English Language and Literature Commons^™

Inoculant To Influence: Cultivating Critical Citizenship By Foregrounding Ontology Through Kenneth Burke And Walter Fisher’S Rhetorical Frameworks, Mark Griffin

English Department Theses

Scholars interested in exploring the potency of the writing modality of critical pedagogy for molding students into proactive citizens will find the integration of Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism and Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm instrumental, offering tools essential for cultivating a rhetorical awareness adept at navigating narratives in the 21st century. Synthesizing Burke’s rhetorical dialectic between the nature of reality and our understanding of it with Fisher’s concept that the human condition is a narrative condition yields insights into the critical writing process. This integration fosters a rhetorical awareness, serving as an inoculant to influence, countering the prevailing persuasive elements within today’s …

Conceptualizing First-Year Writing Agency: The Transfer-Rhetorical Genre-Voice Triad As An Enactment Of Rhetorical Agency, Amanda Kerr

English Department Theses

In First-Year Composition, Teaching for Transfer is an evidence-based pedagogy that teaches students to write across contexts, a goal specified in the WPA Outcomes Statements for First-Year Composition (3.0). However, the implicit relationships shared between Teaching for Transfer, expressivism, and Rhetorical Genre Studies pedagogies are an underexplored area in the teaching of first-year composition. Given the presence of an implicit relationship between transfer, proficiency in rhetorical genres, and student voice in the WPA Outcomes, this thesis defines a dynamic interrelationship between pedagogies of transfer, expressivism, and Rhetorical Genre Studies. In an effort to foreground a comprehensive first-year composition pedagogy that …

Neither Meek Nor Docile: An Analysis Of Margaret Hale And Jane Eyre In Elizabeth Gaskell’S North And South And Charlotte Brontë’S Jane Eyre, Mckell Ferguson

English Department Theses

The Victorian period was an era of societal change in Great Britain. Viewing gender in hetero- and CIS- normative terms, the “woman question” – what to do with unmarried women – became a topic that was widely debated. Activists such as Barbara Leigh Smith, Francis Power Cobbe and Josephine Butler advocated for better education and employment opportunities for women emphasizing the need for women to find dignity and fulfilment outside of the private sphere to which they were relegated. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell reflect the issues facing middle-class women during this period, …

Seeking Visionary: Ginsberg And The Beat Influence On Progress, Mark Howard

English Department Theses

This thesis examines and reevaluates the impact of poet Allen Ginsberg and his Beat Generation counterparts on defining and portraying societal progress through countercultural literature and how they themselves may damage the impact of their works. Beat poets like Ginsberg may not act as the best representation of the counterculture due to unethical and immoral behaviors that take away from the credibility and impact of their work. In addition, the Beat Generation itself must be reevaluated for clarity in who should be associated with the original Beat writers as modern critics’ use of the beat terminology has lumped in artists …

Multimodal Expertise Training For Writing Center Tutors, Erin E. A. O'Day

English Department Theses

As digital technology becomes more common on college campuses and multimodal compositions are assigned by more instructors, writing centers must incorporate support for multimodal projects into their tutoring. However, no method for training writing center tutors to understand the basic principles of multimodal compositions is currently available. This thesis, therefore, proposes a method for training multimodal expert tutors in writing centers which focuses on both the importance of rhetorical choices in communicating a message in different media and on the basic principles of design for four primary areas: visual, audio, video, and web design. Example tutor training handouts for these …

Henry D. Thoreau’S Color Red, Relationship To Nature, And Religious Imagery In Robert Frost’S “Rose Pogonias” And Other Poems, Jennifer Fry

English Department Theses

In the estimation of contemporaries such as book critic Julian Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau sought to leave a legacy of influence behind him. He never saw such attention in his lifetime. Yet, he found a willing audience in Robert Frost, who began reading his works with gusto at the age of 22 and later listed Walden as one of his favorite books. Reading Frost’s own works reveals ample influence of Thoreau’s writings over Frost’s artistry—in terms of the color choices used, but also in advocating a certain view of nature, as well as the use of pagan imagery within his …

Reinvestigating Masculinity In The Works Of Ernest Hemingway, Neidy D. Mchugh

English Department Theses

This thesis examines the conception and destruction of masculine identities in Ernest Hemingway’s fictive works as resultant of a male dependence on societal acceptance. Utilizing both protagonists that fully align with a machismo persona and protagonists that seem disparate from Hemingway’s oeuvre of hyper masculinity, this thesis examines the uniform concerns of Hemingway’s men—their perception in society, threats to their masculinity, and their code of ethics. Through a three-pronged approach, this thesis looks at the male place in society, concerns about masculine identities, and responses to threats against masculinity. First, the recurrent figures of the father, the hunter, the son, …

Similarities And Differences: The Evolution Of Ann Radcliffe, Maximillian D. Patton

English Department Theses

By looking at specific elements and the somewhat formulaic use of these elements within each of Radcliffe’s published works this paper looks at how Radcliffe evolved as an author and how this evolution within her works contributed to the evolution of the gothic genre in general during the time period in which she was writing and shortly thereafter. It focuses on how each of these elements, such as certain character archetypes, settings and themes, along with other more minor elements share certain characteristics from text to text within Radcliffe’s body of works but are still adapted to suit each individual …

European Imperialist Violence And Feminine Influence In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, Katlyn S. Davenport

English Department Theses

This thesis explores themes of influence and resistance to imperialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. To contextualize the feminine control and resistance of imperialism and colonialism, the thesis first examines Marlow’s and Kurt’s roles as agents and representatives of the Company, and thereby reveals their complicity in the brutalities carried out against the native people of the Congo. Additionally, it compares the vivid descriptions of violence inherent in imperialist domination with the vaguer characterization of violence among the tribespeople. Finally, by examining relationships between male and female characters as well as the ideals of the Anglo/American New Woman, this …

Thomas Kent's Paralogic Rhetoric As A Framework For Analyzing Corporate Social Responsibility Discourse, Donald E. Penner

English Department Theses

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholarship increasingly uses rhetorical theory as a method for analyzing contested meaning between communicants. However, the classical and social constructivist rhetorical theories typically used for analysis do not address the primary cause of contested meaning – relativism. Conversely, such theories often contribute to a dualistic worldview by utilizing internally imagined conceptual schemes for analyzing texts. This thesis proposes Thomas Kent’s paralogic rhetorical theory as an alternative method of analyzing CSR texts, and focuses on three common areas typically utilized in rhetorical analyses of CSR texts: text reception, the rhetorical situation, and genre. Where paradigmatic rhetorical theories …

The Desire For Chaste Love In Book Three Of The Faerie Queene, Hayley Mcclenny

English Department Theses

This paper examines the complex relationship between chastity and consummation presented in Book Three of The Faerie Queene. By recasting the Ovidian myth of Venus and Adonis, Spenser creates a definition of chastity that is based in the bond of natural emotion that includes sexual expression without the damaging effects of lust. Venus and Adonis are the first to enact love based on this definition and exemplify perfection in their expression and acceptance of love. From their example, all other lovers in Book Three act in favor of or against the notion of selfless and chaste love. Chapter two …

The Mystery Of The Missing Half: The Developing Female Investigator Trope In Detective Fiction, Anthony E. Farah

English Department Theses

While mainstream thought considers Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to be the first detective with Murders in the Rue Morgue his debut appearance, the female detective trope has her origin in E.T.A. Hoffman’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi. Despite her vintage, the mademoiselle’s role as investigator was overshadowed by her male counterparts in detective fiction, first in time not here being first in right. In subsequent detective fiction a la Poe, the female’s role is typically that of a body—a victim or a corpse exploited by both author and character alike, crimes against who throws a patriarchal world into disorder (e.g. …

“New Hope In The Midst Of Darkness”: Eucatastrophe As Kairos In The Lord Of The Rings, Chance Gamble

English Department Theses

Present-day rhetorical scholarship has largely rectified the neglect of kairos James Kinneavy noted in 1986. However, the ancient Greek concept combining temporal-spatial factors, due measure, situational adaptability, and perfect timing has not seen much use in the rhetorical study of fiction. The application of kairos, a foundational rhetorical device, to fiction has the potential to generate new insights on familiar subject matter. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) may seem an unlikely choice for such inquiry, but there are several factors that make it especially suited to such analysis. Chief among these are the numerous …

Politicized Identity In Peter Ho Davies's The Welsh Girl And The Fortunes, Savanna S. Batson

English Department Theses

This thesis explores the effects of politicized identities on the basis of particular aspects of an individual’s being, such as gender, ethnicity, or nationality in Peter Ho Davies’s novels The Welsh Girl (2007) and The Fortunes (2016). By carefully studying each of his protagonists within the context of the particular time and place in which they have come of age, and are now living, this thesis demonstrates how Davies engages with themes of identity, community, and alienation relative to the specific socio-cultural matrix that informs the politicization of identities at their time. It explores how Davies’s characters undergo the process …

Knowing, Loving, And Being Through Excess: Creation Of Subject In Bertha Harris’S Lover, Kristin S. Bruckner

English Department Theses

This article is a psychoanalytic and feminist reading of Bertha Harris’s novel Lover, a text that deserves wider critical scrutiny and close reading for the theoretical implications it initiates. The novel presents an understanding of what it means to be both a woman and a lover, and it indicates the ways that these two ideas are intertwined. Although it was written in 1976, Lover portrays innovative feminist performances of subject which remain relevant to contemporary feminist readers. The subject this novel envisions is one who is able to enact a seduction that was unavailable to traditional conceptions of self under …

The Phenomenological Beat: Allen Ginsberg's Many Multitudes, Joseph Karwin

English Department Theses

A considerable amount of critical commentary about Allen Ginsberg has focused on his public persona and on his relationship with the Beat Generation. This focus runs counter to Ginsberg’s own wishes, as he wished to be studied as a poet first, a serious poet, and a poet speaking for a new American voice. By focusing on the poetry and on Ginsberg’s extensive amount of self-analysis, this paper details the main strategies and techniques Ginsberg employed in his poetics, and how he used those techniques to form a modern American voice in poetry.

The paper specifically looks at Ginsberg’s relationship to …

Merlin’S Role As Nationalist In Monmouth And Malory, Ashley C. Johnson

English Department Theses

In Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory’s medieval Arthurian texts, History of the Kings of Britain and Le Morte D’Arthur, Merlin is presented as a primary character with nuanced character traits and unique abilities. Merlin stands out because his often analyzed secondary roles as magician, prophet, and counselor culminate in a larger, primary role. Merlin is a nationalist. As such, he shows how legend and historical narrative can shape the history of a country. Through the texts, Merlin disseminates a distinct English identity based upon a shared lineage of valorous deeds and triumphant emancipations from foreign invaders …

Connected Spirits: Adolescent Females And Animal Agents, Elizabeth A. Parrish

English Department Theses

The novels The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies create a unique opportunity to investigate human and animal relationships given the similarity of their time frames and main characters. Both novels feature adolescent females struggling to resolve their identities against the backdrop of WWII. Frankie Addams in The Member of the Wedding and Esther Evans in The Welsh Girl share the additional characteristics of deceased mothers, distant fathers, and contacts with animals. Because these books are bildungsromans, they permit a comparative analysis as separate experiments in feminine growth with attention …

The Politics Of Utopia: Examining Three Hawthorne Romances As Political Allegories, Melanie A. Whiting

English Department Theses

The years between 1849 and 1852 were Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most productive in terms of creative output. Hawthorne penned three romances—the name he gave his longer fictions—in addition to a children’s book and a political biography during these years. These longer stories exhibit the high degree of influence the political climate of the late 1840s and early 1850s had on Hawthorne. The Compromise of 1850 sought to bridge the growing schism in the nation on the topics of boundaries and slavery. By reading Hawthorne’s novels as political allegories of the Compromise of 1850, the political instability of the time becomes clear. …

Conrad's Pronoun Usage As A Stylistic Marker And Its Relation To His Density Of Text And Themes, Jennifer K. Onishi

English Department Theses

In this thesis I perform a close examination of Conrad’s use of pronouns. Before this data is related, a brief overview of Conrad’s linguistic history and the history of his criticism is presented. This overview allows for the data to be placed in the context of his linguistic interference. It also lays out what aspects of Conrad’s language have already been explored. Pronouns are analyzed by word, type, and distance from the referent. The results of this study are then combined with statistical data from previous studies of Conrad’s grammar and linguistics. This combined data is used to explain one …

“That Dark Parade”: Emily Dickinson And The Victorian "Cult Of Death”, Carol M. Degrasse

English Department Theses

The elegiac poems of Emily Dickinson provide what is perhaps the clearest depiction of the conflicting emotions inherent to the death-conscious nineteenth century. In one such poem, Dickinson’s oxymoronic phrase, “Dark Parade,” encapsulates the spirit of a social movement that was born of a desire to comfort the grief-stricken and to beautify the horrific. Throughout Dickinson’s corpus of elegiac poetry, the speaker echoes these sentiments and crafts an insightful portrait, juxtaposing the stark horror of death with the ethereal beauty of ceremony. As Dickinson’s elegies are traced over time, the poems develop as microcosmic representations of a grieving nation, as …

The American Dream, Micronationalisms, And The Three Part National Identity As Presented By Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Brianna J. Doucet

English Department Theses

Hunter S. Thompson was a pioneer in Gonzo journalism, a writing style that fictionalized journalistic reporting through first draft, no editing publication. This unique writing style, coupled with Thompson’s personal collective identity based on Sedikides and Brewer’s three-part identity allowed for Thompson to draft a model for the three-part American identity based in the American dream. Throughout his career Thompson sought to find the American dream but what he found instead was the death of decency in America and the rebirth of the American dream through a whitewashed lens. The thesis paper explores three-parts of American identity, the American dream, …

Hemingway And The Soča Front, Rebecca Johnston

English Department Theses

In 1918 Ernest M. Hemingway served along the Soča Front during the last months of the Great War. Better known as the Isonzo Front, the Soča Front was the battle lines between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. The history of this front is connected to the First World War from the very beginning. Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms (FTA), several of his poems, and the Nick Adams’ stories are all based on the First World War. For this reason, the study of the history behind the war is important in order to better understand Hemingway’s works connected …

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Postmodern Puzzles: Creating Versions Of The Truth And Identity In Margaret Atwood’S The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, And The Blind Assassin, Maggie Raymond

English Department Theses

Although difficult to universally characterize Margaret Atwood as a feminist postmodern writer, three of Atwood’s novels (The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assassin) use postmodern techniques to build a conversation with readers about how female identity is created by having readers co-create meaning, consider the influence of intertexts, and question discourses. By emphasizing the role of the reader and the construction of text through storytelling, the traditional roles of author and reader are questioned, and Atwood develops a conversation with readers over their respective roles in creating and interpreting text. In The Robber Bride, Tony, Charis, …

"Our Attachments Are Our Temples": Addiction, Recovery, And The Metamodernist Movement, Ashlie M. Contos

English Department Theses

There is currently a profound debate occurring across the globe regarding the nature of addiction: whether or not addiction is a disease. Within the last decade, addiction research and publications have flooded the market, which challenge the disease model for understanding addiction. This new research suggests that addiction is a learned behavior thus addiction begins as a habit that, if continued, becomes an ingrained behavior, but it is not a disease, like diabetes or heart disease.

Concurrently, there is much discussion within academia as to what is presently occurring in literary and critical theory trends. Although there is still much …

From Longinus To Tolkien: A Theory Of The Fantastic Sublime, Seth Wilson

English Department Theses

As concepts, the fantastic and the sublime share much in common. Both have the power to take a reader outside the scope of his or her own worldview and experience, and both share the paradoxical power to both elevate and humble the human spirit. So it is surprising that few scholars have explored the intersection between these two constructs, and none has attempted to systematically explore how this intersection operates in the context of literary theory. This thesis endeavors to build a theoretical framework for the fantastic sublime by exploring its constituent parts. First, I examine the contribution of the …

Exploring Psychological Territoriality Through The Domestic Gothic In Beloved And Mama Day, Lori L. Cook

English Department Theses

The novels, Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor, contain narratives of families with a history of slavery that explore how their female protagonists claim their identities within the new boundaries of freedom. Using a framework of the Domestic Gothic, this paper explores how formerly enslaved female characters claim new psychological territory in bounded domestic spaces by using the chores they were forced to perform during their times of slavery as a means to independence. Domestic duties such as cooking and gardening along with magical and religious ceremonies and acts of violence are passed down through the …

Christian Lady Rhetorica: Americanization Of Marian Rhetoric In Early American Sentimental And Seduction Novels, Stephanie Laszik

English Department Theses

In the larger scope of religious feminine iconography, the Virgin Mary stands out as a vessel of cultural rhetoric. As medieval studies in religion, culture, and language indicate, the Virgin Mary's biblical speeches, combined with her image as a mother and follower of God, create a unique opportunity for authors of fiction to explore the Marian manifestations in their characters. This project illuminates the occurrences of Marian Rhetoric as they are found in American sentimental and seduction novels as tools for cultural change. The American sentimental and seduction novels discussed in this project, show a need for the cultural commentary …

Fitzgerald's And Hemingway's Muses Of Disillusionment, Allison Rogers

English Department Theses

This paper examines how the main female characters in three F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night, and three Ernest Hemingway novels, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea, function as muses of disillusionment for the protagonists of those works. First, I analyze the extent to which each of the protagonist's female complements can be defined as a muse in accordance with qualities ascribed to the ancient Greek mythological muses. Subsequently, I assess how each muse functions in her respective novel first to …