English Language and Literature Commons^™

A Natural History Of Teasing: British Women Writers And The Shakespearean Courtship Narrative, 1677-~1818, Mary Vance

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation considers the complex roles that nascent Bardolatry, the rise of women

writers, and the persistence of satiric impulses played in engineering the teasing relationships of eighteenth-century courtship fiction. I argue that in a period reputedly dominated by sentiment, women’s comedy largely hinged on anti-sentiment, particularly in its appropriation of the antithetical wooing practices so pervasive in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. Such a perspective endows female authors (and their protagonists) to assume control of the discursive field and resituates the love story into a love game. I begin by tracing the continued influence of the Elizabethan culture of jest, aligning …

Poor, Pitiful Monsters From Homer To Borges, Robin Mcallister

English Faculty Publications

This article reviews famous monsters in Western literature that reveal a hidden humanity or affinity with the hero that elicits compassion or emphasizes their bestiality in surprising ways. Their monstrosity is often a distorted mirror image of the hero’s humanity. Shakespeare’s Caliban is a famous example of the affinity between monster and protagonist. Homer’s Polyphemus, the first monster in Western tradition establishes certain traits that persist through later literature: lawless, barbarian, cannibal, and giant. Polyphemus hates men, but loves his old ram. Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon in Beowulf are giants, lawless, cannibals. The dragon Beowulf dies fighting anticipates …

Blind But Seeing: Post-Clinical Medicine In Jose Saramago's Blindness, Matthew J. Ftacek

All NMU Master's Theses

This project examines José Saramago’s Blindness (1996) in the context of two other narratives focused on plagues and epidemics – Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) – each written at different points in time during the development of clinical medicine as chronicled by Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic. The paper draws heavily upon Foucault’s work on clinical medicine, as well as a number of different theories of medical history, government policy, and cultural attitudes towards health and illness. The goal of the project is twofold: first, to examine how …

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

"Too Big To Swallow All At Once": Consumption And Posthuman Healing In Ceremony And House Made Of Dawn, Matthew Thomas Craft

Master's Theses

This project examines the roles of animals and animal figures in the Native American novels House Made of Dawn (1968)by N. Scott Momaday and Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko. Both novelists consistently evoke animal imagery within their respective texts often pairing this imagery alongside symbolic and metaphorical depictions of cannibalistic identity violence. Through the use of posthuman and postcolonial methodologies and ideas, I contend that the pairing of these two distinct types of imagery that both Momaday and Silko intentionally align the animal figures with premodern, indigenous belief systems while the cannibalistic violence is more often envisioned as …

"Your Reclamation”: The Gothic Child And Moral Restoration In Charles Dickens’S A Christmas Carol, Ashten Roberts

Master's Theses

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), an example of Victorian Gothic literature, portrays spirits escorting Ebenezer Scrooge on a journey through time in order to transform him from a miser to a benefactor. Dickens’s text has received much critical attention, and while most critics agree that the novella includes various elements of the gothic, few draw attention to the possibility of the child characters as gothic elements. I argue that Carol’s child characters can be read in terms of what Margarita Georgieva calls “the gothic child.” According to Georgieva, the gothic child can be an adult’s memory from childhood …

Decolonizing The Ya North: Environmental Injustice In Sherri L. Smith’S Orleans, Micah-Jade M. Coleman

Master's Theses

Young Adult (YA) dystopias, in recent years, have imagined a future world fueled by the overuse and misuse of technology, the advancement of science for human gain, as well as societies ruled by governments that govern based on their own self-interests and economic gain. Such novels have opened the door for discussion about how the present-day actions of societies can impact the future of the environment; yet many only focus their attention on societies in the North— regions considered “developed” by the western world. In her YA novel, Orleans (2014), Sherri L. Smith focuses attention on the aftermath of Hurricane …

Guide To The Graphic, Scrapbook, And Secondary Source Materials In The Milner Library Lois Lenski Collection, Eric Willey, Sean Tippey, Nicole Wolski, Jessica Lavoy, Alexis Foran

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This guide provides newspaper style captions and descriptive terms from the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials for illustrations, photos, and scrapbooks in the Milner Library, Illinois State University, Lois Lenski Collection, circa 1850-1977 and citations for secondary source materials which were not directly created by Lenski or contain brief excerpts from Lenski's work. In addition, there is a spreadsheet (csv) file which contains the raw data used to compile this guide.

Combinatorics Of The Sonnet, Terry S. Griggs

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Using a definition of a sonnet, the number of basic rhyming schemes is enumerated. This is then used to discuss the 86 sonnets which appear in John Clare's The Rural Muse.

'Those Who Cling In Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues And Memories Of An Elder Day': J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns And Elves, Andrew Scott Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Abstract

Those Who Cling in Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues and Memories of an Elder Day' J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns and Elves

Dr. Andrew Higgins

In this paper I will explore how several historic, literary and mythic associations of the Finnish people with elements of magic, the supernatural and the 'other' influenced J.R.R. Tolkien in imbuing the character and language of his own Elves with a similar quality of magic and 'arresting strangeness'.I will explore several characterisations of the Finns, the People of Kalevala, Tolkien would have encountered in his early study of the Kalevala, several Old Norse and …

Nebraska's Wedding Crasher, Jennine Capó Crucet

Department of English: Faculty Publications

My building thinks of itself as Lincoln's premier wedding venue. I was not told this when I signed the lease. A glitch of duct work sends the sounds of every single party straight through the exhaust fan of my apartment's bathroom, so loud and clear that I can hear the names of everyone in the wedding party as they are announced -- not just in the bathroom, but from the living room. I can hear when people are clapping, can hear the claps as individual sonic events: I can almost always make out the crisp echo of the last person …

Text And Paratext: Analyzing Edith Wharton's Hudson River Bracketed In Its Periodical Context, Paige Szmodis

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

Studying a novel in the context of its paratexts — including the illustrations, advertisements, and captions surrounding the fiction — reveals how the publication context can shape a literary work. This project examines Edith Wharton’s Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and its paratexts by comparing the final version of the novel with textual changes made in its monthly periodical publication in the magazine The Delineator (1928-1930). As mass-consumerism and advertising increasingly targeted women during the 1920s, examining Wharton’s work in a popular middle-class women’s magazine like The Delineator illuminates how paratexts affect audience perceptions of the novel’s characters, conflicts, and themes. …

Literacy And Citizenship: Helping Students Learn The Importance Of Being An Informed And Educated Citizen, Luke H. Schlegel

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

My project utilizes the concept of Understanding by Design, as outlined by education experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, to craft a 12-week curriculum for high school junior and senior English students. McTighe and Wiggins use backwards planning to create long-term learning goals for students. Rather than superficially trying to cover a wide range of material in class, which results in short-term acquisition of knowledge mostly forgotten in the long run, McTighe and Wiggins focus on “big ideas,” that generate conceptual understanding. Ultimately, students will be able to transfer this knowledge to settings outside of the classroom. To help them …

Harken Not To Wild Beasts: Between Rage And Eloquence In Saruman And Thrasymachus, Dennis Wilson Wise

Journal of Tolkien Research

One of the giant gaps in Tolkien scholarship has been to miss how deeply Saruman answers the age-old antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy. Like John Milton, Tolkien cannot bring himself to trust rhetoric. It threatens the unitary truth of a divinely-revealed moral order and, ironically, Tolkien applies great rhetorical skill to convince his reader of rhetoric’s illusionary nature. In this matter Tolkien has been largely successful, since few readers (if any) question the de-privileging of Saruman’s perspective. In the process, though, I suggest that Tolkien has developed in his master rhetorician a new relationship between rhetoric (eloquence) and rage ( …

The Finest Jest, William H. Wandless

The Mythic Circle

*Begin Transmission* The scientist in me could not help but admire the elegance of your plan. It was simple, logical, pitiless. If everything went smoothly, only one of us would die.

After The Black Chrysalis, Marly Youmans

The Mythic Circle

Cracked. Cracked open—praise To that, for that, praise That the black, feathery lint Was washed clean from my face, That the black, feathery lint Came off in wisps and shreds And crinkled threads Like thrums from a loom, Like lines of false poetry, Like cat fur in the mouth On waking.

Editorial, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Contributors, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Brackenstead, Myles Buchanan

The Mythic Circle

When the morrith trees started to thin and I no longer had to stoop and crawl, I nearly started weeping with relief. I’d been travelling through the Morrithwood for nearly five days, and all that was left of the rations for the journey there were a few scraps of deer jerky I’d been putting off eating.

Solitude / Sin, Chelsi Robichaud

The Mythic Circle

Reduced to a great nothingness, a lack of a lack, I wonder where my friends have gone. But surely it matters not in this loathsome sea. ///// I have sinned. Though the masses say it is no crime, I know of the dirt that covers me.

Creüsa, Gania Barlow

The Mythic Circle

If Aeneas doesn’t see Creüsa dead or dying, alive or living, what is she?

Siren's Call, Chelsi Robichaud

The Mythic Circle

I cry my grief out to the sky, the grief that Aphrodite would not calm. The Siren's call that lured him now sings me to my death.

A Visit From The Moon, Georgia Ann Banks-Martin

The Mythic Circle

From the beach, you could see the island. My mother said no one lived there anymore and she didn’t know why. I wanted to live there. I wanted to be a goddess and live forever.

The Great Hall Of Ahkurst, Lee Clark Zumpe

The Mythic Circle

Tarak limped along the long corridor, muttering to himself beneath the flickering florescents. The subterranean passage stretched out before and behind him, a serpentine artery curving gently beneath the surface of the planet.

The Ferrens Of Tar Kiln, Charlie W. Starr

The Mythic Circle

I can’t expect you to believe everything I’m going to tell you. The story at least begins truly enough with a caving adventure one October day in Eastern Kentucky.

The Undiplomatic Girl, Ryder W. Miller

The Mythic Circle

The knight Gawain watched as the young lady walked away again. She was fair and slight of form. There was also a wonderful shimmer of silver in the green dress she wore, but Gawain found her perplexing.

Poem For The Lost Library Of La Mancha, Gania Barlow

The Mythic Circle

After the books are burned there is a hush and then a flutter of ashy syllables out into the world

Mythic Circle #38, Gwenyth E. Hood

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Pedagogical Use Of Loss, Alice Pitt

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Near & Far, Madeleine R. Grumet

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.