Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …

"The Engine Of Free Expression": The Political Economy Of Copyright In The Colonial British Atlantic And Early National United States, Nora Slonimsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1985, the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that copyright was included in the Constitution in order to serve as the “engine of free expression.” By providing economic incentive to drive artistic and scientific innovation, the nation received essential information and other tools of learning necessary to make sound political decisions. However, transnational copyright disputes, then and now, frequently resulted in complex and often contradictory understandings of free expression. The formation of copyright in America was thus a far more complex story, and it is that story that forms the basis of this project.

Amidst the many moving …

A City Room Of One's Own: Elizabeth Jordan, Henry James, And The New Woman Journalist, James Hunter Plummer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis considers the portrayal of the female journalist in the works of Elizabeth Jordan and Henry James. In 1898, Jordan, a journalist and editor herself, published Tales of the City Room, a collection of interconnected short stories that depict a close and supportive community of female journalists. It is, overall, a positive portrayal of female journalists by a female journalist. James, on the other hand, uses the female journalists in The Portrait of a Lady, “Flickerbridge,” and “The Papers” to show his discomfort toward New Journalism and the New Woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These …

Posthumous Preaching: James Melville's Ghostly Advice In Ane Dialogue (1619), With An Edition From The Manuscript, Jamie Reid Baxter

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the use of the dialogue in Renaissance Scotland, and explores the background, themes, and dramatic art of Ane Dialogue (1619), concerning the Five Articles of Perth (1618), and resistance to the church policies of King James VI & I; gives character-sketches of the four speakers, James Melville, William Balcanquhall, Archibald Johnstone, and John Smyth, and of their satiric target, the Edinburgh minister William Struthers; concludes by providing an annotated edition of the dialogue transcribed from the sole manuscript, National Library of Scotland, Wodrow Quarto LXXXIV, ff. 19-25.

'A Thin And Tattered Veil': Lewis Grassic Gibbon And The Church Of Scotland, Ian Campbell

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the changes in Scottish religious practice and adherence from just before the First World War, through to the early 1930s, through the representation of the Church of Scotland in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy: Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933), and Grey Granite (1934), with briefer comment on other writings by the same author writing as J. L. Mitchell. and a final comparison between Gibbon's portrayal of religious change and that in an earlier Scottish novel, John Galt's Annals of the Parish(1821).

Transatlantic Grammars: Lindley Murray And William Cobbett, Peter J. Manning

Department of English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Remembering The Great War: Writing And Publishing The Experiences Of Wwi, Ian A. Isherwood

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

The horrors and tragedies of the First World War produced some of the finest literature of the century: including Memoirs of an Infantry Officer; Goodbye to All That; the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas; and the novels of Ford Madox Ford. Collectively detailing every campaign and action, together with the emotions and motives of the men on the ground, these 'war books' are the most important set of sources on the Great War that we have. Through looking at the war poems, memoirs and accounts published after the First World War, Ian Andrew Isherwood addresses the key issues …

Berth Of The Abergavenny, Richard Matlak

Texts relating to the Earl of Abergavenny (ship)

This essay serves as a brief introduction to the digital collection, Berth of the Abergavenny, by providing context for the historical and literary significance of the model East Indiaman, The Earl of Abergavenny, on display in Dinand Library at the College of the Holy Cross.

Impact Of Tuberculosis On Victorian England, Cara Caputo

Maria Dittman Library Research Competition: Student Award Winners

No abstract provided.

The Sinking Of The Abergavenny, Richard Matlak

Texts relating to the Earl of Abergavenny (ship)

This section of the screenplay Immortal Sea is a fictional representation of the sinking of the Earl of Abergevenny off the coast of England in 1805.

Snoop-Women With Notebooks: Naomi Mitchison, Mass Observation, And The Gender Of Domestic Intelligence, Megan Faragher

English Language and Literatures Faculty Publications

Novelist Naomi Mitchison and Home Intelligence head Mary Adams were crucial supporters of Mass Observation's qualitative approach to public opinion collection, but their efforts were significantly curtailed when the public denounced observers as internal spies. This article traces the backlash against MO's methodology, both bureaucratically and publicly, uncovering that MO critics were partially fueled by the gendering of its unique methodology. While some considered interviews and surveys tantamount to domestic espionage, the subsequent turn towards quantitative data devalued women's experiences by favoring institutionalized patriarchal approaches to analyzing public opinion. Within this context, Mitchison's novel We Have Been Warned similarly presents …

Behind The Shadows, Selena Ramirez Ahilon

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The nineteenth century is classified as the Victorian era, a period in which the middle class rose in power as a result of industrialization. As the middle classes living standards rose the middle class became reliant on utilitarianism values. This ideal appeared to offer a more comfortable life for both men and women, however, by classifying the position of women as the “heart” and men as the “head” of the house, women were hindered to a society in shadows. Women were restricted in every aspect of life because men were in power, and the ideal Victorian woman became the one …

Jonathan Swift: Ideology And Influences, Ricky Romero

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

This project will analyze the ideology and influences Irish author and satirist, Jonathan Swift had in cultivating theories on society/economy and thoughts especially relevant in his novel Gulliver’s Travels. The information is worth noting because of the bigger than life themes he suggests in liberal thoughts and social interactions between people. Ultimately, remorseful thoughts on monotheistic governments, European influences, and pro-world-peace examples were found as prominent ideas conveyed by Jonathan Swift.

Overall, it is morally correct to agree with Jonathan Swift’s ideology of a world based upon freedom and liberty. It is fairly simple to sympathize with Swift’s thoughts on …

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory And Constructions Of Race In Nazi Germany: A Literary And Cultural Analysis Of Darwin’S Works And Nazi Rhetoric, Emily M. Wollmuth

Departmental Honors Projects

First published in 1856, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is one of the most impactful scientific writings in history. While the influence of Darwinian evolutionary theory on historical events has been widely studied, no single work of scholarship has previously combined close reading of Origin’s representations of “race” with analysis of how those constructions of “racial” difference are (mis)translated across the cultural discourses of the eugenics movement and Nazi Germany. Through comparative cultural studies and close literary analysis of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Darwin’s works—including Origin, Descent of Man, and Voyage of the Beagle, this paper examines how evolutionary …

Narrative Pleasures And Feminist Politics: Popular Women’S Historical Fiction, 1990-2015, Victoria Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation contributes to a developing body of work on women’s historical fiction and its significance to feminist discourse. Building from Diana Wallace’s 2005 study The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000, I offer a modified definition of “the woman’s historical novel” and a transatlantic consideration of several of the most popular titles in the contemporary period, including The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), Outlander (1991), A Great and Terrible Beauty (2003), and Scarlett (1991). Several studies have followed Wallace’s, notably Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women’s Writing (2007) and Katherine Cooper and Emma …

Crime And Culture : A Thematic Reading Of Sherlock Holmes And His Adaptations., Britney Broyles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The …

The Poet And The Polemist: Demystifying The Natural Law Theory Of John Milton, John J. Mazola

Theses and Dissertations

A summation of the influences behind Milton's Natural Law theory as found in the works of Aristotle, Grotius, Hobbes, and Thomas Aquinas. The essay's intent is to uncover this important thread that runs through both Milton's Poetic Verse as well as his Polemic tracts.

Immigrant And Irish Identities In Hand In The Fire And Hamilton's Writing Between 2003 And 2014, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Immigrant and Irish Identities in Hand in the Fire and Hamilton's Writing between 2003 and 2014" Dervila Cooke discusses the intertwining of Irish and immigrant identities. Cooke examines the connection between openness to memory and embracing migrant identities in Hamilton's writing both in the 2010 novel and as a whole. The empathetic and inclusive character of Helen in Hand in the Fire is analyzed in contrast to characters who have repressed memory including the Serbian Vid. Helen's ties to elsewhere, her openness to new influence, and her willingness to engage with traumatic elements of the past (Irish …

Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided for the introduction.

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Topic Modeling And The Historical Geography Of Scotland, Michael Gavin, Eric Gidal

Studies in Scottish Literature

Presents selected findings from a larger project using topic modeling for clusters of keywords from a defined corpus of 18th and 19th century Scottish topographical sources (including the Old and New Statistical Surveys), linked to GIS mapping, to explore such topics as Scottish industry, transport, antiquities, print culture, and religion, with 10 maps included in the article text.

Verdens Undergang (1916) And The Birth Of Apocalyptic Film: Antecedents And Causative Forces, Wynn Gerald Hamonic

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay describes the antecedents and causative forces giving rise to the birth of apocalyptic cinema in the early 20th Century and the first apocalyptic feature, Verdens Undergang (1916). Apocalyptic cinema's roots can be traced back to apocalyptic literary tradition beginning 200 BCE, New Testament apocalyptic writings, the rise of premillenialism in the mid-19th Century, 19th century apocalyptic fiction, a growing distrust in human self-determination, escalating wars and tragedies from 1880 to 1912 reaching a larger audience through a burgeoning press, horrors and disillusionment caused by the First World War, a growing belief in a dystopian future, and changes in …

Friends Of Musselman Library Newsletter Fall 2016, Musselman Library

Friends of Musselman Library Newsletter

From the Dean (Robin Wagner)

Library Exhibits

GettDigital: Sports Reels

Research Reflections: The Gettysburg Superstar (Devin McKinney)

Remembering 9/12

Will Power: 400 Years After the Bard

Treasure Island (Robin Wagner)

Margin of Error

A Call to Activism in the Summer of '65 (Richard Hutch '67)

Digital Scholarship: The New Frontier (Julia Wall '19, Lauren White '18, Keira Koch '19)

Scrapbooks and Photo Albums: Snapshots of History (Clara A. Baker '30)

Soldiers' Scrapbooks (Laura Bergin '17)

A Book of Dreams (Alexa Schreier)

Who Do You Think You Are? (Timothy Shannon)

From Professor-Student to Collaborators (Jesse Siegel '16)

The Mysterious Easel Monument …

Animals In Irish Literature And Culture Edited By Kathryn Kirkpatrick And Borbála Faragó, Geneviève Pigeon

The Goose

Review of Kathryn Kirkpatrick and Borbála Faragó's Animals in Irish Literature and Culture.

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 …

Heavy Expectations: Reading Pregnancy In The Victorian Novel, Livia Arndal Woods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation articulates the tendency of Victorian novels to make legible only the pregnant bodies of immodest characters who transgress gendered ideologies while the pregnant bodies of modest characters tend to go undescribed. Tracing the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth over the course of the long nineteenth century, my chapters demonstrate the function of moralizing narrative conventions in the representation of pregnancy in mid-Victorian novels, of a self-conscious use of free indirect diagnosis in high-Victorian fiction, and a shift at the fin-de-siècle from pregnancy as a signifier of morality to a symptom of unstable minds. The novels I read closely …

Scotland In European Perspective: The Mainz-Germersheim Conference Before The Referendum, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews the published papers on political, literary, and cultural aspects of Scottish cultural identity from a conference held at Johnannes Gutenberg University-Mainz at Germersheim, Germany, in October 2013, before the narrowly-unsuccessful Scottish Independence referendum of the following year ["Indyref"], and discusses their continuing relevance in Scottish attitudes to the upcoming United Kingdom referendum on British withdrawal from the European Union ["Brexit"].

Adam Smith For Our Time, I: Necroeconomics, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews a wide-ranging new American study of the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), examining its treatment of Smith as critic and rhetorical theorist, as well as of his better-known writings on moral philosophy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and economic theory in The Wealth of Nations (1776), and discusses briefly the value for Scottish cultural history of interpretative practices developed originally in other national traditions, concluding that the book is "important for scholars of 18^th century Scottish literature... because it approaches Smith’s work through disciplinary practices that are common enough in other literary fields but …

A Dickensian Utilitarianism, Zachary Allentuck

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper argues that Charles Dickens' political and world views were in sympathy with Utilitarianism, as defined by Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarianism Dickens attacked in A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit was not real utilitarianism; it was utilitarianism appropriated by England's middle-class.