Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Shakespeare's Dictionary: One Playwright's Influence On The Modern English Lanugage, Jennifer Walton

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

William Shakespeare is considered to the be the father of Modern English, but what most people do not realize is that he influenced much more in English than just the language. The number of phrases and words he created is over-exaggerated, he borrowed from many other languages, and he was one of the first people to document modern medical disorders. Not to mention Shakespeare was writing during one of the most lexically innovative time periods, so he helped aid in the transition from using “thee” to using “you” when addressing another person. Moving away from language specifically, Shakespeare’s writing has …

Hamlet #Princeofdenmark: Exploring Gender And Technology Through A Contemporary Feminist Re-Interpretation Of Hamlet, Allegra B. Breedlove

Scripps Senior Theses

Exploring the process of designing, producing, directing and starring in a multimedia feminist re-interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a contemporary social media landscape.

Feminism And The Force Of Institutions In Twenty-First Century Dystopian Novels, Stephanie Roman

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Glass Slippers, Fairy Dust, And Feminist Ethics: Perrault And Barrie’S Influence On J.K. Rowling’S Independent Heroine, Gennesis Roman

English 502: Research Methods

My essay delves into J.K. Rowling's character of Hermione Granger. Hermione is a feminist character that seems to have been created with influence from Charles Perrault's "Cinderella" and J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan". This essay details the similarities between Cinderella, Wendy Darling, and Hermione Granger, all while proving Rowling's feminist leaning when creating Hermione.

“We Know What We Are, But We Know Not What We May Be:” Marianne Faithfull, Ophelia And The Power Of Performance, Gabriel Rieger

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Frustrated Feminisms: Hippolyta On Screen, Nicholas Tobin Roth

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Marina, Isabella, And Shakespeare’S Sex Workers, Byron Nelson

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

“The Future Of The Planet”− Scottish Cosmopolitanism/ Cosmofeminism And Environmentalism In Theresa Breslin’S Saskia’S Journey, Fiona Mcculloch

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses major themes and concerns in the young adult novel Saskia's Journey, by Theresa Breslin, with special attention to the relation between Breslin's environmental themes (and Scottish setting) with her portrayal of the novel's central character and multigenerational family relationships.

Cold War Pulp: Gender And Fiction In The Age Of Liberation, James Lewis Hood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The early decades of the twentieth century saw incredible changes in both literacy and general publishing. Once literature had been the domain of the elite, but now it was the daily pleasure of compeople. The changes in American culture in the middle of the century, combined with this revolution in publishing and literacy, combined to produce texts frequently referred to as pulp-fiction, works easily and cheaply produced for a mass-market. This market actively catered to diverse interests, perhaps most significantly the sexually alienated. Works of gay and feminist pulp fiction served to show alienated gay men and women, as well …

Performative Gender And Pop Fiction Females: "Emancipating" Byronic Heroines Through A Feminist Education, Joy Smith

Masters Theses

"I can be a regular bitch. Just try me." With this phrase emblazoned across her t-shirt, Lisbeth Salander, pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in leather, waltzes from the pages of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This woman who subverts authority, maliciously tattoos and sodomizes a man, and intentionally distances herself from close relationships of any kind has somehow managed to capture both the attention and admiration of the American audience. This disheartening phenomenon stems from a renewed interest in the Byronic heroine, a female possessing those traits traditionally assigned to Byronic heroes and men, and the rise of …

‘A River Is Not A Woman’: Re-Visioning Finnegans Wake In Eavan Boland’S ‘Anna Liffey.’, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

"This essay argues that Eavan Boland's 1994 poem “Anna Liffey” is, in part, a re-visioning of James Joyce's famous river-woman and mother, ALP. Although Joyce's deconstructive tendencies provide an added challenge for any author looking to engage with Finnegans Wake, Boland manages to reclaim ALP, both channelling and challenging Joyce's portrayal of the Liffey as “Anna Livia Plurabelle.”--From the Journal.

Place And Contemplative Pedagogy, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Gender & Genre, Sharon Harrow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Delusions, Nora Nachumi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Accessing Liberal Education, Alison Conway

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Teaching Eighteenth-Century Literature As A Feminist Scholar In The New Millennium, Alison Conway, Sharon Harrow, Nora Nachumi, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

‘The Only Beguiled Person’: Accessing Fantomina In The Feminist Classroom, Kate Levin

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition Of Female Satire In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, And Muriel Spark, Jaclyn Andrea Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate …

Surviving The City: Resistance And Plant Life In Woolf’S Jacob’S Room And Barnes’ Nightwood, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

In Jacob’s Room (1922) and Nightwood (1936), Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes use plant life to express a profound ambivalence about the masculine-inflected ordering functions of art and morality. They show that these processes codify lived experience and distance it from the feminine and sexual. To counter this turn towards the urban inauthentic, both novels depict non-urban spaces to upend conventional notions of usefulness. They fixate on evanescent flowers, wild forests, and untillable fields as sites of resistance whose fragility and remoteness are strengths. In Jacob’s Room, I argue that the eponymous protagonist is destroyed by his conventional education …

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

For The Benefit Of Others: Harriet Martineau: Feminist, Abolitionist And Travel Writer, Laura J. Labovitz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One of the distinctive and remarkable traits of Harriet Martineau was her need to publish information that she believed would benefit society. Her publications - Illustrations of Political Economy (1832), Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838) - have the distinct characteristic of being published with the intent to inform and educate the British public. Scholars have focused on her later 1848 publication, Eastern Life: Present and Past, as her most important publication. Yet I will argue that it was her earlier works which set the stage for this later, better known book. Her travel to the …

Defying The Feminist Dilemma: Eavan Boland's "Listen. This Is The Noise Of Myth", Rachel Newman

English

Boland creates a narrative poem, “Listen. This is the Noise of Myth,” that repudiates all legends that show men to be stronger and the savior of women, and suggests both that there are endless ways to depict any myth.

Another "Scandalous Woman": Edna O’Brien, Irish Feminism And Her Gébler Men, Jeffrey P. Griffin

Honors Scholar Theses

Irish novelist Edna O’Brien suffered a tumultuous early reception; her first six novels were banned in Ireland, and critics complained that her writing was sensational and gratuitous. Yet by the time Ireland’s economic boom arrived on the island, many contemporary critics suddenly applaud the novelist’s writing. Is this significant change in critical reception based on O’Brien’s development as an author? Or was O’Brien writing stories that were ahead of her time and are only now accepted by contemporary critics? My paper considers the writing and critical reception of Edna O’Brien by placing her life and career alongside three waves of …

The Individual Resisting The Collective Through Faith, Hope, And Love, Jessica Hodgson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Negotiating Victorian Feminism: Anne Thackeray Ritchie's Short Fiction, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

Best known for her autobiographical introductions to the collected works of her father, William Makepeace Thackeray, and for her biographical essays on several famous writers, Anne Thackeray Ritchie has repeatedly been considered most important as a source of inside information regarding her famous contemporaries. From Dickens to the Brownings, from Tennyson to James, she counted many of the canonical British nineteenth- and early- twentieth-century writers as her friends and often wrote to and about them.2 The scope of her work, however, is much wider and deserves closer scrutiny than it has so far received.

Manipulating Images Of Women's Power In Elizabethen England: Elizabeth I, Spenser, And Shakespeare, Amanda Kaye Martin

Theses & Dissertations

This work celebrates the influence of Elizabeth I on Elizabethan society and literature. In the opening of his Shakespearean Negotiations. Stephen Greenblatt describes writing as an outlet for the dead to speak to the living through "textual traces of themselves" that "make themselves heard in the voices of the living". These textual traces form the foundation for the critical theory of New Historicism, which perceives such traces as a conduit for literary critics to learn about an author's view of the nation, and era, in which he or she lived. In "The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text," Louis …

Feminism And The Public Sphere In Anne Brontë'S The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Rachel Carnell

English Faculty Publications

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the 18th-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an 18th-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a 20th-century-style challenge …