English Language and Literature Commons^™

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Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

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Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

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Milton, Immortality, And Obtaining Eliot's "Significant Emotion", Aaron By Gorner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, T. S. Eliot famously asserts that very few can actually access "significant emotion" in poetry, and do so by understanding where relics of the classical tradition assert their immortality. In my article, I support Eliot's claims by demonstrating two (previously undiscussed) occasions where Milton, via Paradise Lost, inserts Christianity into the classical world: Satan and Abdiel alluding to Virgil's Remulus and Ascanius, and then Eve and Adam with Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus. Ultimately it will be apparent that not only does Milton's poetry obtain Eliot's "significant emotion" and its associated immortality, …

Beyond "His Native Town": Travel And Alienation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Erin G. Quinn

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein features a surprisingly extensive variety of locations through which Victor Frankenstein travels, ranging from the vibrant cities of London and Oxford to the isolated Orkney islands and Arctic lands. Scholars have analyzed the roles which some of these settings, namely, the Alps and the Arctic, play in the novel, and many have noted the importance of travel to the text. However, little scholarship exists assessing how Victor’s travels as a whole impact him, as well as their collective purpose within the story. Given the prominence of travel in Shelley’s text, as well as the fact …

The “Fruit” Of Success: Christina Rossetti’S “Goblin Market” As An Allegory Of The 19th Century Literary Marketplace, Priyodarshini Ghosh

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” is probably her most critically acclaimed literary masterpiece. It has been accepted undoubtedly as an allegory of something, but critics have not been able to come to a unanimous conclusion as to what. Some have tried to establish it as a Christian allegory of Fall and Redemption, while others as an allegory of sexual temptation. Certain critics have hinted that this poem could be an allegory of the literary marketplace during the 19^th century, which was wholly dominated by men, women’s entry into that marketplace being either restricted or marked by insurmountable obstacles. Following the …

From "Pictures Of Perfection" To "No Ideal Expression": How Jane Austen Reimagines And Reinvents Eighteenth-Century Heroines, Gretchen Picklesimer Kinney

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Gender And Orality In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Nessa Ordukhani

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This essay explores the intersection of postmodernism and multiculturalism in Toni Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon. It delves into the destabilization of historical metanarratives by postmodernism through the theories of Jean-François Lyotard, which challenges the notion of a singular truth and questions who constructs popular historical narratives. The essay discusses the role of the victors, particularly white males, in shaping history and the process of legitimation through which historical facts are determined. It examines how Morrison's novel offers an alternative history that highlights African American perspectives and challenges the dominant white narrative. Additionally, the essay explores the tension between multiculturalism …

“Creating And Maintaining Black Life-Worlds”: The Black Aesthetics Of Bernardine Evaristo’S Blonde Roots And Girl, Woman, Other, Sharanya Dg

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Black Aesthetics is the philosophical inquiry into the objects and practices of expressions coming from people who have been racialized as black. These expressive practices then lend to the creation of the life-worlds of people subjected to racist discourses. One such author in the contemporary English society, Bernadine Evaristo, responds to anti-black racist discourses by exploring the cultural plurality of British black life-worlds. This paper is a textual and formal analysis of two experimental novels of Evaristo to study how they distinctly present the quotidian lives of various characters in their racialised bodies to reflect on the sociocultural and political …

The Art Speaks For Itself: Aura And Corruption In Cuarón’S Children Of Men, Colby Orton

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In the world of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, the audience comes face to face with many scenes and shots that are filled with symbolism that it may become difficult to pick up on all the excellent directional moves made by Cuarón. This essay will closely analyze not only the clever placement of art but the heavy symbolic nature that each of these art pieces possess; furthermore, I will analyze the implications that these symbolic references bring to the film and how these implications complicate the film while furthering the difficult themes proposed by Cuarón. To achieve the highest understanding …

Henrietta Maria: Royalist Women’S Representations Of The French Catholic Queen, Kim Hansen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

By the mid-15^th century, the royal marriage of King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria incited enough conflict to spark civil war, as the English struggled to reconcile between the long-established image of female English domesticity and a pervasive cultural expectation for equality between marriage partners. Any form of equality in the royal marriage called the absolute power of the king into question, as it would imply that his actions had included her direct involvement, and even at times were more representative of her, not his, views. Letters captured at the Battle of Naseby confirmed fears that the queen …

Havens And Covens: Pregnancy, Witchcraft, And Female Power In Cotton Mather’S “Retired Elizabeth”, Brittney A. Hatchett

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Over the decades, scholars have been holding two adjacent conversations about witchcraft and gender in Cotton Mather’s works that surprisingly have not been put in dialogue. On the one hand, they have examined Mather’s witchcraft ideology and motivations for involving himself in the Salem witch trials. On the other hand, scholars have discussed how Mather seeks to exert control over women spiritually and physically. However, no one has yet explored how these conversations might converge. I suggest that we can see how Mather intertwines discourses of witchcraft and gender in the section titled “Retired Elizabeth” in The Angel of Bethesda. …

Claude Mckay's Protest Sonnets, Lily Jensen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The sonnet tradition is rich with change. It is a genre forged in strict conventions: fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, a volta (or even multiple turns), and themes of praise and unrequited love. Because of these rules, sonneteers from Petrarch to Shakespeare, Donne to Rosetti, and Hopkins to Hughes have used this form and bent it to their own personal uses. The sonnet has an intense social, cultural, and political history. This paper analyzes how Claude Mckay both used the conventions of the sonnet tradition and broke from the sonnet tradition in the poems “If We Must Die” and “The Lynching” …

Recognizing Freedom: Zitkala-Ša's Fight For Native Citizenship, Camille J. Karpowitz

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Minority groups protesting and petitioning for civil rights have been fundamental to United States history. Before the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Zitkala-Ša, a Native American rights activist, positions herself as a voice for Native citizenship. Within the native community, however, the issue of citizenship was not as easily advocated for, due to past injustices perpetrated by the United States government. As a result, Zitkala-Ša has been labeled an assimilationist or one who connect to either Natives or Americans.

While her advocacy for citizenship does not go unnoticed by scholars, it is often ignored in her works outside of political …

“Hopelessly Crippled”: The Construction Of Disability In Borges’S “Funes, His Memory”, Madilyn Abbe

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Jorge Luis Borges’s “Funes, His Memory,” the narrator presents Ireneo Funes as an intriguing example of both physical and cognitive atypicality. Although the narrator is quick to identify Funes’s deficiencies, he unashamedly acknowledges his own cognitive weaknesses as well. Using a literary disability studies lens, this article examines the construction of disability within the text, arguing that the narrator imposes disability onto Funes to mask the possibility that he be categorized as disabled. The narrator sets up an ableist binary to undermine Funes physically, yet this binary falls apart when applied to cognitive ability. In order to address this …

“What Could She Do Next?”: Margaret’S Power And Control Through Failed Emotional Labor In Elizabeth Gaskell’S North And South, Cianna Alano

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Critics of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South identify Margaret as an emotional laborer, but they emphasize how this is a detriment to Margaret rather than how she uses it to her advantage. Margaret’s role as an emotional laborer is, indeed, often unwanted and inconvenient, but she reappropriates this work to gain control of undesirable situations. Most notably, Margaret repeats this pattern when telling her mother of their imminent move to Milton, when dealing with the Higgins and Boucher families after familial deaths, and when attempting to stop rioters from hurting Mr. Thornton. Instead of just trying to complete the unwanted …

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Matriarchal Past To Forge A Modern Identity: Maternal Origins In Woolf And Ihimaera, Kirsten W. Burningham

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Though the writings of Virginia Woolf and Witi Ihimaera are “incommensurable” in many ways, I find “commesurablilities”––the kind of commensurabilities the Susan Stanford Friedman seeks out across the planetary landscape of modernism––in the way they negotiate a new creative identity in a modern environment with the bang clash of history and present ringing in their ears. I see this commensurability in at least three key features: 1) Woolf and Ihimaera each gave birth to new literary movements: Woolf was mother to high British Modernism with experimental techniques such as free indirect discourse and the relegation of plot to the background; …

“Perfect In Her Eyes:” Domestic Retrenchment And Panoptical Resistance In Jane Austen’S Mansfield Park, Holden O. D'Evegnee

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Mansfield Park features one of Jane Austen's most unique heroines, Fanny Price. Though Fanny is painfully shy—almost to the point of becoming the audience to her own story—she manages, by the end of the novel, to gain everything she wanted while the rest of her adopted family falls apart into disgrace or reform. Some critics see this as proof of Fanny’s monstrosity while others read Fanny’s ascent as a reward for her principled nature. Using recent postcolonial readings of Mansfield Park with Michel Foucault’s theory of panoptical surveillance, my goal is to show how Fanny Price subverts the colonial authority …

A Feminist Icon Or A Homicidal Coward: Medea’S Revenge On Patriarchy, Beyza Ertugrul

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Medea, the alleged epitome of sophistication, does not deserve her title of the flawless feminist icon as she is praised to be. For context, Euripides’ Medea, first performed in 431 BC, portrays a young sorceress whose abusive husband abandons her for another woman and who takes revenge by murdering her own children to spite him. Throughout the tragedy, Medea speaks out on gender inequality, and by definition, such uncommon and advanced statements can be described by the modern term of feminism as the “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (Merriam-Webster). Especially …

Women After Waterloo: Evolving Females In Jane Austen’S Persuasion, Madison Maloney

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Jane Austen’s last novel, Persuasion, she offers a glimpse into a character that breaks past the societal restraints women typically experience. Mrs. Croft, ostensibly, is the first Austen woman to find her way out of England; the Napoleon wars afford her the opportunity to travel the seas with her Admiral husband and participate in traditionally masculine experiences. Though other women in Austen novels do travel, they remain in-country, and they always find their way back to their original society. Throughout many wars in history, the absence of men as they fight in the military offers women the opportunity to …

Subverting Social Order: Investigating Class Critique In Homer’S Odyssey, Riley R. Mayes

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The ‘Homeric Question,’ or the question of who Homer was, has long preoccupied the minds of the Western world (Foley 2). Due to the amorphous nature of oral tradition and the lost histories of ancient Greece, it is likely that this question may never be answered to satisfaction. However, what historical data we do have allows us to synthesize a composite character of who Homer might have been and, more importantly, what he represented. As we will explore, records reveal that the mythology of ancient Greece arose from the lower rungs of the social ladder; storytellers were often members of …

The Rise Of The Machine: The Annihilation Of Human Connection In "The Rainbow", Elizabeth Miller

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This essay analyzes the growth of industrialization in England at the turn of the century by examining D. H. Lawrence’s 1915 novel, The Rainbow. More specifically, this essay will focus on the role of machine culture and how the growing presence of industry acted as a catalyst for societal destruction. I argue that Lawrence defines machine culture as the worship of the machine, roboticism, the erasure of memory, and misogyny. These social constructs are exposed through the male characters in the novel to express Lawrence’s attitude toward the destructiveness of industrialization. He uses these characteristics to represent the type of …

Shakespeare’S Prince Of Denmark: Political Pandering In Hamlet, Moriah Theriault

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Shakespeare's Hamlet contains frequent cultural ties and insights into Danish tradition that depict intentional effort to represent Danish culture. These accuracies can be seen in the description of the castle in Elsinore, the deep-seated conflicts between Christian forgiveness and revenge, and the traditional cannon salutes featured in Hamlet. Shakespeare created these connections to Danish culture for a political maneuver to win the favor of King James and his wife, the Royal Queen Anne of Denmark.

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, …

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 …

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 …

“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 …

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.