English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Natural-Supernatural Solway, Fiona Stafford

Studies in Scottish Literature

Explores, through discussion of Burns's letters from Annan Water on the Solway, and in his poems, Burns's treatment of the supernatural, specifically his references to treatment of Kelpies, the mythical Scottish waterhorses seen in the destructive force of Solway tides and storms, carrying this forward to the work of Allan Cunningham, including his story “Judith Macrone, the Prophetess” (1821) and his poem "The Mermaid of Galloway" (1810).

Thomas Mcgrugar’S ‘Letters Of Zeno’: Patriotic Print & Constitutional Improvement In The Caledonian Mercury, 1782-1783, Alex Benchimol

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses a series of five newspaper letters by Thomas McGrugar (1751-1810), published in an Edinburgh newspaper the Caledonian Mercury, which urged increased representation of the Scottish burghs in the U.K. parliament, and argues that in them McGrugar used print culture to create an alternative political forum to existing political structures.

Boswell’S 'The Cub' And The Shadow Of Augustan Satire, Robert G. Walker

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reassesses James Boswell's satiric poem, and self-portrait, "The Cub" (1762), and Boswell's known affinity for the writings of Sterne, arguing for a wider satiric context in early Augustan satiric poetry, in Pope and especially Swift, and analysing the poem's multiple shifts of satiric viewpoint and allusion.

The Sobieski Stuarts And The Royal Lady’S Magazine: Some Newly-Attributed Tales, Craig Buchanan

Studies in Scottish Literature

Identifies and describes19 previously unrecorded periodical tales, some in multiple parts, contributed to the Royal Lady's Magazine in 1831-34, by the prolific early Victorian Stuart pretenders John and Charles Sobieski Stuart, providing evidence for the attributions and the brothers' pen-names, and quadrupling their known literary output.

David Lindsay And The Shape Of Inner Being, Eric Wills

Studies in Scottish Literature

Explores the influence of German Idealist philosophy, specifically Nietzsche and Hegel, in the work of the 20th century Scottish writer David Lindsay (1876-1945), now best-known for his novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) with primary attention to the role and character of symbolic imagery in Lindsay's stories, focusing on his novels Sphinx (1923) and Devil’s Tor (1932), and countering the broadly gnostic worldview sometimes attributed to him.

'I'M In Full Control': Muriel Spark's The Finishing School, Robert E. Hosmer

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the special issues for reviewers treating an author's late work, analyzes Muriel's Spark's last novel, The Finishing School (2004) and its reception, and draws on correspondence in the Spark archives at the National Library of Scotland to document Spark's firm control over the text of her work.

Thomas Campbell, Joanna Baillie, And The New Monthly Magazine, Amy Wilcockson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reports and transcribes (with illustration) a previously-unpublished letter dated December 2, 1820, to the Scottish poet and dramatist Joanna Baillie from Thomas Campbell, writing as the incoming editor of Colburn's New Monthly Magazine; discusses his role as editor, noting that Baillie's poem "To a Child" appeared in the next issue (and was reciprocated by Campbell's "To a Rainbow" in an anthology Baillie edited in 1823); and places the letter in the context of Campbell's busy professional and fraught family life.

Thomas Campbell’S Epigram On The American Flag And Abolitionist Oratory: Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, And William Lloyd Garrison, Patrick Scott, Michael C. Weisenburg

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes the background to a brief epigram written in 1836 by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell about the American flag and American slavery, which circulated widely in contemporary newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, and discusses the use made of Campbell's epigram over the next decades by three leading American anti-slavery orators, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison. The contemporary impact of the epigram is illustrated by an early non-authorial transcript recently acquired for the G. Ross Roy Collection.

Serious Play On The Fringes Of Empire: Zoë Wicomb, Thomas Pringle, And The Transnational Author, Simon Lewis

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the novel Still Life (2020) by the Scottish/South African writer Zoë Wicomb, which portrays a contemporary novelist researching the life and significance of the Scottish/South African poet Thomas Pringle (1789-1834) through an imaginative collaboration with an early 20th century bellelettristic biographer (referencing Virginia Woolf's imaginative biography Orlando) and with the intervention of two African figures Pringle believed himself to have liberated, the West Indian ex-slave Mary Prince (c. 1788-1833) and Hinza, the Tswana boy memorialized in one of Pringle's best-known South African poems, suggesting that Wicomb's novel (and her oeuvre) present an important transnational version of authorial identity …

Moulding A Persona: The Life And Letters Of William Sharp And Fiona Macleod, Michael Shaw

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses William F. Halloran's three-volume collected Life and Letters of the Scottish poet and critic William Sharp (1855-1905) and his literary alter ego “Fiona Macleod,” with primary attention to the third and most recent volume and to its significance for students of Scottish literature and the fin-de-siecle.

Contributors To Ssl 47.1

Studies in Scottish Literature

Brief biographical notes on contributors to the current issue of the journal.

Book Review: Understanding Alice Walker, Cindy E. Garcia-Rivas

South Carolina Libraries

Cindy Garcia-Rivas reviews Understanding Alice Walker, written by Thadious M. Davis.

Postcapitalist Desert Visions From Earth To Anarres, David J. Goff

Theses and Dissertations

Human industrial and economic activity around the world—happening either directly in the global North (recall the coal-choked London of Dickens) or, increasingly, in (un)developing nations of the global South because of the North’s demand— has burned and pumped so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that climate has noticeably changed even over the span of a single generation. As long as the world and its people are held in the clutches of the hegemonic capitalist politico-economic system, the environment will continue to degrade, and so will life for all the people of Earth, especially those most vulnerable. …

Reimagining Prince Hall: Race, Freemasonry, And Material Culture In Boston, 1775-1870, Sueanna Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation revisits the subject of early black freemasonry and draws upon a new wealth of archival material to recontextualize it through the lens of social history and print and material culture. This study explores the way that freemasonry operated in the daily lives of black masons and presents a new social history of the formation of Boston’s first black masonic lodge. Turning specifically to print and material culture, it traces the way that the earliest black masons engaged in the broader print and material culture of the society, thus promoting interracial engagement. This study also traces how the Prince …

Visiting Jane: Jane Austen, Fan Culture, And Literary Tourism, Brianna Surratt

Senior Theses

People have been visiting sites associated with Jane Austen for two centuries now, and there have been fans of her work for even longer. Austen inspires unique devotion among her fans for an author about whose life we know very little. Furthermore, these fans have been fighting among themselves for as long as fans have existed over who loves her the right way – the academics or the amateurs? This work explores that unique fan culture in detail through the lens of literary tourism, going into detail about two sites in particular – Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England, and …

Creation’S Face In Moby-Dick, Richard Jackson Guignard Wells

Theses and Dissertations

In 1973, Gerhard T. Alexis published “Two Footnotes on a Faceless Whale” (AN&Q, vol. 11, pp. 99-100) to point out how Melville was alluding to an exchange between Yahweh and Moses in Exodus 33 during a commentary by Ishmael in Chapter 86 “The Tail” of Moby-Dick (1851). By using Ishmael’s allusion to the facelessness of Yahweh in relation to his hand in Exodus 33 as a window, I meditate on the relationship between the hand and face images more properly to propose how they are functioning in Melville’s epic in regard to the phenomenon of veiling. The corporeal body in …

“Where Beauty And Anguish Had Contended”: Eden, Gender, And Creativity In Melville’S Pierre, Kersey Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

Much critical interest regarding incest in Pierre has been focused horizontally on the Glendinning family tree, in terms of the brother-sister relationship forged between Pierre Glendinning and Isabel Banford. But this thesis evaluates incest within Melville’s scheme of creativity and gender in the novel. As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have established, to author a text is to become owner of its subjects—a father of one’s “brain-children” (Gilbert and Gubar 7). So, as Pierre writes Isabel into the Glendinning name, the incestuous relationship between Pierre and Isabel may be viewed through the lens of a father-daughter dynamic between the …

“Everything Will Be As It Is Now, Just A Little Different”: Affectively Imagining Alternative Worlds In Ben Lerner’S 10:04, Grace Riley

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most crucial concerns of cultural criticism today is the question of how to grapple with what Mark Fisher refers to as the “malaise” of the present; the pervasive belief that capitalism is the only viable option, that there is no alternative ‘other.’ However, there remains a vibrant scholarship committed to resisting such pessimism that theorizes the possibility of alternative, utopian futures that lie athwart the apocalyptic present. This thesis explores the question of how one begins to imagine such alternative futures from within a capitalist order that constantly works to pre-emptively subsume any possibilities of resistance. Art …

Sacrificial Bodies And Hegemonic Femininity: The Creation Of The Heroine In The Twilight, The Hunger Games, & Divergent Series, Tiffany R. Boyles

Senior Theses

Within this thesis, I analyze The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games Trilogy, and The Divergent Trilogy and how the portrayal and treatment of the protagonists’ bodies within these texts uphold tenets of white, hegemonic femininity. I discuss first how their bodies are feminized, in part by their whiteness and smallness, but also through the comparison to the bodies of male characters. While the men are strong and physically capable, the protagonists are weak and physically incapable. As a result, the protagonists cannot act in the way a traditional hero might, using offensive action for self-preservation. Instead, the protagonists …

Transgressive Migrations: Gender Roles, Space, And Place In American Novels, 1900-1999, Selena Gail Larkin

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine how gender roles combine with changes in space and place to affect women protagonists in twentieth-century American literature. I argue that as these characters migrate, the (self-)perception of their identities shift. Particularly, their outward performances as well as their internal awareness change. My analysis concentrates on the novel genre because of specific characteristics—plot, characterization, and narration. The chosen literary works on which I focus are The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Quicksand (1928), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), The Dollmaker (1954), and Under the Feet of Jesus (1996).

Concepts that I …

“What Can There Be But Witchcraft?”: History, Women, And Witches In Sylvia Townsend Warner’S Lolly Willowes And Graham Swift’S Waterland, Thomas Bedenbaugh

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguous relationship between history, women and witchcraft in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Graham Swift’s Waterland foregrounds the constructedness of historical narratives while also recuperating women’s marginalized positions within history. Both novels link historical narratives with the received ideas upon which norms of gender, sexuality, and the nation are constructed. In recognizing this, both authors challenge the monolithic male gaze of history, revealing it to be a story which, totalizing as it may be, is not in fact “natural.” While many women in both novels are configured as haunting figures - women who confuse the boundary separation presence …

Sanctuary Poetics And Contemporary Us Culture, Alex Howerton

Theses and Dissertations

Sanctuary Poetics and Contemporary US Culture argues that contemporary poets of color create spaces of safety, relation, and justice through the act of writing as resistance itself. Sanctuary Poetics discusses poetry responding to the myriad crises of our contemporary moment, and considers how poets, through formal techniques such as ekphrasis or synecdoche, envision moments of shelter and connection that provide necessary relief to imperiled populations. I introduce the idea of a sanctuary poetics through Amanda Gorman’s recent poem “The Hill We Climb,” performed at Joseph Biden’s inauguration. The first chapter covers citizenship and the work of the Undocupoets, a multiracial …

“Power And The Orientations Of Resistance In Twentieth-Century American Literature”, Victoria Eleanor Chandler

Theses and Dissertations

"Power and the Orientations of Resistance in Twentieth-Century American Literature” analyzes the intersections of space, power, and the possibility for alternatives to power structures. I argue that social power circumscribes the spatial possibilities of normative and non-normative subjectivities. In particular, power curtails the ability of marginalized subjects (such as women, queer people, and people of color) to forge alternatives to the current social order. In dialogue with recent scholars of race studies, feminism, and queer theory, this project reveals how dominated subjects employ their quotidian spaces as sites of resistance and survival. The literature I examine in this dissertation identifies …

Southern United States English As A Rhetorical Device In The Field Of Marketing: A Study And Implications For Business Writing Pedagogy, Megan Jacklynn Busch

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation project, I examine how professionals in the South use their Southern United States English (SUSE) to communicate in business situations. My goals are to (1) understand how regional language variety rhetorically shapes writtenprofessional communication and (2) establish a pedagogical framework for business writing that attunes to the nuances of language variation in the workplace. I hypothesize that speakers of SUSE implement regional dialects to form interpersonal business connections and build ethos and that SUSE has a significant rhetorical role to place in professional communications. To test this hypothesis, I develop a hybrid method of interviewing, discourse analysis, …

Margaret Atwood’S The Testaments As A Dystopian Fairy Tale, Karla-Claudia Csürös

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 23, 2021, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Contents, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Peace, Love And War: Venus As A Pacifist, Warmonger, And Powerful Woman In Venus And Adonis And The Faerie Queene, Maia J. Janssen

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Andersen’S Fairy Tales And The Bildungsroman, Joseph Torres

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.