English Language and Literature Commons^™

John Gower's Magical Rhetoric, Georgiana Donavin

Accessus

In Book 6 of the Confessio Amantis, telling the “Tale of Ulysses and Telegonus,” John Gower says of the former, “He was a gret rethorien / He was a gret magicien,” thereby capturing deep connections between rhetoric and magic. The seriously flawed necromancers of Book 6 exemplify only negative connections, however. Ulysses, by embracing verbal trickery and deploying his knowledge of the liberal arts for inferior aims, fails as both hero and speaker. Worse than Ulysses is Nectanabus, whose deceitful “carectes” seem to serve as a critique against spoken enchantments. Later in Book 7, however, Gower recuperates a concept …

Magic, Religion, And Science: A Special Issue, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

Preface to a special issue of Accessus on magic, religion, and science in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.

The Importance Of Black Love In Romance Novels, University Marketing And Communications, Julie Moody-Freeman

DePaul Download

For Julie Moody-Freeman, reading Black romance novels isn’t a guilty pleasure - it’s an area of study. Moody-Freeman is the director of DePaul's Center for Black Diaspora and a faculty member in the African and Black Diaspora Studies Department. On this episode, she discusses the history and importance of Black love in romance novels, which inspires her work as the host of The Black Romance Podcast. She also reflects on her conversations with Black romance writers, editors and scholars and the importance of their oral histories.

Middle-Earth, Or There And Back Again (2020) Edited By Łukasz Neubauer, Marjorie Burns Professor Emerita

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Marjorie Burns, of Middle-earth, or There and Back Again (2020) edited by Łukasz Neubauer.

The Comfort Of Literature In An Age Of Uncertainty, Jordan C. Gakle

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

This book review essay explores the relevance of Karen Thompson Walker's debut YA novel, The Age of Miracles, centered around an 11-year-old girl living through a global phenomenon that results in the deconstruction of her normal life. The parallels between the novel and our own world, while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, are remarkable. Reading The Age of Miracles in a time like this can offer people, especially young adults, a sense of familiarity and solidarity.

The Seduction Of Pessimism: Eros, Failure, And The Novel, Tom Ribitzky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Plato’s Symposium, we get a pessimistic myth not only about love, but about the first experience of loss, in which we were once globular cosmic beings who were split in two by Zeus’s thunderbolts as punishment for not obeying the Olympian gods. Falling down to earth after the split, Zeus introduced eros out of pity for our condition. Our consolation was to find our other halves and hold on to them as a way of remembering what it was like when we were whole. But, as Allan Bloom notes:

…man’s condition soon worsened. In the beginning, their real …

The Lodge In The Wilderness: Ecologies Of Contemplation In British Romantic Poetry, Sean M. Nolan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that contemplation is often overlooked in studies of British Romantic poetry. By the late 1700s, changing commercial and agricultural practices, industrialism, secularization, and utilitarianism emphasizing industriousness coalesced to uproot established discourses of selfhood and leisure, and effected crises of individuation in Romantic poetry and poetics. Closely reading poems and writing about poetry composed between the 1780s and 1830s by William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill, I probe the relationship between aesthetic, ethical, and emotional responses to depictions of toil, idleness, and leisure. I argue that ecologies …

Silver Girls: A Modern Retelling Of Little Women, Jessica A. Rinker

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When one thinks of a “reader” they might picture a person with large wire-rimmed glasses, their nose buried deep into the binding of a thick book, perhaps with a cat curled up next to them and maybe a mug of tea. If one had to guess what such a literary person was reading, one would assume something very old and wise like Tolstoy or Wordsworth or Austin. What about the twelve-year-old hanging upside down on his bean bag chair devouring James Dashner’s Maze Runner or the fifteen-year-old laying across her bed, lost in the plot of Elizabeth Acevedo’s Poet X? …

Teaching Challenging Texts And Encouraging Inquiry Remotely, Aisha Ratanapool

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Creating a culture of inquiry in non-research based courses helps students enhance their skills in critical thinking, reading, writing, collaboration, and argumentation. In English 101, some students feel like not having all of the answers about a text after a first read is unacceptable. This practice is designed to help college students understand and confidently discuss complex texts in a remote course.

Seamus Heaney And The Role Of The Political Poet, Alex Coleman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Preserving Words: Zitkala-Ša’S Natural Appeal To An Environmentally Concerned America, Emily Hopwood Durney

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Victory Of The Brave In Zitkala-Ša’S The Sun Dance Opera, Amanda Lund

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Siegel, Nyby, And Lovecraft: Of Humanity, Sanity, And Their Opposites, Kristin Pedersen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Contributors List

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Poetic Maturity, Identity, And A Troublesome Future In “Personal Helicon”, Taylor Bitton

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue Fall 2020

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

"Men Were Deceivers Ever": Deceptive Appearances In Much Ado About Nothing, Shelby Shipley

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

"Was Is Not Is": "Give Unto Them Beauty For Ashes" (Isaiah 61.1-3), Katey Workman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

The Search For Redemption: How Olaudah Equiano Captivates His Audience Through His Interesting Captivity Narrative, Emily J. Nichols

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Not Too Ferocious For Liberty Bell Readers: The Slave Woman's Justified Reactions And Retaliations, Elizabeth Daley

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Nature In Heaven And Nature On Earth: Heaven’S Natural World In The Great Divorce, Joshua Richardson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

George Macdonald Collection Finding Aid, Taylor University

Finding Aids

The George MacDonald Collection features a variety of rare books, letters, and serialized fiction written by MacDonald, as well as scholarship and articles written about him.
Last Updated: August 29, 2022

Extending Arda: Mapping Beyond The Lord Of The Rings And Silmarillion, Stentor Danielson

Journal of Tolkien Research

The canonical maps by Christopher Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion cover only a small portion of the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. In the years since their publication, many artists have been inspired to try to create maps of the entire world. In doing so, they have both curated the canonical information provided by Tolkien as well as engaged in their own sub-creation, drawing on geographical ideas from the primary world. This paper examines a broad set of fan-made maps of Arda to trace the lineages of their geographical conceptions and the principles behind their …

Translations As Representations Of Cultural Bias, Sarah Theimer

Faculty Publications

A presentation at the American Library Association's Midwinter Conference this presentation discusses how translations are not simply the movement of a resource from the source language to the target language. Transitioning a work into another language necessarily carries with it the bias of the target culture. Bias is demonstrated in different ways. Publishers decide what should and should not get published. Translators decide what should get included in the text to be meet the expectations of the source culture. Translations are often are incompletely described in library catalogs, which further inhibit the users' ability to make an informed choice.

Military Cartography’S Influence On Tolkien’S Maps Of Middle-Earth, Stentor Danielson

Journal of Tolkien Research

The published maps of Middle-earth by Christopher Tolkien drew on extensive drafts made by his father during the process of his writing. These drafts enable tracing the possible influence of the elder Tolkien’s training in map-reading during his time in the British Army during the First World War. The early maps drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien exhibit features, such as the use of hachures and contour lines to indicate elevation, and a focus on the accurate calculation of distances and movements, that were characteristic of military cartography. The maps then evolved into a more pictorial style, characteristic of contemporary literary maps, …

Eng 1002g-008: College Composition Ii, Betzy Elifrits Warren

Spring 2021

No abstract provided.

Eng 4765z-600: Professional Editing, Colleen Abel

Spring 2021

No abstract provided.

Eng 1001g-001: College Composition I, Lucinda Berry

Spring 2021

No abstract provided.

Eng 1001g-003: College Composition I, Glen Davis

Spring 2021

No abstract provided.