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Articles 31 - 42 of 42

Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Culture In Crisis: The English Novel In The Late Twentieth Century, Michael F. Harper Nov 2014

Culture In Crisis: The English Novel In The Late Twentieth Century, Michael F. Harper

Scripps Faculty Books

Culture in Crisis begins with political and social history at the moment of the election of Margaret Thatcher. Many saw in this event the dissolution of the ideal of the liberal State once believed to be shared by both the Left and the Right. Ranging widely over such writers as Anthony Powell, John LeCarre, Samuel Selvon, Salman Rushdie, and Margaret Drabble, Harper examines various responses to this “crisis” which he shows to have roots in a pernicious ideal of “Englishness” going back many generations. With considerable skill and a masterful grasp of books and ideas, he presents the novel as …


Man Pain In The Man Booker Prize: A Quantitative Approach To Contemporary Canon Formation, Caitlin E. Powell Jan 2014

Man Pain In The Man Booker Prize: A Quantitative Approach To Contemporary Canon Formation, Caitlin E. Powell

Scripps Senior Theses

This project examines the corpus of novels that have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize and, using the prize as a creator of a contemporary literary canon, attempts to develop a model of a contemporary best text. Using the distant reading techniques proposed by digital humanities scholar Franco Moretti to track and graph a variety of formal and structural variables across the corpus of nominees, it becomes apparent that the kind of novel that typically wins the Booker Prize and thus the kind of novel that qualifies as a contemporary best text fits a distinct mold. These novels are …


Brian Friel’S Modern Irish Drama: Writing The Past, Present, & Future, Brian F. Mccabe Mar 2013

Brian Friel’S Modern Irish Drama: Writing The Past, Present, & Future, Brian F. Mccabe

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Postcolonial and historicized readings of Irish literatures describe the evils of colonialism, and the ways it has distorted nationhood and nation-building to serve the ends of greedy empires. But, what happens to a nation or nations in the vacuum after a major colonial power abandons the colony or is driven out? [excerpt]


"Something Old And Dark Has Got Its Way": Shakespeare's Influence In The Gothic Literary Tradition, Natalie A. Hewitt Jan 2013

"Something Old And Dark Has Got Its Way": Shakespeare's Influence In The Gothic Literary Tradition, Natalie A. Hewitt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines Shakespeare’s role as the most significant precursor to the Gothic author in Britain, suggesting that Shakespeare used the same literary conventions that Gothic writers embraced as they struggled to create a new subgenre of the novel. By borrowing from Shakespeare’s canon, these novelists aimed to persuade readers and critics that rather than undermining the novel’s emergent, still unassured status as an acceptable literary genre, the nontraditional aspects of their works paid homage to Shakespeare’s imaginative vision. Gothic novelists thereby legitimized their attempts at literary expression. Despite these efforts, Gothic writers did not instantly achieve the type of …


Dreading He Knew Not What: Masculinities, Structural Spaces, Law And The Gothic In The Castle Of Otranto, Pride And Prejudice, And Wuthering Heights, Samantha E. Morse Jan 2013

Dreading He Knew Not What: Masculinities, Structural Spaces, Law And The Gothic In The Castle Of Otranto, Pride And Prejudice, And Wuthering Heights, Samantha E. Morse

Pitzer Senior Theses

This essay investigates the integral linkages between Gothic spaces and Gothic masculinities in three texts: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). At the core of this examination is architecture, or more specifically, the physical constructions and built environments that comprise a man’s property. I explore how a man uses his property to construct, legitimize, and perform his identity. In the Female Gothic, the home is a place of anxiety for women, where patriarchal dominance and violence reign to constrain female agency. I argue that the home is …


The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs Apr 2012

The Monkey In The Looking Glass: Fairies, Folklore And Evolutionary Theory In The Search For Britain's Imperial Self, Tessa Katherine Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

In his groundbreaking work of postcolonial theory, Orientalism, Edward Said puts forth the idea that imperial Europe asserted an identity by constructing the character of its colonized subjects. Said writes that his book tries to “show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (3). The object of this thesis is a related project, for it too is a search for imperial Britain’s surrogate or underground self. Yet rather than positioning this search within the British colonies, this thesis takes as its context a …


Wilde And Wonderful: The Ultimate Aesthete's Redefinition Of Individualism, As An Idealist, And Then As An Outcast, Anna Brill Jan 2012

Wilde And Wonderful: The Ultimate Aesthete's Redefinition Of Individualism, As An Idealist, And Then As An Outcast, Anna Brill

CMC Senior Theses

Oscar Wilde redefined the relationship between Life and Art, and attempted to live in the style of the characters in his works: pursuing Beauty. His view of Life as imitating Art played a crucial role in his definition of Individualism. In his works, he explored how one develops one's personality and Individuality, and society's role in suppressing the Individual. He firmly believed that Life and ugliness were inextricably intertwined, and that society's moral structure was to blame. Popular in his time as an artist, he made it a point in his writing and in his work to stand apart from …


Siegfried Sassoon And Rebecca West: A Dual-Commentary On The English Home Front In World War I, Joseph Farewell Jan 2011

Siegfried Sassoon And Rebecca West: A Dual-Commentary On The English Home Front In World War I, Joseph Farewell

CMC Senior Theses

The glory of war is dead, and the Great War killed it. Soldierly dignity, heroism, and proper field chivalry; all laid to waste by a single mortar round at Arras. This ethos—a vestige of Greek warrior worship—stood little chance against the trenches. It either drowned in the fecal trench muck at the Somme or staggered back—in tatters, if that—a broken soul; another victim of the so-called “Good Fight.” And there were many victims. An entire generation, even, lost to the trenches. But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that home front in England didn’t even get …


"This Rough Magic:" Imagination, Resurrection, And The Dream World Crisis In Shakespearean Tragedy, Rachel A. Selvin Jan 2011

"This Rough Magic:" Imagination, Resurrection, And The Dream World Crisis In Shakespearean Tragedy, Rachel A. Selvin

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I explored the relationship between Shakespearean tragedy and romance, specifically how each genre treated themes regarding resurrection and the imagination. In romance, I discovered that the imagination became a portal to reality--a way through which characters understood and accepted impermanence, decay, and death. I used romance to illuminate tragedy's failures, showing that in both King Lear and Othello the imagination acts as a mask against the real. I called these imaginative spaces “dream worlds”--fantastical plains in which characters chased their impossible longings for eternity and perfected romantic love. This refusal to engage with the real, I concluded, …


Interpretations Of Medievalism In The 19th Century: Keats, Tennyson And The Pre-Raphaelites, Shannon K. Wilsey Jan 2010

Interpretations Of Medievalism In The 19th Century: Keats, Tennyson And The Pre-Raphaelites, Shannon K. Wilsey

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis describes how different 19th century poets and artists depicted elements of the medieval in their artwork as a means to contradict the rapid progress and metropolitan build-up of the Industrial Revolution. The poets discussed are John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; the painters include William Holman Hunt and John William Waterhouse. Examples of the poems and corresponding Pre-Raphaelite depictions include The Eve of Saint Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shalott.


Tragic Pleasure In Shakespeare's King Lear And Othello, Luella Fu Jan 2010

Tragic Pleasure In Shakespeare's King Lear And Othello, Luella Fu

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an examination of reader or audience response to Shakespeare’s tragedies. Primarily, it identifies key pleasures that Shakespeare’s King Lear and Othello offer. The complementary nature of these two plays is such that the analysis of their various pleasures allows for an in-depth treatment of the topic and also reflects the diversity of emotional response elicited by Shakespeare’s tragedies. The kinds of pleasure addressed in this study are catharsis as explained by Aristotle, the delight of violent passion as advocated by DuBos, pleasure from details in the work, satisfaction from the coherence of the tragedy, and pleasure in …


Serving The Storyline Of The Novel: The Powerful Role Of The Feudal Servant-Narrator, Stephanie Turner May 2009

Serving The Storyline Of The Novel: The Powerful Role Of The Feudal Servant-Narrator, Stephanie Turner

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis addresses issues of class as represented through the narrative agency exercised by the servant-narrator in Castle Rackrent and Wuthering Heights. Thady Quirk and Ellen Dean are servant-narrators who strategically use feigned allegiance, astute perception, and selective disclosure to wield power over the lives of their masters. These “arts of subordination” allow the servant-narrator to tell his or her own life narrative, while appearing to share the masters’ memoirs. While both servant-narrators are motivated by economic means, Ellen Dean’s involvement throughout Wuthering Heights is further complicated by her desires of emotional connection. However, each servant-narrator achieves his or her …