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Articles 1 - 30 of 34
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles
“Umble” Vampirism: Socioeconomic Scapegoats And David Copperfield, J.R. Rizzo
“Umble” Vampirism: Socioeconomic Scapegoats And David Copperfield, J.R. Rizzo
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
The narrative framing of David Copperfield is oriented in a way that ignores the flaws of its titular hero. Dickens’ autobiographical David Copperfield is compounded to entertain readers. His social mobility refines their perception of David into a middle class gentleman who is neither aristocratic, nor working class. It is David’s narration which helps facilitate such a companionship between himself and the reader, clouding any serious criticisms behind the guise of his charm. The doubling of bias layered within the novel’s narrative structure thereby poses David as a sort-of golden boy. That is, Dickens’ adoration for his protagonist, coupled with …
“The Atmosphere That Supports Life On Earth”: An Ecocritical Approach To Tolkien’S Arda, Elizabeth Anne Turello
“The Atmosphere That Supports Life On Earth”: An Ecocritical Approach To Tolkien’S Arda, Elizabeth Anne Turello
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Ecocriticism speaks to the relationship between the environment and literature, a progressively vital topic of discussion. What is often overlooked, however, is the necessity of the theory’s applicability to stories of speculative fiction; that is, ones existing outside the realm of the real world or, as is the case with the father of modern-day fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien, a mythology set in the ancient days of our world (“Arda”). At first, it may seem contradictory to learn about our surroundings through fictionalized ones seemingly irrelevant to Earth’s own; this apparent contradiction is not valid, though, as the relationship between humans and …
The Artful Voyeur: Seamus Heaney As Parrhesiastes, Olivia Ransbottom
The Artful Voyeur: Seamus Heaney As Parrhesiastes, Olivia Ransbottom
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Critics Edna Longley and Ciaran Carson have examined the complicated relationship between Seamus Heaney's poetry and the Northern Irish conflict, arguing that, in general, he refrained from clear political commentary. Despite this, Seamus Heaney was a revolutionary poet celebrated for his vivid imagery and commentary on ordinary life in Northern Ireland. While these critics say he held back on stating his political opinion or mystified the violence, this paper argues that he was a parrhesiastes (one who speaks truth to the rest of society for the sake of truth itself) of his time, choosing to practice the ancient Greek idea …
He Had Two Women To Die For, Ireland And The Missus”: Mothers As Abject And Sons As Scapegoats In Edna O’Brien’S House Of Splendid Isolation And In The Forest, Emily Nix
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This thesis examines the protagonists in Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest and House of Splendid Isolation and applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Rene Girard’s theory of the scapegoat. In doing so, I attempt to give a richer understanding of O’Brien’s masculine and feminine characters and how their constructed identities are based on their cultural circumstances and positions in their societies. I use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the single women in these novels, Eily and Josie, who become metaphorical single mothers by the invasions of young men into their homes. Then, I apply Girard’s theory of the …
The Nobility In Seeing Oneself: Unreliable Narration In British Postmodern Fiction, Jessica Marzocca
The Nobility In Seeing Oneself: Unreliable Narration In British Postmodern Fiction, Jessica Marzocca
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In an interview in 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, expresses an interest in “the whole business about following somebody’s thoughts around, as they try to trip themselves up or to hide from themselves,” a curiosity that directly correlates to the functionality of unreliable narration (Mason 347). That same interest can spill over into trying to trip up or hide from readers, a jump easily made when considering novels narrated in first-person like The Remains of the Day or Martin Amis’s Money: A Suicide Note, or even Muriel Spark’s third-person novel The Prime of …
Satire In The Cold War Era: Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana And Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions, Sara Eslami
Satire In The Cold War Era: Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana And Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions, Sara Eslami
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Both Graham Greene and Kurt Vonnegut use satire to interrogate the social uneasiness during the Cold War; however, each author uses satire in different ways. Greene’s novel Our Man in Havana demonstrates this unease, as almost every character is paranoid besides the vacuum salesman and inept “spy” Wormold, who uses fiction to fabricate the reports he sends to the Secret Intelligence Service. Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions also has a protagonist who is strongly impacted by fiction, as Dwayne Hoover is so affected by Kilgore Trout’s literature that it drives him insane. Both authors use different satiric techniques as a …
“This Is A True Story”: Paratextual Prefaces And Their Fictive Truths Across Literature, Rebecca Stokem
“This Is A True Story”: Paratextual Prefaces And Their Fictive Truths Across Literature, Rebecca Stokem
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Scholar Gérard Genette defines the term “paratext” as accompanying components of a text like titles, forwards, illustrations, footnotes, etc. Genette claims these “productions” affect the “reception” and function as a liminal space between the “inside and outside” of a written work (1-2). Many texts and other works of fiction, across years and genres, use their paratexts to create fictitious histories that surround their main stories. The success of this rhetorical strategy, a convention that I call “fictive truth,” depends heavily on the paratexts’ reception from its audience. These genre conventions are traceable through canonical Western literature, from texts like Walter …
Van Gogh’S Yellow Flowers: The Influence Of Post-Impressionism On Mansfield And Woolf, Gabriella M. D'Angelo
Van Gogh’S Yellow Flowers: The Influence Of Post-Impressionism On Mansfield And Woolf, Gabriella M. D'Angelo
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In a letter to Dorothy Brett, Katherine Mansfield responds to Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers explaining, “That picture seemed to reveal something that I hadn't realised before I saw it. It lived with me afterwards. It still does... They taught me something about writing, which was queer—a kind of freedom—or rather, a shaking free” that she felt after experiencing his painting (O’Sullivan, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 4: 333). The aesthetic emotion resided with her thereafter, as she claimed: “I can smell them as I write” (O’Sullivan, TCLKM, 2: 333). French paintings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth …
Sacramental Anxiety In Richard Ii And The Comedy Of Errors, Aria Casey
Sacramental Anxiety In Richard Ii And The Comedy Of Errors, Aria Casey
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Following England’s break from the Catholic Church in 1534, Protestant thought gradually transformed the English Church’s understanding of sacraments. The influence of Reformation thinkers such as Thomas Cranmer, the author of The Book of Common Prayer, propelled the idea that that a ritual is only as good as the worthiness of a recipient. Ritual, the “outer” component of a sacrament, now had the potential to be distant from divine favor, the “inner” component of a sacrament. This potential distance caused anxiety over the authenticity of sacraments, affecting English thought well into Shakespeare’s day. Shakespeare’s plays Richard II and The Comedy …
I Can't Hear You: Queering And Hearing In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Miranda Lynn Hajduk
I Can't Hear You: Queering And Hearing In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Miranda Lynn Hajduk
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This thesis project attempts to prove that the Wife of Bath’s deafness is the key to understanding her text, and the ways in which both her Prologue and Tale play with the constructions of gender and normativity. The Wife of Bath’s deafness is one of her most prominent characteristics. Not only is it the first thing which Chaucer describes about her in the General Prologue, but the whole of the Wife’s own prologue builds toward and ultimately concludes with the Wife’s story of how she was struck deaf by her husband Jankyn. As a result of this act of violence, …
"I Believe In Sherlock Holmes": Fans, Readers, And The Problem Of Serial Character, Mary Katherine Evans
"I Believe In Sherlock Holmes": Fans, Readers, And The Problem Of Serial Character, Mary Katherine Evans
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Through the connections between Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s series Sherlock, this thesis examines the phenomenon of fan fictions and fan works, which constitutes a type of seriality distinct from serial fictions and television series.The project pursues the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes in order to better understand fan culture and the “virtual reality” created by original fans of the written works and fans of Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes represents a different model of characterization; he is presented across timelines, although he doesn’t always bear the name “Sherlock Holmes,” he is just as recognizable …
"'Violent Love': Jane Austen And Eighteenth-Century Marriage Laws", Brianna Bicho
"'Violent Love': Jane Austen And Eighteenth-Century Marriage Laws", Brianna Bicho
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In several of Jane Austen’s novels, her heroines are confronted more than once with the proposition of marriage. Many of the primary proposal scenes in these tales contain violent language seemingly at odds with the romantic context, and the romance convention, of a proposal scene. Austen’s rhetoric of violence functions as a critique of contemporary laws defining and regulating marriage, particularly Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765. These laws negated a woman’s ownership – both personal and financial – upon her marriage: they outlined both the illegality of a wedded female to own property and the …
Time, Memory, And Consciousness In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And Between The Acts, Nicole Olivotti
Time, Memory, And Consciousness In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, And Between The Acts, Nicole Olivotti
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway emerges as a character gripped by the notion and passage of time. Woolf represents the chronological aspect of time through images such as Big Ben and its relentless chimes as well as the various references to clocks or bells throughout the novel. To the Lighthouse also thematically and narratively explores constructions of time, particularly by focusing on elements such as inaction and delay. The journey to the Lighthouse, for example, does not occur until the end of the novel. Both texts underscore the tension between the linear timeframe of the novel and …
Becoming Pamela: The Fight For Maternal Authority In Pamela Ii, Danielle Pollaro
Becoming Pamela: The Fight For Maternal Authority In Pamela Ii, Danielle Pollaro
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In Pamela, Volume II, Pamela and her husband, Mr. B, clash over breastfeeding their child. The conflict over breastfeeding represents a contest for control over the maternal body and with it control over woman’s authority. The eighteenth-century created the concept of motherhood in order to maintain and perpetuate the patriarchy’s social, economic and sexual hierarchies. Pamela, Volume II propagates eighteenth-century domestic discourse by instructing and constructing the idea of the good wife and mother. Pamela’s failure to resist domesticity reveals patriarchy’s role in establishing gender identity. The novel functions to reinforce, strengthen and sustain eighteenth-century domestic discourse to stabilize …
Organic Morality: A Poetic Garden Rhetoric Originating In The 18th Century, Heather Robinson
Organic Morality: A Poetic Garden Rhetoric Originating In The 18th Century, Heather Robinson
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Many literary critics have researched and conjectured on the 18 th century poets’ connections to the developing landscape gardens of the time. For example, Francesca Orestano, in “Bust Story: Pope at Stowe, or the Politics and Myths of Landscape Gardening,” discusses at length the presence and creation of Pope’s development of aesthetics at the Stowe landscape gardens. However, most critics have focused solely on the idea of the aesthetic that gardens create and their relationship to the human experience of nature. Markus Poetzsch, in “From EcoPolitics to Apocalypse: The Contentious Rhetoric of EighteenthCentury Landscape Gardening,” describes the heated political world …
Wilde's Final Act, Justine Ilissa Sha
Wilde's Final Act, Justine Ilissa Sha
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This thesis examines Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, the prison-written letter to his ex-lover, as a work created with the signature Wildean dramatic conventions of composition, style, the writing process, and formal structure of which make up Wilde’s theatrical plays “Lady Windermere’s Fan” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” This shows how De Profundis was written not as an autobiographical work, a love letter, or a portrait of a tormented, imprisoned mind, but as a performance: paradoxical play in the same style as his dramatic repertoire, and desperately intended for publication. First, the Wilde’s dramatic writing process is examined. Then, using …
Talking Some Sense Into Chaucer: Bodies In “The Miller’S Prologue” And “The Miller’S Tale”, Jacqueline Joewono
Talking Some Sense Into Chaucer: Bodies In “The Miller’S Prologue” And “The Miller’S Tale”, Jacqueline Joewono
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
If there is one question that underpins the evaluation of any great literary work, it is the following: How does the text make us feel? Through affect and textural studies, the answer becomes more complicated than any old adage might readily convey, for “feeling” here becomes a matter of simultaneous tactility and sentiment. Under this lens, perhaps no historical period becomes more desirable to feel than the Middle Ages; it is here, after all, that readers’ responsibilities with texts are pluralized: readers move from listeners born from oral traditions to participants of all kinds. Feeling, then, may be found in …
“Names Portable As Alter Stones”: Nomadic Movement And Recollection In Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Norah Toomey Hatch
“Names Portable As Alter Stones”: Nomadic Movement And Recollection In Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Norah Toomey Hatch
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Seamus Heaney’s acknowledgement of the names of the places in his poems serve as a map, but a map that demonstrates the deterritorializing nature of memory and therefore meaning itself. The places become points of departure, places of transit, motivators of unstable memories, and catalysts for changing perspectives. Heaney’s use of location anticipates a future that is not bogged down by static meaning as the speakers in the poems face their own memories clouded by history, politics, and myth. Grappling with connotation, though, does not offer any closure from the multiplicity of meaning that the naming or visiting of certain …
An Almost Threesome: Erotic Love Triangles And Authorial Choice In Malory’S Le Morte D’ Arthur, Maria L. Avery
An Almost Threesome: Erotic Love Triangles And Authorial Choice In Malory’S Le Morte D’ Arthur, Maria L. Avery
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
It seems to be nearly a critically unanimous consensus that when translating Chretien de Troyes’ romance of the glorious King Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, in his Le Morte Darthur, approaches the narrative of Sir Lancelot with the unwavering attitude that Lancelot must not only sustain the status of Arthur’s most revered knight and truest friend, but also be a true and ideal lover for Guenevere. This deep sense of friendship and comraderie between Lancelot and his king is also reflected in nearly all of the relationships between Arthur’s knights; which is, similar to de Troyes a very important component …
Slaying Hybridity: The “Uncreated” Monstrous Doubles In The The Saga Of The Volsungs, Nibelungenlied, And Kudrun, Kyle Augustyniak
Slaying Hybridity: The “Uncreated” Monstrous Doubles In The The Saga Of The Volsungs, Nibelungenlied, And Kudrun, Kyle Augustyniak
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This paper examines anxieties about gender and gender in a thirteenth-century Old Norse text, The Saga of the Volsungs, and two Middle High German texts, the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun. All three exhibit a similar uneasiness about gender performance. In these epics, fears about gender fluidity are founded on the slaying of hybrid mythological creatures (dragons and griffons) and are perpetuated by various media: blood, tears, clothing, promises, and lies. These monsters threaten the established order within the text, a patriarchal order defined by feudal society. Once the hero defeats the monster—whose very essence is simultaneously an embodiment of the perceived …
“He Was The Mirror Of The World”: Social Constructivist Reflections In Le Roman De Silence, Hillary O'Brien
“He Was The Mirror Of The World”: Social Constructivist Reflections In Le Roman De Silence, Hillary O'Brien
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This essay attempts to clarify the purpose of ambiguity and indecision within Heldris of Cornwall's Roman de Silence. Using the framework laid out by Judith Butler, it seeks to understand the way that the protagonist's performance of gender and class reflects the social context in which she lives.
Refiguring George Macdonald: Science And The Realist Novel, Karl Hoenzsch
Refiguring George Macdonald: Science And The Realist Novel, Karl Hoenzsch
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This article analyzes George MacDonald’s realist novels. It looks at how David Elginbrod, Alec Forbes of Howglen, and Lilith engage with scientific discourse and epistemological concerns of the period. These scientific and epistemological dealings include a positive evaluation of evolution, a resistance to pseudoscience and Calvinism, an endorsement of non-dualism, and an analysis of scientific models and methods. The generic classification of Lilith as a realist novel with fantastical elements is discussed.
Beyond The Pages: The Significance Of The Social Self Proposed In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Veronica Grupico
Beyond The Pages: The Significance Of The Social Self Proposed In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Veronica Grupico
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
This paper focuses on Austen's novel Persuasion and how she rejects the Romantic notion of the self defined by individualism, which leads to the breakdown of society. Instead of the Romantic self, with its emphasis on self-examination, retrospection, and emotion, Austen advocates for an older notion of the self, a view based in eighteenth-century notions of social networks, mutual responsibility, and the moral function of emotion. Persuasion links Romanticism’s self, which was popular at the time that Austen was writing, with the breakdown of society, arguing that not just social stability but much-needed social vitality depends on the interdependence and …
Collapsing The Secret Self: Thackeray's The History Of Pendennis As A Performative Parody, Rachel Freire
Collapsing The Secret Self: Thackeray's The History Of Pendennis As A Performative Parody, Rachel Freire
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
By collapsing the distinctions between private and public as he presents individual interiority as yet another performance, Thackeray’s The History of Pendennis undercuts disciplinary individualism, so that performances are not the product of social regulation but rather are as genuine as any presumed private thoughts or feelings. Pendennis actively performs the dissolution of interiority, as it thematically and stylistically enacts the awkwardness of genuine affectation as a routine and unavoidable reality of modern life. Reveling in the discomfort that accompanies the absence of secrecy, Thackeray parodies the privileging of secrecy and one’s interior self that pervades the Bildung genre he …
"It Is The Business Of The Artist To Follow It Home To The Heart Of The Individual Fighters": D.H. Lawrence, The Great War, And The Trajectory Of His Novels, Samantha Lauren Mathews
"It Is The Business Of The Artist To Follow It Home To The Heart Of The Individual Fighters": D.H. Lawrence, The Great War, And The Trajectory Of His Novels, Samantha Lauren Mathews
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
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Fear And Loathing In Nineteenth-Century England: Monsters, Freaks, And Deformities And Their Influence On Romantic And Victorian Society, Valerie Falk
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
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Meddlesome Markets And Epistolary Escapes: Mediating Discourses In Gissing's New Grub Street, Robert Fanzo
Meddlesome Markets And Epistolary Escapes: Mediating Discourses In Gissing's New Grub Street, Robert Fanzo
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
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Ophelia's Mistreatment And Ignored Monastic Opportunities, Danielle Tovsen
Ophelia's Mistreatment And Ignored Monastic Opportunities, Danielle Tovsen
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
Thesis: I will argue that Ophelia could have saved her own life if she had left home and fled to a nunnery; the treatment she received from Laertes and Polonius was worse than Hamlet's treatment of her throughout the play and especially in Act 3 .1. Through thorough research, the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, is explored. This thesis specifically focuses on the character of Ophelia and Ophelia's relationships with Hamlet, Laertes, and Polonius. Through the examination of Ophelia, with a literature review of Ophelia's reputation amongst scholars, the argument is made that Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia is one of …
Open, Clear Decisions: Virginian Woolf's Orlando And Clarissa Dalloway As Bisexuals, Sarah Brey
Open, Clear Decisions: Virginian Woolf's Orlando And Clarissa Dalloway As Bisexuals, Sarah Brey
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In Orlando Virginia Woolf, shows Orlando as a person with a clear conscience who knows what he/she wants. Like Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway, who is also often regarded as a lesbian because she loves Sally fondly her whole life but chooses to marry Richard, Orlando loves Sasha regardless of what changes her body undergoes, but chooses to marry Shel. Neither Clarissa nor Orlando is forced into marriage. Both choose to marry and abandon their active lesbian tendencies because they know what is most comfortable for them. As bisexuals they show the confusion of desiring both sexes, and instead of …
Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond
Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond
Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)
In early Victorian England, married women were denied the legal right to own property, and social convention remanded them to ostracism if they chose to remain single. Likewise, jobs that were available to women failed to pay a living wage, so women were placed under tremendous economic and social pressure to marry. In Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby, he depicts how marriage becomes manipulated within the working and middle classes as a means to acquire wealth. Dickens also compares the repression of women to the abuse suffered by school children in the Yorkshire schools, which had a reputation for neglecting …