Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Articulating The Questions, Searching For Answers: How To The Lighthouse Can Help, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) At Old Dominion University, English majors must take one of the following courses-Postcolonial Literature, Literature by Minorities, African-American Literature, or Women Writers. In each course, our majors encounter new materials and perspectives. I teach Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse in Women Writers, a course in which students expect to explore feminist perspectives. Students range in age from nineteen lo sixty, but most are in their twenties or thirties. Frequently the first in their families to attend college, many come from conservative homes where feminist is a derogatory word. Therefore I find that the best way into a feminist …

Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Doris Lessing's novels of the early 1970s offer readers a rare kind of wisdom one which has been nourished by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, which she admires. Unlike Lessing's earlier fiction which was simply influenced by the ideas of Sufism, three of her novels-Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)-are literally Sufi fables-that is, symbolic stories, each of which "illuminates truth" (qtd. in Shah, The Sufis 14). The Sufi truth illuminated by these novels is that "life is One," and that because we have …

The Nautical Quest, Bradford S. Warner

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite crossing genres and continents, strong literary connections exist between Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Poe's novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Melville's novel Moby Dick or the Whale. The works are similar in terms of plot, symbolism, and other artistic devices. Ties between any two of the works have been mentioned in literary scholarship over the last century, yet I have located none involving all three.

None of the present criticism has revealed that each work utilizes several important literary devices, such as a quality of incorporation of source material (including travel …

Lord Byron's Heroines, Cathy Douglas Rodreguez

English Theses & Dissertations

Byron as a poet, aristocrat, and Romantic, began as all the other poets of his time, in a traditional fashion. But unlike the other poets, Byron began to develop a heroine who would become a voice for the realities of society. Despite the fact that Byron had many love affairs, he also respected women, believing in their right of autonomy within society. He considered them his equal, relishing lively debates with them on many topics. Byron's heroines embodied sentimentalism, integrity, morality and intelligence, which in turn subtlety influenced society to respect a woman's desire to openly express her emotions. What …

An "Earthly Paradise": William Morris's Later Prose Romances, Carolyn Adele Gardner

English Theses & Dissertations

William Norris, prominent Pre-Raphaelite poet and early Socialist thinker, devoted the final six years of his life not to poetry or Socialism, but to the creation of a new literary genre, the prose romance. Following the initial publication of the later prose romances between 1890-1896, few critics have attempted to analyze Norris's last works; moreover, those who have done so, have generally either dismissed the romances as escapist fantasies or twisted the narratives of these romances in an attempt to demonstrate the presence of Marxist allegories thought to accord with Norris's Socialism. Yet Norris's later prose romances, uniting his philosophies …

"Lost Books" And Publishing History: Two Annotated Lists Of Imprints For The Fiction Titles Listed In The Circulating Library Catalogs Of Thomas Lowndes (1766) And M. Heavisides (1790), Of Which No Known Copies Survive, Edward Jacobs, Antonia Forster

English Faculty Publications

Almost immediately upon the British Library's publication of The Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue on CD-ROM (hereafter ESTC), there emerged criticism and controversy respecting the design and execution of that monumental bibliography, and of its access software. However, amidst these discussions and those surrounding the on line version, little notice has been taken of the historical inaccuracies inevitably entailed by the fact that ESTC and other union-catalog-type bibliographies only include books of which copies have survived. Certainly, for most scholars it makes sense to give bibliographical priority to cataloging books of which we still have copies, since those are the …

A Previously Unremarked Circulating Library: John Roson And The Role Of Circulating-Library Proprietors As Publishers In Eighteenth-Century Britain, Edward Jacobs

English Faculty Publications

The entry in The Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue on CD ROM2 for The History of Miss Dorinda Catsby and Miss Emilia Faulkner (London: printed and sold by S. Bladon, 1772) notes that it contains between volumes one and two an advertisement for the catalog of John Roson's circulating library. However, Roson's library is not included in the lists of known English circulating libraries compiled by Hilda Hamlyn and by Paul Kaufman, and evidently no actual copy of a Roson catalog has survived. Still, merely the advertisement for this catalog tells us much about Roson's library business, and the discovery that …

The Vital Life: D.H. Lawrence's Response To A Dehumanized World, Rebecca Recce White

English Theses & Dissertations

As D.H. Lawrence experienced World War I and the Industrial Revolution, he recognized the inner spirits of men and women being valued less in the midst of war and industrialism. Lawrence's novels, short stories, and other works dramatize this dehumanizing process. Of his novels, five will be examined in this study: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, The Plumed Serpent, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Pivotal relationships between men and women are outlined by Lawrence to illustrate the ways in which they either reflect or challenge society.

Lawrence gives the readers a view of the modern age torn apart …

The Laissez Faire Political Vision Of John Milton In Paradise Lost, Gerald Keith Delles

English Theses & Dissertations

John Milton's Paradise Lost, a work subject to an indefinite variety of readings, is here dissected to reveal the nature of Milton's political epistemology. Using his prose as the soil from which his ideas sprang and the whirlwind political climate of seventeenth century England as the catalyst of these ideas, the goal is to connect the implied political content of Paradise Lost with corresponding points in the prose and actual events of Milton's time, with the intent to form a blueprint of Milton's "political vision." Eden and Heaven from Paradise Lost offer a link between labor without constraints and the …

Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

The reputation of British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now well established. Her brilliance as a writer is seldom contested, and her place in the literary canon is assured. Whether interested in literary traditions, textual studies, applied feminism, or postmodern theory, most scholars and critics admire what she had to say and how she said it. The variety, volume, and quality of her writings are impressive; her skill as a writer is seen not only in her eight novels but also in her essays, diaries, letters, short stories, biographies and nonfictional works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas …

A Syntactical Approach To Mr. Collins' Letter, Shixing Wen

Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The Theology Of Father Brown, Catherine Miles Flynn

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This thesis explores the theological thought of G. K. Chesterton, particularly as it is found in his detective short stories about Father Brown. In his other works (e.g., Orthodoxy, Heretics, and his many books of essays), the theology of Chesterton is obvious. However, in the light, whimsical Father Brown stories the theology expressed is often profound, but underrated if not ignored by his critics. Specific examples from his stories will be used to highlight the theological points within the mysteries.

The life and times of Chesterton are discussed as having highly influenced his thought. His unconventional religious upbringing, in particular, …

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: It's Roots And It's Impact On Her Novels, Nancy Topping Bazin, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) War InspIred Horror In Virginia Woolf. Her antipathy toward those who cause wars is evident in her two essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. The impact of war on her fiction expands from a portrayal of individuals as victims of war to a vision of war that encompasses the possible annihilation of civilization. Between the Acts, Woolf's final novel, is obviously an artistic response to the threat posed by World War II. However, a close examination of her works reveals, to a surprising degree, her early and persistent preoccupation with the consequences of war, …

Knowing God In William Blake: A Study To Find Meaning In His Work Through Plato, Swedenborg, And Mystical Tradition, David B. Gabel

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This project takes a look into the philosophical and theological sources found in the work of William Blake as they culminate in his epic poem Jerusalem. This study includes an examination of the philosophies of Plato and Emanuel Swedenborg, the mystical pathway, the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah, and finally an examination of the works of Blake himself. We work from a three-fold premise: 1) that mystical experience occurs, 2) that archetypes exist in the collective unconscious, and 3) that these archetypes can be known through intuition and mystical experience. The focus is on those elements which are characteristic …

Spatiality In Ulysses And Cubism, Lingchei Chen

English Theses & Dissertations

The paper is a study of James Joyce's Ulysses and Cubism in modern art. Both forms, as the paper presents, use similar techniques to establish multidimensionality in the work of art. In a spatial novel like Ulysses, because of its techniques, the reader is allowed to experience exactly what the characters experience as Joyce presents every aspect of the Dublin life simultaneously. A Cubist painting does the same. As the Cubist painter captures every side of the object and simultaneously presents these different views on the canvas, the spectator is therefore able to apprehend the object from every possible angle, …

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: Its Roots And Its Impact On Her Fiction, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Theses & Dissertations

Virginia Woolf saw the nightmare of war as a form of madness which posed a threat not only to individual human life, but to art and culture as well. Her many tragic personal experiences with death together with the fact that she lived through World War I and the beginning of World War II, caused in her a keen sensitivity to the transitory nature of life. Because Woolf saw militarism and the violence of war as blindly chauvinistic and utterly wasteful, war became for her a source of anger and contempt as well as fear.

Woolf's response to war had …

"Wretched, Bloody, And Usurping Boar"? An Evaluation Of The Historicity Of Shakespeare's Richard Iii, Kathryn Kiff

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Shakespeare's portrait of Richard III as a diabolical monster was based on the hostile accounts fashioned about him during the Tudor regime. Sir Thomas More's Richard III established the definitive image of Richard as the deformed tyrant who usurped the throne and murdered his nephews. This was the portrait that Shakespeare inherited from the sixteenth-century writers who incorporated More's account into their chronicles. This thesis examines Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard and the chronicle sources upon which he drew in order to show how Shakespeare's portrait of Richard developed. Although Richard was not the evil character presented in Shakespeare's play, it …

The Spherical Vision, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Virginia Woolf's experiences as a manic-depressive influenced her vision of reality and, in tum, her aesthetics. Manic-depression is a "cyclic" illness-cyclic in the sense that the manic-depressive moves alternately between two extreme psychological states. Hence, he experiences reality in terms of two opposite perspectives. Psychotic depression involves what Jung describes as the experience of the "shadow." That is, looking into the unconscious, the individual sees his own reflection. He takes a risk in looking, for as Jung says, "The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because …

The Evolution Of Doris Lessing's Art From A Mystical Moment To Space Fiction, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

After publishing ten major novels, Doris Lessing has begun writing what she calls '·space fiction'· for her new series entitled Canopus in Argos: Archives. In a review of the first two novels published in this series, namely, Shikasta ( 1979) and the Marriages Between Zones Three. Four, and Five (1980)¹. Jean Pickering stresses that many of Doris Lessing's most avid readers were initially attracted to her because of her insights about the female experience and because of her allegiance to nineteenth-century realism." Pickering suggests that Lessing's growing interest in space fiction and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) has …

Biographical Themes In T. S. Eliot's Early Poetry, Jeo-Yong Noh

English Theses & Dissertations

Throughout his career, T. S. Eliot developed his central poetic doctrine, the theory of poetic impersonality. Because of the importance of this theory to Eliot, a question is raised about its importance to his own poetry. Some recent critics, examining Eliot's poetry in the light of his memoirs and biographies, have found that Eliot was not governed by his theory. My thesis is designed to continue this investigation which so far has been done incompletely and randomly.

This investigation finds that Eliot suffered from a congenital double hernia, from his disastrous first marriage, and from general poor health. Furthermore, in …

British Reviews Of Shikasta, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph] British reviewers had mixed reactions to Shikasta, the first novel in Doris Lessing's new series, "Canopus in Argos: Archives." Favorable and critical comments balanced one another, often within the same review. Furthermore, reactions tended to be extreme: either it was a magnificent novel (Times 11/15/79) or reading it was "a shameful waste of precious and irreplaceable time." (Sun Telegraph 11/18/79); or it was simultaneously great and boring. In general, British reviews of Shikasta were more perceptive than those of the second novel in Lessing's new series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five. Because …

British Reviews Of Marriages, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) British reviews of Doris Lessing's second novel in her "Canopus in Argos: Archives" series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five, were more favorable than those of the first novel, Shikasta. However, compared with comments about Shikasta, both negative and positive remarks about Marriages were less perceptive and more often blatantly inaccurate, perhaps because a novel dealing with male-fem ale relationships draws forth in reviewers and other readers the multitude of misconceptions and prejudices that abound on this topic. Moreover, although reviewers obviously enjoyed reading Marriages more than they did Shikasta, their praise …

The Priest In Gulliver's Travels, Mary Virginia Green Mathews

English Theses & Dissertations

Dr. Jonathan Swift was a priest of the Church of England. For a sermon, he wrote: "I look upon myself, in the capacity of Clergyman, to be appointed by providence for defending a post assigned me, and for gaining over as many enemies as I can." He is ever-present in the role of priest in Gulliver's Travels. The Anglican Church is a State Church. For centuries it has taught profound truths through ritual and symbolism. Dr. Swift used Christian symbolism and political allegory in Gulliver's Travels, being fully aware that his contemporary readers would perceive and understand the underlying dimension …

Hermione Lee's The Novels Of Virginia Woolf [Book Review], Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Unifying Principles In The English Renaissance Sonnet Sequence, Deborah Fairfield Heatwole

English Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, the structural and thematic development of the English sonnet sequence during the years of its greatest vogue is examined in detail. The sonnet itself, as the basic unit of the structure of a sequence, is analyzed, and the various characteristics of the sequences themselves are investigated. The sequences of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton are discussed in separate chapters.

The basic contention of this thesis is that, while many sonnet "cycles" are mere collections of discrete sonnets, the major sonnet writers of this period constructed sequences that are highly organized along stylistic, …

Samuel Becket's Use Of "Silence", Russell V. Watkins

English Theses & Dissertations

Silence is an important aspect of modern literature. No other living writer has made more adept use of silence in his fictional works than has Samuel Beckett. In this thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the M.A. degree in English, I provide an in-depth study of Beckett's use of silence both in his prose works and in his plays. Not only does this thesis provide an in-depth study of Beckett's use of silence, but it also provides a brief survey of how Beckets use of silence has gradually evolved in his fictional works, and comments on the significance of …

An Exploration Of The Roots Of The Feminist Heroine In The Lives And Selected Works Of Robert Browning And Thomas Hardy, Pamela L. Smith

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.

Fresh-Robed/ In Flesh: The Incarnation Theme In The Poetry Of C. S. Lewis, Margaret P. Anderson

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.

The Use Of Analogy In The Learning Process In Piers The Plowman, Carol Eason Jones

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.

John Galsworthy And The Theme Of Unhappy Marriage And Divorce: 1895-1911, June Moosbrugger

English Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.