English Language and Literature Commons^™

Palo Duro, Andrew Sofer

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 161

The Physiologist’S Rebuke To His Lover, Todd Portnowitz

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 148

Lights And Shadows - 2013, University Of North Alabama

Lights and Shadows

Art and Literature Magazine

A Son Of Mercy, Un Hijo De Misericordia, Carlos Fidel Espinoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A Son of Mercy is a novella that follows Charlie Cantero as he struggles to find his role in the Cantero family after the death of the family's patriarch, Braulio "Pepper" Cantero. A Son of Mercy is set along the El Paso/Juarez border and deals with issues of language, racism and sexuality.

Haunted By Passion: Supernaturalism And Feminism In Jane Eyre And Villette, Laurel Lorber

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

Werewolves As Translation: Bisclovret, Melion And Alphonse, Jessica L. Auz

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

Style And Substance: Isabel Archer As A New Type Of "Lady", Sandra Gulbicki

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

"It Is The Business Of The Artist To Follow It Home To The Heart Of The Individual Fighters": D.H. Lawrence, The Great War, And The Trajectory Of His Novels, Samantha Lauren Mathews

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

Going Hard, Going Easy, Going Home: Death And Dying In 20th Century African American Literature, Chayah Amayala Stoneberg-Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation answers the question: How can art represent the essential human experience of death, particularly when the creative context is one of extreme violence? And, what can be learned about the risks and rewards of the living's relationship with the dead by way of these artistic representations? Further, how do these aesthetic renderings of death construct the ethics of life for survivors? In the case of African America, discussion of, and responses to, these questions have been primarily explored in novelist and creative writing. This dissertation examines these novelistic treatments of death-tropes, or thanatropes in eight novels written by …

Who Is Still Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?, Laura Decrane

Honors Theses

One of the most well known villains of all time is the Big Bad Wolf. Usually a male entity, he has been present in child and adult literature for centuries and continues to unsettle readers in the twenty-first century. The Big Bad Wolf is consistently portrayed in a negative light because he originated in a time when wolves were feared, making him the perfect example to terrify village children. Over time, as a result of social and cultural changes, writers have transformed the wolf so that he is no longer the terror that plagued the nineteenth century. Instead, the Big …

George Saunders And The Postmodern Working Class, David Rando

English Faculty Research

George Saunders peoples his stories with the losers of American history—the dispossessed, the oppressed, or merely those whom history’s winners have walked all over on their paths to glory, fame, or terrific wealth. Among other forms of marginalization, Saunders’s subject is above all the American working class. In the last twenty or more years, however, for reasons that include the fall of the Soviet Union, the impact of poststructuralist theory, conceptualizations of identity that more and more take race and gender into consideration alongside class, and the general cultural turn in class analysis, it has become increasingly difficult to write …

Forgiveness And Literature, Michael Fischer

English Faculty Research

Imagine a community where constructive dialogue across political, class, and other differences is rare. Threatened by disagreement, individuals cluster together with like-minded believers, often egging one another on into taking even more extreme positions, usually against their ideological opponents. Sources of information are selected to ratify existing views instead of challenging them. Shielded from external perspectives, individuals stay stuck in anger, opposition, and resentment, recycling grievances against their enemies and spinning out fantasies of revenge.

Gilded Age Travelers: Transatlantic Marriages And The Anglophone Divide In Burnett's The Shuttle, Rebecca L. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1907 novel, The Shuttle, is an important contribution to turn-of-the-century transatlantic literature because it offers a unifying perspective on Anglo-American relations. Rather than a conventional emphasis on the problematic tensions between the U.S. and Britain, Burnett tells a second story of complementary national traits that highlights the dynamic aspect of transatlantic relations and affords each nation a share of their Anglophone heritage. Burnett employs transatlantic travel to advance her notion of a common heritage. As a tool for understanding the narrative logic of The Shuttle, Michel de Certeau's theory of narrative space explains how Burnett uses movement …

The Heroine's Journey, Catherine Bailey

The Hilltop Review

My current research focuses on representations of gender in contemporary literature and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on feminist criticism. Furthermore, I am interested in the ways in which ancient mythology, fairy tales, and folklore have shaped--and continue to shape--societal ideals about normative gender behavior. While some myth critics profess the benefits of framing one's life in terms of a grand narrative--an archetypal "hero's journey"--feminist critics and queer theorists argue that these sweeping narratives can be damaging to people of all genders by forcing them into limiting social scripts. Much of my recent research has explored the question of …

Identification Through Inhabitation In Literature, Film, And Video Games, Charlotte Palfreyman Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In real life we each experience the world separately through our individual bodies, which necessitates what Kenneth Burke calls "identification." In this paper, I assert that as artistic media have structured our aesthetic experience in a way that increasingly resembles our lived, embodied experiences, our identification with fictional characters requires less imaginative effort and is more automatic and powerful. I will show this by analyzing how we inhabit characters through sensory engagement, point of view, and narrative form in literature, film, and video games (specifically action/adventure games, RPGs, and MMORPGs). I will then build off of Burke's foundational theory to …

Quantitative Patterns Of Stylistic Influence In The Evolution Of Literature, James M. Hughes, Nicholas J. Foti, David C. Krakauer, Daniel N. Rockmore

Dartmouth Scholarship

Literature is a form of expression whose temporal structure, both in content and style, provides a historical record of the evolution of culture. In this work we take on a quantitative analysis of literary style and conduct the first large-scale temporal stylometric study of literature by using the vast holdings in the Project Gutenberg Digital Library corpus. We find temporal stylistic localization among authors through the analysis of the similarity structure in feature vectors derived from content-free word usage, nonhomogeneous decay rates of stylistic influence, and an accelerating rate of decay of influence among modern authors. Within a given time …

The Galway Rambler: Anthony Raftery And The Roots Of Irish Cultural Identity, Caroline O'Shea

English Student Scholarship

My project looks at the impact of Anthony Raftery, a 19^th century blind poet and fiddle player from Co. Mayo, Ireland, on Ireland’s cultural landscape upon his ‘discovery’ by Irish writers Lady Augusta Gregory and Douglas Hyde, and his influence upon E. B. Yeats. Explorations of Scottish folk collections and Homeric influences upon Raftery’s poetry and the art of folk music preservation are also examined.

The Bicycle In Western Literature: Transformations On Two Wheels, Nanci J. Adler

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Since the invention of the modern bicycle in the 1880s, bicycles have played an integral role in western culture. As a reflection of its cultural significance and impact on individuals, many novelists have incorporated bicycles into their works in both realistic and symbolic ways. This paper focuses on the use of bicycles in western literature from the bicycle boom decade of the 1890s to the mid-twentieth century and includes works of H. G. Wells, Émile Zola, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Richardson, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Luigi Bartolini and L. P. Hartley. …

Dante Gabriel Rossetti And The Romance Of Loss, Jane N. Cooper

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Through paired poems and paintings, Dante Gabriel Rossetti explored the nature of Love—both physical and spiritual—as made evident by distance or absence. Influenced early by his familiarity with Dante Alighieri and a confluence of changing social and artistic attitudes, Rossetti transformed the dialogue around him to a more personal internal conversation, revealed by pen and brush. This paper examines the dynamic of that pervasive thread in Rossetti’s work through a discussion of the influences upon the artist, the artist’s effect upon important figures of mid- to late nineteenth century England, and the important relationships that shaped his discourse. In addition, …

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …

The Unbought Grace Of Life: Chivalry In Western Literature, Richard N. Boggs

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The code of chivalry has a rich literary history. From the violence and misogyny of pre-chivalric ancient Greece and Rome, the chivalric code was constructed in a deliberate effort to curb and improve the most violent aspects of male behavior. The chivalric male ideal was built upon the tripartite foundation of the ancient archaic virtues, the gallantry of Germanic barbarians, and the Christian beatitudes. Chivalry sought a male ideal which brought raw strength and power under the concept of legitimate authority. By casting the literary male ideal – the knight – into the role of the defender of the weak …

Adaptation: Is The Book Really Better Than The...Television Series?, Jane F. Eberts

Scripps Senior Theses

When the topic of ‘adaptation’ is brought up, more often than not the coupling of a novel and its most recent Hollywood hit come to mind. Although it may not be at the forefront of the general population’s mind, adaptation is something that we encounter often, and consciously or not, we all have our own theory on the subject. While it may seem that the evolution of book series, to film adaptation, to booming franchise may be recently trending with the acceleration of blockbusters such as Harry Potter, adaptation has been a fundamental part of the advancement of media. …

"An Image Comforting The Mind”: Emotion Theory And Tennyson’S In Memoriam, Melanie Pavao

English Student Scholarship

This paper examines Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam A.H.H. through the lens of Cicero’s stoic theory of emotion. It critically reviews the manner in which Tennyson describes grief in the poem and how he uses the poem to deal with his own grief over the death of his best friend. It continues with a discussion of how the poem is useful for others in learning to deal with their own grief.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Literature-Based Professional Writing: An Oxymoron Whose Time Has Come, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema, Kelley R. Newhouse, Michele L. Propper, Ruth M. Riedel, Barbara S. Teitelzweig

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article discusses a study regarding the integration of professional writing in English classes. It mentions the proposal of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in its annual convention on associating professional writing with literature. It also states that connecting literature with technical writing in English classrooms provides students with opportunities to absorb real life writing experiences.

It’S My Body: The Biomedical Ethics Of Cell And Organ Harvest, Christina Perri

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

First Place

Words & Images 2012, University Of Southern Maine

Words and Images

Words & Images is an annual arts and literature publication distributed by the University of Southern Maine.

Editor: Caroline O'Connor Thomas

Design: Adriana Warner

Back Cover: Dichotomy: Health and Harm, Beatrice Abbott

My Old Man Loves Fried Okra, David Bottoms

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 3

Six Years On, Jasmine V. Bailey

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 25

What The Dead Do, Katie Chaple

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 30

March, Bill Christopherson

Birmingham Poetry Review

p. 33