English Language and Literature Commons^™

Shadows Of Empire: The Displaced New World Of Antony And Cleopatra, Christopher Kane

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Embracing Multiplicity: Autobiographical Personae In Ruth Hall, Gina Marie Schneck

Theses and Dissertations

Sara Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton, more famously known as the elusive Fanny Fern, employs three autobiographical personae mediated by fiction in her debut novel, Ruth Hall: (1) Ruth Hall, the novel's protagonist; (2) Floy, the fictional Ruth's pseudonym; and (3) Fanny Fern, Parton's real-life pseudonym and the name under which Ruth Hall was published. Together these personae assert a fragmented presence that incorporates various voices and lives, allowing for exploration, growth, and interactivity.Philippe Lejeune's autobiographical contract outlines three specific guidelines for autobiography—that it be a narrative, that it explore personal history, and that it link author and protagonist. Ruth …

Macro, Micro, Material : Rachel Blau Duplessis’ Drafts And The Post-Objectivist Serial Poem, Alan Golding

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

19th Century Gothic Inspiration: Investigating The Next Generation Of Poes, Alexandrea L. Horton

All Student Theses and Dissertations

The objective of my study is to examine specific works by Edgar Allan Poe that best emulate his literary obsession with insanity and the grotesque, arguing that these elements of his literature serve as the source of inspiration for many 20^th and 21^st century gothic literature writers. Two of Poe’s poems that will be analyzed and critiqued include, “The Sleeper” which was originally published in 1831 and “The Raven” published in 1845. There will also be two of Poe’s shorter fiction pieces that will be analyzed and critiqued, which include, “Berenice” published in 1835 and “The Black Cat” …

Critical Exploration Of The Neo-Slave Narrative In Selected Walker And Morrison Novels, Meisha M. Edwards-White

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Alice Walker’s The Colored Purple and Toni Morrison’s Beloved as Neo-Slave Narratives. These extraordinary authors reveal slave history in their novels. Although these novels deal with neo-slave narratives, they closely identify with history of African American enslavement. Walker and Morrison express through their works the many ways African American women lived in bondage during slavery. Their characters speak volumes to the mis-treatment of African Americans.

Neo-Slave Narratives are contemporary works of fiction. Walker and Morrison have chosen to illustrate the horrors of slavery as it relates to African Americans. The novelists demonstrate the realities of slavery in …

The Last Gentlemen: Southern Conservative Superfluity And The Work Of William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, And Peter Taylor, William Matthew Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes that a robust, serious treatment of Southern conservatism can provide readers with effective ways to interpret works of Southern literature. Southern writers have always dealt with issues we might identify as “conservative,” and scholars have shown us three typical ways of Southern writers approaching conservatism. First, some writers have treated conservatism as one of many characteristics of the South; their treatments of conservatism have been part of their descriptive project. Other writers have used conservatism for more didactic, political purposes, whether that be showing the South’s sins or arguing that the South’s conservative character makes it a …

Textile As Intercessor: Understanding Margery Kempe's Sartorial Body, Hannah Lynn Davis

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I will explore Margery Kempe’s late fourteenth, early fifteenth century mystical text. Previously, Margery Kempe has been discussed in reference to her highly erotized language with Christ and her maternal themes that appear throughout her Book. However, I urge other medieval scholars to also look at her usage of textiles and clothing as a means of gaining authority with both Christ and the medieval church. First, I discuss Margery’s gendered situation within the male-centered church and community. Margery uses her position as a woman to build her agency and, as such, uses gendered specific clothing to introduce …

The Civil, Silent, And Savage In Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, Alexander J. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I argue that the political situation between Britons and Saxons within Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant further articulates Ishiguro’s ongoing critique of Western humanism’s logic of labelling the Other. I also argue for a definition of the figure of the buried giant broadly speaking as the Other par excellence, as an entity of pure alterity, and as a Lèvinasian “infinite other.” As The Buried Giant demonstrates, Ishiguro continues to write against the politics of humanism that have flourished in Western art, science, and political philosophy since the Enlightenment. Though Ishiguro sets The Buried Giant loosely in the …

Remembering Salinger's Franny And Zooey Through Pari And The Royal Tenenbaums, Taraneh Zohadi

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the ways in which Mehrjui’s Pari and Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums borrow from Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. My argument is that Salinger and the concepts he introduced in the book are remembered through both films. Being a product of their historical/cultural contexts, The Royal Tenenbaums embraces the aesthetics of the text and Pari converses with the spiritual aspect of the main text. Anderson’s film captures the United States’ preoccupation consumerism and the hollowness at turn of the twenty-first century, while Pari explores the angst and despair in the post Iran-Iraq war context of the film’s release, feelings …

Metafiction In Mourning: The Intersections Of Gender Performance And Postdictatorial Memory In Novels By Luisa Valenzuela, Clarice Lispector, And Diamela Eltit, Jennifer L. Slobodian

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to build on two major theoretical fields, feminism and postdictatorial memory, in the context of Latin American women’s writing. The development of Latin American feminism has run concurrently with the broader feminist movements of the 20th century, but has been shaped by the particularities and diversity of the region. Specific concerns relating to postcoloniality, religion, and nation have caused theorists like Debra A. Castillo to discuss Latin American feminism on its own, focusing on the inherent privileging of praxis over theory and the necessary pastiche of local and international theories. The development of Latin …

Patient Agency, Terministic Screens, And The Role Of The Public In The Cases Of Karen Ann Quinlan And Terri Schiavo, Ashley Marie Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Humanity has always been fascinated with death, and in recent history, has attempted to delay or suspend death through life-preserving technologies. These advancements in artificial life support, such as ventilators and feeding tubes, have contributed to tenuous and controversial situations in which the dividing line between life and death is unclear. In this thesis, I interrogate two case studies in order to analyze how the various medical, legal, and public discourses have grappled with the ambiguous space between life and death regarding patients in persistent vegetative states. The case of Karen Ann Quinlan from 1975 and the case of Terri …

Cut Purses And Poisoned Paintings: Resisting Gender Objectification, Meredith N. Will

Theses and Dissertations

The early modern English stage often portrays gender as polarized, creating an unwelcoming atmosphere toward characters who act exhibit characteristics from both male and female genders. Moll Cutpurse from Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and Alice of Arden of Faversham resist early modern gender boundaries, conflating masculine and feminine attributes as they use objects to navigate their respective social spaces. Critics often describe Moll as a transvestite due to her fashion choice to wear a codpiece, along with her exaggerated, boisterous masculine behavior; however, she consistently defends her biological sex, implicating herself within her arguments concerning female …

Framing The Spaces Unseen In Mason & Dixon, Gregory W. Deinert

Theses and Dissertations

The treatment of the Conestoga Massacre and the (dis)placement of the subaltern in Mason & Dixon are of utmost importance to the novel’s narrative arc. The relative paucity of indigenous voices in Mason & Dixon is important in at least two seemingly contradictory ways: the author simultaneously avoids appropriation, and performs, as it were, the erasure at the heart of the colonial paradigm. Mason & Dixon’s multiple allusions to native peoples never quite amount to an indigenous presence; indeed, they seem only to rehearse a particular ideological outlook in which colonial racial aggression cannot be acknowledged, or perhaps even seen. …

Lillian Smith, Richard Wright, And Walker Percy's Ontological Vision: Gnosticism, Cartesian Dualism, And The Split Of The Southern Self, Thomas R. Cody

Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the New Southern Studies and its critiques of Southern Exceptionalism, the critic of Southern Literature has felt the necessity to both look within and outside the American South to re-contextualize the parameters of the study in order to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing and whitewashed narratives it is accused of perpetrating. As Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino note in their study The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, such a shift may be accomplished through the consideration of more salient measures of identity and belonging, such as religion, class, and gender. In this paper, I examine how religious …

The Classical And The Christian: Tennyson's Grief And Spiritual Shift From "The Lotos-Eaters" To "Ulysses", Carleen Lara Miller Ratcliffe

Theses and Dissertations

Sacred forms, in the shape of doctrines and creeds, constituted a large part of Tennyson’s childhood religion. This is reflected in “The Lotos-Eaters,” written in 1832, as Tennyson cautions against increasingly popular ideas of secular materialism; Tennyson’s mariners parrot the ideas of Epicureanism, but their arguments mirror that of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene character Despair. In putting Despair’s words in the mariners’ mouths, Tennyson warns against forgetting religious ritual, as this leads to suicide and eternal damnation. However, with the death of Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833, Tennyson’s religion shifted dramatically. In Memoriam gives us the final version of Tennyson’s …

Playing In Literary Landscapes: Considering Children's Need For Fantasy Literature In The Place-Based Classroom, Sarah Fischer

Occasional Paper Series

Are the philosophies and pedagogical practices of literature-based classrooms congruent with place-based classrooms? In this paper, the author argues that not only is imaginative literature compatible with place-based philosophies, but it can become a powerful centerpiece of a curriculum aimed at educating for a sense of place and inspiring life-long readers.

The Second Wilde Revival: Current Trends In Oscar Wilde Scholarship, Helena Gurfinkel Dr.

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

A Time To Die: Death And The Self In Virgina Woolf’S Orlando, Emily Harmon

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

No abstract provided.

Accessing Poetry In A Global Age: Applied Pedagogical Assessment, Amanda Bryars

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

No abstract provided.

No Child Left Unharmed: The Image Of The Child In The Hunger Games, Sara Harvey

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This project seeks to examine the role of the child presented in The Hunger Games by comparing the image of the child to that of the adult, both in the individual districts and in the utopian city of the Capital. By using the contrasting images, I aim to show how imagery is used to draw on the significance of the misplaced roles. Director Gary Ross uses opposing color themes to show stark differences between the Capital and the districts. However, I feel that a further argument can be made in the way that the children and adults are expressed on …

Introduction: Fabulous Animals, Holly Dugan, Karl Steel

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Enter The Dragon: Desire And Meaning In A True And Wonderfull Encounter, Jan Stirm

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

"Famine And No Other Hath Slain Me": Jack Cade In The Garden Of Iden, Emily Gruber Keck

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Desdemona's Dildo: Fetish Objects And Transitional Sex In Othello, Perry Guevara

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Familiar Creatures: Witchcraft, Female Bodies, And Early Modern Animals, Christopher Clary

Early Modern Culture

No abstract provided.

Tracing The Material: Spaces And Objects In British And Irish Modernist Novels, Mary Allison Wise

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tracing the Material considers how James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s The Years, and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy represent material spaces and objects as a way of engaging with the fraught histories of England and Ireland. I argue that these three writers use spaces and objects to think through and critique nineteenth and early twentieth-century conflicts and transitions, particularly in the areas of empire, nationalism, gender, and family. Writing in the 1920s and 1930s, in the decline of British ascendency, the rise of the Irish Free State, and between the World Wars, these writers seek to interpret their history through …

Entertaining Angels: Homelessness And The Hospitality Of Faith In Adams County, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

I first volunteered at a soup kitchen in the frigid depths of winter in very late 1981 or very early 1982, in the heart of the Rust Belt in the midst of a terrible recession. I should emphasize right from the onset that I didn’t want to be there: I was next to useless and very intimidated, forced to be there by the tradition of service at my all-boys Catholic high school. Still, the experience made quite an impression on me, and I tell that story to my students so that they will understand that I know what’s like to …

Txtng: A Nu Pov Human Drivers Of Modern Language Change, Kelli Johnson

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

No abstract provided.

Eng3010g-600: Literary Masterworks, Melissa Caldwell

Summer 2016

No abstract provided.

Eng1002g-001: Composition And Literature, Tammy Veach

Summer 2016

No abstract provided.