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Enter Invisible: Atavistic Dualism In Shakespeare, Donne, And Milton, Andrew Scott
Enter Invisible: Atavistic Dualism In Shakespeare, Donne, And Milton, Andrew Scott
Master’s Theses
This thesis explores the different ways in which either dualistic or monistic points of view are represented in select works of William Shakespeare, John Donne, and John Milton. I am relying principally on the broad definition of dualism Ioan Couliano utilizes in his book The Tree of Gnosis. Per Couliano, dualism is not necessarily a discrete tenet of a systematized belief; rather, he means by the word to indicate an intellectual tendency toward splitting certain complex ideas—body and soul, God and man, evil and its opposite, etc.—into separate, sometimes opposing parts. This in contrast to monism, which brings into …
Writing The Womb, Writing The Wound: The Function Of Vulnerability In Autotheory, Madison Weaver
Writing The Womb, Writing The Wound: The Function Of Vulnerability In Autotheory, Madison Weaver
Master’s Theses
This thesis frames autotheory, a genre and practice of writing based in autobiographical and theoretical work, in the feminist genealogies established by Lauren Fournier and as a study in vulnerability. I revisit and reconsider Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of my Name (1982) and Cherríe Moraga’s Waiting in the Wings: A Portrait of Queer Motherhood (1997) in terms of contemporary conversation on autotheory that center on Nelson’s popular memoir The Argonauts (2015), arguing that Lorde, Moraga, and Nelson practice autotheory by writing through physical and metaphorical wounds. This thesis considers how vulnerability is tied to the autotheoretical impulse by …
Fantastical Worlds And The Act Of Reading In Peter And Wendy, The Chronicles Of Narnia, And Harry Potter, Grace Monroe
Fantastical Worlds And The Act Of Reading In Peter And Wendy, The Chronicles Of Narnia, And Harry Potter, Grace Monroe
Master’s Theses
My thesis explores the relationship between the child reader and the protagonist within fantasy children’s literature. By examining the experience of the protagonist in the text, I am complicating the notion of escapism in children’s literature and offering a new way to look at how children read. Using narrative theory and Freud’s fort-da, I detail how the events within a novel, the danger and catharsis within the plot, show how both the protagonist and the reader use narrative to better understand and cope with anxieties in their worlds. The novels and series that I discuss, Peter and Wendy (1911), …
Existential Reactions To Modernity: An Analysis Of Lovecraft's Nihilistic Cosmicism & Dostoevsky's Christian Existentialism, Olivia Maikisch
Existential Reactions To Modernity: An Analysis Of Lovecraft's Nihilistic Cosmicism & Dostoevsky's Christian Existentialism, Olivia Maikisch
Master’s Theses
Literary representations of existentialism demonstrate the movement’s efficacy as a tool for ideological and personal exploration, particularly as it pertains to issues of identity-formation, the Other, and rising concerns about modernized life. Despite their differences in genre, location, and time period, both H.P. Lovecraft and Fyodor Dostoevsky in their fiction greatly emphasize facets of existentialism as a response to their cultural concerns about modernity. They highlight complex relationships between socio-political concerns, philosophy, and literature in their different uses of existentialist themes. This study places both Dostoevsky’s Christian existentialism and Lovecraft’s nihilistic cosmicism within the existing spectrum of existential thought. The …