English Language and Literature Commons^™

Protection Against Ruin: The Reality Of Judgment, Sarah B. Brooks

FUSION

This essay analyzes the works of Chekhov and Eliot in depicting the prevention of ruin in strict societies. Whether they deserve it or not, characters may face personal or societal ruin. With this understanding, this essay inspects the lives of three characters and how their decisions impact their role in society. Additionally, this essay allows readers to form their own opinions on the actions of each of the characters from Chekhov and Eliot's works. By analyzing the ideas of judgment, morality, and the merit of societal standards, this essay discusses pieces that took place in the past, but messages that …

Paradoxes Of Intimacy In Selected Novels Of Victorian And Early Twentieth Century, Miaad Muhammad Mahmood

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

While markers of the passage from Victorian to early Twentieth-century novels abound, none is more pointed or insistent than human relationships. Marriage, one of the important human connections for social, emotional, and spiritual purposes, becomes the dominant theme of the novels of the period. This dissertation addresses intimacy and its paradoxical nature in marriages depicted in Victorian and early twentieth-century novels. It explores how these novels depict marriage and intimacy, and the paradoxes surrounding intimacy that develop from those depictions. Three novels—George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871), Thomas Hardy’s Tess of d’Urbervilles (1891), and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925)—span the period from …

Describing The Dress Of Women: Author’S Notes On The Development Of Gender, Cassandra B. Tan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an examination of how authors of the late Victorian and early Twentieth Century describe the embodied and mental effects of the nature of women’s clothing through works of fiction and nonfiction. Through this analysis, I argue that clothing serves as a mechanism to oppress women by eliminating concrete and philosophical access to wealth and necessities as well as by instigating acts of violence upon a developing body through stricture and hygiene. I examine the ways that feminine dress, from youth through adulthood, shapes the way women view themselves, and in turn has a reciprocal effect on how …

The Triumph Of Love: Interpretations Of The Tarot In Charles Williams' The Greater Trumps, Nancy-Lou Patterson

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Extended study of Tarot imagery in Williams’ The Greater Trumps, with examination of Eliot’s possible influence on Williams through his earlier use of Tarot symbolism in The Waste Land. A substantial portion traces the history of Tarot and the evolution of its symbolism through several important decks, then looks at Williams’s interpretation in his novel. Also examines the Roman triumph ceremony and the figure of the Fool for their surprisingly rich interconnections with the Tarot and The Greater Trumps.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Failures Of Grace: Limits Of Tragedy In The Late Nineteenth-Century Novel, Anick S. Rolland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Failures of Grace argues that nineteenth-century novelists challenge the hegemonies of literary form and the value of personal suffering through what I call the trans-genre tragic novel. This new form is emblematic of a period in which values hang in the balance and places traditional values at odds with themselves by combining the low form of the novel with the highest mimetic mode in the Western tradition: tragedy. It simultaneously proposes the most vulnerable members of society as tragic heroes in contrast to the noble figures who previously were presumed to define the genre.

Through close readings of works by …

T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land", And Yoga Philosophy, Jessica Cloud

Master's Theses

While pursuing his graduate studies at Harvard, T.S. Eliot put a year into deep study of the Yoga Sutras with renowned scholar James Haughton Woods. Yoga, defined in the Sutras as the practice of stopping “the fluctuations of the mind-stuff” (Patañjali 8), provides the possibility of hope and equanimity in Eliot’s poem The Waste Land (1922), which depicts a world seemingly devoid of meaning. Not only can the influence of the Yoga Sutras be seen in the poetic form, style, and voice of The Waste Land and in the explanatory notes to the poem provided by Eliot, but classical yoga …

Gender In Eliot's The Mill On The Floss And Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd, Rachel C. Nelson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This text explores the characters of Maggie and Tom Tulliver from George Eliot’s 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss and the characters of Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak from Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd. It connects the two novels by way of the relationships between these main characters. In both cases, the female character struggles with the confines of Victorian societal limits for women based on their gender. In The Mill, Maggie constantly struggles against the wishes of her older brother, and while Tom is arguably an antagonistic force in the novel, this …

Queer Affect In T.S. Eliot's Early Poetry, Michael Houle

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

T.S. Eliot: A Never-Ending Exploration, Kristina Krupilnitskaya

Honors Thesis

The following thesis explores the work of T.S. Eliot before and after his conversion to the Anglican Church. While the paper explores the stylistic qualities of Eliot's poetry, the main focus of the essay lies in bridging the pre and post conversion works together in order to show that both of the periods were significant in the poet's life. While many critics viewed Eliot's early poetry as a lot more exploratory and challenging, calling his later poetry banal and bland, my essay aims to show that even though the poetry had shifted in its content, its significance, complexity, and experimentality …

The Peace Of The Waste Land And Understanding Eliot’S Two Readings, Luke J. Chambers

The Hilltop Review

There are two recordings of T.S. Eliot reading The Waste Land in existence today, one made in 1946 for the Library of Congress, and another from 1935, recorded at Columbia University. The later 1946 recording, being the only one published, is by far the more well known. The 1935 recording is of much inferior sound quality and is difficult to find. The younger Eliot recites at times with greater energy, a quicker tempo, and with markedly different phrasing and intonation. However, quite often Eliot’s recitation is nearly indistinguishable between the two recordings. The specific moments of difference reveal a great …

Middlemarch: Eliot's Spencerian Sociological Study Of Provincial Life, Kellie Marie Mckinney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the novel Middlemarch, George Eliot fulfills the intention of her subtitle and uses sociological theories to conduct A Study of Provincial Life. Eliot's letters, journals, and various essays provide evidence of sociologist Herbert Spencer's influence on her own writings. Spencer's specific opinions and contributions not only strengthen the sociological message of Eliot's novel, but a handful of his ideals shape the narrative voice of her novel. Variations of Spencer's theories are seen in Eliot's "authorial narrator's" comments and observations of the Middlemarch couples. With her narrator, Eliot applies Spencer's theories on "belief" and on the correlation of …

Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson Mr.

Tyler E Anderson

My thesis will closely examine recent trends in criticism of "The Waste Land," namely the ideological rebuttal against the New Critics proposed by recent historicists such as Lawrence Rainey. I will show that Rainey has unfairly characterized the so-called New Critics as supporting a reading of the poem that only sees it for a work of order and unity while in fact they acknowledged many organizational inconsistencies within the text. A central tenet of my thesis will be that ideological characterizations of earlier critics should never substitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. My findings will lead to broader …

The Persistence Of Narrative: Archetypal And Thematic Parallelism In Milton And Shelley, Douglas Stephens Iv

Other Undergraduate Scholarship

The literary connections between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are relatively obvious to anyone familiar with both works. Less obvious is the fact that an astonishing number of character roles and thematic components translate directly between the two works. The characters of Frankenstein continually switch in and out of these clearly archetypal roles, but careful study reveals that the underlying parallels hold true throughout. The question at hand is whether the parallelism evident in the relationship between the books is a result of thematic referentialism or if there is a deeper historical and mythopoeic significance. That these …

The ‘Ontology Of Reading’. Beyond ‘Realism’ And The Problem Of Reference Via Eliot And Swinburne, Pier Giuseppe Monateri

Pier Giuseppe Monateri

No abstract provided.

Examining Early And Recent Criticism Of The Waste Land: A Reassessment, Tyler E. Anderson Mr.

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

My thesis will closely examine recent trends in criticism of "The Waste Land," namely the ideological rebuttal against the New Critics proposed by recent historicists such as Lawrence Rainey. I will show that Rainey has unfairly characterized the so-called New Critics as supporting a reading of the poem that only sees it for a work of order and unity while in fact they acknowledged many organizational inconsistencies within the text. A central tenet of my thesis will be that ideological characterizations of earlier critics should never substitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. My findings will lead to broader …

The Horrors Of A Disconnected Existence: Frustration, Despair And Alienation In The Poetry Of T. S. Eliot, Oscar C. Labang

Dr. Oscar C. Labang

The expression of modern existence as a disconnected entity with shocking and distressful consequences is reflected in the writings of many modernist writers, but it seems to take centre stage in the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The decline of values and the multifarious problems of the twentieth century have caused modern man to create parentheses that detach them from each other, from society, from nature and even from themselves. This paper examines the horrifying consequences of life in a chaotic and disconnected universe on human existence from the perspectives of frustration, despair, and alienation. From a Structuralist theoretical standpoint, …

Lee Oser. The Return Of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien And The Romance Of History, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

In The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History, Lee Oser, a professor of literature at Holy Cross College, follows Chesterton's lead in taking on the heretics, decadents, and aesthetes within the postmodernist critical establishment, extolling Chesterton, Eliot, and Tolkien as defenders of reason and romance and vilifying influential late twentieth-century critics such as Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, whose alleged attacks on the liberal humanist tradition Oser sees as having eroded not only literary scholarship but indeed the very underpinnings of democratic society. In his preface Oser asserts, "Without scruple or debate, our schools …

Full Circle: T. S. Eliot's Quest For Spiritual Fulfillment, Lindsay Sarin

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

A Gentlemen's Benevolence: Symptoms Of Class, Gender, And Social Change In Emma, Nicholas Nickleby, And The Mill On The Floss, Aubrey Lea Hammer

Theses and Dissertations

Austen, Dickens, and Eliot each responded to discussions of their time concerning class, gender, and social change. One of the ways they addressed these issues, and sought to find solutions to the problems facing their culture, was through benevolence. Knightley, in Emma, uses benevolence as a means of mediating self-interest and sympathy. By acting out of sympathy, through benevolence, he achieves the self-interested benefits of reinforcing the class system and achieving his romantic conquests. Likewise, Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby learns how to use benevolence as a means of social mobility from his mentors, the Cheerybles. Throughout Nicholas Nickleby the hero learns …

Leaving Her Story: The Path To The Second Marriage In The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall And Middlemarch, Angela Myers Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

During the Victorian period marriage proved to be a dominant theme in fiction. Female writers especially focused on the topic of marriage and wrote stories of women whose first marriages were imperfect. Anne Brontë and George Eliot dedicated themselves to portraying in their stories realistic heroines who deal with their own flaws as well as those of the men they marry. Their heroines distance themselves from their expected roles, moving beyond their first failed marriages to wiser second marriages.

Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall follows Helen Huntingdon as she attempts to fulfill the self-appointed role of Savior to …

Reading The Wreckage: De-Encrypting Eliot's Aesthetics Of Empire, Paul Douglass

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

The writer examines an aesthetics of empire evident in Eliot's The Waste Land. He contends that though this work's formal innovations appear “revolutionary,” its aesthetics fit into modernism's reactionary character and reflect the cultural politics of the British conservatism that Eliot had adopted. In decoding the poem's fragments and allusions, he illustrates Eliot's preoccupation with empire. He also shows how The Waste Land may be seen as part of a British literary tradition of “reading the wreckage” that goes back at least to Edward Volney's Ruins (1791).

Reading The Wreckage: De-Encrypting Eliot's Aesthetics Of Empire, Paul Douglass

Paul Douglass

The writer examines an aesthetics of empire evident in Eliot's The Waste Land. He contends that though this work's formal innovations appear “revolutionary,” its aesthetics fit into modernism's reactionary character and reflect the cultural politics of the British conservatism that Eliot had adopted. In decoding the poem's fragments and allusions, he illustrates Eliot's preoccupation with empire. He also shows how The Waste Land may be seen as part of a British literary tradition of “reading the wreckage” that goes back at least to Edward Volney's Ruins (1791).

Reading Authorial Narration: The Example Of The Mill On The Floss, Carl D. Malmgren

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Visionary Excitability And George Eliot: Judeo-Mythic Narrative Technique In Daniel Deronda, Barbara Stufflebeem

Honors Papers

Readers of Daniel Deronda have long noted the tension in the novel between the so-called "Jewish" and "English" halves, and understandably so. Not only are the lives of Gwendolen's carefully drawn psychological portrait contrasts strongly with the air of myth and prophecy in Deronda's discovery of his heritage and destiny. Critics, following Leavis in The Great Tradition, have considered Deronda's story vastly inferior to Gwendolen's, an unbelievable moral fairy-tale peopled with flat characters. But if we consider the novel, ans the Deronda story especially, as constructed with an awareness of a characteristically Judaic narrative style we can see both as …

Eliot's Cats: Serious Play Behind The Playful Seriousness, Paul Douglass

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Eliot's Cats: Serious Play Behind The Playful Seriousness, Paul Douglass

Paul Douglass

No abstract provided.

T. S. Eliot's Theory Of Dramatic Communication, Janelle G. Reinelt

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote only seven dramatic works, which include the unfinished fragments Sweeny Agonistes and the pageant play, The Rock. These works show the ways Eliot put into practice his own theories about the relationship of drama and verse. Although their relative merits are the subject of considerable critical controversy, each play affords a rich theatrical experience. This study attempts to assess the real value of Eliot’s work and seeks to explore the relationship between his avowed intentions to communicate in the theatre, and the finished product of his labors. Necessarily, we must examine his views on art, religion, …

Echoes Of Eliot's The Waste Land In Three Modern American Novels, Ruth Elliott

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This essay demonstrates how three popular writers of the twentieth century have created novels that contain echoes of Eliot's poem. They are F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), and John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown (1933). I chose these particular novels because they exemplify widely different and distinctive echoes of the poem. Fitzgerald's use of waste land imagery is readily perceptible the most effective in defining and summing up the temper of the Jazz Age in America. Hemingway's borrowing lies principally in parallel characterization (Jake Barnes as he Fisher King is the …

An Introduction To The Poetry Of T.S. Eliot : A Selective Handbook, Jean Katherine Collins

Master's Theses

T. S. Eliot, one of the most discussed poets of our time, has registered a deep and sincere concern for the plight of modern society. That concern is mirrored in his poetry where he has spoken his message to those who will hear it. He seems to have put a supersensitive finger on the pulse of the world's ills, and has suggested what he believes to be the only solution.