenge nineteenth-century society, as well …

Constructing Depth Through Jane: Contemporary Interactions Between Austen And Interiority, Nicole Catherine Peters

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The world is saturated with Jane Austen. She is in the movies, in bookstores, and in college courses. For years “lowbrow” and “highbrow” readers have fought over the “proper” way to read her work. Ian Watt, a popular literary critic, argued that Austen’s value resides in her use of interiority. For years, interiority was held as the measure of a novel’s worth or depth. Deidre Lynch exposed this interiority Watt spoke of as a cultural taste—one which Austen and Watt emerged from and helped to create.

In this project, I look at two contemporary manifestations of Austen—one that is considered …

Harry Potter And The Theory Of Things, Erica Maitland Lange

Master’s Theses

This thesis investigates the boundaries between body and object in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, seven children’s literature novels published between 1997 and 2007. Lord Voldemort, Rowling’s villain, creates Horcruxes—objects that contain fragments of his soul—in order to ensure his immortality. As vessels for human soul, these objects rupture the boundaries between body and object and become “things.” Using contemporary thing theorists including John Plotz and materialists Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin, I look at Voldemort’s Horcruxes as transgressive, liminal, unclassifiable entities in the first chapter.

If objects can occupy the juncture between body and object, then bodies can as …

Playing Devil's Advocate: The Attractive Shakespearean Villain, Jonathan Montgomery Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The characters of William Shakespeare have spawned countless words of critical interpretation inspired by the playwright's aptitude for fashioning intricate and conflicted figures. As a master character craftsman, Shakespeare is consistent in creating fascinatingly deep characters, and many of them have even gone so far as to generate entire literary archetypes. From the contemplative Prince Hamlet to the despicable yet charming John Falstaff, Shakespeare's characters remain eternal representatives of what any good character should be: interesting, provocative, and complicated.

However, among the playwright's most hypnotic figures are his villains, those characters whom audiences should by all counts detest but cannot …

Becoming Pearls: Patterns Of Social Reading In Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Rachel Elizabeth Gould

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As soon as the first English texts began to appear, Arabian Nights' Entertainments, as translated by Antoine Galland, captivated the imaginations of most of eighteenth century England, bringing the work instantly into demand. Although the Arabian Nights' Entertainments is generally recognized among scholars for its influence on other fictional tales and travel narratives and its shaping of the West's perception of the East, further study is needed in ascertaining the effect of the rhetorical device of repetition, which is so prevalent within the tales and which gives the collection both its unique character and its ability to engage readers …

Public Parks And Private Ideologies: Building Nineteenth-Century British National Identity Through Landscape, Laura Swaim Witherington

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines how nineteenth-century landscape theories shaped national identity and were influenced by it. Predominant is an investigation of how the desire for a more egalitarian class structure underlies the changes in British landscape design from an attachment to classical exclusivity through pastoral tropes to a limited acceptance of middle and working classes within public landscapes that represented patriotic values. Although poetic works inform the study, novel-length fiction and non-fiction prose and periodicals are also a primary source of consideration. Novels demonstrate how fictional geography generates the constructs of national ideology, and although canonical works typically referenced in studu …

Romanticism, Blake, And The Politics Of Nature (Flyer), Kevin Hutchings

The Idea of Nature Public Lecture Series

Because politics is a distinctly human activity, we often think of nature as something that exists apart from the political realm. However, in an era of revolutionary turmoil, William Blake, who championed “England’s green and pleasant land” against industrialism’s “dark Satanic Mills,” understood better than any other Romantic poet that nature was subject to myriad political uses. By showing how cultural institutions invoke nature to “naturalize” their authority, Blake reveals that nature can be thoroughly political. Join author and musician Kevin Hutchings as he explores the politics of Blake’s visionary ecology in poetry, painting, and song.

The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

In his groundbreaking work of postcolonial theory, Orientalism, Edward Said puts forth the idea that imperial Europe asserted an identity by constructing the character of its colonized subjects. Said writes that his book tries to “show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). The object of this thesis is a related project, for it too is a search for imperial Britain’s surrogate or underground self. Yet rather than positioning this search within the British colonies, this thesis takes as its context a …

Force Or Fraud: British Seduction Stories And The Problem Of Resistance, 1660-1760, By Toni Bowers. (Review), Rachel Carnell, Toni Bowers

English Faculty Publications

A review of the book "Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760," by Toni Bowers is presented.

A Victorian Christmas In Hell: Yuletide Ghosts And Necessary Pleasures In The Age Of Capital, Brandon Chitwood

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores how the cultural and literary development – one might argue, creation – of a specifically Victorian Christmas arose in response to social anxieties related to the expansion of industrial capitalism, Darwinian theories of evolution, and the increasingly problematic definition of the family during the nineteenth century in Britain. Using a Lacanian psychoanalytic lens, the dissertation explores how the liminal figure of the ghost pervades the literary narrativization of the Christmas holiday, and how such ghosts provided uncanny comforts to a reading public increasingly horrified by social, economic, and natural forces seemingly beyond their control. The dissertation argues …