English Language and Literature Commons^™

When Artists Fail: A Reply To Trivedi, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

In a recent article, ‘An Epistemic Dilemma for Actual Intentionalism’, Saam Trivedi argues that the way we ought to interpret artworks is best understood using the model proposed by hypothetical intentionalism. Trivedi alleges that actual intentionalism faces a serious dilemma, the upshot of which is that actual intentionalists must choose between redundancy and indeterminacy. Largely on the basis of this dilemma, he concludes that even if actual intentionalism is descriptively accurate, it is prescriptively untenable. In this essay, I focus on this alleged dilemma and argue that, contra Trivedi, it fails to undermine the prescriptive legitimacy of moderate actual intentionalism. …

A Trove Of New Works By Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered, Adrian S. Wisnicki

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Early in 1960, after having graduated from Cornell and while writing V., Thomas Pynchon moved to Seattle and began working for the Boeing Airplane Company. What Pynchon did while working at Boeing has puzzled scholars almost from the moment of the very private author's literary debut. When we try to delve into his stint at Boeing first mentioned by Lewis Nichols and Dick Schaap--we reach dead ends or find conflicting information. Yet Pynchon's time at Boeing is perhaps the most documented period of his life, and over the years a number of interesting (though not always accurate) bits of information …

Atheism And Sadism: Nietzsche And Woolf On Post-God Discourse, Michael Lackey

English Publications

In the western world, twentieth-century literature has been an extended experience of atheism and sadism. Lest this claim not seem dogmatic enough, let me put it differently, more boldly: this century has been an attempt to ingest and digest Nietzsche, to cannibalize the Übermensch philologist, first in order to comprehend the strength and depth of his vision, but second to enact his philosophy. Were this a standard academic essay, I would define atheism and sadism, identify and analyze a few texts that best corroborate my thesis, and draw some conclusions about the twentieth century. But sadism and atheism are not …

A Dyke's Life: Sexual Identity And Gender Performance In Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness, Erica L. Ellsworth

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis studies sexual and gender identity and gender performance in The Well of Loneliness by utilizing postmodern theory. The protagonist in the novel, Stephen Gordon, is not only one example of the many identities of lesbianism, but she is also an example of a multiplicitous identity. This thesis also questions whether we can find the exact moment or reason why an identity is formed. An exploration of not only The Well of Loneliness but also of a character study of Stephen Gordon is important to this dialogue because both studies validate the contradictory and complimentary relationship between sex and …

The Costs Of Scholarly Teaching And Learning, Amy M. Goodburn

Department of English: Faculty Publications

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) I come to SoTL work from several different locations: As an English professor in composition and rhetoric; as an associate dean for faculty within the College of Arts and Sciences; and as cocoordinator of a faculty teaching development program. This past spring was especially challenging as the country’s economic free-fall led to a year filled of budget-planning exercises, which then turned into budget-cut proposals, and now impending--but still not determined--budget cuts. In many ways, UNL has fared better than most other universities nationwide. The state of Nebraska received national attention when it was named …

Reading Through Galileo's Telescope: Margaret Cavendish And The Experience Of Reading, Elizabeth Spiller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay reassesses the role of reading in the context of seventeenth-century natural philosophy by analyzing Galileo Galilei’s Starry Messenger and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World. The unreliability of telescopic vision becomes a dominant metaphor for the unreliability of reading printed texts. Where Galileo sought to put the reader in his own position as a scientific observer by making reading a form of observation, Cavendish used the telescopic image to show how readers become the makers of their own fictions. From the recognition that reading and observation finally reveal our relationship to the world rather than the world itself comes …

Reading Space As Time In Great Plains Recollective Architecture, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

It is a long way from Black Elk's tipi to the Stuart building. Clearly most cultures and periods impose one or more narrative plots on time and space (I have written of four that were part of the recent past of this state). It may be that we will need soon to return again to a celebration of the cyclical in our architecture. If the ethos of domination that goes with linear, progressive notions of time is as destructive to our environment as the Club of Rome (and other successor study groups looking at the future of the planet) have …

Giving The Devil His Due: Leeching And Edification Of Spirit In The Scarlet Letter And The Witches Of Eastwick, James Plath

Scholarship

The essays collected here evaluate the religious dimension of Updike's prodigious literary vision, looking broadly at Updike's understanding of religion in ordinary human experience, in the context of historic Christianity, and in contemporary American culture.

Dreiser's Real American Tragedy, Kathryn M. Plank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Searching For The Route Of Inventions": Retracing The Renaissance Discovery Narrative In Gabriel García Márquez, Elizabeth Spiller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

If, as Harold Bloom suggests. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is a "supreme fiction," it achieves that status as it reformulates early modern narratives of self-discovery and dominion. Garcia Márquez signals his intention of rewriting the great Renaissance narratives of discovery when he begins his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech with an account of Antonio Pigafetta's Viaggio attorno al mondo (1522). As a navigator aboard Magellan's 1519–21 voyage around the world, Pigafetta kept a log that Garcia Márquez categorizes as an ancestor "of our contemporary novels." Where many Latin American writers might describe their work as postcolonial. García Márquez …

Journeying And Wandering In The Narrative Of The Knight's Tale, William Thomas Hill, Robert S. Haller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

An essay on the journeying and wandering in the Knight's Tale found in the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer.

Recent Polish-American Fiction, John A. Merchant

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the development of a Polish American voice in American literature through an analysis of works by Stuart Dybek, Anthony Bukoski, Susan Strempek Shea, and Denise Dee.

School At The Center: Mending Breaks In The Broken Heartland, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Some years ago I was teaching a course called "The Literature of Agriculture," accounts of how farmers and rural people made a living over time. Hesiod, Virgil, Chaucer's rural tales, George Eliot, Great Plains modem farm novels, and Wendell Berry's writings about the unsettling of America were the fare. One of my students remarked in passing, "Don't know if I can read this stuff. I only went to a small high schooL" He knew nothing of the literature about smallness and quality in education and had no pride of community. Later I asked the rural class if they planned to …

In Our Very Bones: Poems By Twyla Hansen, Twyla Hansen

Nebraskiana Publications: Resources and Materials on the 37th State

DISTANCES

1 Midwestern Autumn, 2 Going to the Graves, 3 Memorial Day, 4 On the Screen Porch, 5 Gophers, 6 Lilac Tripping, 7 The Separator, 9 Conspiracy, 11 My Neighbor's Daughter Learning To Drive, 12 Platte River State Park, Late January, 13 Spring Equinox, 14 When You Leave, 15 My Husband Snoring, 16 Full Moon, Total Eclipse, 17 My Father's Miniatures, 18 Wind, 20 If My Father Were Still Alive

ON THE PRAIRIE

23 Song of the Pasque Flower, 24 Blue Moon, 25 Crane River, 26 Nine-Mile Prairie, 27 Late May, 29 Prairie Trout, 30 Vines, 31 Building a Bat …

Growing Old And Growing Wise? Parenting And Maturation In Henry James' Selected Tales And Novels, Judit Magyar

Masters Theses

My thesis examines young people portrayed in Henry James' selected novels and tales, exploring the theme of the maturing process, with special emphasis on the influence of the adult world on the psychological development of the young. To this end, I focus on the following works: Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, “A London Life,” “The Pupil,” What Maisie Knew, “The Tum of the Screw” and The Awkward Age. James, through the experience of his young characters, explores not only the depths of moral corruption in society, but also the necessary steps to be taken …

"Time Is One": The Temporal Aspect Of The Hopi Language And Its Experimental Application In Postmodernist Novels, Peter Buru

Masters Theses

My thesis examines the relationship between the temporal aspects of the language of the Hopi Indians, based on Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic analyses, and postmodernist narrative theory. Within postmodernism itself, the study focuses on the narratives' handling of time and space, as illustrated by the following novels: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson; Time's Arrow by Martin Amis; Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; and Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko.

The study investigates how these postmodernist novels experiment with the application of a timeless temporal scheme. This scheme originates from what I refer to as Benjamin Lee Whorf’s …

Review Of The Mysteries: Creation, A New Adaptation, Robert S. Haller

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Review of Nicholas Rudall and Bernard Sahlins, editors. The Mysteries: Creation, A New Adaptation by Bernard Sahlins of the Medieval Mystery Play Series: Plays for Performance. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1992. $7.95. Elephant Paperbacks EL 412.

Placing The Places In Wordsworth's 1802 Sonnets, Stephen C. Behrendt

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Wordsworth's political sonnets of summer and fall 1802 recount the sights and sounds the poet encountered during the brief respite provided by the Peace of Amiens, which enabled him to return to France and to the woman and child who were the physical reminders of the time he had spent there ten years earlier in the spirited days following the French Revolution. Published together in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, they juxtapose the dispirited and pathetic state of France in 1802 with the ebullience Wordsworth recalled from that earlier time. More important, the sequence documents his "return" to England, …

Michael North, The Political Aesthetic Of Yeats, Eliot, And Pound, Robert Spoo

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A New Sense Of Time In Female Development: Linearity And Cyclicity In Atwood's Surfacing And Cat's Eye, Diana L. Unes

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Criminal Artists And Artisans In Mysteries By E.T.A. Hoffman, Dorothy Sayers, Ernesto Sábato, Patrick Süskind, And Thomas Harris, Edith Borchardt

German Publications

Much has been written on the subject of genius and neurosis, and psychobiographies of the artistic personality are numerous; however, literature on the artist as criminal is scarce. In real life, there are probably no artists who murder for their art or whose art is murder. In literature, such figures are also relatively rare. There are, however, several fictional artists with psychopathic disorders that cause them to murder. E.T.A. Hoffmann's Cardillac in Das Fraulein von Scuderi is a goldsmith in seventeenth-century Paris who kills the recipients of the jewelry he creates. Loder in "The Abominable History of the Man with …

Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

The reputation of British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now well established. Her brilliance as a writer is seldom contested, and her place in the literary canon is assured. Whether interested in literary traditions, textual studies, applied feminism, or postmodern theory, most scholars and critics admire what she had to say and how she said it. The variety, volume, and quality of her writings are impressive; her skill as a writer is seen not only in her eight novels but also in her essays, diaries, letters, short stories, biographies and nonfictional works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas …

Like He Would Jump Me With A Book: Black Humor In Sanctuary And Oliver Twist, Deborah Leclaire

Masters Theses

Although many critics have compared William Faulkner and Charles Dickens, no one has fully developed the resemblance between their uses of black humor. Using several critics' definitions of black humor, I examine several aspects of black humor in Faulkner's Sanctuary and Dickens' Oliver Twist: the presence of the wasteland in society, the irreverent treatment of death and religion, the presence of grotesques and perverse sexuality.

Like the humour noir of the French surrealist movement, black humor in both of these books is very much involved in these authors' indictment of society. Both Faulkner and Dickens use black humor to …

A Woman's Quest For Happiness: O'Neill's "Private Myth", Andrea Ximena CampañA Garcia

Masters Theses

Following the approach used by James Hurt in his book Catiline's Dream to determine Henrik Ibsen's "private myth" which he retold in play after play, I have delineated O'Neill's "private myth" in a narrower way concentrating on his female characters. Examining parallel motifs in the lives of the dominant women in Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude, and Mourning Becomes Electra, I have detected this mythic pattern involving the O'Neillian woman: She goes through an early innocent and submissive state guided by an initial vision of happiness which can be regarded as fairly conventional. But when her …

Tolkien's Unnamed Deity Orchestrating The Lord Of The Rings, Lisa Hillis

Masters Theses

The epic world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is one in which secular and religious elements are intertwined and the relationship between the two is intentionally kept vague. Within this created world, known as Middle Earth, good and evil are apparent, but the standard by which they are determined remains undefined. The free creatures living in Tolkien's world appear to have an intuitive ability to discern between good and evil, and each being generally exercises its free will in pursuit of one or the other though some personalities do combine the qualities. This innate …

Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) are both dystopias, nightmare visions of the future. Both of the worlds depicted come into being because of revolutionary coups. However, in both cases, the revolutions were in progress long before the actual takeovers, and there were opportunities for citizens to have prevented these dystopian situations from coming to pass. Yet, because changing the direction of political events requires energy, solidarity, bravery or at least some self-sacrifice, most citizens are reluctant to become involved. Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood understand this attitude because they have felt that way …

Virginia Woolf & Postmodernism: Literature In Quest & Question Of Itself, Pamela L. Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism argues not that Virginia Woolf is a postmodernist but that postmodern assumptions about art can account for her narrative innovations and feminist politics better than conventional modernist and feminist approaches to her works. In rethinking many of the prominent aesthetic and critical positions of her day, Woolf anticipated many postmodernist tenets. This book helps us to understand how and why she came to hold such views, and how we might change our reading of Woolf and narrative literature in turn.

Pamela Caughie brings together pragmatism and postmodern theory to move critical inquiry, particularly feminist criticism and …

"Interviewing" Mr. Larkin, Robert Phillips

The Courier

This article provides some details about the life of the English poet Philip Larkin. This enigmatic man wrote some of the best poetry in the English language of the twentieth century. His work had a lasting effect upon readers. After that of Sir John Betjeman, Larkin's verse was probably the best-loved of any contemporary poetry in the United Kingdom.

Preface And Introductory Materials To Approaches To Teaching Cather’S My Ántonia, Susan J. Rosowski

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The aim of this volume is to provide background and ideas others have found most helpful in teaching My Antonia. The portion presented here describes Cather's role in preparing the text and supervising the physical design of My Antonia, and reviews other writing by Cather relevant to My Antonia, as well as biographical studies and criticism recommended most often by instructors who teach it. It includes also a selective introduction to materials recommended for instructors' libraries: reference works on Cather, general background, biographical studies, and critical commentary. Finally, it surveys aids to teaching: pedagogical articles and non-print …

My Ántonia As Plains Epic, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

When I assign My Antonia, I teach it to the sons and daughters or more distant relatives, in blood or spirit, of the people it treats. I have had relatives of Mrs. Pavelka in my classes, citizens of Red Cloud and Wilber, Czechs who still retain their Czech culture, and classicists at the University of Nebraska who study what Cather studied here. It is thus impossible entirely to make the work of art defamiliarize the experience, as Shklovsky would have it do, nor would I want it to remove the students from their pasts and knowledge of family or …