English Language and Literature Commons^™

Maria Susanna Cummins' London Letters: April 1860, Heidi Lm Jacobs

Heidi LM Jacobs

Within scholarship on Maria Susanna Cummins (1827-1866), there are two recurrent phrases: "author of the best-selling novel The Lamplighter" and "little is known about her life." Despite the early contextualization of Cummins by various scholars, most of the recent critical work on Cummins has centered on her first and best-known novel, The Lamplighter (1854). Very little critical attention has been paid to Cummins's life, her career as a publishing author, her lesser known novels, her periodical publications, and her archived letters. Written in the weeks preceding the publication in the United States and Britain of her third novel, El …

What Did He Just Say? Did She Really Just Say That?: Vignettes Of Racism In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen: An American Lyric, Susan Ayres

Susan Ayres

No abstract provided.

Claudia Rankine And The Poetry Of Protest, Susan Ayres

Susan Ayres

No abstract provided.

Hogging The Limelight: The Queen's Wake And The Rise Of Celebrity Authorship, Jason Goldsmith

Jason Goldsmith

In the following essay, Goldsmith argues that The Queen's Wake is commentary on the literary name branding inaugurated by the periodical culture of Hogg's day. For Goldsmith, the "crisis of reception" staged in the poem--sixteenth-century provincial bards in a first encounter with royal spectacle--is not unlike the uneasy celebrity Hogg experienced as the Ettrick Shepherd of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.

Courtroom And Classroom Across The Curriculum: The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Jason Goldsmith

Jason Goldsmith

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde draws on Robert Louis Stevensons intimate knowledge of Victorian legal culture knowledge Stevenson acquired while studying law at the University of Edinburgh. (Although he was called to the Scottish bar in 1875, he abandoned the legal profession and never practiced it.) Its trace can be found in the work's title, main characters, and narrative structure: the title suggests a legal action; Mr. Utterson is the legal representative of Henry Jekyll, who is himself both a doctor of law (LLD) and a doctor of Civil laws (DCL); and the final two chapters …

Fictional Journalists: News Work In American Novels, Bonnie Brennen

Bonnie Brennen

No abstract provided.

Recent Research And Publications On Plain Language, Russell Willerton

Russell Willerton

Profiles Of Plain-Language Practice, Russell Willerton

Russell Willerton

John Clare And The Art Of Politics, Jason Goldsmith

Jason Goldsmith

Jason Goldsmith's contribution to Volume 30 of the John Clare Society Journal. Article focuses on Clares poem, 'Don Juan' and its place in the University classroom.

Diversifying Shakespeare, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

Immersion In Esl Culture: Oral Output Through Acting, Chamkaur Gill

Chamkaur Gill

Many ESL learners exhibit diffidence in situations where they are required to speak in English. They retreat into their shells because of the threat of embarrassment and a loss of face which are consequences of making errors in grammar and pronunciation. One effective method of inducing them to speak is drama. By putting them in imaginary situations and creating make-believe identities, teachers can give them incentives to participate in oral interaction, thereby increasing the quantity of speech produced and providing increased practice in speaking in the target language. Classroom activities imbued with drama are often enjoyable and evidence indicates that …

Mary Of Nemmigen, With Its Dutch Analogue Mariken Van Nieumeghen, Clifford Davidson, Ton Broos, Martin Walsh

Clifford Davidson

Conquering A Wilderness: Destruction And Development On The Great Plains In Mari Sandoz's Old Jules, Lisa Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

Jules Ami Sandoz came to America in 1881 at the age of 22. Following a three-year sojourn in northeastern Nebraska, he headed further west, settling in the recently surveyed region northwest of the Nebraska Sandhills. In Old Jules, the biography of her pioneer father, Mari Sandoz presented a character filled with conflicts and contradictions. Pitted against Jules's dynamic vision of community growth was his self-centered and destructive nature. Well aware of the more unsavory qualities exhibited by her father. Sandoz nonetheless maintained that he and others like him were necessary to the development of the West. This recognition did not …

Idleness Working: The Discourse Of Love's Labor From Ovid Through Chaucer And Gower, Gregory Sadlek

Gregory M Sadlek

Inspired by the critical theories of M. M. Bakhtin, Idleness Working is a groundbreaking study of key works in the Western literature of love from Classical Rome to the late Middle Ages. The study focuses on the evolution of the ideologically-saturated discourse of love's labor contained in these works and thus explores them in the context of ancient and medieval theories of labor and leisure, which themselves are seen to evolve through the course of Western history. What emerges from this study is a fresh appreciation and deepened understanding of such well-known classics of love literature as Ovid's Ars amatoria …

“Turning To The Stranger In Shakespeare’S Henry V”, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

This collection is currently under contract with MLA. With a twenty-first century American student demographic in mind, I aim to interrogate how attention to the negotiation of alterity in Henry V registers Shakespeare’s keen attention to the role of the immigrant/alien/stranger/other in the nation-building enterprise of the play, and also how it reveals the play’s rich cultural currency for today’s underrepresented students, whose own epistemological standpoints are informed by issues of immigration, xenophobia, and the imagined value of homogeneity.

Spenser And The Human, Ayesha Ramachandran, Melissa Sanchez

Ayesha Ramachandran

A special issue of Spenser Studies, guest edited with Melissa E. Sanchez. Forthcoming in 2016.