Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
English Language and Literature Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Entropic Interactionist Theory: Reading Social Constructionism Through Thermodynamics And Samuel Beckett, Brie Barron
Entropic Interactionist Theory: Reading Social Constructionism Through Thermodynamics And Samuel Beckett, Brie Barron
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism
This essay aims to explain the breakdown of social constructs through the concept of Entropic Interactionist Theory. EIT argues that it is the nature of creations to be vulnerable to the same forces as their creator, and that social constructions (like identity, for example) are subject to the very same physical forces that give rise to humanity’s creative impulse. At its core, EIT is informed by social constructionism and Nietzschean sociological theory, but it names the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy as the driving force behind societal disintegration. The complication with this theory is that it …
Flannery O’Connor And Transcendence In The Christian Mystery Of Grace, Taran Trinnaman
Flannery O’Connor And Transcendence In The Christian Mystery Of Grace, Taran Trinnaman
Student Works
Within Flannery O’Connor’s works are the repeating themes of grace and salvation. Kathleen G. Ochshorn points one major criticism towards O’Connor’s works however in that her morally flawed characters’ reception of grace and salvation comes through violent or traumatic means, which appears counter to the Roman Catholic faith of Flannery O’Connor. This paper argues against this reading of Flannery O’Connor’s works by examining the Catholic theology surrounding grace alongside the theology of grace as understood through Protestantism. The paper then places three of Flannery O’Connor’s works, “Greenleaf,” “Revelation,” and “The Enduring Chill,” within a Catholic and Protestant reading to explore …
Emotional Truth In Fiction, Tamara Thomson, Stephen Tuttle
Emotional Truth In Fiction, Tamara Thomson, Stephen Tuttle
Journal of Undergraduate Research
In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to work closely with a group of youth patients, staff members, and clinicians at the Utah State Hospital. During that time there were several accusations of misconduct of staff with the youth patients, some of whom I knew personally. My project has been to create six short stories dealing with the experiences of both the youth patients and the staff at the State Hospital that are based on the interviews I did with former patients, clinicians, and staff. I wanted to investigate the way specific individuals remembered incidents of misconduct and how …
We Heard Our Voices With The Hyenas And Other Stories: The Community Of Strangers, Rebekah Washburn Olson
We Heard Our Voices With The Hyenas And Other Stories: The Community Of Strangers, Rebekah Washburn Olson
Theses and Dissertations
Community is often defined by the familial or residential relationships we have, such as family, neighbors or coworkers. But there is another vital and often unobserved community among strangers. These relationships are often haphazard, temporary relationships formed in a moment of necessity—customers trapped in a convenience store by a storm, orphaned runaway teenagers who band together for safety on the streets, miners trapped in the rubble of a collapsed mine, etc. These communities are spontaneous and often undefined, but have the potential to reveal more about our insecurities, reflexes, and emotional capacities than almost any other relationship. For many, they …
Drink Me, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blog, James Arthur Goldberg
Drink Me, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blog, James Arthur Goldberg
Theses and Dissertations
Language itself is a technology, and the advent of each major technology of language transmission (from the alphabet to the printing press to the Internet) has changed the range of speaker-audience dynamics which are the starting point for all creative writing. In this thesis, a writer, armed only with his blog archives and a smattering of John Tenniel illustrations, guides the curious reader through various issues raised by creative writing in the blog form. Topics discussed include self-presentation, the juxtaposed brevity and expansiveness of online texts, nonlinear reading, alternative models for revision, the literary possibilities of the hyperlink, speaker-audience-time relationships …
Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West
Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West
Theses and Dissertations
This creative thesis includes five short stories that explore paradoxical ways in which people can feel alone, even if they are together. Although a combination of isolation and intimacy can occur in any human relationship, the stories in this collection spend much of their time with family circles in particular, considering the way that our closest, most permanent relationships can simultaneously prove the most intimate and the most isolating. The critical introduction that precedes the collection examines each story individually, discussing strategies and subject matter in terms of the collection's guiding concept. The introduction discusses the binary of intimacy and …
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 …
Man Down South, Joseph B. Plicka
Man Down South, Joseph B. Plicka
Theses and Dissertations
In this novella the main character, David Crumm, is getting older and decides not to wait around and die on his frozen ranch, but to retire to warmer climates. He leaves everything with his daughter, gets in his truck and drives south with his dog. In Florida, he accidentally hits and kills a migrant woman on her bicycle. The woman has a young son who survives the accident and, through a number of converging factors, David is compelled to personally take the boy back to his relatives in Nicaragua. The book then deals with David's experiences as he heads farther …
Interrogating History Or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Delillo's Libra, And The Shaping Of Collective Memory, Mark Spencer Mills
Interrogating History Or Making History? Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Delillo's Libra, And The Shaping Of Collective Memory, Mark Spencer Mills
Theses and Dissertations
In the wake of the post-structuralist skepticism of language and language's ability to represent reality, the philosophy of history has likewise been questioned, since we gain our knowledge and understanding of the past primarily through language—through written and spoken testimony, and through subsequent historiography. Various post-structuralist critics have pointed out that history is never entirely recoverable, but accessible only indirectly through what is written and documented about it. What is written and documented is in turn determined by the contents and the nature of the archive. What we know about history is largely mediated and limited by the problems inherent …
Sandra Cisneros As Chicana Storyteller: Fictional Family (Hi)Stories In Caramelo, Sally Marie Giles
Sandra Cisneros As Chicana Storyteller: Fictional Family (Hi)Stories In Caramelo, Sally Marie Giles
Theses and Dissertations
My thesis discusses the ways in which Sandra Cisneros makes historical claims from a Chicana perspective by telling fictional family stories in Caramelo. Not only have Chicanas traditionally been marginalized ethnically by the Anglo mainstream, they have also suffered disenfranchisement as women in their own male-dominated cultural community. Both elements have contributed to the cultural silencing of Chicanas outside of domestic spaces, and particularly in historical discourse. Cisneros introduces storytelling as a means of empowering Chicanas through language that allows them to speak historically and still signify culturally. By telling stories from the site of the family, she ingeniously utilizes …
The Secret Wife, Jill Elena Sharland
The Secret Wife, Jill Elena Sharland
Theses and Dissertations
This master's thesis project is the first half of a historical novel concerning the involvement of Elvira Field Strang Baker, the first plural wife of James Jesse Strang, with the "Beaver Island Mormons" who followed Strang from Nauvoo shortly after the death of Joseph Smith in 1844. The events portrayed are historical, although fictionalized. This portion of the novel contains a brief introduction to her childhood in Chapter One and follows her involvement with the Strangite movement beginning in April 1847 to the coronation of her husband in. Elvira was the first plural wife of James Jesse Strang who to …