English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Magic Lotus Lantern And Other Tales From The Han Chinese, Haiwang Yuan

DLPS Faculty Publications

This chapter is the first of the three parts of the book, The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales from the Han Chinese. This chapter introduces many aspects of China that may intrigue American readers. It provides some background knowledge of the Chinese culture so that readers can have a better understanding of the tales retold in the book. The second part includes crafts, games, and recipes; and the third part, the tales.
Focusing specifically on the stories of the Han Chinese (the largest ethnic group in China, numbering over a billion people), the book presents more than 50 tales, …

Once Upon The North Pole, Regina Anne Roselli

Dissertations and Theses

The North Pole can be imagined in two ways. The first, the Magnetic North Pole, is based on the Earth's magnetic field, which is in constant flux. It is a general area of the Arctic that isn't affixed to a specific geographic location but moves to where the lines of magnetic force enter and exit the earth vertically. The second, the true North Pole, refers to its actual physical and fixed geographic location, 90° N. It lays below miles of the Arctic Ocean's water, hundreds of miles from the nearest land.

The North Pole has fueled man's imagination for centuries. …

Samuel Beckett's Late Aesthetics Of Subjectivation, Jianxi Lie

Lingnan Theses

No other writer has explored so metaphysically the problem of human existence as Samuel Beckett, the Irish writer who first gained world renown in 1953 with the formal radicalism and existential angst of Waiting for Godot. In the bleakest forms, Beckett has denied human experience the most fundamental of all certainties – subjectivity and self-consciousness – and exposed conventional realism’s inability to convey the ungovernable flux of the world and the individual’s unfixed, subjective response.

Taking Beckett’s manipulation of pronominal, spatial and temporal deixis as an entry point, this thesis captures the late works in its central dilemma of Beckettian …

The Narrative Lens: Understanding Eudora Welty's Fiction Through Her Photography., Brandon Clarke Ballentine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Eudora Welty's brief photographic career offers valuable insight into the development of her literary voice. She discovers many of the distinguishing characters of her fiction during the 1930s while traveling through Mississippi writing articles for the Works Progress Administration and taking pictures of the people and places she encountered. Analyzing the connections between her first collection of photographs, One Time, One Place: Mississippi during the Depression: A Snapshot Album, and her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, and Other Stories, reveals the writer's sympathetic attitude towards her characters, the prominence of place in her fiction, and her …

Samuel Taylor Coleridge And Opium., Donald John Marotta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coleridge's usual use of opium was through laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol. This thesis presents the history of and criticism regarding the poet's use of laudanum and the physical and emotional consequences the drug held for him and his writing career.

Double The Novels, Half The Recognition: Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Contribution To The Evolution Of The Victorian Novel., Lori Elizabeth Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Why do we read what we read? Janice Radway examines works that were not popular in an author's time period, but now are affecting the construction of the canon. In her own words, Radway seeks to "establish [popular literature] as something other than a watered-down version of a more authentic high culture [and] to present the middlebrow positively as a culture with its own particular substance and intellectual coherence" (208). Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novels were considered "middlebrow" and were very popular in Victorian England. Along with this facet, her heroines were considered controversial because they were not portrayed as what …

Metaphor Manifested: An Examination Of Metaphor In Katherine Mansfield, Kathleen E. Kotaska

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Oedipus' Wake: The (Neo-)Masculinization Of The Self In Late Twentieth-Century American Women's Memoir, Thomas Johnson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Without pretensions to exhaustiveness, this study briefly examines the mid- to late-twentieth-century flowering of western theory and criticism built around autobiographical writing and follows the feminist branch(es) of that theory and criticism through a reading of the following four memoirs: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, All the Lost Girls by Patricia Foster, Lying by Lauren Slater, and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as they relate to literature, I argue that the selves these four women write in their memoirs are not selves built around the model historically set for women by …

I Am Elizabeth Gaskell: The Literary Evolution Of Elizabeth Gaskell Throughout Mary Barton, North And South, And Wives And Daughters, Jessica Leigh Watkins

Theses & Honors Papers

An overview of the literary evolution of Elizabeth Gaskell throughout Mary Barton, North and South, and Wives and Daughters is reviewed in this thesis. Gaskell’s novels contain a plethora of themes and concerns, ranging from the plight of the Industrial working class, to the developing romance of young lovers, and even to the social implications of the developments of rural life. Throughout the three novels, Gaskell’s personal evolution and her struggle to develop a complete female consciousness within her writing can be tracked. As the female characters in her books grow into an understanding of working class life or learn …

The Gospel Of Cosmopolitanism: Conflict Resolution In Barbara Kingsolver's Fiction, Catherine Altmaier

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Despite Barbara Kingsolver's ability to create unique characters and storylines, two factors remain constant throughout each of her novels: strong female protagonists and conflict resolution. Though conflict exists in almost all fiction, the way that Kingsolver's characters deal with their situations often speaks louder than any other aspect of her writing. Moreover, though her characters often vary wildly from story to story, their methods of conflict resolution seem to undoubtedly connect them. Through her continuing desire to emphasize "the question of individualism and communal identity," {Reading Group Guides) Kingsolver often promotes the ideas of cosmopolitanism, which have recently been articulated …

Tempering Steel: Reapproaching The Mythos Of Superman, Corey Alderdice

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study seeks to answer a question posed in Superman #156 and frequently throughout the history of the DC Comics Universe: Must there be a Superman? In answering this question, this study seeks to seam together over sixty years of Superman to better understand the mythology associated with these narratives as well as their impact on American culture. In an analysis of Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright (2003), the basic forms of the origin narrative are addressed as well as how Waid reconstructs the mythos for the twenty-first century. The second chapter addresses deconstructive narratives and the issue of shifting the …

Influence And Its Opposite: Presence And Absence In The Work Of Harold Bloom, Joshua Henderson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the years since he formulated and expanded on it in The Anxiety of Influence (1973), A Map of Misreading (1975), and Kaballah and Criticism (1975), Harold Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence" has engendered more ambivalence than serious investigation into his theory and its influences. In part, the ambivalence is due to Bloom's persona, which irritates the academic "left" and "right" alike. Surprisingly, it is not Bloom's defense of canonicity against post-structural Marxism, feminism, and New Historical criticism that generates the most resistance; instead, Bloom's dissenters more often come from the ranks of conservative traditionalists who might be …

Masculinity And The Postmodern In American Psycho And Fight Club, Sean Mccray

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Initially, this paper traces masculinity in America from the nineteenth century and up through the mid twentieth century in order to define traditional masculinity and identify some of its characteristics. Traditional masculinity, typically demonstrated though aggressive and violent behavior, is currently undergoing cultural and social revisions due to various contemporary ideas. In analyzing American Psycho and Fight Club, two controversial novels written in the past twenty years, the paper makes clear that the protagonists acutely feel the tension that exists between historical perceptions of masculinity and current ideas of what men should be. They react to that tension by exhibiting …

"The Curse Never Fell Upon Our Nation Till Now": History And Fear In Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, Michael Lynn Brittain

English Theses - Archive

In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth questions the common perception of historic "inevitability" by creating a counter-factual history, placing himself and his childhood family into a fictional World War II America. Through the novel's imaginary political and historical events, Roth's alternate American history (in which Charles Lindbergh is President) creates a powerful sense of fear that permeates the novel. In this paper, I examine Roth's use of history in The Plot by exploring the novel's blurring of alternate history, dystopia, "imagined autobiography," bildungsroman, and Holocaust genres. I also examine how the narrator (literally/fictionally Roth) conducts in the novel a …

The Labour Of Her Own Hands: Nineteenth Century Gardening Discourses And The Work Of Jane Webb Loudon, Kelli Lee Towers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Jane Webb Loudon, wife of eminent horticulturist and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon, has been largely ignored by historians and literary critics. Yet in her brief career she produced some of the most practical and influential gardening works of the early nineteenth-century. Beginning with Gardening for Ladies in 1840, Loudon published seventeen books and edited two magazines on gardening, botany, and natural history, most of them specifically directed to a female audience. These books would educate an entirely new class of gardeners, and allow women in particular to engage not only with gardening, but also with aesthetics, social reform, morality, …

Poem No. 95, May 2006, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

The Lawrencian Becoming Of Deleuze, Saffana Manoun

Master's Theses

Gilles Deleuze and D.H. Lawrence, the philosopher with a poetic writing and the literary man with a philosophical project, invite us to consider their affinities and differences. An unavoidable trace of the Lawrence in Deleuze has not received the attention it should. This lack of critical attention makes the enterprise more worthy of initiation. To demonstrate something of the relationship between them, this essay is divided into three parts that gloss their main points of intersection and difference. I begin with the question of what is at stake in such a comparative endeavor. In the second section, I focus on …

A Study Of Progression : The History Of Basic Writing At Montclair State University, Kelly Robin Adams

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

No abstract provided.

Death Of One's Former Self, Joel Hall

Forces

No abstract provided.

2006 Forces, Scott Yarbrough

Forces

No abstract provided.

Balancing The Power Of The Patriarchy : The Evolution Of Self-Determined Identity For Women In Josephine Humphreys' Dreams Of Sleep And Rich In Love, Mary Ramsey Evans

Master's Theses

Fifty years after William Faulkner wrote Absalom, Absalom! Josephine Humphreys revisited the patriarchal metaphor of failure of the Old South in her first novel, Dreams of Sleep. In this novel, and again in her second novel, Rich in Love, Humphreys examines the ambivalent state of gender relations in the contemporary South brought on by the destabilization of a traditionally patriarchal society increasingly under economic, social, and political pressure to conform to a more egalitarian national standard. Using intergenerational relationships between women, Humphreys demonstrates how the devolution of patriarchal identity becomes the catalyst for the evolution of a self-determined …

“Writing Cricket Bats” : The Unsettling Intersections Of Art And Life In Tom Stoppard’S Travesties And The Real Thing, Bonnie Kinsey Dowd

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In both Travesties and The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard investigates the role of the artist in society and the connection of art to history, politics, reality, and emotion. Through his characters, Stoppard voices conflicting, but often equally credible, arguments regarding the various intersections of art with life to illustrate his contention that “there is no static viewpoint” of events (Chetta 133), in Stoppard’s own words: “There is no observer. There is no safe point around which everything takes its proper place, so that you see things flat and see how they relate to each other” (Hayman, Tom Stoppard 141).

Stoppard …

From Court To Collar: Post-Elizabethan Poetics And The Submissive Stance, Timothy J. Duffy

Fenwick Scholar Program

This project was created out of one key observation about the English Renaissance: that the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries had to deal with social pressures, influences, and expectations far more directly than their eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth-century, or contemporary counterparts. The struggle to establish an individual and innovative identity was as much a motivation for these poets as for any artists, yet the unique political circumstances that surrounded them called for a clever strategy, one inspired by continental models, the taking on of the submissive stance.

Implicit Response : Instructor Values And Social Class In The Literacy Narrative Assignment., Kara Poe Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines instructor responses to a popular personal writing assignment, the literacy narrative. Previous studies have shown this assignment to be popular with instructors because of the reflection it is thought to generate; however, nobody has yet looked at what instructors really mean by reflection. This study investigates what features of student texts instructors recognize as reflection. I collected literacy narratives and demographic questionnaires from students and surveys, assignments, think-alouds, and follow-up interviews from instructors. Personal writing, and the literacy narrative assignment in particular, can best be taught by highlighting the rhetorical capabilities of this genre. The results of …

2006 Literary Review (No. 19), Sigma Tau Delta

The Greenleaf Review

No abstract provided.

Adolescent Fears And Anxieties: A Comparative Analysis Of Parents' And Teachers' Perceptions Of Adolescent Differences, Carolyn B. Miller

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of the study were 1) to compare parents and teachers and students perceptions of students' fears and anxieties, and 2) to determine if there were differences in students' fears and anxieties based on grade level or gender. This study was quantitative in nature. Four hundred eighty-six middle school students in a five through eight configuration, and their parents and teachers were included in the sample. Two surveys were given: The Middle Level Survey was created by the researcher, and the Comprehensive Assessment of School Climate is a National Study of School Evaluation (NS SE) product created by Kelley, …

This Is My Idaho, Cynthia L. Struloeff

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This Is My Idaho is a collection of short stories set in or around the fictional town of Eagle City, Idaho, in southeast Idaho near the borders with Montana and Wyoming. There is a wildness in this part of the world, circled by high, unforgiving mountains, that resonates within the people there. The characters of this collection must hammer out their lives against this landscape. Some, like Mary in “What the Good Is,” and Ginny in “The Sugar Shell,” feel the mountains as a kind of barrier between them and the rest of the world and yearn to escape. Others, …

Genres, Media, And Usability In The Evaluation Of Writing Quality In Digital Environments, Lisa Ferrara

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has recognized that there may be a problem with depending too much on usability studies for identifying some weaknesses in digital media. In their effort to find a substitute, they have funded more than $250,000 in research in the past two years.

I Am: Identity, Maturation, And The Ideal Woman In Bronte’S Villette, Malissa Brennan

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Although many individuals may be familiar with Charlotte Brontë’s works—Jane Eyre has become somewhat of a literary staple—many others may not be as familiar with Villette, Brontë’s last and most autobiographical novel. Regardless of mixed reviews, Villette’s themes, characters, and underlying premises create a literary work that is exponentially more valuable in the Brontë literary canon than any work of any Brontë sister. The literary merit of Brontë’s novel, which documents one woman’s journey towards self-discovery and maturation, is infinitely invaluable; its passion, intensity, and discovery far surpasses the literary fame of Jane Eyre and Rochester. Villette showcases a woman’s …

Lvn: A Fiction, Jacqueline S. Gill

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This is a creative thesis, the first 87 pages of an original novel divided into 14 chapters. This story takes place along the Mexican-American border and has elements of humor, mystery, witchcraft, and murder. It is written in first person from the point of view of the main character, Matt. Matt's normal life begins to change when he becomes best friends with a flamboyantly gay hairdresser who introduces him to Celeste - a mother of four, Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN), and a self proclaimed witch. Celeste practices the dark side of the craft; and when she feels the need for …