English Language and Literature Commons^™

Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd

Criticism

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe L. Moraga. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. 280, 9 illustrations. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Tempering Romance, Katherine R. Larson

Criticism

The Fabulous Dark Cloister: Romance in England after the Reformation by Tiffany Jo Werth. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Pp. 248, 8 illustrations. $65.00 cloth.

Fresh Shakespeare From The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Some critics have argued against the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's contemporary English translation project, but Daniel Pollack-Pelzner argues it's part of the process of keeping Shakespeare alive.

Metafiction As Genre Fiction, Jeremy A. Levine

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Realism, the genre in which literature is expected to reflect reality, tends to act as the default setting for establish- ing the worth of a given piece. This paper contends that metafiction, a post-modern genre characterized by a work’s awareness of its own fictional nature, has been damaged by realism’s standards. Using a case study of two metafic- tional works, John Barth’s “Life-Story” and David Foster Wallace’s Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way against a historical and theoretical backdrop, the paper both isolates metafiction from realism while describing its deliberate artistic mission. This identity is based on open …

Manzanar Murakami As Radical Mathematician, Logan Bishop-Van Horn

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

In Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, characters attempt to make meaning of the many complex structures in which they are situated. In his unique meaning-making process, Manzanar Murakami, a homeless Sansei, “conducts” the Los Angeles traffic with a silver baton from atop a highway overpass. In conducting his music, Murakami per- forms complex mathematics, finding meaning in connection by mapping the rhythmic flow of humans, machines, and goods. Through his baton, to the sounds of a beautiful orchestra, he translates precisely the relationships he sees before him. Murakami’s music and Yamashita’s fantastic images constitute a “mathematical realism,” a lens …

Hearkening To The Other: A Certeauvian Reading Of The Ainulindale, Cami Agan

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Applying literary theory to authors whose works interest us is “a kind of play that attunes us to the interior movements, voices, and processes” of their work. Analyzes the Ainulindalë using the literary-historical theoretical framework of Michel de Certeau as a way of understanding how the inhabitants of Arda, not just the readers outside the world, comprehend how they are situated in their history, and what this says about Tolkien’s understanding of history.

Reviews, Nicholas Birns, Joe R. Christopher, Catherine Coker, Janet Brennan Croft, Mike Foster, Jon Garrad, Crystal Hurd, Yvette Kisor, Jeremy Larson, Laura Lee Smith

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis: A Critical Edition. Edited by Don W. King. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North. G. Ronald Murphy. Reviewed by Jon Garrad.

Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Deborah A. Higgins. Reviewed by Yvette Kisor.

Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C.S. Lewis and Gender. Monika B. Hilder. Reviewed by Laura Lee Smith.

Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of The Rings. Susan Jeffers. Reviewed by Jeremy Larson.

Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis. Abigail Santamaria. …

The Texting Smile, Richard K. Angel

Student Works

There's nothing like dating to turn us into a miserable puddle of falsehood. When we're with the person we like, we fight to play the game and find the right balance of not showing too much interest (so she'll know that you like her) and showing enough (so she doesn't think you don't). It's an art. But when we're only texting, we can behave however we'd like as long as we choose our words carefully; we don't even try to hide our emotions, and the perfect strangers surrounding us see more of our unabashed smile than the object of our …

1904: Tolkien, Trauma, And Its Anniversaries, Nancy Bunting

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A controversial speculative reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s early years with his mother Mabel and brother Hilary. Applying our current understanding of childhood trauma and its later effects, definitions of abuse, and knowledge of the history of childrearing to a close reading of underused material from Hilary’s memoirs and Ronald’s artwork, among other documents, Bunting proposes a far less rosy picture of Tolkien’s early childhood than usually seen. However, statements from Tolkien’s official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, hint at a great deal of suppressed material; it’s possible this interpretation may turn out to be closer to the truth than one might expect …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

The Lost Letter: Seeking The Keys To William's Arthuriad, John D. Rateliff

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Mythcon 47 Guest of Honor address. The Arthuriad is dense with allusion and the reader often has a sense of missing much that goes on below the surface; as it happens, the reader is not wrong to be confused. Rateliff finds the keys that unlock this poetic sequence à clef in a relatively unknown letter Williams wrote in answer to a list of questions on the Arthuriad from C.S. Lewis, in the “gynecomorphical map” drawn to Williams’s personal specifications which served as endpapers to the poetry, and in Williams’s private life as revealed in letters and memoirs, in particular to …

Tolkien's Philological Philosophy In His Fiction, Sherrylyn Branchaw

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Reading of several key passages in Tolkien’s works that tie back to and illustrate his deepest-held philosophical beliefs about philology. Among other examples, pays particular attention to Gimli’s speech about the Glittering Caves of Aglarond and to Faramir’s failure to understand the warning implicit in the place-name Cirith Ungol due to the drift of linguistic meaning over time.

Tales Of Anti-Heroes In The Work Of J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers two stories which seem uncharacteristically anti-heroic in comparison to the rest of Tolkien’s legendarium—the story of Túrin Turambar, and in particular, the portrait of the failed marriage of Aldarion and Erendis in “The Mariner’s Wife” and its ecological implications.

"A Wilderness Of Dragons": Tolkien's Treatment Of Dragons In Roverandom And Farmer Giles Of Ham, Romuald I. Lakowski

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An exploration of Tolkien’s depictions of dragons in his stories for children, Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham. Draws on “On Fairy-stories,” the Beowulf lecture, the Father Christmas letters, and a little-known “Lecture on Dragons” Tolkien gave to an audience of children at the University Museum in Oxford, as well as source Tolkien would have known: Nennius, The Fairy Queene, and so on.

Noms De Guerre: The Power Of Naming In War And Conflict In Middle-Earth, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers named weapons, noms de plume and other personal name changes, place name changes. Un-naming is seen as both a political strategy and a key tactic of in Sauron’s arsenal.

Notes, Seona Ford, Joe R. Christopher

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An obituary of long-time Mythlore advisory board member and Sayers scholar Barbara Reynolds, who was closely associated with Dorothy L. Sayers. An anniversary appreciation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; attempts to analyze its literary staying power.

The Hall Of Mirrors: Multi-Biographical Transfigurations Of British Women Writers During The Long Nineteenth Century, Brenda Ayres

Honorable Mention

Assistant Director of Honors, Dr. Brenda Ayres, presents on her upcoming book, A Hall of Mirrors: Multi-biographical Transfigurations of British Women Writers During the Long Nineteenth Century, to be published in the summer of 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan. The presentation is a part of the English Faculty Research Lecture Series. The lecture will be DH 3397, October 16, 2015 from 10:30-11:35.

Fan The Flames Of Discontent: Contemporary Labor Literature And Social Movements, Ericka Rae Wills

Theses and Dissertations

Fan the Flames of Discontent: Contemporary Labor Literature and Social Movements balances a literary approach to textual analysis with socially grounded reflections on diverse worker organizations. Chapters analyze Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Helena Maria Viramontes's Under the Feet of Jesus, and Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day alongside worker-writers' texts and testimonies, such as Fran Leeper Buss and María Elena Lucas's Forged under the Sun / Forjada bajo el sol and The Heat: Steelworker Lives and Legends, a collection of United Steelworkers' Institute for Career Development writings. In each of five chapters, this dissertation respectively discusses how literature …

Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir Of A Father, Gone To War [Table Of Contents], Louise Desalvo

History

When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn’t realize her quest would take ten years, and that it would yield more revelations about the man—and herself—and the effect of his military service upon their family than she’d ever imagined. During his last years, as he told her about his life, DeSalvo began to understand that her obsession with war novels and military history wasn’t merely academic but rooted in her desire to understand this complex father whom she both adored and …

On Writing Neo-Victorian Fiction: James Miranda Barry (1999) And Sophie And The And The Sibyl: A Victorian Romance (2015), Patricia Duncker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the text of the Forty-Fourth George Eliot Memorial Lecture delivered at the Chilvers Coton Heritage Centre on 10 October, 2015. An extended version of this article will appear in late 2016 or early 2017 as an interview/essay in the series 'anglistik & englischunterricht': Christina Flotmann and Anna Lienen (eds.), Victorian Ideologies in Contemporary British Culture, Heidelberg: Winter Verlag.

My first historical novel - lames Miranda Barry (1999) was not born a Neo-Victorian novel, but became one. And it had a very personal link to my own life. Barry was a nineteenth-century colonial doctor and medical reformer, who had …

A Companion To J.R.R. Tolkien, Ed. Stuart D. Lee, Reviewed By Andrew Higgins, Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review of A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2014), edited by Stuart D. Lee

Way Forward On Healthcare?, William H. Lane

English Faculty Publications

In the wake of a remarkable visit from Pope Francis, is it time to ask, WWFD? What would Francis do with our half-fixed, highly fragmented healthcare system? [excerpt]

Caribou, Petroleum, And The Limits Of Locality In The Canada–Us Borderlands, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

his article discusses Karsten Heuer’s 2006 book Being Caribou in light of debates in ecocriticism and border studies about how to define the local in the context of environmental problems of vast range and uncertain temporality. It explores how Heuer’s book about following the Porcupine Caribou herd’s migration engages in multiple forms of boundary crossing—between countries, between hemispheric locations, and between species—and shows how insights from Indigenous storytelling complicate the book’s appeal to environmentalist readers by asserting a prior, transnational Indigenous presence in the transboundary landscapes of present-day Alaska and the Yukon.

October 5, 2015: David Bleich Lecture, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring David Bleich

Fgcuscholars: Using Undergraduate Research As A Tool To Enhance Student Writing, Critical Thinking, And Information Literacy, Mary Crone-Romanovski, Hulya Julie Yazici, Rita Rubin, Charles W. Gunnels

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

This presentation will overview FGCUScholars, a university-wide program at Florida Gulf Coast University that integrates undergraduate research across the university as a means of teaching and assessing writing, critical thinking, and information literacy. We will overview the development and learning outcomes of FGCUScholars and the implementation across the campus, highlighting examples of curricular changes in engineering that engage students throughout their career at FGCU, the role of problem/project-based learning (PBL) in business classes, the development of research assignments that use digital media in literature courses, and the creation of disciplinary-specific sections of Composition II.

An Independent Will: The Rise Of Women’S Literacy Reception Digital Signage

Promotional Materials

No abstract provided.

The Industrial Fairy Tale: The Adaptable Narrative In Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies, Emily Handy

Graduate Theses

Though Charles Kingsley’s mid-nineteenth century children’s book, The Water-Babies, is generally out of favor with canons of Victorian or children’s literature, I argue that The Water-Babies is a highly adaptable text because it is made up of conjoined opposites. The text’s multiplicity of form and content as well as its emphasis on imagination make the The Water-Babies malleable for variation and adaptation, while the approach Kingsley took to the child audience prepared the text for an indefinite future readership. Moreover, the work’s initial intent to be utilized for social change and the proto-environmentalist messages already present in the text situate …

The Literary Significance Of Herman Melville’S Benito Cereno: An Analytical Reflection On Benito Cereno As A Fictional Narrative, Dani Kaiser

4997 English: Capstone

In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855), Captain Amasa Delano discovers a distressed slave ship in need of aid, only to later find out that his perception of the dire situation was completely incorrect. Melville’s novella is derived from Delano’s nonfiction account of the experience, titled Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817). This paper focuses on three questions that demonstrate why Melville wrote a novella almost completely derived from a nonfiction account of the events aboard the ship. In order to understand why Melville’s novella is powerful, one must ask, as an overarching question why …

Biography And Broken Barriers: Melville’S Use Of Personal Experience And Social Groups To Achieve Commentary In Typee And Redburn, Katelyn Quigley

4997 English: Capstone

Melville’s texts continue to be relevant to a contemporary readership well over a century since original publication, as his words not only illuminate and examine nineteenth century experiences, but also present concepts and ideas that continue to be worthy of consideration by modern audiences. One such issue that is regularly addressed in Melville’s works is that of identity: of the individual, of society, and of the individual as he navigates between the fabrics of various social worlds. This paper examines Social Identity Theory and its components that both achieve identification of the individual and the aggregate in society and define …

Interpretations Of Herman Melville’S Moby-Dick In The Field Of Visual Arts, Madeline Kudlata

4997 English: Capstone

Artistic adaptations of literary classics allow readers to visualize and contextualize some of the most important themes, motifs, scenes, and images in a story that may be difficult to grasp through verbal text alone. From these adaptations, one can analyze the stylistic and thematic similarities or differences in the way an artist portrays elements of Melville’s Moby-Dick. Through their varying artistic styles and media, abstract impressionist Frank Stella, self-taught artist Matt Kish, and award-winning children’s book illustrator Allan Drummond express how Melville’s novel can manifest itself in a multitude of contexts: emotional, literal, and theoretical. By analyzing the way …