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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Altered States Of Style: The Drug-Induced Development Of Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose, Eric M. Izant
Altered States Of Style: The Drug-Induced Development Of Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose, Eric M. Izant
Theses and Dissertations
Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose method was inspired in part by his use of drugs while writing. While there is abundant biographical evidence that Kerouac used drugs frequently, little attention has been paid to their effects on the development of his style. This thesis attempts to demonstrate that the altered states of consciousness produced by Kerouac's drug use should be considered in conjunction with historical, cultural, and biographical forces in tracing the evolution of Kerouac's creative growth. As a member of the Beat Generation, Kerouac used drugs both as a social statement of rebellion and for artistic insight. In fact, he …
A Reassessment Of James Joyce's Female Characters, Anna Margaretha Gordon
A Reassessment Of James Joyce's Female Characters, Anna Margaretha Gordon
Theses and Dissertations
The female characters in James Joyce's fiction have received considerable critical attention since the publication of his writings and are often denigrated as misogynist portrayals of women. However, a textual and historical analysis of the female characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake shows them in a more constructive light. Such an analysis reveals them to be sympathetic portrayals of the situation of Irish women at the turn of the twentieth century. An historical contextualization of the characters is essential in any reading of Joyce, but is particularly important for his …
Resurrecting Speranza: Lady Jane Wilde As The Celtic Sovereignty, Heather Lorene Tolen
Resurrecting Speranza: Lady Jane Wilde As The Celtic Sovereignty, Heather Lorene Tolen
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the ways in which Lady Jane Wilde, writing under the pen name of Speranza, established ethos among a poor, uneducated, Catholic populace from whom she was socially and religiously disconnected. Additionally, it raises questions as to Lady Wilde's exclusion from the roster of Irish literary voices who are commonly associated with the Irish Literary Revival, inasmuch as Lady Wilde played a critical, inceptive role in that movement. Lady Jane Wilde, mother of Oscar Wilde, was an ardent nationalist who lived in Victorian Ireland. She contributed thirty-nine poems and several essays to the Nation newspaper—a nationalist publication—under the …
A Transnational Study: Young Adult Literature Exchanged Between The Us And Germany, Kristana Miskin
A Transnational Study: Young Adult Literature Exchanged Between The Us And Germany, Kristana Miskin
Theses and Dissertations
Both young adult literature and transnational literature occupy transitional spaces and defy simple classifications. Their commonalities naturally suit the two sets of literature for concurrent study. However, the field is underdeveloped, particularly in the United States. With a concentration on the exchanges taking place between the U.S. and Germany, this thesis addresses the need to assemble primary materials and pertinent critical commentary into a single place available to educators, scholars, and researchers to acquire background on transnational YAL themes. The thesis delineates methods used in conducting and compiling research on U.S.-German YAL exchange and highlights the translation and publication concerns …
Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins
Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …
The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways To Teach Reading, Writing, And Thinking In Secondary Schools, Natalie Sue Baxter
The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways To Teach Reading, Writing, And Thinking In Secondary Schools, Natalie Sue Baxter
Theses and Dissertations
Within the past two decades, theorists have begun to look back to the classical rhetorical past for answers to modern dilemmas in composition teaching. Several textbooks have been published that focus their teaching of college composition on the classical tradition. While the movement to revitalize classical rhetoric is gaining strength in universities, however, the benefits of this movement have not yet reached, in any real way, the levels of elementary, middle school, or high school education. This thesis shows how the classical rhetorical curriculum generally, and a specific part of that curriculum, the progymnasmata, accomplish important aims of modern composition …
The Compatibility Of Containment And Autonomy In Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness Of Beauty, Rachel Jeppsen
The Compatibility Of Containment And Autonomy In Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness Of Beauty, Rachel Jeppsen
Theses and Dissertations
Subaltern studies has overwhelmingly privileged subaltern resistance as a means for the subaltern to attain autonomy. While the group's project has made breakthroughs in rewriting Indian subaltern history, their emphasis on resistance to oppression has also essentialized what it means to create autonomy. A 1999 novel, Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness of Beauty, challenges this essentialist view by portraying alternative behaviors that indicate autonomy. The novel is set in 1920s Japan when transnational excitement and anxiety provided opportunities for one subaltern group, Japanese women, to gain autonomy. While some feminist movements in Japan substantiate the notion that autonomy must be gained …
Blue Heron Goodbye, Holly Rose Hansen
Blue Heron Goodbye, Holly Rose Hansen
Theses and Dissertations
As is typical to the way I write essays, I did not understand the goal of this collection until I wrote the last essay, “Blue Heron Goodbye.” Up until that point I was calling the collection “Why We Need Bloodhounds.” This title felt sufficiently representative to me of the goal of the collection because in this essay, I use discussions canvassing the Bloodhounds' strong sense of smell to focus my discussion about the world of the heart. However, when I wrote “Blue Heron Goodbye,” I realized I wasn't only interested in the struggles of the human heart (a broad topic …
Boot Camp For The Psyche: Inoculative Nonfiction And Pre-Memory Structures As Preemptive Trauma Mediation In Fiction And Film, Jacob Michael Hodgen
Boot Camp For The Psyche: Inoculative Nonfiction And Pre-Memory Structures As Preemptive Trauma Mediation In Fiction And Film, Jacob Michael Hodgen
Theses and Dissertations
While some theorists have hinted at various social functions served by the gothic genre—such as providing an outlet for grief, anxiety, and violence in their various forms—recent research within the last few decades into sociology, military science, and trauma studies supplies compelling new ways of rereading the horror genre. In addition to providing an outlet for grief, anxiety, and violence in their various forms, horror media can now be read as a preemptive measure in an effort to mediate the immediate and long-term effects of the trauma and horror faced by humanity. I argue that in much the same way …
Death In The Royal Family: Victorian Funeral Sermon Techniques In Tennyson's National Poetry, Daniel W. Newton
Death In The Royal Family: Victorian Funeral Sermon Techniques In Tennyson's National Poetry, Daniel W. Newton
Theses and Dissertations
Mourning rituals and memorial aesthetics played an integral role in Victorian England. Queen Victoria's poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, confronted death on a literary level. His national elegiac poetry — addressed to Victoria — is illuminated when read as a funeral sermon. By drawing out the funeral sermon techniques Tennyson incorporates, we see that he assumes a role as religious mediator to counsel and comfort Victoria in her grief. Tennyson's funeral sermon message alters quite distinctively from Albert's death in 1861, to the death of the Duke of Clarence in 1892, where he makes a final effort to restore the …
A True War Story: Reality And Simulation In The American Literature And Film Of The Vietnam War, Alexis Turley Middleton
A True War Story: Reality And Simulation In The American Literature And Film Of The Vietnam War, Alexis Turley Middleton
Theses and Dissertations
The Vietnam War has become an important symbol and signifier in contemporary American culture and politics. The word "Vietnam" contains many meanings and narratives, including both the real events of the American War in Vietnam and the fictional representations of that war. Because we live in a reality that is composed of both lived experience and simulacra, defined by Baudrillard as a hyperreality, fiction and simulation are capable of representing particular realities. Vietnam was shaped by simulacra of Vietnam itself as well as simulacra of previous American conflicts, especially World War II; however, the hyperreality of Vietnam differed largely from …
Towards A New Currency Of Economic Criticism, Jason G. Douglas
Towards A New Currency Of Economic Criticism, Jason G. Douglas
Theses and Dissertations
“The Purloined Letter,” Edgar Allan Poe's third and final tale featuring the detective Dupin, has evoked a long history of critical response. Criticism has tended to read the text for its role in the development of detective fiction and as illustrative of various theoretical positions. However, the implications of the “The Purloined Letter,” as a tale of ratiocination, has largely been left unexplored. “The Purloined Letter” explores logical processes of value and exchange, particularly economic exchange, in a manner very similar to what Charles Sanders Peirce will call pragmatism several decades later. Dupin's deductive methods and Peirce's abductive logic express …
The Rhetoric Of Violence, James Christiansen Gunter
The Rhetoric Of Violence, James Christiansen Gunter
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis seeks to understand how we read and understand the use of depictions of violence by examining its rhetorical presentation. Although the media gives us a mixed understanding of the way that experiencing violence secondarily (that is, through all types of media) affects us, scholarship in this area has proved clear connections between viewing/experiencing depictions of violence and raised levels of aggression. On the other hand, there is a clear difference between gratuitous depictions of violence and socially useful depictions of violence (i.e., the difference between a slasher movie and a holocaust movie) that that area of scholarship does …
Coming Of Age In Spite Of The Contrast Of Vagueness: Native Speaker And The House On Mango Street As Erziehungsroman, Melissa Lee Huff
Coming Of Age In Spite Of The Contrast Of Vagueness: Native Speaker And The House On Mango Street As Erziehungsroman, Melissa Lee Huff
Theses and Dissertations
Treating Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street and Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker as Erziehungsroman—that is, stories whose coming-of-age process depends on the characters' education—reveals the similar process that both Esperanza Cordero and Henry Park experience as they navigate the 1960s and 1970s American school system. The most important obstacle in Esperanza's and Henry's ability to achieve academically is the contract of vagueness, the tacit agreement between federal education policy and English language learning (ELL) students to misunderstand one another. Differing cultural conceptions of education perpetuate this mutually detrimental relationship between education policy and ELL students, forcing Henry and Esperanza …
Dialectic, Perspective, And Drama, Ethan Mckay Sproat
Dialectic, Perspective, And Drama, Ethan Mckay Sproat
Theses and Dissertations
This project is by and large a project of elucidation: it may add something to studies of Kenneth Burke, but I doubt it adds much to Kenneth Burke's studies. This thesis begins and ends with analyses of Burke's famous motto Ad Bellum Purificandum (or Toward the Purification of War). The Introduction focuses on "war" while the Conclusion focuses on "purification." In short, purified war is a dialectical activity which actively and perpetually pits divergent perspectives against each other. Such an activity keeps the conflictual nature of divergent perspectives in verbal and symbolic arenas rather than physical ones. Burke owes this …
Wwjd, Anna Christina Kohler Lewis
Wwjd, Anna Christina Kohler Lewis
Theses and Dissertations
This creative thesis includes one full length play followed by a critical essay. The play is a comedy revolving around an apartment of college students who are visited by Jesus. Jesus washes their dishes, skateboards with them and otherwise accompanies them throughout their daily activities. Tom, one of the college students, is unable to see Jesus and believes that his roommates are playing a joke on him. Trying to ignore his friends' insistence that Jesus is indeed in their apartment, Tom attempts to pursue his long term crush. Things become complicated when Tom goes on a date and Jesus tags …
Marina Carr's Hauntings: Liminality And The Addictive Society On And Off The Stage, Hillary Jarvis Campos
Marina Carr's Hauntings: Liminality And The Addictive Society On And Off The Stage, Hillary Jarvis Campos
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is an examination of the trapped lives of Marina Carr's female protagonists and their relevance to contemporary Irish women. In her six plays from The Mai to Woman and Scarecrow, each of Carr's female protagonists is trapped either in a liminal state, defined by Victor Turner as a phase in a rites of passage process, or in a patriarchal addictive society, defined by Anne Wilson Schaef as a society in which the power is maintained and perpetuated by white males with the help of all members of society including women. Portia (Portia Coughlan), Hester (By the Bog of …
Sympathetic Observations: Widowhood, Spectatorship, And Sympathy In The Fiction Of Henry James, George Michael Gordon-Smith
Sympathetic Observations: Widowhood, Spectatorship, And Sympathy In The Fiction Of Henry James, George Michael Gordon-Smith
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the roles of widowhood and sympathy in Henry James's short and long fiction. By the time James established himself as a writer of fiction, the culture of sentiment and its formation of sympathetic identification had become central to American and British writers. Critically, however, sympathy in James's fiction has been overlooked because he chose to write about rich expatriates and European nobility. James's pervasive use of widowed characters in his fiction suggests the he too participated in the same aesthetic agenda as William Dean Howells and George Eliot to evoke sympathy in their readers as a means …
Mormon Rhetoric And The Theory Of Organic Evolution, Kurt Wilford Laird
Mormon Rhetoric And The Theory Of Organic Evolution, Kurt Wilford Laird
Theses and Dissertations
Most rhetorical studies of evolution/religion debates have addressed the media version of the debates that pits fundamentalist religion against science. Yet, most of the rhetorical studies in this area have not been nuanced enough to appreciate the complexity of the rhetoric resulting from this rich area of discourse. This study provides a rhetorical analysis of the evolution rhetoric in one particular religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and focuses on the discourse of two prominent leaders in the LDS Church, B.H. Roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith. In the LDS Church there is a clear distinction …
The Man In The Transatlantic Crowd: The Early Reception Of Edgar Allan Poe In Victorian England, Brian Robert Wall
The Man In The Transatlantic Crowd: The Early Reception Of Edgar Allan Poe In Victorian England, Brian Robert Wall
Theses and Dissertations
An important anomaly in transatlantic criticism is the contrast between transatlantic theory and the applied criticism of literature through a transatlantic lens. While most transatlantic scholars assert the value of individual strands of thought throughout the globe and stress the importance of overcoming national hegemonic barriers in literature, applied criticism generally favors an older model that privileges British literary thought in the nineteenth century. I claim that both British and American writers can influence each other, and that mutations in thought can travel both ways across the Atlantic. To argue this claim, I begin by analyzing the influence of Blackwood's …
Facing God: Contemporary American Devotional Poetry, Sarah E. Jenkins
Facing God: Contemporary American Devotional Poetry, Sarah E. Jenkins
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis examines the connection between scripture and contemporary American poetry. Scripture is inherently poetic, employing devices that require analysis and explication. Poets drawing from scriptural text for narrative, language, or form are not looking to replace scripture, or even enhance it. Poets create new experiences in language, and their writing can illuminate the poetics of scripture. My thesis will examine work by three contemporary poets who have imitated, alluded to, and re-created scripture: Jacqueline Osherow's "Scattered Psalms" from 1999 collection Dead Men's Praise; Louise Glück's 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Wild Iris; and Morri Creech's "The Testament of Judas" …
The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon
The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon
Theses and Dissertations
Countering traditional claims that the feminist movement all but vanished during the early nineteenth century, this thesis suggests feminism remained prominent in both the literature and rhetoric of the time. In tracing the development of the "New Rhetoric," a rhetorical movement that aimed to accommodate new principles of the Enlightenment, I focus in part on the rhetorical battle between Edmund Burke, with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man. From there, I suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in the wake of the Burke-Paine debate and drawing upon the rhetorical philosophy of George …
Transcendental Exchange: Alchemical Discourse In Romantic Philosophy And Literature, Elizabeth Olsen Brocious
Transcendental Exchange: Alchemical Discourse In Romantic Philosophy And Literature, Elizabeth Olsen Brocious
Theses and Dissertations
Alchemical imagery and ideology is present in many Romantic works of literature, but it has largely been overlooked by literary historians in their contextualization of the time period. The same can be said for mysticism in general, of which alchemy is a subset. This project accounts for alchemy in the works of transcendental philosophers and writers as it contributes to some of the most important conversations of the Romantic time period, particularly the reaction against empirical philosophy and the articulation of creative processes. The transcendental conversation is a transnational one, encompassing Germany, Britain, and America, with its use of alchemy …
Sugar Nine: A Creative Thesis, Emily L. Dyer
Sugar Nine: A Creative Thesis, Emily L. Dyer
Theses and Dissertations
This collection of short stories explores the different ways women tolerate violence in exchange for some form of validation. The narratives focus on women and the reverberations of small moments which carry violent mass. While the violence occasionally includes physical elements, the collection is more concerned with the ways women accept emotional and psychological violence—specifically from men. Themes, motifs and symbols from the Clytie-Helios myth are threaded throughout the collection as well as a concern for space and touch, art and the creation of art, silence and voice. All of these elements involve control as the women characters in these …
Angels And Demons: Christina Rossetti’S Goblin Market As A Social Critique Of The Victorian Ideal Of The “Angel In The House” And The Pre-Raphaelites’ Response To That Ideal, Melissa Adams
Theses and Dissertations
Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market presents a subversive critique on the socially constructed dichotomy of Angel versus Demon as depicted in Pre-Raphaelite artwork, Dante Gabriele Rossetti’s poetry, and Coventry Patmore’s poem Angel in the House. An analysis of Goblin Market in relation to Patmore’s poem and the Pre-Raphaelite paintings The Annunciation, Ophelia, Lady Lilith, Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, and Sibylla Palmifera and Dante Gabriele Rossetti’s poems “Soul’s Beauty” and “Body’s Beauty” illustrate the ways in which Rossetti presents a counter-image that breaks down this socially constructed dichotomy. This is additionally supported by an exploration …
Blending Doctrine, Practice, And Purpose In Legal Education: The Case For An Integrated Pedagogy, Debra M. Schneider
Blending Doctrine, Practice, And Purpose In Legal Education: The Case For An Integrated Pedagogy, Debra M. Schneider
Theses and Dissertations
Traditional legal education is sorely imbalanced. A law student receives rigorous training in legal doctrine and analytical skillshe learns to "think like a lawyer"but is left with little training in practical skills or his ethical role in society. Moreover, law schools rely almost exclusively on the ineffectual pedagogy of the case-dialogue, or "Socratic," method. Several factors explain this entrenched imbalance, most notably the academy's top-down power structure and its budget constraints. Increasingly, however, the marketplace is demanding practice-ready lawyers who have strong training not only in doctrine but in practical skills and ethics. Law schools, responding to this market pressure, …
"Motionless As An Idol": The Roles Of Art, Modernism, And Religion In William Faulkner's Construction Of Gender, Chelsea Bullock
"Motionless As An Idol": The Roles Of Art, Modernism, And Religion In William Faulkner's Construction Of Gender, Chelsea Bullock
Theses and Dissertations
I argue that Faulkner's purpose extends beyond forging sympathy for the women; his purpose seeks to prevent future losses like those he depicts and offers corrective guidance for his Southern community.