Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Literature in English, British Isles Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Literature in English, North America (9)
- Philosophy (8)
- Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (6)
- History (6)
- American Literature (4)
-
- American Studies (4)
- French and Francophone Language and Literature (4)
- Women's Studies (4)
- Comparative Literature (3)
- Creative Writing (3)
- French and Francophone Literature (3)
- Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority (3)
- Other English Language and Literature (3)
- Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (3)
- African American Studies (2)
- American Material Culture (2)
- Art and Design (2)
- Continental Philosophy (2)
- Ethics and Political Philosophy (2)
- European History (2)
- Fine Arts (2)
- Medieval Studies (2)
- Modern Literature (2)
- Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (2)
- Philosophy of Language (2)
- Philosophy of Mind (2)
- Poetry (2)
- Institution
- Keyword
-
- Romanticism (4)
- Ecocriticism (3)
- Frankenstein (3)
- Monster (3)
- Nature (3)
-
- Adam Smith (2)
- Affect (2)
- Anthropocene (2)
- Ben Jonson (2)
- Chivalry (2)
- Christina Rossetti (2)
- England (2)
- Feminism (2)
- Goblin Market (2)
- Gothic (2)
- Knighthood (2)
- Medieval (2)
- Monstrosity (2)
- Patriarchy (2)
- Religion (2)
- Sexuality (2)
- Shakespeare (2)
- Sympathy (2)
- William Shakespeare (2)
- "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" (1)
- A Passage to India (1)
- Abject (1)
- Absurdism (1)
- Agatha Christie (1)
- Alain Robbe-Grillet (1)
Articles 1 - 30 of 43
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles
“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming
“Before Your Honour?”: Divine Morality And Women Reclaiming Power In Ben Jonson’S Volpone And William Shakespeare’S Measure For Measure, Delilah G. Fleming
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores how the female protagonists in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Jonson’s Volpone navigate and combat corrupting patriarchal forces through moral religious speech. In both plays, the male characters have allowed false gods and hypocrisy to dictate and justify their corrupt behavior. By engaging with the historical significance of early modern female rhetoric this thesis examines Jonson’s Celia and Shakespeare’s Isabella, and how they operate in the interest of godly virtue rather than blind obedience to patriarchal figure heads. Volpone’s Celia is a character largely neglected in the canon, and whose speech emphasizes the relationship between female agency …
The Monsters We Make: Confronting Repression And Failure In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Ben Wilenski
The Monsters We Make: Confronting Repression And Failure In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Ben Wilenski
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis builds upon psychoanalysis and Shelley’s biographical accounts to claim that, rather than creating fear through physical monstrosity, Frankenstein’s horror emerges from the return of repressed parental and social failures. While the novel never excuses its violence, it contextualizes the creature’s acts in ways that demand readers to confront complicity, neglect, and social shortcomings. The following section discusses general horror theory with a focus on notions of abjection and the synthesis of contrasting images and concepts. A baseline understanding of fear will be formed and referred to in each following segment. After establishing a basic understanding of horror vocabulary, …
“One Object Yields Both Grief And Joy”: Death In Elizabeth Cary’S The Tragedy Of Mariam (1613), Valeria Suprunova
“One Object Yields Both Grief And Joy”: Death In Elizabeth Cary’S The Tragedy Of Mariam (1613), Valeria Suprunova
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis argues that the dialog between early ancient Roman and early modern English traditions of death and dying helps illuminate the complex relationship between tyranny and death in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) and that death is an inextricable and dynamic element of the text.
Abject And Uncanny Manifestations Of Sexuality And Sexual Desire In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Varvara Kuznetsova
Abject And Uncanny Manifestations Of Sexuality And Sexual Desire In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Varvara Kuznetsova
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis explores the ways in which psychoanalytic concepts of the abjection and the uncanny were used to depict monsters and monstrous bodies in nineteenth-century Gothic literature as a site of social, cultural, and sexual transgression. Through the intersections of queer theory, monster theory, and psychoanalytic theory, I examine and analyze depictions of women as monstrous figures in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1816), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Sheridan Joseph Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872). In particular, I aim to detail how language and descriptions of women monsters become coded elements that reveal monstrosity and transgression.
Writing Against The War Machine: Wiflred Owen's Poetic Challenge To World War I Pro-War Rhetoric, Elizabeth Woods
Writing Against The War Machine: Wiflred Owen's Poetic Challenge To World War I Pro-War Rhetoric, Elizabeth Woods
Theses and Dissertations
Wilfred Owen, a soldier-poet who fought in World War I, is often labeled an anti-war poet, with some claiming that he was against the war in its entirety. This thesis explores the opinion that Owen is not an anti-war poet but rather that he wrote against anti-pro-war rhetoric. This includes all types of pro-war rhetoric influential in England for recruitment purposes but mainly focuses on poetry that would be published in newspapers for everyday readers to see. Owen seems to specifically resist two types of pro-war rhetoric, the myth of the German barbarian and what he called the old lie. …
The Communal Lyric: Poetry In Devotional And Oppressed Communities, Michael N. Yacoub
The Communal Lyric: Poetry In Devotional And Oppressed Communities, Michael N. Yacoub
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis investigates the interaction between lyric and community; it asks what a communal lyric is, how it functions, and to what ends. In Chapter One, I compare Jonathan Culler’s performative model of lyric with the theory of Takhyīl as expounded by Arab philosopher-critics al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and al-Qartajanni to argue that a communal lyric is a form of audience-oriented public discourse distinguished by formal features that prompt the poem’s (re-)iteration and establish an interpersonal relationship with the audience in order to influence them and make shareable value claims about the world. In Chapters Two and Three I provide close-reading …
False Virtues And Fragile Honor: The Weight Of Reputation In Shakespeare’S Works, Amanda Sheps
False Virtues And Fragile Honor: The Weight Of Reputation In Shakespeare’S Works, Amanda Sheps
Theses and Dissertations
"False Virtues and Fragile Honor: The Weight of Reputation in Shakespeare’s Works" analyzes the intersection between honor and social standing in William Shakespeare's Othello and Much Ado About Nothing, specifically in regards to the gender roles prevalent in the plays' societies. In both plays, women who are perceived as a threat to the prevailing norms of society are ostracized, ridiculed, and may even face violence at the hands of their male love interests. The innocence of Desdemona and Hero, however, calls into question the validity of this cruel treatment. These negative reactions reflect the pressure that men have to preserve …
“Some Vague Utopia”: Searching For Urania, Moira L. Neve
“Some Vague Utopia”: Searching For Urania, Moira L. Neve
Theses and Dissertations
Despite the global pendulum swing of gender trouble marked by the United States’ President’s declaration that there are only two sexes, activists have been rejecting assimilation (ie. defining equality as gay marriage or queer people in the military) within queer studies long before 2025. In the first half of the 20th century, a journal by the name of Urania (1916-1940), privately published and circulated to their home base in the United Kingdom and beyond, five editors (Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Jessey Wade, Dorothy Cornish, and Irene Clyde/Thomas Baty), challenged the gender binary and the resulting assumptions of heterosexual marriage. This …
Knighthood In The Wilderness: Ecocritical Readings Of Nature And Chivalry In The World Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Dajana Memko
Knighthood In The Wilderness: Ecocritical Readings Of Nature And Chivalry In The World Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Dajana Memko
Theses and Dissertations
Many interpretations of the Green Knight portray him as a personification of nature or as nature’s embodiment. Ecocriticism, however, challenges a more anthropocentric approach, calling into question deeply ingrained ideals of chivalry and human dominion over nature. The Green Knight is a hybrid creature whose striking features mark his otherness; yet, through his familiarity, he challenges the knight of Camelot and asks them to consider their chivalric identities as well as the nature of their Trojan ancestry and legacy. Among them, Gawain is forced to confront his identity as he ventures into the wilderness of Wirral, and his interactions with …
Chaucer’S Contradictory Representations Of Fourteenth Century Knighthood In The Canterbury Tales, Nicholas Cabrera
Chaucer’S Contradictory Representations Of Fourteenth Century Knighthood In The Canterbury Tales, Nicholas Cabrera
Theses and Dissertations
Differences in interpretation have long dominated scholarship regarding knighthood in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. But these differences fail to consider the nuance of the text and the historical realities of the period in which Chaucer wrote. Chaucer’s depiction of knighthood represents the institution as filled with tensions and contradictions.
The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii
The Revolting Monster - A Consideration Of Existentialist Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Through A Comparison To Albert Camus' The Stranger, Felipe Rodriguez Ii
Theses and Dissertations
This Master’s thesis is concerned with analyzing key themes and ideas in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through an existentialist lens which is made possible through a comparison to themes and ideas in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. I aim to make a contribution to my field by fulfilling a comparison that has long been made since the late 1960s when conversations about British Romanticism and Existentialism were still common. The purpose of my first chapter is to elucidate a new argument about the relationship between these two novels. There is a discernable element of Camusian Revolt exhibited by the Creature in …
Queer Mother, Hybrid Monster: Serpentine Hybridity And Monstrous Motherhood In D’Arras And Spenser, Farah R. Paterson-Cisco
Queer Mother, Hybrid Monster: Serpentine Hybridity And Monstrous Motherhood In D’Arras And Spenser, Farah R. Paterson-Cisco
Theses and Dissertations
Disparate, deformed, and hybridized bodies of women have appeared in mythology and literature in myriad allegorical incarnations as representations of monstrosity. The monstrous serpent-woman hybrid form can be traced back quite far, though at the point when one reaches antiquity, literary examples meld into the religious, mythological, and folkloric. These hybrid beings also embodied meanings particular to their time and culture that work to distinguish them as literary characters, presenting a compelling case for the consideration of the hybridized and deformed figure as a threat to patriarchal systems. Contemporary readings through the lens of feminist, gender, and disability frameworks offer …
"Where Sex Is Directly Concerned" Agatha Christie And The Feminization Of Detective Fiction, Barbara Javori
"Where Sex Is Directly Concerned" Agatha Christie And The Feminization Of Detective Fiction, Barbara Javori
Theses and Dissertations
Agatha Christie’s name is synonymous with the Whodunit. She is without a doubt one the most popular and best selling authors of all time. Christie’s work built upon the first examples of detective fiction, including Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, Christie’s embrace of the traditionally female spaces, her subversion of expectations, and her unlikely detectives set her apart from her predecessors with their focus on male intellect, patriarchal superiority, and absent female characters. Christie’s novels established recognizable patterns still used today in books, television and movies. This project examines the arc of detective fiction …
The Worst Horror Of All: Greene’S Political And Salvific Imagination In Brighton Rock, James C. Mcguire
The Worst Horror Of All: Greene’S Political And Salvific Imagination In Brighton Rock, James C. Mcguire
Theses and Dissertations
An evaluation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock as it apprehends the Catholic novel as form. With ample assistance from Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Robert Hugh Benson's The Lord of the World, and select works of Fredric Jameson—most notably The Political Unconscious—this analysis seeks to clarify the politico-spiritual "horizon" evident in Greene's first "Catholic novel." By reviewing the novel through the lens of both Catholic theology and modern historical dialectic material criticism, this evaluation reclaims Graham Greene's early political radicalism that critics identify better in his later, less-religious texts. Discovered most clearly in the ending …
Sexual Exploration Of The Pastoral: Analyzing Queer Desire In “Goblin Market” And In Memoriam, Amanda Rajnauth
Sexual Exploration Of The Pastoral: Analyzing Queer Desire In “Goblin Market” And In Memoriam, Amanda Rajnauth
Theses and Dissertations
The term “queer pastoral” was coined by Vin Nardizzi to refer to the use of the pastoral setting to normalize homosexuality. While the queer pastoral has primarily remained within Renaissance studies, I seek to expand the reach of this concept by applying it to Victorian literature. This thesis argues that Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” and Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam both use the pastoral as a space to explore queer desire.
Gloria Naylor’S Conversation With The Tempest, Kelly Mcavoy-Giarrusso
Gloria Naylor’S Conversation With The Tempest, Kelly Mcavoy-Giarrusso
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis focuses on how Gloria Naylor used Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest as inspiration for her character George, and how her evolution of the character reveals issues within the literary and academic community at the time of her writing. George fulfills Caliban’s limitations in that he has more power and autonomy than Caliban, but the tragedy of his death reveals that he has lost part of himself in order to gain that power. This idea that education and society can cause a loss of self is personal for Naylor, who encountered only white male authors in school and struggled …
Snapshots Of A Fictional Past: Photographic Nostalgia In The Early 20th Century Art Novel., Harry A. Jones Iv
Snapshots Of A Fictional Past: Photographic Nostalgia In The Early 20th Century Art Novel., Harry A. Jones Iv
Theses and Dissertations
In this dissertation I argue that the proliferation of a mass codependent relationship with nostalgia in the twentieth century shares a parallel history with the widespread adoption of the reproducible image being used by collective audiences as a supplement for natural memory, or what Proust names “voluntary memory.” This conflict between nostalgia-hungry consumers and artists inspired groups such as Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists and artistically minded authors like Henry James, who employed increasingly complex photographic and literary practices to resist the images’ tendency to debase the aesthetic quality of their own work. Authors such as Marcel Proust and William Faulkner used …
The “Muddle” Of Landscape And Machinery In E.M. Forster’S Howard’S End And A Passage To India: An Ecocritical Reading, Ryan Ignatius Vera
The “Muddle” Of Landscape And Machinery In E.M. Forster’S Howard’S End And A Passage To India: An Ecocritical Reading, Ryan Ignatius Vera
Theses and Dissertations
This is an ecocritical reading of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and Howard's End. I argue that Forster is concerned with imperial power structures that damaged the environment, as well as the looming aftereffects of the Industrial Revolution on both landscape and the people that reside in it.
Broken Harts: Mourning The Human/Animal Divide In Shakespeare’S As You Like It And Wordsworth’S “Hart-Leap Well”, Jennifer Jourlait
Broken Harts: Mourning The Human/Animal Divide In Shakespeare’S As You Like It And Wordsworth’S “Hart-Leap Well”, Jennifer Jourlait
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis compares the deer scenes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Wordsworth’s “Hart-Leap Well.” Both raise questions about man’s right to hunt animals with impunity. Shakespeare’s Jaques superficially takes up the issue of animal rights whereas Wordsworth’s personification of the stag evokes the reader’s sympathy for the animal.
Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem, Luke C. Widlund
Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem, Luke C. Widlund
Theses and Dissertations
My MA thesis examines sixteenth and seventeeth-century lyric poetry by the male poets Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Thomas Carew, and Andrew Marvell. These poets make use of different lyric genres and forms, including Petrarchan sonnets and carpe diem arguments, to torture the purported female mistresses. A close examination of specific works, including Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Donne’s “The Apparition”, Carew’s “Song: Persuasion to Enjoy”, and Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” demonstrates that they all share a preoccupation with weaponizing poetry in their depiction of mistresses and female lovers in pain and punishment. Poetry functions as a tool for imposing …
Taming The Beast: Heathcliff As Dog In Wuthering Heights, Anna Cittadino
Taming The Beast: Heathcliff As Dog In Wuthering Heights, Anna Cittadino
Theses and Dissertations
This paper examines the human/animal distinction in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, focusing specifically on the animal within Heathcliff, and the way this animal undermines his ability to be human as a result of the violence and abandonment he endured in childhood.
The Scientific Romances Of Jules Verne And H.G. Wells: Imperialism Disguised As Progress In The Early Days Of Science Fiction, Timothy Ferris
The Scientific Romances Of Jules Verne And H.G. Wells: Imperialism Disguised As Progress In The Early Days Of Science Fiction, Timothy Ferris
Theses and Dissertations
Frequently in their respective oeuvres, Verne and Wells write in a rhetoric of conquest that almost always translates to discovering a more efficient means of taming wild, non-European environments. These goals extend not only to the lands that their protagonists explore, but also to human beings and other life that may populate them. Indeed, the underlying focus—the one that is masked behind the thrill and adventure of both Wells and Verne—is none other than the march of progress as understood by middle-class Europeans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Progress can produce positivistic optimism, and it can also …
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Theses and Dissertations
John Clare’s poetry emphasizes an affinity with environment by suspending the distinction between the inside (subject) and the outside (object). Clare’s identification with objects and perception rather than subjects and aesthetics renders his work as a prescient and radical example of ecological poetry in the Romantic period. Raymond Williams’ “green language” and Timothy Morton’s ambient poetics both cite Clare as an ideal figure for their above theories and evoke Clare as a writer who positions the environment as governing thought rather than thought governing the environment. This thesis especially relates Clare to Morton’s Ecology without Nature, a study of …
Thornfield, Wragby, And Their Discontents: Nature And Civilization In Jane Eyre And Lady Chatterley’S Lover, Marianna Alvarado Teuscher
Thornfield, Wragby, And Their Discontents: Nature And Civilization In Jane Eyre And Lady Chatterley’S Lover, Marianna Alvarado Teuscher
Theses and Dissertations
In Jane Eyre and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Charlotte Brontë and her literary inheritor, D.H. Lawrence, locate the potentially revolutionary romance between their protagonists in natural settings, distant from the social sphere, in order to demonstrate the un-naturalness of an administered capitalist society in which class distinctions work in dehumanizing ways.
“The Healing Balm Of Sympathy Denied”: Moral Sense Philosophy, Patriarchy, And Monstrosity In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Estefania Velez
“The Healing Balm Of Sympathy Denied”: Moral Sense Philosophy, Patriarchy, And Monstrosity In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Estefania Velez
Theses and Dissertations
Though Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein produces an ideology of sympathy consistent with the literary and philosophical aims of Romanticism, this essay examines Shelley’s critique of patriarchy which posits that though sympathetic companionship in Frankenstein remains an ethical necessity, it is unattainable within a social order marred by misogynist structures of power.
"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover
"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived …
Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky
Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky
Theses and Dissertations
This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …
The Second Pen, Nicholas D. Brennan
The Second Pen, Nicholas D. Brennan
Theses and Dissertations
"The Second Pen" evaluates the historical relevancy of prevalent monikers for William Shakespeare-- namely, "The Bard," "Swan of Avon," and "Upstart Crow." While Brennan finds the general concept of the moniker to encapsulate Shakespeare's current historical legacy, he equally finds the aforementioned monikers to misrepresent this. Brennan offers "The Second Pen" as a moniker for Shakespeare that redresses the distortions of the others. He concentrates his defense of its relevancy around a defense of William Shakespeare as the "second pen" which Ben Jonson's 1605 Sejanus quarto names as a collaborator in the writing of a preceding stage version of the …
William Hazlitt: On The Silencing Effect Of Public Opinion In Nineteenth-Century England, J M Tessa Freeman
William Hazlitt: On The Silencing Effect Of Public Opinion In Nineteenth-Century England, J M Tessa Freeman
Theses and Dissertations
“William Hazlitt: On the Silencing Effect of Public Opinion in Nineteenth-Century England” investigates the social interactions that fostered the circulation of misinformation. Hazlitt depicts how silencing portions of the population benefited those in power and how many within society were unknowingly compliant and in fact facilitating this manipulation of information.
Dogs, Cats, And A Lambkin: Speechlessness And The Animal In Ulysses, Pierce R. Watson
Dogs, Cats, And A Lambkin: Speechlessness And The Animal In Ulysses, Pierce R. Watson
Theses and Dissertations
This essay explores the status of the animal and the consequences of animal speechlessness in Ulysses, mainly focusing on encounters with dogs and cats. Through these animal encounters, Joyce provides a foundation for understanding the complications faced by the Bloom family in grieving their deceased infant son.