English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Eschatological Vision Of The Abolition Of Man, Joshua J. Paladino

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man is ultimately an eschatological work, a vision of the end of history, a warning about the fully conditioned society, an insight into the nature of the universal and homogeneous state, and even a prophecy of Hell on Earth. The end-times significance of the Abolition is perhaps overlooked because it lacks an apocalyptic framing. Lewis presented, rather, a “snug” eschatology.1 There is none of the apocalyptic drama that Lewis crafted in The Last Battle. We do not hear the Lion roar, “Now it is time,” before watching Father Time squeeze the sun in his …

The Riddle Of The Sphinx, Owen Barfield, Rory O'Connor

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Owen Barfield, whom C. S. Lewis described archetypally as his “Second Friend” —“the man who disagrees with you about everything . . . not so much the alter ego as the antiself ”1 —expressed his agreement with the argument of The Abolition of Man and his admiration of the book on a number of occasions. For example, describing various means by which one can become aware of the presuppositions of one’s thoughts, Barfield once wrote: One, of which the best example I know is C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, is to take some typical utterance by a contemporary …

In Memoriam: J. Stanley Mattson (1937–2024), Gayne J. Anacker

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

John Stanley (Stan) Mattson will be best remembered for what he accomplished as the Founder and President of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. Those who knew him best would add that what he accomplished flowed from who he was as a person and as a child of God.

Frontmatter (Volume 18 Issue 1), Bruce R Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

General Editor’s Note:

C. S. Lewis delivered a series of lectures in February 1943 for the University of Durham, published the month prior as The Abolition of Man. It remains a robust defense of moral law and objective values against the onslaught of what Lewis soon labeled “The Poison of Subjectivism.” He argued that children who are not schooled in ancient wisdom regarding mercy, justice, beneficence, and duty become not simply self-centered adults but easily manipulated people. A society bent on pursuing such a path becomes a society in peril.

Last year’s issue of Sehnsucht included a call for papers …

Preface To A Translation Of John Gower's Cronica Tripertita, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

This preface conveys the editors' introduction to Robert J. Meindl and Mark T. Riley's new poetic English translation of John Gower's Cronica Tripertita

What's Their Story? To Help Save The Humanities, Let's Listen To English Majors, Kevin T. Caffrey

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Amid declining enrollment in humanities programs throughout the United States, the English major has been hit the hardest. This article gives voice to current English majors about why they choose to enroll in a program that often receives criticism pertaining to its value and worth. This study provides a literature review of the history of higher education in the United States, an examination of the humanities backlash that has evolved over the past half-century, and an exploration of the value of a degree in English. In addition, it provides survey results from a small group of English majors currently enrolled …

David Lynch Exposed The Rot At The Heart Of American Culture, Billy J. Stratton

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

Stratton discusses cultural commentary and impact in the films of David Lynch, following the director's passing.

Artificial Intelligence And The Urgency Of The Digitally Literate Instructor In Secondary Education, Evan Kyle Calderon

Masters Theses

The formative school years that comprise secondary education, defined as grades 6th through 8th, pave the way for student success in their foreseeable academic careers. More so than ever, the relationship between technology and student experience has significantly impacted students’ overall academic success. With the encroaching wave of artificial intelligence as a societally necessary tool, the days are fast approaching when AI will become commonplace in the classroom, for which educators of the aforementioned grade levels are overwhelmingly unprepared. In addressing the alarming lack of initiative from higher positions in the education hierarchy, an analysis of the reasons for this …

Critics And Champions; Woolf's And Forster's Novel's Connection, Sarah Timm '28

Best First-Year Seminar Writing

Although Virginia Woolf’s and E.M. Forster’s relationship was not as widely discussed or scrutinized as were other relationships between Bloomsbury Group members, Woolf’s and Forster’s association contributed to both novelists’ lasting literary success. Despite having held various—and often conflicting—opinions of each other, Woolf and Forster conversed frequently and engaged in a decades-long debate over form, character, and art in novels. Since Woolf and Forster were both critics and champions of each other’s work, their debates and willingness to question each other contributed to their growth as writers and reviewers. An exploration of the personal and professional relationship between Woolf and …

Professor Franklin's Annotated Bibliography Of Young Adult Literature, 2023-24, John Franklin

Open Educational Resources - English and Modern Languages

Designed to be a useful, time-saving source of primary reading material, Professor Franklin’s Annotated Bibliography of Young Adult Literature, 2023—24 includes his notes and reading recommendations for 218 authors, editors and illustrators; 209 titles; and 60,638 pages of reading.

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet …

More To The Hobbit Than Meets The Eye: Deconstructing Femininity In Bilbo Baggins, Pieter Conradie

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Femininity in JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit has long been read as virtually non-existent. Although Tolkien’s 1937 text remains a compelling story, this absence often means that female readers struggle to find themselves represented in the text. New strains of scholarship, however, claim that by her appearance, interests, behaviour and positioning in a patriarchal society, Bilbo Baggins appears to be more of a woman than a man. In this presentation I take up these emerging arguments, showing how gender relations in The Hobbit deconstruct. In Bilbo and Bilbo’s parents, traditional gender roles are reversed, but ultimately merged. The outcome is a …

Reading, Rending, And Queering The Web Of Story With The Lenses Of “Con-Creation” And Process Theology, Cameron Bourquein, Nick Polk

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

“Sub-creation” within Tolkien’s narrative and extra-narrative works is routinely exhibited not as monolithic but rather as (literally and figuratively) polyphonic. In this joint paper Bourquein proposes that the Legendarium can be read through the lens of “con-creation” (total, continuous, collective, creative activity) both internally (as events in the Secondary World) and externally (as both a text and a pseudohistory in the Primary World). This approach levels the playing field between all actors in—and readers of—“The Drama,” providing a queer approach to interpretive-creative activity when compared to “orthodox” doctrines of creation. Polk further argues that con-creation resonates with process theologies of …

Trans Inequity, Intersectional Ritual, And Jewish Tikkun Olam (Healing Of The World), Valerie Estelle Frankel

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

As Jewish science fiction expands into twenty-first-century questions of identity, some authors explore the trans experience and build bridges towards intersectionality. Ritual and tradition become popular subjects. In the post-apocalyptic Fragments of the Brooklyn Talmud by Andrew Ramer, diverse rabbis create new prayers and practices. A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys offers protagonists from a diverse commune who welcome aliens and rise up against the corporations. Bogi Takács’ short story “Three Partitions” questions where to segregate the shapeshifting Adira, and how the Orthodox space colony can change. Several of these stories ask how comfortable Jewish protagonists are with alien rituals …

Towards An Ethos Of Discussing In-Corporeal Gender In Fantasy Literature: Part I—A 'Feminine' Eldil And A 'Masculine' Vala, Luke Shelton

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people engaged with others on social media in ways that they had not before. During this time, many new interpretive communities arose. In one of these conversations, the way that fans interpreted Tolkien’s description of the physical characteristics of the Valar resonated with a passage in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra (the second book of his Space Trilogy) where the narrator describes the physical manifestation of Perelandra and Malacandra. In this paper I perform a close read of the two passages, to examine the textual meaning, to see what interpretive room there is in …

Sauron, Seduction, And The Queering Mechanism Of The Ring, Mercury Natis

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

It has often been argued that Sauron is barely present in The Lord of the Rings, existing as a villainous presence on the margins of the narrative. This paper will argue that Sauron is present throughout the entire narrative as manifested in the Ring, and through the Ring’s presence as a queering device. The Ring acts out Sauron’s seduction mechanism, a defining character trait as portrayed in the Silmarillion. It is this seduction mechanism that allows the Ring to act as a queering agent throughout the narrative. Ring-lust is inherently queer as it projects a male-presented character’s seductive powers, …

The Mariner (And His Wife): Rethinking Aldarion's (A)Sexuality, Rory M. Queripel

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

“Aldarion and Erendis” (Unfinished Tales) is a rare example in Tolkien’s work of a marriage gone severely awry. Many readings of the tale apportion blame to Aldarion, who is seen as “unwilling” to make the marriage work, and cruel and unfeeling towards Erendis, who herself is characterised as resentful and unaccepting. However, these readings rely on an assumption of a cisheteronormative and, more importantly, allosexual relationship between the couple. This paper proposes an alternate view of Aldarion and his role in the story, suggesting the possibility that he is asexual and/or aromantic (i.e., he does not experience sexual …

Gazing Queerly: The Art And Text Around Saruman’S Non-Normativity, Christopher Vaccaro

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Saruman is an example of a an outsider character in relation to the normative communities in The Lord of the Rings; he serves as a repository for a stigmatized eros, a non-normative desire, a repressed sexuality, and even an orcish sadomasochism simmering just below the narrative’s surface. This paper examines the representation of this queer relationship in several artists’ depictions of Saruman, focusing in particular on three works by Donato Giancola.

Myth, Murder, And Mayhem: Discerning The ‘Other’ In Our Flag Means Death, Sara Brown

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Although the television series Our Flag Means Death presents on the surface as a romantic comedy, it is enhanced by mythic elements that infuse the narrative with a clear sense of the fantastic. Here, the pirates exist in a Secondary World that openly draws upon the Primary (both in terms of historiography and legend); hence 18th-century piracy and British colonialism can interact seamlessly with human-to-animal-transformations (paying homage to the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone) without seeming either disconcerting or anomalous – all co-exist comfortably in Faerie. OFMD both inverts and deconstructs mythopoeia; the Primary World myths of the Gentleman …

Cruising Faërie: Further Notes On Queering Faith In Fantasy Literature, Taylor Driggers

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

In Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (2022), I argue that fantasy affords sexually marginalized people the ability to re-vision Christian theology in queer ways, thanks to its fixation on strange bodies, its longing for other worlds, and the ways in which both of these may reflect back on theological narratives of incarnation and salvation. Yet this project raises further questions that remain unresolved: namely, how might the framework of Christian theology constrain, as well as illuminate, queer imaginaries? If fantasy allows us to envision livable lives for ourselves as unruly bodies, just what forms of relating may those lives entail? …

"Something Mighty Queer" [Introduction], Alicia Fox-Lenz, Grace Moone, Leah Hagan

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Recounts the origin of the conference theme and introduces the contributors.

The English And The Welsh: Tolkien’S Rewriting Of History In The Legendarium, Alexander Retakh

Journal of Tolkien Research

Early legendarium is often called a "mythology for England," while Tolkien's later tales have been described as mythologies for Britain (by Dimitra Fimi) or Englishness (by Thomas Honegger). Later legendarium still contains fictional versions of English-like peoples, the Hobbits and the Rohirrim. Their construction leads to a re-construction of elements of English history in the subcreation, that often produces fictional analogs not only of the English but of the Welsh. How Tolkien described contacts between the English and their closest neighbors reveals his idea of Englishness (his own national identity) and its place in the narrative.

This article traces appearances …

Uncovering Maria Edgeworth’S Strategic Political Influence Through Her Unpublished Letters, Autumn G. Hall

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) was one of the most prolific Anglo-Irish novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While Edgeworth’s novels are regularly discussed among Regency-era scholars, researchers have rarely considered her letters and correspondence, especially in relation to her role in contemporary politics. During my time on the Maria Edgeworth Letters Project team, I researched Edgeworth’s previously unpublished letters, which provided a unique view of her strategic political correspondence network. Through her writing, Edgeworth was able to voice her thoughts while also remaining publicly complacent with restrictive societal norms imposed on women. In my article, I argue that through her …

Materiality Of Traumatic Experience And The Limits Of Representation In Hassan Bani Ameri’S Gonjeshkha Behesht Ra Mifahmand (Sparrows Understand Heaven), Maryam Ghodrati

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

This paper examines the materialization of trauma as both a narrative and embodied phenomenon in Hassan Bani Ameri’s 2006 novel, Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand, using contemporary narrative and trauma theory. The postmodernist narrative, told from the perspective of a photojournalist, reconstructs events surrounding the death of a celebrated Iran-Iraq War commander. I argue that traumatic truths resist full integration into conventional frameworks of understanding, evident in the novel’s non-linear, fragmented narrative and its shift from visual realism to confessional surrealism in an ending that challenges traditional storytelling and historical documentation. By vividly simulating the sensory processing of traumatic memories, the …

Review Of: Born Amish: Life Before The Ex-Communication—Ann Stoltzfus Taylor, Amy Schlabach

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The account begins on the night of the author’s birth. Ann Stoltzfus Taylor was the first child born to her parents, Gid and Lizzie Stoltzfus, a well-known Amish couple living near Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Stoltzfus Taylor gives us a brief history of the home she grew up in, as well as introducing us to her family. Various aunts, uncles, and grandparents are described, along with memories associated with each person. She writes about her great-grandfather, nicknamed “Wild Gid,” who apparently was not a model Amishman. The chapter ends with a few stories of tragedies and stories of fun and bonding with …

Review Of: A Road Less Travelled; Going Back To My Roots; And Traveling Solo But Never Alone—Christopher Petrovich, Robert Alexander, Danny Kohlar, Darrell Yoder

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

People that are interested in joining the Amish or Mennonites are often referred to as “seekers.” And such they are, though in a sense we are all seekers, looking for that better country. It is a mistake to think that all seekers are the same, for their personalities, motivations, and “position on the road” are all different. [First paragraph.]

The Nameless Enemy: How Do You Solve A Problem Like “Mairon”?, Cameron Bourquein

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper analyzes Sauron’s “original” name, “Mairon,” in its various contexts (textual, temporal, and linguistic) and then applies it to a reading of the character in order to produce a “capsule characterization” or “minimyth” for the Lord of the Rings himself. The name “Mairon” appears only in a note to a single entry in a list of Eldarin roots, not published until 2007 in the journal Parma Eldalamberon. This niche location suggests one of the many ways in which this name is marginal: typographically, linguistically, narratively, and historically (as in the Secondary World). The name appears to have been …

The Songs Of The Spheres: Lewis, Tolkien And The Overlapping Realms Of Their Imaginations (2024), Edited By Łukasz Neubauer And Guglielmo Spirito, G. Connor Salter

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by G. Connor Salter, of The Songs of the Spheres: Lewis, Tolkien and the Overlapping Realms of their Imaginations (2024), edited by Łukasz Neubauer and Guglielmo Spirito

‘Keeping It Real’ Goes Wrong: Deconstruction Of Masculinity In The Work Of Jay-Z And Kendrick Lamar, Leo Mcmahon

Theses and Dissertations

Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar use their latest albums, 4:44 and Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, to address the wake of damage their behaviors have caused. On a personal level each artist apologizes to their wife for infidelities, but along the way they deconstruct performances of masculinity that have dominated popular hip-hop music since the late 1980's. Highlighting the pressure the music industry puts on hip-hop artists to perform a hyper-sexual, hyper-violent masculinity, I argue that the artists join the genre of African-American autobiography to reveal the inauthentic performances of 'realness' in hip-hop. Posturing as representatives of African-American men, …

Chaucer’S Complaint To His Purse And Authority In The World, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Chaucer’s Complaint to His Purse concerns more than the poet’s financial need under the new Lancastrian administration. It speaks to the limits of Henry IV’s royal authority and, through irony, to the limitations of Chaucer’s purse’s power. Underlining royal limits, Chaucer petitions the king as one who holds office through election and line but not con-quest, which is Henry’s position on his office as well. In speaking iron-ically of the purse’s authority, the poet addresses the gold that the mon-arch might grant him as if it constituted a human or divine patron, but he does so in a hierarchy of …