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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Concerning The Perceptive Gaze: The Impact Of Vision Theories On Late Nineteenth-Century Victorian Literature, Lindsay Rushworth May 2019

Concerning The Perceptive Gaze: The Impact Of Vision Theories On Late Nineteenth-Century Victorian Literature, Lindsay Rushworth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines two specific interventions in vision theory—namely, Herbert Spencer's theory of organic memory, which he developed by way of Lamarckian genetics and Darwinian evolution in A System of Synthetic Philosophy (1864), and the Aesthetic Movement (1870s–1890s), famously articulated by Walter Pater in The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873 and 1893). I explore the impact of these theories on late nineteenth-century fiction, focusing on two novels: Thomas Hardy's Two on a Tower (1882) and Edith Johnstone's A Sunless Heart (1894). These two authors' texts engage with scientific and aesthetic visual theories to demonstrate their anxieties concerning the …


The Effect Of Speech Elicitation Method On Second Language Phonemic Accuracy, Nicole Carrasquel Jan 2017

The Effect Of Speech Elicitation Method On Second Language Phonemic Accuracy, Nicole Carrasquel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study, a One-Group Posttest-Only Repeated-Measures Design, examined the effect of speech elicitation method on second language (L2) phonemic accuracy of high functional load initial phonemes found in frequently occurring nouns in American English. This effect was further analyzed by including the variable of first language (L1) to determine if L1 moderated any effects found. The data consisted of audio recordings of 61 adult English learners (ELs) enrolled in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses at a large, public, post-secondary institution in the United States. Phonemic accuracy was judged by two independent raters as either approximating a standard American …


Bluegrass, Bildung, And Blueprints: The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come As An Appalachian Bildungsroman, Leona Shoemaker Jan 2015

Bluegrass, Bildung, And Blueprints: The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come As An Appalachian Bildungsroman, Leona Shoemaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come takes as its backdrop the American Civil War, as the author, John Fox, Jr., champions Kentucky's social development during the Progressive Era. Although often criticized for capitalizing on his propagation of regional stereotypes, I argue that the structure of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come is much more problematic than that. Recognizing the Bildungsroman as a vehicle for cultural and social critique in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century writing, this project offers an in-depth literary analysis of John Fox, Jr.'s novel, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, in which I contend the story itself is, …


Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans Jan 2012

Genetic Engineering As Literary Praxis: A Study In Contemporary Literature, Taylor Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood – originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis – Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of …


The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson Jan 2012

The Machine, The Victim, And The Third Thing: Navigating The Gender Spectrum In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake And The Year Of The Flood, Lindsay Mccoy Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: "People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing." I assert that Atwood depicts this "third thing" through her characters who navigate between the binaries of "masculine" and "feminine" in a third realm of gender. As the female characters—regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior—engage in a quest for agency, …


The Sacrament Of Violence: Myth And War In C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, Tanya Engelhardt Jan 2012

The Sacrament Of Violence: Myth And War In C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, Tanya Engelhardt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My primary aim for this study is to illuminate the Ransom trilogy's inherent psychological and spiritual themes, as well as demonstrate how these themes clarify Lewis's philosophical and political goals for the text. Specifically, by investigating Lewis's mythic imagery and suffering motifs in light of psychoanalytic and theological literary criticisms, I elucidate the reasoning behind Lewis's unique—and at times, horrific—portrayal of fear, violence, and death. I also investigate how Lewis integrates his theology with the horrors of personal and intrapersonal suffering, as well as how he utilizes imagination and myth to explicate the practical (or political) implications of his theodicy. …


Exiled As The Ship Itself: Liminality And Transnational Identity In Malcolm Lowry's Ultramarine, Under The Volcano, And Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, Spencer Tricker Jan 2012

Exiled As The Ship Itself: Liminality And Transnational Identity In Malcolm Lowry's Ultramarine, Under The Volcano, And Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, Spencer Tricker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The themes of empire, nationality, and self-imposed exile constitute underexplored topics in critical discussions of modernist author Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957). Until recently, most academic studies have approached his work from biographical, mythological, and psychoanalytic perspectives. While a few studies have performed historical readings of his novels, such investigations tend, primarily, to focus on his engagement with western literary and theoretical movements of the early twentieth century. Of the few studies that address the cross-cultural reach of his novels, most are limited to discussions of Mexican history and traditions, thus prioritizing a specific geographical region when they might, instead, illuminate the …


Harvesting The Seeds Of Early American Human And Nonhuman Animal Relationships In William Bartram's Travels, The Travel Diary Of Elizabeth House Trist, And Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, Leslie Blake Vives Jan 2012

Harvesting The Seeds Of Early American Human And Nonhuman Animal Relationships In William Bartram's Travels, The Travel Diary Of Elizabeth House Trist, And Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, Leslie Blake Vives

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses ecofeminist and human-animal studies lenses to explore human animal and nonhuman animal relations in early America. Most ecocritical studies of American literature begin with nineteenth-century writers. This project, however, suggests that drawing on ecofeminist theories with a human-animal studies approach sheds light on eighteenth-century texts as well. Early American naturalist travel writing offers a site replete with human and nonhuman encounters. Specifically, naturalist William Bartram's travel journal features interactions with animals in the southern colonial American frontier. Amateur naturalist Elizabeth House Trist's travel diary includes interactions with frontier and domestic animals. Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, a conduct …


A Laudable Ambition Fired Her Soul Conduct Fiction Helps Define Republican Womanhood, Female Communities, And Women's Education In The Works Of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, And Susanna Haswell Rowson, Jessica Crystal Workman Jan 2011

A Laudable Ambition Fired Her Soul Conduct Fiction Helps Define Republican Womanhood, Female Communities, And Women's Education In The Works Of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, And Susanna Haswell Rowson, Jessica Crystal Workman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the major works of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susanna Haswell Rowson, three major writers of the 1790s whose writing responds to the ideologies of the early American Republic. I suggest that Murray, Foster, and Rowson write conduct fiction which responds to the changing attitudes toward women and education after the American Revolution. Using fiction, these authors comment on the republican woman, the need for women’s education, and the necessity for women to gather in communities for support. Despite the prevailing notion that reading too many novels would corrupt young women, Judith Sargent Murray’s novella, …


The Lady Of The Lake And Chivalry In The Lancelot-Grail Cycle And Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, Amanda Marie Ewoldt Jan 2011

The Lady Of The Lake And Chivalry In The Lancelot-Grail Cycle And Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, Amanda Marie Ewoldt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Lady of the Lake as an active chivalric player in the thirteenth century Lancelot-Grail Cycle (also known as the Prose Lancelot) and in Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century Le Morte Darthur. To study the many codes of chivalry, particularly in regard to women, I use two popular chivalric handbooks from the Middle Ages: Ramon Lull's Book of Knighthood and Chivalry, Geoffroi de Charny'sKnight's Own Book of Chivalry. Traditionally, the roles of women in medieval chivalry are passive, and female characters are depicted as objects to win or to inspire knights to greatness. The Lady of the Lake, I …


Adventures Of Kody A Children's Visual Storybook And Interactive Web Site, Matthew L. Walsh Jan 2010

Adventures Of Kody A Children's Visual Storybook And Interactive Web Site, Matthew L. Walsh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to experience unconditional love, prejudices must be exposed and overcome. People often meet others with a disability or handicap and unknowingly treat these individuals negatively. As a middle school teacher, I have often witnessed students behaving cruelly towards those that are different. When my dog became a paraplegic I was inspired to develop a project to assist young readers in the development of conscientious actions towards individuals with disabilities. This document chronicles the development, procedures, and outcomes of the process behind that artistic endeavor. The artistic elements of this thesis project are a written children's storybook and an …


Sisterhood Articulates A New Definition Of Moral Female Identity: Jane Austen's Adaptation Of The Eighteenth-Century Tradition, Katherine Curtis Jan 2010

Sisterhood Articulates A New Definition Of Moral Female Identity: Jane Austen's Adaptation Of The Eighteenth-Century Tradition, Katherine Curtis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing at a moment of ideological crisis between individualism and hierarchical society, Jane Austen asserts a definition of moral behavior and female identity that mediates the two value systems. I argue that Austen most effectively articulates her belief in women's moral autonomy and social responsibility in her novels through her portrayal of sisterhood. Austen reshapes the stereotype of sisters and female friendships as dangerous found in her domestic novel predecessors. While recognizing women's social vulnerability, which endangers female friendship and turns it into a site of competition, Austen urges the morality of selflessly embracing sisterhood anyway. An Austen heroine must …


A Screen Of One's Own The Tpec And Feminist Technological Textuality In The 21st Century, Amy J. Barnickel Jan 2010

A Screen Of One's Own The Tpec And Feminist Technological Textuality In The 21st Century, Amy J. Barnickel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I analyze the 20th century text, A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf (2005), and I engage with Woolf's concept of a woman's need for a room of her own in which she can be free to think for herself, study, write, or pursue other interests away from the oppression of patriarchal societal expectations and demands. Through library-based research, I identify four screens in Woolf's work through which she viewed and critiqued culture, and I use these screens to reconceptualize "a room of one's own" in 21st Century terms. I determine that the new "room" is …


Bloudy Tygrisses: Murderous Women In Early Modern English Drama And Popular Literature, Alexandra Hill Jan 2009

Bloudy Tygrisses: Murderous Women In Early Modern English Drama And Popular Literature, Alexandra Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines artistic and literary images of murderous women in popular print published in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. The construction of murderous women in criminal narratives, published between 1558 and 1625 in pamphlet, ballad, and play form, is examined in the context of contemporary historical records and cultural discourse. Chapter One features a literature review of the topic in recent scholarship. Chapter Two, comprised of two subsections, discusses representations of early modern women in contemporary literature and criminal archives. The subsections in Chapter Two examine early modern treatises, sermons, and essays concerning the nature of women, the roles and …


Representations Of The Catholic Inquisition In Two Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novels: Punishment And Rehabilitation In Matthew Lewis' The Monk And Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, Jarad Fennell Jan 2007

Representations Of The Catholic Inquisition In Two Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novels: Punishment And Rehabilitation In Matthew Lewis' The Monk And Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, Jarad Fennell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how guilt and shame act as engines of social control in two Gothic narratives of the 1790s, how they tie into the terror and horror modes of the genre, and how they give rise to two distinct narrative models, one centered on punishment and the other on rehabilitation. The premise of the paper is that both Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian harness radically different emotional responses, one that demands the punishment of the aberrant individual and the other that reveres the reformative power of domestic felicity. The …


Eyes In The Text: Surveying The Ocular Aesthetic In Pat Barker's War Trilogy, James Hammond Jan 2005

Eyes In The Text: Surveying The Ocular Aesthetic In Pat Barker's War Trilogy, James Hammond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1991, British novelist Patricia Barker published Regeneration, the first of three novels that portrayed the exploits of both factual and fictional characters during the darkest days of WWI. Barker's Eye in the Door (1993), followed by The Ghost Road (1995) for which she won the Booker Prize for Fiction, completed the series that explored the effects of combat on the human psyche. What emerges as a dominant feature of Barker's war novels is her depiction of the ocular sense. Reminiscent of Orwellianism, Barker's texts contain a seemingly ubiquitous ocular presence. For example, neurasthenic patients are scrutinized by army psychiatrists, …