Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Adoring The Head Of Alcasan: Posthuman Horror And Anticipatory Corpse In Lewis’S That Hideous Strength, Mark Brians

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

At the pinnacle of Lewis’ That Hideous Strength (2003) is the reanimation of the decapitated head of Francois Alcasan. The sheer biological persistence that is afforded to it by the biosynthetic technics of medicinal artifice, allows the head to be possessed by “macrobes”— maleficent spiritual beings imprisoned within the circle of the moon. The goal of this reanimation project is purportedly “the conquest of death […] to bring out of that cocoon of organic life […] the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick …

The Overlooked Vampire: Might Macdonald’S Lilith Be Repopularized?, A. J. Prufrock

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Lilith (1895) is George MacDonald’s premier work of symbolic fiction. W.H. Auden asserts that Lilith is “equal, if not superior, to the best of Poe." A cursory reading of the novel reveals much in Narnia can be traced directly to passages. Why has MacDonald’s Lilith received so little commentary and why is it picked up and then put down by even avid readers of fantasy? Universalist theology and chauvinism have been blamed, but literary style is unarguably the main stumbling block. C.S. Lewis, who says of MacDonald, “I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not …

Tolkien As A Folk Horror Author, Monica Sanz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Folk Horror, although being identified as a cinematographic genre quite recently, sinks its roots in an undeniable tradition of English writers who used English rural landscapes, ancient beliefs and culturally differentiated communities as humus for their prose and poetry. From the literary tradition of the 8th Century on, creatures and beliefs belonging to dark times have left their mark on our literature, traditions and folklore. Tolkien, as a philologist, was well aware of the hints and bits of these almost unknown legends and creatures left in our language, in the form of loose words, etymologies and fragmentary texts. In this …

Books Within Books In Fantasy And Science Fiction: “You Are The Dreamer And The Dream”, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

This chapter discusses books that exist only within works of science fiction and fantasy—what the “List of Fictional Books” on Wikipedia calls a “fictional book” and what Claire Fallon calls “invented books” in her article for the Huffpost website, “Fictional Books Within Books We Wish Were Real.”

The David Oberhelman Collection Of Science Fiction, Fantasy, And Tolkieniana At Oklahoma State University, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

In September 2020 I drove to the Oklahoma State University (OSU) Stillwater campus to see “The David Oberhelman J. R. R. Tolkien Collection” exhibit, on display on the Edmon Low Library’s second-floor mezzanine in the Lisa and Mark Snell Gallery.

Exploring Shakespearean Influence On Executive Leadership In Finance: A Qualitative Narrative Inquiry, Erik Decicco

All Theses And Dissertations

This qualitative narrative inquiry sought to investigate perceptions of executive leaders in finance about how Shakespeare can influence leadership performance. It employed a conceptual framework in dramaturgical analyses (Goffman, 1959) and a theoretical framework in reflective leadership (Schon, 1983). Separate semi-structured interviews were conducted with five participants to gather data, which was coded in vivo. Codes were then analyzed and sorted into themes. The study was driven by two major research questions and a sub-question: The two major research questions and sub-question guiding this study were as follows: (1) What are perceptions of executive leaders in the financial industry about …

Japanese-English Translation: Katayama Hiroko—Jesus And Simon Peter (June 1953), Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Translation of 「イエスとペトロ」、片山廣子著、昭和２８年６月

Source: Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of public-domain Japanese-language works)

General website: https://www.aozora.gr.jp

Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001346/files/50159_41222.html

The Visionary Mode In Anglophone Modernist Fiction, Wei Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is a critical reexamination of descriptions of visionary experiences in the novels of Woolf and Lawrence. Its goal is twofold: first, to demonstrate that the visionary mode, when best practiced by the modernist novelists here discussed, can overcome the ideological liabilities that its supposed individualist stance seems to entail; secondly, based on an updated understanding of the visionary mode, to reconceptualize its relation with the ordinary. Through discussions of five important modernist novels, this study concludes that modernist practicing of the visionary mode, when contextualized and historicized, portrays the subject as situated in dynamic exchanges with otherness, subscribes …

Subtle Speech And Use Of Pronouns In Tolkien's Novels And Old English Poetry, Chiara Marchetti

Journal of Tolkien Research

In human conversations, verbal exchanges follow rules. Applicable both to Old English poetry and Tolkien's fiction, rules governing speech set the right quantity and quality of information to be transmitted and provide strategies to avoid conflicts. What is too redundant or scanty in a speech might indicate more layers of meaning, which are implied or suggested.

Language can create or resolve conflicts; the careful use of words and even pronouns can make a difference between self-assertion and cooperation, unity and separation. Such refined linguistic technique is visible in Old English poetry, where dialectal ability is as important as valour, where …

The Gaelic Background Of Old English Poetry Before Bede, Colin A. Ireland

Richard Rawlinson Center Series

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide …

Humanism, Capitalism, And Rhetoric In Early Modern England: The Separation Of The Citizen From The Self, Lynette Hunter

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to concepts of the self associated with the development of humanism in England, and to strategies for both inclusion and exclusion in structuring the early modern nation state. It addresses writings about rhetoric and behavior from 1495-1660, beginning with Erasmus’ work on sermo or the conversational rhetoric between friends, which considers the reader as an ‘absent audience’, and following the transference of this stance to a politics whose broadening democratic constituency needed a legitimate structure for governance-at-a-distance.

Unusually, the book brings together the impact on behavior of these new concepts about rhetoric, with the …

Musical Scores And The Eternal Present (2021) By Chiara Bertoglio, Brad Eden

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by Bradford Lee Eden of Musical Scores and the Eternal Present (2021) by Chiara Bertoglio

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 …

More Than Midnight Feasts?: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Enid Blyton’S Malory Towers, St. Clare’S And The Naughtiest Girl In The School Series, Rebecca Broomfield

Dissertations

Food is fundamental to life. It is also fundamental to culture; through our production, manipulation and consumption of foodstuffs, the way in which we eat has amassed a range of rituals and rules. This suggests that food can be used to indicate more than mere biological need. Food and foodways are a common occurrence throughout literature, not least children’s literature. This thesis applies gastrocriticism as a paradigm to investigate the use of food and foodways in Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, St. Clare’s and The Naughtiest Girl school series. Gastrocriticism is an emerging form of literary criticism that considers the complex …

Orts 77, 2022, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

The last two and half years have seen big changes in how we connect and interact with each other, and this is especially the case for a Society like ours, where many are also geographically separated. While covid is still with us, hopefully things are slowly returning to the “new normal,” however, some of the changes that have occurred will have lasting significance, particularly the accelerated use of technology and move online. There is definitely still a place for face to face meetings, but Societies like ours also need to adapt, and a recurring theme in this newsletter is change. …

Mr. Vane’S Confessions: The Unexpected Play Of Augustine In Lilith’S Bibliographic Vision, Michael Wayne Wilhelm

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

Death As Birth And The Mutuality Of Life: Being Born Into The World Through The Female Body As A Door In At The Back Of The North Wind, Ayumi Kumabe

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

Love Conquers Death: Mythological Subversion And Emotional Triumph In “The Tale Of Beren And Luthien”, Sam Baughn

4610 English: Individual Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien

Though The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings sit at the forefront of J.R.R. Tokien’s expansive legendarium, there is one work that sits at the center of his expansive world. Published as chapter 19 of The Silmarillion, Of Beren and Luthien, also referred to as The Tale of Beren and Luthien is the beating heart of Tolkien’s mythology. It is perhaps his most important work, consistently developed over the course of his life. It is a true mythological epic, a story of good and evil, monsters and heroes, great treasure and constant peril. More than anything it is …

Environmentalism In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, Sophie Butler

4610 English: Individual Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien

The theme of environmentalism within Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, while sometimes underlying, is an ever-present background to the characters and actions of Middle-Earth.The hero’s movements through nature contrasted with the criminal destruction of nature by the villains presents two clear perspectives about the treatment of nature, but Tolkien also inserts his perspective through the inclusion of Tree characters, like Ents. Trees and tree characters are an essential part of Tolkien's legendarium that help to illuminate the author's claims about environmentalism and the impacts of progress on the world. How characters interact with nature inform their ethics and point …

Beguiling Time In Wonderland, Neverland And Fairyland, Daniel Gabelman

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

A Relational Literary Geography Of George Macdonald’S The Wise Woman, John Pazdziora, James Thurgill

North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies

No abstract provided.

"It Will Help Him Wonderfully": Placebo And Meaning Responses In Early Medieval English Medicine, Rebecca Brackmann

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

Many early English medical remedies have been dismissed, even by sympathetic scholars, as “mere placebo,” with the implication that therapeutic benefits to the patient, if any, are thereby insignificant. My article challenges such dismissals of placebo responses in Old English medicine. I draw on current research demonstrating that in certain conditions, a placebo effect, or “meaning response” (to use Daniel Moerman’s term), can have striking success in bringing about healing. I describe contemporary clinical practices shown to enhance patient responses to pharmaceutical treatments both inert and active, and demonstrate that these strategies are also visible in early English medical practice. …

The Owl And The Nightingale And The English Poems Of Jesus College Ms 29 (Ii), Susanna Fein

TEAMS Middle English Texts

An edition of the early Middle English verse sequence contained in the thirteenth-century Oxford Jesus College MS 29 (II) with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales’s Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely …

British Literature I, Justin Shaw

Syllabus Share

What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to have an identity? This course serves as an entry point to the study of early British literature and its historical contexts. We examine texts written from the 7th to the 17th Centuries that comprise a portion of what we call British literature. This survey engages poetry, prose, and drama that reimagine the complexities of intersectional identity, render the nation as part of a global stage, and challenge conventions of sexuality and gender. It traces early texts written by and about people on the margins of “Britishness” and "Englishness" such …

The Impacts Of Dune And The Lord Of The Rings On American Culture, Nick Collins

4610 English: Individual Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien

The middle third of the 20th century was a time of hyper-aggressive industry, invention, and progressivism. This portion of the 1900s was instrumental toward shaping modern popular culture. Two of the predominant works were J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings and Frank Herbert’s political science fiction novel Dune. Both works inspired massive cult followings upon their release and grew in popularity largely due to the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. They have each inspired countless works of inspiration that include some of the most popular movies and games from the 1970’s through the modern …

The Tragedy Of Krudhog The Cruel: A Horrid Tale Best Never Told At All, Eric Ramos

4610 English: Individual Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien

What have I to tell you, unlucky one, of this vision brought before me? Hear it here that I, Othur Lokbrok, do not speak with a voice of my own, but rather echo the Sisters Weird, come to me one night in a passion and fury beyond all earthly resemblance. Thereupon that cursed night was I, awake and trembling, for out of a dream my spirit raised itself vigilant, as hushed voices seemed to seep and slither eerily through my window. Then in the dark at the foot of my bed a dampened candle glowed red hot as three faces, …

History, Cognition And Nostromo: Conrad’S Explorations Of Torture, Trauma, And The Human Rage For Order, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

Focusing on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, this essay historicizes the treatment of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, demonstrating how Conrad anticipated our current understanding and treatment of the illness. The second part of the essay addresses Nostromo’s treatment of historiography. Part three is concerned with epistemology and the relationship between neurological discoveries concerning the gap between perception and consciousness, relating those discoveries to Conrad’s use of delayed decoding.

Fun With Palamon And Arcite: Rationale And Strategies For Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen As The Culmination Of The Shakespearean Canon, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Hardly noticed in the reception of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human several years ago was his hint that not The Tempest but The Two Noble Kinsmen makes an appropriate final accomplishment. On one level, the play is merely a stage adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, with a rather crude couple of subplots thrown in, perhaps to please the commoners. In an undergraduate forum, I am less inclined to evaluate Fletcher's contribution as distinct from Shakespeare, but I do think the play important for how it is representative of many of the co-authored English Renaissance plays …

Men Who Conquered & The Women Who Mov'd Them, Nikita Chinamanthur

Scripps Senior Theses

Considering John Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, this thesis examines how drama shaped popular ideas of the Indian subcontinent in Renaissance England. This thesis engages in a comparative analysis of formal choices such as doubling, tripling, and etymology to assess the efficacy of two incomplete portrayals of South Asia configured as women.

Psychoactive Revolution And Transnational Networks, Menglu Gao

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

The connection and clash between Asia and the Anglophone world were, in part, facilitated by what David T. Courtwright calls the “psychoactive revolution,” a process in which hunger, the need for food, was replaced by desire and addiction in the modern world. Networks between these regions deepened and proliferated as stimulants and sedatives such as tea, opium, and coffee became increasingly accessible and popular around the globe.