English Language and Literature Commons^™

Reexamining Virtue In Arthur Mervyn, Clarissa Mcintire

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Though Arthur Mervyn focuses primarily on the deadly 1793 invasion of the yellow fever into Philadelphia and humanitarian responses to it, the novel’s juxtaposition of contemporary societal attitudes towards fever victims with those towards unchaste or fallen women underlines striking similarities between the two. In this article I claim that, when applied to unchaste women, the novel’s argument for improved treatment of diseased and infected persons also establishes the unreliability of sexual purity as a standard of respectability due to the potential for a woman’s virtue to be taken from her. Therefore, because Arthur’s society judges the respectability of individuals …

Table Of Contents, Criterion: A Journal Of Literary Criticism

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

“Life Is A Solid Substance”: Materialism And The Use Of Objects In Virginia Woolf’S The Waves, Madeline Thatcher

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper seeks to establish Virginia Woolf as a materialist and her subsequent reliance on objects to create lasting relationships between her characters in her novel The Waves. In an in depth analysis of each of the six principle characters, as well as three distinct instances where all of these protagonists meet together, this paper argues objects are central to fostering human connection, and although each individual may relate differently to materialism, all are brought closer to one another because of it. This paper also responds to several critics’ claims about Woolf and her work with objects, especially Douglas …

Unmooring And Anchoring Bigger Thomas: Ontological Confusion And Mercy In Richard Wright’S Native Son, Davey Cox

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, puts Bigger Thomas on display as an isolated soul, ontologically separated from the world around him and confused about his place in it. The work of Phillipe Descola aids in understanding the cultural models that lead to this confusion by elucidating the underlying schemas by which people organize their experience. Bigger's isolation appears incurable, or difficult to approach at best. The novel's proposed solution is mercy, or closeness and connection, which both Jan and Max offer Bigger. Much of the novel's content and it's treatment thereof is relevant to the environmental justice movement of …

Disciplines, Institutions—And Desires, Will Stockton, Mario Digangi, Ruth Mazo Karras, Melissa E. Sanchez

Publications and Research

Will Stockton: I would like to begin by asking you to consider the chiasmus under which we gather: “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire.” The chiasmus focuses our attention on the crossing of two terms, each with noun and verb forms their grammatical flexibility indexed, perhaps, to the methodological flexibility of the fields in which most of us work: early modern (here both Renaissance and late-medieval) queer and/or sexuality studies. Talk a bit about the definitions of desir/e/ing and histor/y/icizing, and the relation of these terms to the periodization and thematization of your and our work. Is defining these words more …

Tales From Rugosa Coven, By Sarah Avery. Reviewed By Emilee J. Howland-Davis., Emilee J. Howland-Davis

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Tolkien, By Raymond Edwards. Reviewed By Katherine Neville., Katherine Neville

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Adam Smith For Our Times, Ii: Of Sympathy And Selfishness, Michael Gavin

Studies in Scottish Literature

Summarizes the published proceedings of a recent conference at Mercer University discussing the significance for 21st century America of the 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, and offers a critical perspective.

Issue Cover Page, Drew Hubbell, John Ryan

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Issue Cover Page

Lamentations, Betsy Bolton

English Literature Faculty Works

The following poem attempts to think about loss from the perspective of different religions (the Jewish prophet Jeremiah, a Christian sermon, a Buddhist tale, Muslim prayer and traditions). The piece travels through time as well as space: it looks back at the Renaissance as a period in which Jeremiah’s lamentations were set to music and forced travel/slavery between Morocco and England first occurred.

The Lives And Deaths Of Flora Mac-Ivor And Rose Bradwardine: Romance And Reality In Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, Monica D. Allen

Student Works

In Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, Scott presents the problem of romance versus reality. He does this by personifying romance and reality through Flora Mac Ivor and Rose Bradwardine. Flora, with her passion, represents romance. While Rose, a more mellow character, represents reality. Waverley finds that he must choose between them. Rose is a “kindred spirit” to him, while Flora resembles “one of his daydreams.” They embody these ideas through a physical location. Flora’s location is the romantic Scottish Highlands, and Rose’s location is simply her father’s home. Besides location, the figurative deaths of Flora and Rose embody romance and …

Oceans And Ecotones In Mary Shelley’S Maurice, Or The Fisher’S Cot, Colin Carman

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This essay is about oceans in one of Mary Shelley’s non-canonical works, Maurice, or the Fisher’s Cot: A Tale (1820), and the relatedness of humans to their ocean environments; it’s also about Shelley’s representations of those rich and diverse life-forms that populate the edge between sea and land-mass and within what ecologists refer to as an “ecotone.” By characterising the ocean as an ecotone in Maurice, Shelley makes explicit a more eco-conscious way of understanding the nature/culture dichotomy and in terms that directly involve the shifting boundaries between land and sea, saltwater and freshwater, human and animal. This English Romantic …

The Paradox Of Desert Writing: Bridging Epistemological And Discursive Gaps In Craig Childs’ The Secret Knowledge Of Water, Paul Formisano

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This essay examines Craig Childs’ use of paradox as a key rhetorical device to represent the deserts of the American Southwest as depicted primarily in The Secret Knowledge of Water (2000). To understand how Childs employs this device, I draw upon the pragmatic rhetorical tradition and ecocriticism’s materialist turn to show how scientific and poetic discourses, as well as the desert’s agency, create a physical and philosophical contact zone, one where the reader confronts the borders that mark epistemological systems, divisions between the human and the nonhuman, and the discursive and disciplinary strategies and positions used to evoke the mystery …

Glimpses Of Lost Home In The Works Of J.R.R. Tolkien And Owen Barfield, Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

No abstract provided.

A Tourist Performance: Redefining The Tourist Attraction, Brandy Lee Kinkade

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this paper is to examine the intersection of tourism and memoirs in the United States specifically how specific travel memoirs function as tourist attractions. This investigation employs performer-centered analysis as a method of inquiry in order to gain insight on tourist experience as well as concepts of travel, imagination and embodiment. The paper also employs MacCannell’s Semiotics of Attraction as a framework to illustrate the presence of the following categories: tourist, sight, and marker. The presence and the relationships established between these categories establish Into Thin Air and Almost Somewhere: Twenty-eight Days on the John Muir Trail …

All Our Old Heroes Are Dead: The Nostalgia Of Chivalry And The Myth Of The 'Good War' In Game Of Thrones, Elizabeth Wawrzyniak

Foley Library Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Eve's Feminist Wave, Heather S. Higgs

BYU English Symposium

Paradise Lost has been around since the seventeenth century, and yet there is still something readers cannot agree on: what is up with Eve? I propose that Eve’s role in Paradise Lost can be understood through the lens of third-wave feminism, the United States’ current feminist wave. Eve matches well with third-wave feminists in her independence and complexity of character, but what distinguishes her from feminists today is more potent in understanding her role in Paradise Lost. When faced with decisions of the self, Eve ultimately looks outward to Adam and her future posterity and chooses selflessly, exercising restraint …

Early American Need For Christ, Baylee S. Vasquez 6161151

BYU English Symposium

A war torn land of the early Americas created a want for the relief that Christian sects sought when originally retreating from Europe. These early colonists relied on the belief of savior that would redeem them in an eternal sphere, but the absence of an immediate savior in the midst of terror inspired the idea of characters that could act as flawed, yet effective Christ-like figures in the present moment. Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Dustan, and Olaudah Equiano each follow a path that mimics that of Christ’s: death, resurrection, and providing the redemption of others through their tribulation. Dustan redeemed fellow …

Return To Virtue: Defining Moral Strength, Melissa A. Weigeshoff

BYU English Symposium

No abstract provided.

Riot Grrrl’S Legacy: The Medium Is The Message, Rosemary Larkin

BYU English Symposium

Riot Grrrl appropriated traditional, even “feminine,” media platforms to encourage third wave feminism. They ignored a central message on purpose in lieu of loud mediums meant to disrupt the status quo instead of assert a new one.

The Scandal Of Sources Of Henriette-Julie De Murat’S Histoires Sublimes Et Allégoriques, Jared Willden

BYU English Symposium

Henriette-Julie de Murat claims in the foreword of Histoires sublimes et allégoriques (1699) that the only source for her tales is Straparola’s Facetious Nights, yet this claim seems to be misleading. Taking “The Savage” as an example, this essay first assesses the reasons we should doubt Murat’s claim. It then explores other possible literary sources for “The Savage,” such as Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Straparola’s “Guerrino and the Savage Man,” and the Breton folktale “Georgic and Merlin,” as well as biographical elements, both from details surrounding her exile by Louis XIV in 1702 and from her fictional …

The Sewing Room, Madeline L. Tracy

BYU English Symposium

A short horror story delving into the depths of family relationships. After Charlotte's mother dies, she goes to live with her grandparents. She has entered her mother's childhood world and what she witnesses could become emotional baggage- or something that could define her forever.

To Know Grief Intimately, Alexandra Francom

BYU English Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Revolution Of Bath: The Writing And Re-Writing Of Social History In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Erica L. Pratt

BYU English Symposium

Hidden beneath the structure of Regency England lies a society near eruption. In Persuasion, Austen brings her characters on a journey through the landscape of social revolution. Bath serves as pinnacle of this journey –the battlefield where characters are invited to perform according to their social training.

The initial skirmish takes place before the book begins and uses social fighting techniques of the pre-Napoleonic war. It is fought within an aristocratic structure, and defeats our heroine. The second battle, however, is conducted under completely different training mechanisms. This second skirmish follows the fall of aristocracy and the rise of meritocracy. …

The Lives And Deaths Of Flora Mac-Ivor And Rose Bradwardine: Romance And Reality In Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, Monica D. Allen

BYU English Symposium

In Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, Scott presents the problem of romance versus reality. He does this by personifying romance and reality through Flora Mac Ivor and Rose Bradwardine. Flora, with her passion, represents romance. While Rose, a more mellow character, represents reality. Waverley finds that he must choose between them. Rose is a “kindred spirit” to him, while Flora resembles “one of his daydreams.” They embody these ideas through a physical location. Flora’s location is the romantic Scottish Highlands, and Rose’s location is simply her father’s home. Besides location, the figurative deaths of Flora and Rose embody romance and …

Who Wears The Pants: The Unraveling Of Gender In "The Things They Carried", Zoe Meyer

BYU English Symposium

In this paper, I analyze gender roles in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried arguing that war causes American society to shift, and as a result, expected gender roles and the understanding of expected behavior change. Correlating the soldiers’ understanding of what it means to be American directly to their understanding of gender, I explain that changing what it means to be men alters their idea of what it means to be citizens of the United States. Because the soldiers can no longer be identified by their gender, nor can they identify themselves as Americans, they lose their understanding of …

Discourse Functions Of Modal Verbs 'Will And Shall' In Christian Prayers, Olalekan T. Adepoju

Publications and Research

Prayer and language can be said to share similar definition in that they are both means of communication, though in prayer, one is communicating solely with a Supreme Being. This communication implies that a prayer is a form of discourse due to the presence of interaction; as such a discourse analysis of prayer will not be out of place. This study therefore investigates the use of modal verbs by pastors in Christian prayers. This is with a view to identifying and examining the discourse functions performed by these modal expressions. The Speech Act Theory and Systemic Functional Grammar, mainly using …

Katniss Everdeen: Feminist Fighter Or Teen Bride?, Baylee S. Vasquez

BYU English Symposium

Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games, can be read as a strong female character that represents the Third Wave of Feminism. She has become a measuring stick for strong female characters that have appeared after her. It is even argued that she has taken the place of the stereotypical male hero while her cohort, Peeta Mellark, plays the stereotypical female role. However, in spite of all of the things that she accomplishes during her time within the dueling ring, the main debate amongst teenagers—for whom the book was written—is who will Katniss Everdeen, goddess of the hunt and champion …

Almost Normal, But Not Quite, Benjamin L. Featherstone

BYU English Symposium

This is a non-fictional essay focusing on the author’s personal experience with the process and result of receiving a cochlear implant. This essay neither promotes nor discourages the usage of cochlear implant. Instead, it simply reveals the experience of the author. This written form shows the inner storms that come from trying to find a balance between two worlds, which the author lives in—the Deaf world and the hearing world.

Just The Secretary, Belen Jackson

BYU English Symposium

When a voice is silenced, can it ever be restored?