English Language and Literature Commons^™

Poem No. 114, November 2015, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Ecology 101, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Altar At Home: Sentimental Literature And Nineteenth-Century American Religion By Claudia Stokes, Angela Sorby

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Capital As Artificial Intelligence, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

This article examines science-fictional allegorizations of Soviet-style planned economies, financial markets, autonomous trading algorithms, and global capitalism writ large as nonhuman artificial intelligences, focussing primarily on American science fiction of the Cold War period. Key fictional texts discussed include Star Trek, Isaac Asimov's Machine stories, Terminator, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952), Charles Stross's Accelerando (2005), and the short stories of Philip K. Dick. The final section of the article discusses Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 (2012) within the contemporary political context of accelerationist anticapitalism, whose advocates propose working with “the machines” rather than against them.

“Inhumanly Beautiful”: The Aesthetics Of The Nineteenth-Century Deathbed Scene, Margo Masur

English Theses

Death today is hidden from our everyday lives so it cannot intermingle with the general public. So when a family member dies, their body becomes an object in need of disposal; no longer can they be recognized as the familiar person they once were. To witness death is to force individuals to confront the truths of human existence, and for most of us seeing such a sight would fill us with an emotion of disgust. Yet during the nineteenth century, the burden of care towards the sick or dying was shared by a community of family, neighbors, and friends; the …

Tales Of Anti-Heroes In The Work Of J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Article in Mythlore 34.1, Fall/Winter 2015.

The Octavia E. Butler Papers, Gerry Canavan

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Muslim Mystique: The Use Of Rushdie’S Imaginary Homeland To Combat Prejudice Against Muslim Peoples Explored In Three Semi-Autobiographical Works Of Popular Fiction By Muslim Authors Of An American Immigrant Background, Lauren E. Nadolski

Selected Honors Theses

There is a largely unexplored trend in recent popular fiction that regards the semi-autobiographical work of authors of an immigrant or refugee background. These works seldom fall into the trap exposed by Said’s Orientalism, but instead present the author’s native country and culture through a lens similar what Salman Rushdie described as “imaginary homelands.” This thesis examines three primary texts that fit that description: The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseni, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid, and Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye for their inclusion of the Islamic faith and their portrayal of America. The texts are analyzed and recommended …

"Terror As Theater": Unraveling Spectacle In Post 9/11 Literatures, Elise Christine Silva

Faculty Publications

For the purposes of this paper, I will discuss two post 9/11 novels—both of which utilize the terror-as-theatre metaphor in order to work through the 9/11 spectacle. Both Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007), and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) explore avenues of communication and meaning making in the face of an event that many critics suggested defied language, description, and expression. Through their thematic use of performance, these texts reject a closed and inert polarized interpretation of 9/11 and invite a pastiche of interpretations and interactions. Through this communicative connection, authors, texts, and readers convene to …

Alcoholism, Miscomprehension And Salvation : Edwin O'Connor's The Edge Of Sadness, Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Dale Spender Collection At The Women's College, University Of Sydney, Olivia Murphy

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Notice of the opening of the Dale Spender collection of books relating to feminism; Australian women's writing; and women's writing in English of the long nineteenth century.

Review Of Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer In The Eighteenth Century, Marie Mulvey-Roberts

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Peggy Thompson, (Ed). Beyond Sense And Sensibility: Moral Formation And The Literary Imagination From Johnson To Wordsworth, Elizabeth A. Dolan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Chawton Novels Online, Women’S Writing 1751-1834 And Computer-Aided Textual Analysis, Anne Bandry-Scubbi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Using Chawton House Library’s “Novels Online,” several corpora have been set up for a computer-aided textual analysis of the use of vocabulary by women writing “domestic novels” from 1752 to 1834. This corpus stylistics approach makes it possible to map texts according to their word usage and to identify quantitative keywords which provide vocabulary profiles through comparison and contrast with contemporary male and female canonical texts. Items identified include pronouns, markers of dialogue and of intensity; others can be grouped into specific lexical fields such as feelings. One text from the collection then forms the object of a …

Tearing Down Walls And Building Bridges, Melba J. Boyd

Criticism

A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe L. Moraga. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. 280, 9 illustrations. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Tempering Romance, Katherine R. Larson

Criticism

The Fabulous Dark Cloister: Romance in England after the Reformation by Tiffany Jo Werth. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Pp. 248, 8 illustrations. $65.00 cloth.

Fresh Shakespeare From The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Some critics have argued against the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's contemporary English translation project, but Daniel Pollack-Pelzner argues it's part of the process of keeping Shakespeare alive.

Metafiction As Genre Fiction, Jeremy A. Levine

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Realism, the genre in which literature is expected to reflect reality, tends to act as the default setting for establish- ing the worth of a given piece. This paper contends that metafiction, a post-modern genre characterized by a work’s awareness of its own fictional nature, has been damaged by realism’s standards. Using a case study of two metafic- tional works, John Barth’s “Life-Story” and David Foster Wallace’s Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way against a historical and theoretical backdrop, the paper both isolates metafiction from realism while describing its deliberate artistic mission. This identity is based on open …

Manzanar Murakami As Radical Mathematician, Logan Bishop-Van Horn

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

In Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, characters attempt to make meaning of the many complex structures in which they are situated. In his unique meaning-making process, Manzanar Murakami, a homeless Sansei, “conducts” the Los Angeles traffic with a silver baton from atop a highway overpass. In conducting his music, Murakami per- forms complex mathematics, finding meaning in connection by mapping the rhythmic flow of humans, machines, and goods. Through his baton, to the sounds of a beautiful orchestra, he translates precisely the relationships he sees before him. Murakami’s music and Yamashita’s fantastic images constitute a “mathematical realism,” a lens …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

1904: Tolkien, Trauma, And Its Anniversaries, Nancy Bunting

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A controversial speculative reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s early years with his mother Mabel and brother Hilary. Applying our current understanding of childhood trauma and its later effects, definitions of abuse, and knowledge of the history of childrearing to a close reading of underused material from Hilary’s memoirs and Ronald’s artwork, among other documents, Bunting proposes a far less rosy picture of Tolkien’s early childhood than usually seen. However, statements from Tolkien’s official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, hint at a great deal of suppressed material; it’s possible this interpretation may turn out to be closer to the truth than one might expect …

"A Wilderness Of Dragons": Tolkien's Treatment Of Dragons In Roverandom And Farmer Giles Of Ham, Romuald I. Lakowski

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An exploration of Tolkien’s depictions of dragons in his stories for children, Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham. Draws on “On Fairy-stories,” the Beowulf lecture, the Father Christmas letters, and a little-known “Lecture on Dragons” Tolkien gave to an audience of children at the University Museum in Oxford, as well as source Tolkien would have known: Nennius, The Fairy Queene, and so on.

Noms De Guerre: The Power Of Naming In War And Conflict In Middle-Earth, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers named weapons, noms de plume and other personal name changes, place name changes. Un-naming is seen as both a political strategy and a key tactic of in Sauron’s arsenal.

Hearkening To The Other: A Certeauvian Reading Of The Ainulindale, Cami Agan

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Applying literary theory to authors whose works interest us is “a kind of play that attunes us to the interior movements, voices, and processes” of their work. Analyzes the Ainulindalë using the literary-historical theoretical framework of Michel de Certeau as a way of understanding how the inhabitants of Arda, not just the readers outside the world, comprehend how they are situated in their history, and what this says about Tolkien’s understanding of history.

Reviews, Nicholas Birns, Joe R. Christopher, Catherine Coker, Janet Brennan Croft, Mike Foster, Jon Garrad, Crystal Hurd, Yvette Kisor, Jeremy Larson, Laura Lee Smith

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis: A Critical Edition. Edited by Don W. King. Reviewed by Joe R. Christopher.

Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North. G. Ronald Murphy. Reviewed by Jon Garrad.

Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Deborah A. Higgins. Reviewed by Yvette Kisor.

Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C.S. Lewis and Gender. Monika B. Hilder. Reviewed by Laura Lee Smith.

Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of The Rings. Susan Jeffers. Reviewed by Jeremy Larson.

Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis. Abigail Santamaria. …

The Texting Smile, Richard K. Angel

Student Works

There's nothing like dating to turn us into a miserable puddle of falsehood. When we're with the person we like, we fight to play the game and find the right balance of not showing too much interest (so she'll know that you like her) and showing enough (so she doesn't think you don't). It's an art. But when we're only texting, we can behave however we'd like as long as we choose our words carefully; we don't even try to hide our emotions, and the perfect strangers surrounding us see more of our unabashed smile than the object of our …

The Lost Letter: Seeking The Keys To William's Arthuriad, John D. Rateliff

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Mythcon 47 Guest of Honor address. The Arthuriad is dense with allusion and the reader often has a sense of missing much that goes on below the surface; as it happens, the reader is not wrong to be confused. Rateliff finds the keys that unlock this poetic sequence à clef in a relatively unknown letter Williams wrote in answer to a list of questions on the Arthuriad from C.S. Lewis, in the “gynecomorphical map” drawn to Williams’s personal specifications which served as endpapers to the poetry, and in Williams’s private life as revealed in letters and memoirs, in particular to …

Notes, Seona Ford, Joe R. Christopher

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An obituary of long-time Mythlore advisory board member and Sayers scholar Barbara Reynolds, who was closely associated with Dorothy L. Sayers. An anniversary appreciation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; attempts to analyze its literary staying power.

Tolkien's Philological Philosophy In His Fiction, Sherrylyn Branchaw

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Reading of several key passages in Tolkien’s works that tie back to and illustrate his deepest-held philosophical beliefs about philology. Among other examples, pays particular attention to Gimli’s speech about the Glittering Caves of Aglarond and to Faramir’s failure to understand the warning implicit in the place-name Cirith Ungol due to the drift of linguistic meaning over time.

Tales Of Anti-Heroes In The Work Of J.R.R. Tolkien, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Considers two stories which seem uncharacteristically anti-heroic in comparison to the rest of Tolkien’s legendarium—the story of Túrin Turambar, and in particular, the portrait of the failed marriage of Aldarion and Erendis in “The Mariner’s Wife” and its ecological implications.