English Language and Literature Commons^™

Bannock (Fort Hall, Idaho), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Bannock, whose precontact territory centered around the Snake River plain of southwestern Idaho and the Boise River valley, speak the variety of Northern Paiute most influenced by its close linguistic relative, Shoshoni. This influence may be due to a combination of factors, including the overlapping nature of aboriginal territories, the acquisition of the horse and buffalo-hunting culture, and the later impact of a one-way bilingualism that was present on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, whereby nearly all Bannock speakers also spoke (and speak) Shoshoni, but not the reverse. The number of Bannock speakers, currently, may be no more than …

Wadadɨka’A (Burns Paiute Reservation, Oregon), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Harney Valley, or tibidzi yipɨ (the True Valley), region of southeastern Oregon is a rich and varied landscape consisting of all the extremes one expects to find in the Great Basin—vast marshlands, high-elevation grasslands, alkali basins, pine forest, and ephemeral lakebeds and rivers. This high desert area attracts hundreds of thousands of water and other fowl (as well as birdwatchers) on their seasonal migration. Water has been, and remains, a source of tension in the region, as does the management of federal land more generally, including, in particular, the allocation of grazing rights. The occupation of the headquarters of …

“Thus Seyden Sadde Folk”: Chaucer’S Oxford Clerk On Theological Controversy In The 14th Century, Molly Kluever

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

Among the most disturbing of The Canterbury Tales, the Oxford Clerk’s story of the submissive Griselda and her husband-cum-tormentor Walter has, despite its categorization as one of Chaucer’s “religious tales,” resisted most, if not all, theological readings with its lack of a clear moral. I attempt to address this ambiguity by focusing on the teller himself. As an Oxford-trained cleric, the Clerk is uniquely qualified to juggle the interrelated but conflicting discourses of two significant theological controversies of the late fourteenth century: the ongoing realist-nominalist debate within medieval universities and the rising Wycliffite/lollardy reform movement among all levels of …

Reimagining Reflection In First-Year Composition: A Freirean-Jesuit Perspective, Adrianna Deptula

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Twinship And Marriage In The Comedy Of Errors, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article proposes that Shakespeare uses twinship and marriage in The Comedy of Errors to reflect on the importance of individuality and interrelation in the formation of identity. Specifically, this article shows how The Comedy of Errors sets the twin relation against the marital relation, ultimately implying that marriage—imperfect, everyday marriage—has as much subjective impact as the extraordinary bond between identical twins. As amazing as it might be to see two persons sharing "one face, one voice, one habit," The Comedy of Errors suggests that the twin relation does not surpass in significance the equally marvelous relation whereby husband and …

Ivy Leaves, Volume 95, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2020 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Emma Morris, Sarah Grace Hoover, Lucy Kirkpatrick, Alli Kennedy, Genevieve Rice, Hayden Dutschke, Cameron Mason, Larisa Crowder, Kristopher Sutherland, Emily Britton, Savannah Smith, Megan Adams, Terra Baughn, Carson Long, David Stancil, Allie Thompson, Taylor Harrison, Meredith Guio, Austin Rusher, Taylor Smith, Ashley Stone, Abigail Timms, Teresa Jones, and Tim Speaker.

Hamlet As Music: A Study In The Semantics Of Symphonic Poetry, Mckenzie C. Alons

Selected Honors Theses

Symphonic poetry, a widely overlooked genre in musico-literary scholarship, provides a unique focal point into the relationship between music and extramusical texts. Invented by Franz Liszt in the mid-19th century, symphonic poems (or ‘tone poems’) interpret literary texts or ideas through short orchestral works. Thus, the symphonic poem invites close analysis of the semiotic relationship between music and literature. Using Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Liszt’s Symphonic Poem No. 10 (“Hamlet”), this thesis examines the relationship between the Shakespearean tragedy and Lisztian symphonic poetry. This focus is a microcosm for the musico-literary relationship and, henceforth, an undiscovered niche that involves disciplines as …

Cosmological Models And The Christian Faith In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Jacob R. Taylor

Tenor of Our Times

In this work the author argues that John Milton justifies the intelligibility and priority of Christian faith against modern revolutions of science in his epic poem Paradise Lost. Milton argues against scientists who choose to believe modern astronomy over cosmology. He argues that Christian faithfulness stands firm despite the crumbling of its medieval cosmological basis. This endurance of the faith is the primary scientific theme of the epic English poem.

World Humanities 1, Joseph Boisvere

Open Educational Resources

OER Syllabus for World Humanities 1 (WHUM 1)

"Founding Its Empire On Spells Of Pleasure": Brunonian Excitability, The Invigorated English Opium-Eater, And De Quincey's "China Question", Menglu Gao

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

What light can De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) shed on its author's later advocacy of the First Opium War? To what degree did De Quincey's and other contemporaneous accounts of opium use in Britain influence metaphorical connections between bodily energy and national power in the 1830s and 1840s? Placing Confessions alongside John Brown's 1780 treatise, Elements of Medicine, this essay argues that De Quincey "nationalized" opium-eating by transforming mental exceptionality in British Romanticism into a medical body's connection with internal energies and external stimuli from China and "the Orient." The essay concludes that opium serves in …

Syntax, Newsletter Of The Suffolk University English Department, Issue 6, 2020, English Department

Syntax Newsletter of the Suffolk University English Department

No abstract provided.

Satori 2020, Shannon Laurance, Sara Severson, Hailey Seipel, Mike Desch, Annette Deyo, Nicole Tompos, Jena Archer, Megan Martin, Abbey Johnson, Carly Weber, Sara Severson, Mike Desch, Kimberly Coffee, Dahlia Garofalo

Satori Literary Magazine

The Satori is a student literary publication that expresses the artistic spirit of the students of Winona State University. Student poetry, prose, and graphic art are published in the Satori every spring since 1970.

Witness: The Modern Writer As Witness, Alex Berge, Andrew Bertaina, Andrew Collard, Miranda Dennis, Andrea Eberly, Emily Greenberg, Day Heisinger-Nixon, Sarah Helen, L.A. Johnson, Anne Liu Kellor, Mary Kuryla, Emmy Newman, Lara Palmqvist, Mary Lane Potter, David Lerner Schwartz, Michelle Sharpe, Nina Sudhakar, Kristina Ten, Eric Tran, Pamela Yenser

Witness Magazine

Editor's Note [Excerpt] Magic can mean many different things, especially for writers. Magic can be an illusion, a sleight of hand designed to trick onlookers into believing the impossible. Or magic can be a supernatural force in a world of harsh reality, a set of beliefs that sits just outside the realms of organized religion and advanced technology. Wizards and demons, Las Vegas entertainers and houngans --they all practice a kind of sorcery. For poets and prose writers, though, magic affords an opportunity for us to stretch the limitations of the physical world in search of new themes, settings, and …

“‘Faith’ Is A Fine Invention”: Emily Dickinson’S Critique Of Empiricism, Harrison Dietzman

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In opposition to those who might read Emily Dickinson’s opus as emblematic of nineteenth-century empiricism, or at least the work of a poet enthralled with and enchanted by modern science, a close examination of Dickinson’s poems demonstrates her attention to the constructedness of empirical science. The roots of Dickinson’s examination of empiricism lies in her exploration of selfhood and the relationship between experience and knowledge. As such, Dickinson’s critique of empiricism is contained within a critique of secularizing visions of human autonomy. In a few isolated poems Dickinson explicitly addresses empiricism, but on the whole she prefers to approach empiricism …

Etymology Of “Ragtime”: Role Of “Tag, Rag, And “Bobtail” (The Rabble) And The 19th Century “Fancy Rag Balls”, Fred Hoeptner

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite abundant speculation about the etymology of “rag” in “ragtime” since the emergence of ragtime music into popular consciousness in 1896, a convincing solution has remained elusive. As OED3 sums up the situation (rag, n. meaning #5): “Origin uncertain and disputed.”

But at least some new insight may now be possible. The present study is the first to use digitized newspaper archives to track “rag” and “ragtime” from their sources to full maturity, and the following picture emerges:

1. The starting point is tag, rag, and bobtail “the common herd, the rabble”; the word appears in OED3 under bob-tail.
2. Rag as …

Bodies In The Margins: Refiguring The Rebetika As Literature, Sophia Schlesinger

English Honors Projects

This thesis engages a literary analysis of a corpus of songs and recordings known as the rebetika (sing. rebetiko), which prospered in the port districts of major cities throughout the Aegean in the early 20th century. Engaging the rebetika as literary texts, I argue, helps us understand how they have functioned as a kind of pressure point on the borders between nation and Other. Without making unproveable biographical claims about the motives of the music progenitors, I examine why so many have reached for the rebetika as texts with which to articulate various political and cultural desires. Using a …

How Cypress Tress Become Mangroves: An Analysis Of The Works Of Amitav Ghosh And Climate Change, Alyssa D. Dobson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Yahooskin (Beatty, Oregon), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although it is clear that the term “Yahooskin” is not a native term (likely originating from the Sahaptin (Ichiskiin) language), it has been in general use as a reference to disparate Northern Paiute bands (e.g., YapatɨkaɁa, ‘wild carrot-eaters’) around any of several lake basins of south-central Oregon, including the Silver, Summer, and Abert lakes, and the Warner Valley region. These bands were brought together after the formation of the Klamath Reservation and the signing of the treaty at Yainax in 1864. The “Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians,” as they had come to be called, were most closely tied to the …

Kuiyuidɨkadɨ (Pyramid Lake Reservation, Nevada), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Pyramid Lake Reservation is about an hour’s drive northeast of Reno, Ne- vada. As such, it lies close to the major isogloss boundary that separates Oregon Northern Paiute (including Bannock) from Nevada Northern Paiute (Paviotso). The lake, a remnant of ancient Lake Lahontan, is home to the endemic Lahontan cutthroat trout, known locally as kuiyui, and is a popular fishery.

Toidɨkadɨ (Cattail-Eaters) Of Stillwater Marsh, Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wuzzie George (b. ~1880, d. December 20, 1984) was, by all accounts, a true keeper of traditional knowledge. Over the course of more than three decades, she provided detailed ethnographic information about her people, the Toidɨkadɨ (Cattail-Eaters), for ethnographer Margaret Wheat (1967) and anthropologist and historical linguist Catherine S. Fowler (1992). Wuzzie also had an ongoing working relationship with the intrepid folklorist Sven Liljeblad, as evidenced by this prayer, which she composed for him in Fallon, Nevada, during a time of illness.

Fort Mcdermitt Reservation (Mcdermitt, Nevada), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

The McDermitt reservation straddles the Oregon-Nevada border and is the home of the majority of all remaining first language Northern Paiute speakers. Like the Duck Valley Reservation, it is quite isolated, lying approximately 90 miles northeast of the town of Winnemucca, Nevada (population > 7,000). The following stories are two of the many texts collected in the early 1960s by Sven Liljeblad from Pete Snapp, a fluent speaker from McDermitt. Mr. Snapp was in his early nineties at the time of this recording, which was made on reel-to-reel tape and archived as part of the Sven Liljeblad Collection in the Special …

Duck Valley Reservation (Owyhee, Nevada), Tim Thornes

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Shoshone-Paiute community of Duck Valley includes reservation territory that straddles the Idaho-Nevada border. Recordings of the Duck Valley communolect were made at the home of the speaker’s niece in the presence of several extended family members, including speakers, passive bilinguals and non-speakers alike, as well as children. The speaker was 60 years old at the time and clearly enjoyed recounting Coyote stories. That said, a few of the stories were considered by her family to be a bit too lurid to include here.

Northern Paiute Texts: Introduction, Tim Thornes, Maziar Toosarvandani

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This volume of Northern Paiute texts is the result of continued collaborative relationships between members of several Northern Paiute (Western Numic; Uto-Aztecan) speech communities and two linguists who have nearly 30 years of combined experience working on the language. The resulting documentary resource provides varied samples of naturally occurring speech—narratives recorded and analyzed by the editors as part of their own fieldwork as well as materials recorded of earlier generations of speakers. In one case, materials from three generations of speakers from the same speech community are provided. By providing access in a single volume to previously inaccessible texts from …

The Adventures Of Mousy And Jasper, James Schantz

English Senior Capstone

In my senior project I wanted to explore the world of children's literature that is meant specifically to be listened to. The project is in audio-script form and it is the tale of a dog and a mouse who become unlikely friends, share a nemesis in an evil cat named Mr. Bojangles, and need each other's help in order to get back home.

Metaphors Of Mental Illness: How Emily Dickinson And Vincent Van Gogh Understood And Expressed Their Personal Battles With Depression, Samantha Moss

English Senior Capstone

Both the poet Emily Dickinson and the artist Vincent van Gogh wrestled with mental illness in their adult lives. There are indications that both suffered from major depression, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder. Both lived in a time when there was no real understanding of mental illness and there was no language through which people could interpret and explain their pain. Dickinson used her poetry to create metaphors, metaphors centered around death and winter. Van Gogh created nature metaphors – and some centered around dying like Dickinson’s – in his paintings and in letters to his brother. These metaphors …

Searching For Understanding: How Hamlet And Frankenstein Inform Humanity’S Response To Trauma, Jonathan Knippenberg

English Senior Capstone

By looking at trauma narratives we are able to learn about the nature of trauma as well as the effective and ineffective ways it has been handled by literary characters. Hamlet by William Shakespeare tells of the young prince Hamlet who, in repressing his trauma, unwittingly falls victim to repeating the anger reinforced by his father’s ghost while he continually allows no one to see anything but the mask of his antic disposition. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley portrays the turmoil between Dr. Frankenstein and his monster—a rejected creation scorned by a tortured creator—which not only consumes them but also tears …

The End Of Art Is Peace: Memory, Witness, And Restorative Imagination In Anna Burns’S Milkman And The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Sarah Davis

English Senior Capstone

Northern Irish writers Seamus Heaney and Anna Burns both explore the suffocation and trauma of living in civil conflict as informed by their time spent living in Belfast during the Troubles. In her 2018 novel Milkman, Burns depicts a beleaguered community that has succumbed to hypervigilance and learned helplessness. Burns’s characters try desperately to establish normality by twisting memory and refusing to witness the present, resulting in an inability to imagine a future unmarred by violence. In his poetry collections North and Field Work, Heaney wrestles with the responsibility of an artist to such a community, to his art, and …

Broadening The Feminist Ideal: Female Expression In Kate Chopin’S The Awakening And Kathryn Stockett’S The Help, Hannah Funk

English Senior Capstone

Feminist criticism can be difficult to navigate, especially given the sociopolitical contexts connected to feminism all throughout history. In literature, idealized feminist characterizations can often leave less dramatically feminist characters behind, relegating them to a category of characters who are “not feminist enough.” But it is important to understand that these characters are still just as validly feminist as their dramatically feminist counterparts. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, readers see wonderful examples of women who operate in feminist ways, some within the roles that traditional feminist criticism would see as roles which trap them and …

Learning Or Not Learning To Overcome Trauma: Jane Eyre And A Farewell To Arms, Jessica Cutter

English Senior Capstone

In the novels Jane Eyre and A Farewell to Arms, Charlotte Brontë and Ernest Hemingway both display characters that have experienced devastating trauma. In both novels, female characters demonstrate strength and mental support that their male counterparts are unable to reciprocate because they cannot move on from their past. Jane learns that letting go of past trauma will lead to her growth and success in life, which ultimately influences Mr. Rochester to be like Jane, and the novel ends with them happy and mentally healthier. On the other hand, Henry can’t let go of his past traumas and leans heavily …

Seeking The Tomato: Encounters With Beauty In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God And Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Jessica Dundas

English Senior Capstone

When Zadie Smith was first given a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was reluctant to read it. But once she did, she found herself captivated by the beauty protagonist Janie Crawford is seeking and encountering throughout the novel. Later in Smith’s own novel On Beauty the protagonist Howard Belsey becomes the inverse of Janie as he intellectually rejects the idea of beauty and ignores the encounters he has with it. Thus while Janie finds that beauty decenters her from thinking herself the center of her world, Howard stubbornly refuses to allow himself to be …