Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Ghosts And Ethics In The Early Works Of James Joyce, Michael Menase

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last 20 years, critics have contributed new insights into the character development, overall messages, themes, and other literary aspects of James Joyce’s works by focusing on their ethical implications. By following an intertextual method and by performing close readings of Joyce’s texts, I try to fill a gap in the scholarly literature by adding a related focus on ghosts to the conversation about Joyce’s ethics and those of his characters. Focusing on Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I hope to show that the ghosts in Joyce’s corpus motivate characters and readers to …

Performance, Theatricality, And Identity In Shakespeare’S The Taming Of The Shrew, Nina Masin-Moyer

College Honors Program

William Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew is a curious and often controversial play due to its depiction of spousal abuse and female subordination. But despite that charged reputation, it continues to be produced on stages around the world, with creative choices that suggest an attempt to change a supposedly un-feminist play into a feminist one. My thesis argues that this play already features notable feminist elements at the level of the text itself, stemming in particular from its thematic and structural investment in performance and theatricality and in the roles that these elements play in constructing gender and …

Switzerland In Tolkien's Middle-Earth: In The Footsteps Of His Adventurous Summer Journey In 1911 (2021) By M.S. Monsch, Christina Scull &. Wayne G. Hammond

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, of Switzerland in Tolkien's Middle-earth: In the Footsteps of His Adventurous Summer Journey in 1911 (2021) by M.S. Monsch.

First Person Narration In Postwar British Women’S Fiction, Julia Mccoy

English Student Scholarship

Julia McCoy ’22
Majors: English and Political Science
Faculty Mentor: Dr. William Hogan, English

A study of postwar English novelists Margaret Drabble and Jeannette Winterson, looking particularly at the way these writers use first person narration in their works. Both writers explore how women’s identity can be ‘written into being’ against external pressures and authorities that seek to define women’s ‘proper’ role.

Women And Supposition: The Chronicles Of Narnia And Biblical Womanhood, Carolyn Dailey

Honors Projects

Supplemented by C.S. Lewis' works in theology, predominately Mere Christianity, and 'Priestesses in the Church?" as well as sources from other theologians, and historians, this paper explores the relationship between Christian tradition and Biblical womanhood that is expressed in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. This paper finds that C.S. Lewis drew more from the core tenets of love and equality that exist at the heart of Christianity rather than from traditional Christian beliefs, including some he held himself. In doing this, he crafted an imaginative fiction that affirms Biblical womanhood.

The Science Of Art “Faithfully Presented”: Entropy In British Victorian Literature, Hannah Harris

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In the chemical world, entropy, or the randomness and chaos of a system, must continually increase; it is much more favorable for things to fall apart than to be put together. This scientific concept can also be rightly applied to the study of literature. While it is true books contain information put together into some sense of order from chaos, making them counterintuitive to entropy, I am convinced these works must still obey the laws of thermodynamics. There must be an increase in chaos somewhere, and if it is not within the words themselves, it must lie within the ideas …

The Gallant Edith Bratt: J.R.R. Tolkien’S Inspiration (2021) By Nancy Bunting And Seamus Hamill-Keays, Wayne G. Hammond &. Christina Scull

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, of The Gallant Edith Bratt: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Inspiration (2021) by Nancy Bunting and Seamus Hamill-Keays.

Reimagining History Dataset 3.0, Michelle R. Warren, Neil Weijer

Other Faculty Materials

The Middle English prose Brut chronicle survives in nearly two hundred manuscripts. This corpus has been the subject of extensive study for more than a hundred years. The most recent research, however, has turned out to be the most fragile. In 2017, the multiyear digital humanities project “Imaging History: Perspectives on Late Medieval Vernacular Historiography” disappeared from the live Internet, only a decade after its publication. Shortly afterwards, we began a project called "Re-Imagining History"--to create a new dataset of information about the Brut manuscript corpus and learn how digital infrastructure might shape the production and preservation of historical data. …

“All The Daughters Of My Father's House, And All The Brothers Too”: Shakespeare’S Portrayal Of Gender Fluidity, Sebastian Lopez

Symposium of Student Scholars

This paper analyzes how Shakespeare's personal life influenced the relationship between Viola and Cesario in Twelfth Night through a feminist lens and an analysis of gender fluidity in the Elizabethan Era. It is a common misconception that conversations revolving around gender are a modern discussion. Shakespeare popularized the idea of gender fluidity in English literature in his play, Twelfth Night.

At the height of Shakespeare’s career, he wrote many comedies, yet few tragedies, however, a tonal shift occurred after the death of his son, Hamnet. Shakespeare was father to a pair of fraternal twins, Judith and Hamnet. However, the …

“Legato Con Amore In Un Volume”: Can Tolkien’S Ainulindalë Accommodate Divine Knowledge?, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tolkien's depiction of Eru Iluvatar in the Silmarillion as coming to know the Song of the Ainur only as he hears it conflicts with ideas about the nature of divine knowledge developed by such thinkers as Ibn Sina, Maimoindes, and Thomas Aquinas--as well as with more general ideas about omniscience and eternity. Texts recently published in The Nature of Middle-earth indicate that Tolkien was aware of some of these divergences. The fact that he classifies the Ainulindalë as a "legend" in which divine thought is merely "represented" as music offers some possibilities for reconciliation with the theological tradition, but Tolkien …

A Man Not A Monster : Reimagining Disability In Hollow Crown's Richard Iii, Taylor E. Uphus

Honors Theses

Traditional portrayals of William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) in film interpret Richard’s physical disability as an outward reflection of his evil. In recent years, disabilities studies scholars have reconsidered the historic association of Richard’s physical deformity with immorality. Unlike previous Richard III films, the BBC’s Hollow Crown: Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016) highlights Richard’s mental abuse and trauma. While the film does not shy away from Richard’s villainy, its more empathic depiction of Richard contests the one-dimensional stage and film representation of him as a conniving monster. Ultimately, this film presents Richard III to critique society’s treatment of disabled individuals.

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff

Journal of Religion & Film

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …

To Put Her In Her Place: An Interrogation Of Death And Gender In Shakespearean Tragedy, Isabella A. Zentner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This analysis investigates the gendered implications of Shakespearean heroines' deaths. Using Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus as case studies, evidence is drawn from the text. This evidence is then supported by extensive historical research and reference to external critical studies of these tragedies. By identifying the gendered aspects of these heroines’ deaths, one can gain a greater understanding of Shakespeare’s view of female autonomy and power. The deaths Shakespeare inflicts often act as a punishment for the heroines' betrayal of traditional gender roles and forcibly return the heroines to the feminine sphere.

The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biographers of George Eliot, when writing about her childhood, have focused on her close and complicated relationships with two of the most important men in her life, her father Robert Evans and brother Isaac Evans. Less discussed are Eliot’s relationships with her immediate female family members, her mother Christiana Pearson Evans and her sister Christiana (Chrissey) Evans Clarke. This thesis reviews the predominant interpretations of Eliot’s relations with her father and brother. It also pulls together the known information about Christiana and Chrissey from several major biographies and adds new insights from Eliot's letters in combination with two of her …

George Macdonald's Phantastes As A Bildungsroman Of Spiritual Reality, Hannah O'Malley

Senior Theses

George MacDonald's 1858 novel Phantastes is one of the first fantasy novels written for adults, but it has received little attention in part because of its confusing structure. I argue that Phantastes is best understood as a Bildungsroman, a novel of formation. While the Bildungsroman is usually a realist novel of commercial society, Phantastes’ fantasy elements allow the protagonist to grow up into a spiritual reality that contrasts with many commercial values. MacDonald uses the fantasy genre to show his protagonist's inner development as he learns humility, gains feminine and childlike virtues, and leaves behind the old self

Tolkien And The Classical World, Edited By Hamish Williams, Larry J. Swain

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Eotenas And Hobbits: Finn And Hengest, And Tolkien’S Speculation About Origins, Nicholas Birns

Journal of Tolkien Research

This essay examines Tolkien’s Finn and Hengest, particularly concentrating on Tolkien’s interpretation of the word eotenas as meaning Jutes rather than ‘monsters’. As opposed to “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics,” where Tolkien emphasizes supernatural elements at the expense of history, Tolkien’s lecture on the Finnsburg episode in Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment seems to present Hengest as an English national hero, despite the bloodiness and vengeance of his reprisals against Hnaef and the Frisian court. The use of the word 'eotenas,' which can be constructed as either 'monsters' or 'Jutes,' is at the nub of the conflict here, …

Tolkien As A Literary Artist (2021) By Thomas Kullmann And Dirk Siepmann, John R. Holmes

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by John R. Holmes of Tolkien as a Literary Artist: Exploring Rhetoric, Language and Style in "The Lord of the Rings" (2021) by Thomas Kullman and Dirk Siepmann

A Sense Of Tales Untold: Exploring The Edges Of Tolkien's Literary Canvas (2021) By Peter Grybauskas, Dennis Wilson Wise

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Dennis Wilson Wise of A Sense of Tales Untold: Exploring the Edges of Tolkien's Literary Canvas (2021) by Peter Grybauskas

Adapting Tolkien (2021), Edited By Will Sherwood, Douglas C. Kane

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Douglas C. Kane of Adapting Tolkien (2021), edited by Will Sherwood

Sweet Fooling: Ethical Humor In King Lear And Levinas, Kent R. Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In recent years, scholars have increasingly put the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1623) in dialogue with the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995)... The majority of these Shakespearean references are to Hamlet and Macbeth, but contemporary critics working in the vein of Levinas have tended to favor King Lear. No Shakespearean play has been subjected to Levinasian analysis more fully or more frequently.⁵ This critical proclivity is not unwarranted, for Shakespeare's tragic play and Levinas's ethical writings tell the same basic story: that of the egoist who heedlessly pursues his own interests until he is until he …

Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

J. R. R. Tolkien has had a significant influence on American writer Ernest Cline. In Ready Player One (2011), the character Ogden Morrow invites Wade and his friends to his mansion, which is modelled after Rivendell from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films (2001- 03). Cline goes further in his sequel Ready Player Two (2021) by staging a part of Wade’s virtual quest on Arda I, the First Age of Middle Earth. In this paper, we focus on this episode and, in so doing, argue for Cline’s insights into how we approach fantasy. First, we attend to the …

Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregosa

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In the 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth originated the character of Merlin, setting him upon the world stage as a wonder-working youth fathered (in the tradition of Greek and Latin authors of the past) by a daemon. However, later writers of the Middle Ages, beginning with Robert de Boron, reconceived Merlin within a more Christianized world, altering his heritage and transforming his sire into a demon from Hell. This shift from benign daemon to malevolent demon has impacted the representation of the wizard of Camelot for centuries. Contemporary fiction for the page as well as for the screen has adopted and …

"Shivering Trees": Horror Monstrosity In Selected Stories From Tolkien’S The Silmarillion, Elise Mckenna

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien used conventions of horror within the setting of Arda. To begin with, the entire world, which is monstrous, is in upheaval with mountains being raised and valley being delved, lanterns of light created, and huge beings walking the land. Then, these landscapes are torn down, the lights are smashed and go out, and new creatures of horror prowl the world. The differences between the portrayals of monstrosity on a grand scale border the grotesque and the sublime. Monstrous beings, Valar and Maiar, command the elements of earth, air, fire, water. They have pre-ordained roles that …

The Story, The Narrator And The Reader: Mediated Horror In C.S. Lewis’S Narniad, William Thompson

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In her introduction to Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture, Jessica R. McCort defines horror for children and young adults as a hybrid genre, one having its roots in both the gothic and the nineteenth-century fairy tale. She explains that the exploration of dark forces in children’s books is often not limited to those tropes traditionally associated with the horror genre for adults: “Think of the books that are considered children’s classics. The best of them contain dark forces of one kind or another, as well as internal battles between the light and the dark: …

Environmental Horror And Restoration: Tolkien And Today, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Caitlin Rottler

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

J.R.R. Tolkien never forgot the felling of a willow tree that had overlooked the mill-pool in Sarehole, nor how his former climbing companion had been left to rot in the grass. His horror at that small environmental violence bleeds through his works, from poems like “From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames” (1913) to the Party Tree in The Hobbit (1937) to a letter to The Daily Telegraph in 1972 when he decried the modern “torture and murder of trees.” This presentation will draw on the excellent foundations laid by Dinah Hazell, as well as the father-son pair of …

Nature And Horror In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Julia Bowers

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Tolkien incorporates horror in his legendarium through the twisting of the natural world in order to signal upcoming dangers to his characters. This creates a dichotomy between the idyllic natural world that represents good in his works and the twisted natural world that has been tampered with by evil. Most of the focus on Tolkien’s portrayal of nature looks at the conflict between nature and technology; the natural world of Middle-earth is portrayed as more complex than merely all nature being good. His natural settings take on an eerie tone to convey a sense of horror to the reader as …

Charles Williams' P'O- L'U - The Cthulhu Connection, Eric Rauscher

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This presentation delineates the connections between horrific elements in the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the situation of P’o-L’u from Charles Williams.

Delight In Horror’: Charles Williams And Russell Kirk On Hell And The Supernatural, Camilo Peralta

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Charles Williams has always been one of the more overlooked members of the Inklings, and the continued neglect of his poetry and “supernatural thrillers” suggests that he is not likely to experience a dramatic increase in popularity anytime soon. Similarly, Russell Kirk is an American historian who will always be better known for writing The Conservative Mind in 1953 than for any of the dozens of short stories and novels he wrote, many of which deal with ghostly or supernatural themes. In fact, Kirk acknowledged Williams to be an important influence on his fiction; this influence is perhaps most evident …

White Shadows, Black Riders And Restless Wights: Undead Horror Monsters In The Fantasy Worlds Of J.R.R. Tolkien And George R.R. Martin, Franz Klug

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

The proposed essay aims at comparing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Nazgûl and barrow-wights with the white walkers (also known as “the Others”) and wights from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. To begin with, the folkloric/mythological templates for these sub-created monsters would be scrutinized. The introductory ascription of source material would be followed by an analysis of these creatures as horror monsters and gothic elements within the fantasy worlds of Tolkien and Martin. This analysis would also be linked to addressing the question of how the gothic/horror genre influenced the fantasy worlds of both authors, and as in …