English Language and Literature Commons^™

Playing With Poetry, Jessica Ashurst

The Utah English Journal

In my experience, the average student claims that they hate poetry. But, what if we try to get them to experience poetry by trying it in various forms instead of just digging for meaning in obscure poetry? This poetry unit encourages them to play with words and author's craft choices. Each poem becomes part of the poetry portfolio they tum in at the end of the unit.

Curiosities Of Street Literature, A Critical Edition, Lauren Maynes, Sydnie Poulsen, Drew Rigby, Sarah Schulzke, Zerin Wetzel, Emi Yamazaki

Student Works

Curiosities of Street Literature, compiled and edited by Charles Hindley, Sr. and published by Reeves and Turner in 1871, is a curiosity in every sense of the word. The volume contains over 200 Victorian broadsides (primarily ballads) reprinted from the cheap Seven Dials versions that flooded the streets of Great Britain before the advent of steam printing. Sold for a penny (or less) by “patterers” who sang the ballads to popular tunes to attract their typically working-class customers, these pieces of ephemera were never meant to be saved or remediated in book format. Street ballads appeared quickly and disappeared …

Editorial Introduction, Kat O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

“I Suppose An Island Dweller Should Expect It To Be So”: The Contradiction And Drama Of Maternity And Islands In Caleb’S Crossing, Shayla Frandsen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Islands have a long tradition of capturing human imagination and functioning as a space that nurtures both magic and mystery. As geographic locations, they seem to avoid easy taxonomy even while behaving easily categorizable: they exist as tourist fantasies separate from everyday landscape even while many operate as an othered land that is still “safe” enough to visit. They are isolated yet capable of nurturing strong cultural identity. They also act as autonomous entities while still being interconnected within larger natural structures, coastlines, and waterways. In these ways and more islands navigate as border spaces of inherent contradiction—contradictions which are …

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse, Virginia Moscetti

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this paper, I argue that the “lighthouse” in Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse operates as a symbol for Mrs. Ramsay’s “self-hood” and for Mr. Ramsay’s obscure desire for sanctuary and domesticity in Mrs. Ramsay. Through this symbolism I further contend that Woolf renders the ambiguous processes associated with self-hood and desire materially legible and, in doing so, demonstrates how metaphor and symbolism reconstitute our material world into representation. Moreover, I argue that we can conceptualize the lighthouse symbolism revolving around and centered in Mrs. Ramsay in terms of T.J. Clark’s “dual figure”; a figure with two symbolic connotations …

Character First: Defining And Methodizing Character Depth, Jeff Mason

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper explores the definition of "depth" in characters and provides a radical new definition, supplemented by an applicable model. By looking into significant literary theory, contemporary works of story, and even elements of mathematics, this paper advances our understanding of characters and how they create meaning in stories.

Marriage And Relationships In Art Spiegelman’S Maus: The Erasure Of The Female Experience, Gretchen K. Picklesimer Kinney

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this paper, the author explores how Vladek’s focus on money, control, and independence creates an imbalance of power in his romantic relationships with Luica, Anja, and Mala. She explores Vladek’s motivations for continuing (or not continuing) these relationships, and how Vladek tries to maintain power and control. She analyzes how Vladek ignores the perspectives and experiences of these women to create his own biased narrative of the relationships.

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Only Way Out Is Through: Community, Death, And The Desacralization Of Trauma In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Josey Gardner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The arrival of George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo as yet another trauma narrative is not surprising. What began as a desire for representation of trauma in media and literature has morphed into an obsession in which trauma is the gold standard. Upon becoming so, trauma is inevitably placed upon a pedestal—the shining object that all other decisions are measured against and based upon. Its placement on this pedestal marks the “sacralization” of trauma. However, Lincoln in the Bardo fills a unique niche in the current portrayals of trauma found in popular media by seeking to minimize its importance …

Genre In Translations Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Madison Schow

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

A comparison of J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, published posthumously in 1975, and Simon Armitage’s 2007 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight reveals that a translator’s choices can affect the genre of a work. Tolkien’s foreignizing translation situates Sir Gawain in the tradition of medievalist fantasy and should be read in the context of twentieth century fantasy, the same genre as Tolkien’s original works. Armitage’s domesticating translation places Sir Gawain in the context of twenty-first century fantasy. An examination of the subgenres represented in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ghost story, thriller, …

Fragments And Foreignness In Claudia Rankine's Citizen, Cutter Mendenhall

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This analysis investigates Claudia Rankine’s redefinition of foreignness as the fragmenting force of microaggressions that splinters the African American identity. This fragmentation has implications that shatter and reconstruct the traditional understanding of the African American self, the source and fallacies of both white and black anger, and what it means to be native to mainstream American society. Ultimately, Rankine asserts that the foreignizing nature of microaggressions is a socially constructed form of oppression. This foreignness breaks the African American identity into easily accessible subhuman caricatures that leave the black identity in a ruptured state of cognitive dissonance. While making coherence …

A Valley Lost To Time, Washington C. Pearce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis delivers a playable and functional module for the 5 th Edition of the World’s Greatest Role-Playing Game. The Critical Introduction uses reader response and performance theory to create a framework for reading role-playing games as literature, explains some of the recent scholarship surrounding role-playing games, and details the creative process and work of the creative thesis.

In A Valley Lost to Time, Adventurers recruited by the Trellin Prime Minister are sent westward, over the Drazlin mountain range, with a mission to discover the fate of a decades-lost failed colony. The route is long and treacherous, passing through a …

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Ghosts’ Stories: Addictive Behaviors And Complicated Grief In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Jc Leishman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

When experiencing the natural motions of the grieving process, some individuals encounter an inability to pass this process by a phenomenon known as complicated grief. To deal with the cyclical trauma this causes, the human mind seeks to engage in addictive behaviors (both substantive and behavioral) that work to artificially and momentarily circumvent grief. This process, as it appears in George Saunders' experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, reveals a depth of commentary on human attachments and grieving processes through the lives and narratives of ghosts found in the bardo.

To Put Her In Her Place: An Interrogation Of Death And Gender In Shakespearean Tragedy, Isabella A. Zentner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This analysis investigates the gendered implications of Shakespearean heroines' deaths. Using Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus as case studies, evidence is drawn from the text. This evidence is then supported by extensive historical research and reference to external critical studies of these tragedies. By identifying the gendered aspects of these heroines’ deaths, one can gain a greater understanding of Shakespeare’s view of female autonomy and power. The deaths Shakespeare inflicts often act as a punishment for the heroines' betrayal of traditional gender roles and forcibly return the heroines to the feminine sphere.

Entropic Interactionist Theory: Reading Social Constructionism Through Thermodynamics And Samuel Beckett, Brie Barron

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This essay aims to explain the breakdown of social constructs through the concept of Entropic Interactionist Theory. EIT argues that it is the nature of creations to be vulnerable to the same forces as their creator, and that social constructions (like identity, for example) are subject to the very same physical forces that give rise to humanity’s creative impulse. At its core, EIT is informed by social constructionism and Nietzschean sociological theory, but it names the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy as the driving force behind societal disintegration. The complication with this theory is that it …

The Walls That Define Us, Kaitlyn C. Nielson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” tells the story of Bartleby, a man living in the lower-class of nineteenth century New York City, who secures a job copying legal documents. Unlike the other employees’ eagerness to work, Bartleby remains behind his “green screen” that demarcates his office space and repeatedly responds “I would prefer not to” when asked to complete a task.

Most readers and critics alike interpret Bartleby’s behavior as a mode of passive resistance against his boss and the larger institutions of Wall Street and capitalism. However, through close reading, I instead …

A Sharply Worded Silence: Silence As The Revelatory Link Between Past And Future In Faithful And Virtuous Night, Noah Hickman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Given the recent celebrity of 2020 Nobel Prize Laurette Louise Glück, the 2014 collection Faithful and Virtuous Night enjoys a relative bounty of reviews and criticism for such a recent collection. Most of these reviews make oblique reference to Glück’s use of silence in the collection, but none forward any serious argument regarding the function of silence in the argument of the collection. This essay argues that Glück relies on silence as a kind of revelation for her speakers, marking the end of a given system of being and the inauguration its supplanting ontology. Within the collection, Glück’s silence represents …

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Kindness In The Bardo: Empathy As A Catalyst For Healing In Victims Of Dissociation, Julia Dorothea Chopelas

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, a host of undead characters find themselves in a spiritual limbo based on the bardo. Although they won’t admit it to themselves, Roger Bevins III and Hans Vollman are most certainly dead. Despite their supernatural makeup as ghosts, Bevins and Vollman bear strong psychological resonance with the living: they are human, heartbroken, and lost. For the ghosts of Oak Hills Cemetery, the inefficient coping mechanism of dissociation perpetuates their afterlife imprisonment in the bardo. Bevins and Vollman suffer from a variety of dissociative symptoms, their minds’ psychological defense against the trauma that has …

Assimilation In The United States: Semitism And Asian Americanism, Megan Gibson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’S And Fitzgerald’S Portrayals Of Mental Illness, Cryslin A. Ledbetter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Cryslin Ledbetter's essay, "How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’s and Fitzgerald’s Portrayals of Mental Illness" examines the similarities and differences between Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Through a careful comparison of male and female writers, the author analyzes defining factors that effect the final product of each novel.

"I Don't Believe One-Half Of It Myself": The Role Of Folk Groups In Supernatural Legend Interpretation, Melanie Kimball

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A range of interpretations can characterize supernatural legends as religious or non-religious—or somewhere in between. Religious audiences quickly categorize supernatural religious legends as such, but they hesitate when interpreting supernatural non-religious legends and supply multiple interpretations. Folk group paradigms influence these interpretations, and a variety of factors in turn influence which paradigms are used. The most important of these factors is a hierarchy of folk groups, which each individual has uniquely created and to which they refer when interpreting stories and experiences. When the most important of these folk groups fails to fully interpret a narrative, individuals will use folk …

“I—I Can’T Talk About Things”: The Tragedy Of Post-Wwii Civilian Masculinity In Agatha Christie’S Taken At The Flood, Rebekah Olsen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the ways in which Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood serves to illustrate the fragility and ultimate destabilization of masculinity immediately following WWII. Christie illustrates this break by comparing two men, David Hunter and Rowley Cloade who represent types of men in Britain’s postwar landscape. Throughout the text, David Hunter is framed as a dangerous and dreadful young man, serving as a representation of post-war fears about demobbed soldiers attacking young women. However, the story really revolves around the civilian trauma that Rowley Cloade has sustained through his wartime role as a farmer, which comes from repression …

“The Only Story I’Ll Be Able To Tell”: An Analysis Of Shame And Queer Identity In Gothic American Campus Novels, Aubrey Dickens

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes shame and queerness in contemporary gothic American campus novels, also known as “dark academia” novels. The thesis looks specifically at the novels The Secret History by Donna Tartt, published in 1992 and considered to be the first dark academia novel, and Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas, published in 2020 and a more modern adaptation on the subgenre. The two novels deal explicitly with how shame constitutes identity, specifically in regards to individuals who are depicted as queer or outside of heteronormative expectations of sexuality. Queerness in the context of this paper is defined as any portrayal of …

Practices For Professional Learning When Composing Teaching Materials, Jessica Rivera-Mueller

The Utah English Journal

As teachers, we know that reflection is essential for professional learning. However, it can be challenging to find time to engage in reflective experiences that prompt meaningful learning, especially in this historical moment. For many of us, time has become increasingly scarce during the past two years as we have navigated new and uncertain teaching conditions. Like many teachers, I had to spend additional time creating teaching materials and learning experiences for delivery in new and multiple contexts. I spent the early months of the pandemic just keeping up with daily teaching demands-even though I value the activity of reflection. …

Scary Character And Setting Vignettes, Melissa Heaton

The Utah English Journal

Most students know how to write stories, but their stories are often void of description and life. Instead of my students writing whole narratives, I have them focus their mental binoculars by writing snippets of stories that I call Scary Character and Setting Vignettes.

Book Review: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain In A Digital World, Leah Day

The Utah English Journal

Decades ago, Jeff Goldblum delivered some of the greatest wisdom of our time in his iconic role as Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park. Chastising the myopic man responsible for bringing back dinosaurs, he explains, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, that you didn't stop to think if they should." As our schools race toward 1: 1 student/ device ratios and parents give tablets and smartphones to their kids at younger and younger ages, it's hard to deny that we might be as reckless as those darn dino lovers. Maryanne Wolf is not a doomsdayer or a luddite, …

Book Review: Where I End And You Begin, Michelle Ritter

The Utah English Journal

Ezra Slevin is a typical teenager who has crushing insomnia, an identity crisis, and a crush on Imogen - a girl who barely knows he exists. Wynonna Jones is Imogen's overprotective best friend who has a crush on his best friend, Holden, and who has made it her mission to torment Ezra for as long as he can remember. To ramp up the teenage angst, Ezra has been working up the courage to ask Imogen to prom but can't even seem to talk in her presence.