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Articles 1561 - 1590 of 5491

Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Boethian Variations: Musical Thought In Sir Orfeo, Troilus And Criseyde, And Robert Henryson’S Orpheus And Eurydice, Joshua T. Parks Jul 2020

Boethian Variations: Musical Thought In Sir Orfeo, Troilus And Criseyde, And Robert Henryson’S Orpheus And Eurydice, Joshua T. Parks

Masters Theses

This study approaches three poems from the late medieval British Isles—the Middle English Breton lay Sir Orfeo, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice—through the lens of medieval music theory. The most important authority for medieval music theorists was the late antique philosopher Boethius, who held to a Neoplatonic philosophy of music that valued reason, theory, and contemplation of the music of the spheres. Later medieval theorists cited Boethius extensively while also adapting his thought to suit their own purposes. In particular, the early fourteenth-century French theorist Johannes de Grocheio, influenced by Aristotle, departed …

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The Canons Of Fantasy: Lands Of High Adventure (2019) By Patrick Moran, Mariana Rios Maldonado Jun 2020

The Canons Of Fantasy: Lands Of High Adventure (2019) By Patrick Moran, Mariana Rios Maldonado

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Mariana Rios Maldonado, of The Canons of Fantasy: Lands of High Adventure (2019), by Patrick Moran

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Interiority And Narrative Temporality In Jane Austen’S Persuasion, Margaret Flahery Jun 2020

Interiority And Narrative Temporality In Jane Austen’S Persuasion, Margaret Flahery

The Criterion

Jane Austen’s last completed work, Persuasion, explores protagonist Anne Elliot’s female agency through use of free indirect discourse and time shifts. In the novel, published in 1817, Austen mediates between different time periods — the present day and seven years prior — to demonstrate Anne’s maturity and the evolved perspective of a woman’s status in society. Anne’s shifting interiority reflects what it means to be a woman in the Regency era, and, perhaps, across time, as she breaks out of the mediated and subjective perceptions placed upon her by herself and other characters. The result is a revolutionary conception of …

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Examining Fatherhood Through Historical Empathy In Tristram Shandy, Marygrace King Jun 2020

Examining Fatherhood Through Historical Empathy In Tristram Shandy, Marygrace King

The Criterion

Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy follows the tangential musings of Tristram Shandy — musings so roundabout and convoluted that they force modern readers either to eyerolls of frustration or to a reconceived sense of humor. Within this essay, I explore the character of Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, through a lens of historical empathy. To twenty-first century standards, Walter’s fatherhood is lacking and distant, even uncaring; yet when viewed through the lens of an eighteenth-century perspective, Walter’s motivations and eccentricities begin to make sense in the context of eighteenth-century mortality rates. I explore his unorthodox …

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Creation And Beauty In Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study Of The Influence Of Neoplatonsim In J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy Of Life As “Being And Gift” (2020) By Michael John Halsall, John Wm. Houghton Jun 2020

Creation And Beauty In Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study Of The Influence Of Neoplatonsim In J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy Of Life As “Being And Gift” (2020) By Michael John Halsall, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by John Wm. Houghton of Creation and Beauty in Tolkien's Catholic Vision: A Study of the Influence of Neoplatonsim in J.R.R. Tolkien's Philosophy of Life as “Being and Gift” by Michael John Halsall

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Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng Jun 2020

Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

“Aspects of Character” uses quantitative evidence to trace new timelines in the literary history of characterization. The guiding premise of this work is that digital libraries and mathematical perspectives can shed new light on the practices used to configure fictional people. Using texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, this dissertation analyzes how different aspects of characters have transformed throughout history, coordinating quantitative experiments with the critical perspectives of literary scholars. This project begins by analyzing the characterization used in works of fiction that were reviewed by prestigious publications. This first experiment pushes back on a historical truism about “well-crafted” …

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Women's Self-Definition Through Poetry, Olivia Samimy Jun 2020

Women's Self-Definition Through Poetry, Olivia Samimy

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

This project looks at five female poets across history – Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Forough Farrokhzad, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath – to explore the various challenges they faced writing in their patriarchal societies. Further, it looks at the way they each used their poetry to define themselves and their own identity. This project seeks to explain why this act of self-definition is significant, and why it so often drew criticism from the writers’ respective societies. What was discovered, is that the act of a woman crafting her own self-definition through poetry is a privilege in a patriarchal society, where …

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Renderings Of The Self: The Inception Of Autobiographical Writing In Robinson, Wollstonecraft, And Wordsworth, Hannah M. Dewitt Jun 2020

Renderings Of The Self: The Inception Of Autobiographical Writing In Robinson, Wollstonecraft, And Wordsworth, Hannah M. Dewitt

Honors Projects

This paper covers the origination of British autobiography and investigates why authors began to write autobiographically through the analysis of three pioneering autobiographical works: The Prelude by William Wordsworth, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft, and Memoirs of Mary Robinson, “Perdita,” by Mary Robinson. In each section of this paper, I examine these stories and authors individually and attempt to unearth what pushed each author toward autobiographical writing in relation to what drove them to publish their work. I argue that autobiography is centered around rendering oneself, and that self-renderings …

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Index To The Journal Of Tolkien Research Volume 1 Through Volume 9 Issue 1, Douglas A. Anderson Jun 2020

Index To The Journal Of Tolkien Research Volume 1 Through Volume 9 Issue 1, Douglas A. Anderson

Journal of Tolkien Research

An Index to The Journal of Tolkien Research from Volume 1 through Volume 9 issue 1

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Utopian And Dystopian Themes In Tolkien's Legendarium (2020), By Mark Doyle, John D. Rateliff Jun 2020

Utopian And Dystopian Themes In Tolkien's Legendarium (2020), By Mark Doyle, John D. Rateliff

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review by John D. Rateliff of Utopian and Dystopian Themes in Tolkien's Legendarium (2020) by Mark Doyle

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'Where Many Paths And Errands Meet': Travel Writing In The Lord Of The Rings, Will Glover Jun 2020

'Where Many Paths And Errands Meet': Travel Writing In The Lord Of The Rings, Will Glover

Journal of Tolkien Research

In this paper I examine The Lord of the Rings through the lens of genre criticism. I take issue with the commonplace characterisation of the work as an ‘epic’ or a ‘romance’, a tendency that has restricted interpretations of the work and tied criticism of it too exclusively to that of medieval literature. I argue that the work should be viewed as a modern novel: an open-ended and capacious text comprised of numerous generic traditions, including the previously overlooked genre of travel literature. After establishing a working definition of travel writing, I analyse The Lord of the Rings's paratextual …

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Sartorial Subversion: Eliza Haywood’S Fantomina And The Literary Tradition Of Women’S Community, Ruth Garcia Jun 2020

Sartorial Subversion: Eliza Haywood’S Fantomina And The Literary Tradition Of Women’S Community, Ruth Garcia

Publications and Research

This article locates Fantomina in a literary tradition that proposes all-female communities, such as convents and monasteries, as liberating and empowering spaces. I argue that the novella implies a virtual community rather than an actual one, as the heroine collectively embodies many different women, all of distinct social ranks: the heroine is both one woman and a variety of women brought together under the auspices of a single body, much the way discrete individuals together compose a community. Then, too, Beauplaisir, the object of the heroine’s desire, treats all the personae the same, no matter their social station. This emphasis …

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Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella Jun 2020

Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …

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Shakespeare's Problem Comedies As Self-Critique, John-Paul Spiro Jun 2020

Shakespeare's Problem Comedies As Self-Critique, John-Paul Spiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I argue that Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well reveal underexplored features common to Shakespeare’s comedies. Often interpreted as “problem plays,” they are more representative of the genre than previously acknowledged. I suggest that Shakespeare wrote them to de-nature and de-familiarize his own practices. The plays present the coercion inherent in the normativizing of marriage as the basis for social and political order. The “happiness” achieved—or at least gestured towards—at the end of Shakespearean comedy restricts human possibilities and is often presented as an imposition or injunction rather than a reflection of spontaneous, collective emotion. In particular, …

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British Romanticism And The Paradoxes Of Natural Education, Catherine S. Engh Jun 2020

British Romanticism And The Paradoxes Of Natural Education, Catherine S. Engh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“British Romanticism and the Paradoxes of Natural Education” offers a distinct perspective on Romantic-era ideas on “natural” education and human development. Though the Romantic retreat into nature has long been understood as a break from the Enlightenment’s programmatic commitment to the progress of reason, I contend that the ideas on natural development of four canonical Romantic authors—Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley—actually originate in the ideas of one of the foremost figures of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Natural education is doomed to failure in Rousseau’s thought because “nature” is paradoxically a social construct. I argue that …

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Crafting Girlhoods, Elissa E. Myers Jun 2020

Crafting Girlhoods, Elissa E. Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Crafting Girlhoods emphasizes nineteenth and early twentieth century British and American girls' agency and creativity within the prescribed limits of educational crafts—including sewing and periodical-making. My first section shows how girls use psychological means to resist the cultural and gendered imperatives of sewing and tidiness, while my second section shows how girls resisted the censorship and harassment that the newspaper and periodical forms allowed by creating intimate communities in the pages of their periodicals that could help them negotiate these difficulties. In both cases, I will show how the craft forms themselves were their own antidote to the constricting force …

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Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics, Amir Dagan Jun 2020

Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics, Amir Dagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is intended as a correction to the almost universal contemporary assumption that beauty is either nonexistent or a tool of oppression, and that the arts should be judged less by their aesthetic value than their social, political, or moral dimensions. This dissertation will propose a fivefold argument. First, I will assert that the experience of beauty is real, pleasurable, and not in any way culturally determined, second, that beauty is the most significant and characteristic feature of art, third, that the rejection of the reality of beauty is motivated more by the fragility of the mass man’s ego …

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"The Sweet And The Bitter": Death And Dying In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings (2018) By Amy Amendt-Raduege; And Fantasies Of Time And Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) By Anna Vaninskaya, Kris Swank May 2020

"The Sweet And The Bitter": Death And Dying In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings (2018) By Amy Amendt-Raduege; And Fantasies Of Time And Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) By Anna Vaninskaya, Kris Swank

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book reviews by Kris Swank of "The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (2018) by Amy Amendt-Raduege; and Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) by Anna Vaninskaya

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Bombadil And Bible Stories: A Biblical Function For Tom Bombadil Within Frodo’S Quest, Clive Shergold May 2020

Bombadil And Bible Stories: A Biblical Function For Tom Bombadil Within Frodo’S Quest, Clive Shergold

Journal of Tolkien Research

This essay probes the purpose of the encounter between Tom Bombadil and Frodo and his friends, within the overall narrative of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It asks: Why do the hobbits encounter Tom at this point in their journey? Why does Tom rescue, care for, equip and send them on? Why does Tom not accompany them further, and why does he never meet them again? Then it proposes an explanation based on comparisons with Bible stories that include theophanies and angelic appearances, and shown to provide answers to the questions, and suggestions for Tom Bombadil’s wider …

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Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw May 2020

Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper considers the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine from the late Middle English romance Melusine. By invoking contemporary leadership theory, this paper identifies leadership maneuvers in Melusine that are similar to those often practiced by women today, but the discourses of gender identity then ultimately render Melusine’s leadership invisible, just as leadership discourses today often render female leadership invisible. By uncovering the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine and identifying commonalities with the leadership of women today, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the contemporary problem of the marked …

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Matrons, Mothers, And Monsters: The Heroine In Beowulf, Grendel, And The Mere Wife, Grace Lucier May 2020

Matrons, Mothers, And Monsters: The Heroine In Beowulf, Grendel, And The Mere Wife, Grace Lucier

College Honors Program

This thesis examines the relationship between gender and heroism in the Beowulf tale and two of its modern retellings. It includes an exploration of the medieval gender roles of the original epic using Seamus Heaney and E. Talbot Donaldson’s translations. This thesis also addresses the ways in which some characters disturb gender binaries and social roles — especially in the case of Grendel’s mother. The second and third chapters focus on two retellings of the Beowulf text respectively: John Gardner’s Grendel , told from the perspective of the monster Grendel; and Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife , which is …

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Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem, Luke C. Widlund May 2020

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 …

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An Anthology Of Irish Nationalism: Music, Verse, Speeches, And Interviews Regarding The Betterment Of The State Of Ireland, From The Sixth Century Until The Liberation Of Ireland, Sofia J. Gilmore-Montero May 2020

An Anthology Of Irish Nationalism: Music, Verse, Speeches, And Interviews Regarding The Betterment Of The State Of Ireland, From The Sixth Century Until The Liberation Of Ireland, Sofia J. Gilmore-Montero

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When I started this project because in my extensive amount of research into Irish literature, I found that the common theme in many of the works was nationalism and the desire to have a free state. I could not find any books that focused on nationalistic literature over the lengthy history of Ireland, only collections that pertained to a specific time period. This thesis project proposes introductory material and a potential table of contents to an anthology that would be centered around the theme of Irish nationalism in literature between the ninth century and the liberation of Ireland. It covers …

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More Human Than Human: Artificial People In Literature And Media, Taylor P. Amalfitano May 2020

More Human Than Human: Artificial People In Literature And Media, Taylor P. Amalfitano

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Though Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein over two hundred years ago, many of the main themes of alienation and revenge featured in Shelley’s novel reappear in HBO’s Westworld in 2016. This thesis establishes a genealogy for the stories of artificial people and analyzes the relationship between human beings and artificial life, as it is portrayed in speculative fiction and popular media. The popularity of robots and cyborgs is associated with people’s fear of technology, but their stories are often used as an allegory to explain aspects of the human experience that are unknown or difficult to understand. As artificial intelligence becomes …

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A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights, Jordan Cymrot May 2020

A World Ruled By Unknowns: The Psychological Effects Of The Supernatural And Natural Worlds In Emily Brontë'S Wuthering Heights, Jordan Cymrot

Student Theses and Dissertations

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847 at a point of collision between Romantic thought and Victorian ideals. Her novel exemplifies a developed and deliberate effort to represent a world ruled by forces out of one’s control, the most evident example of this being the supernatural force that overtakes the novel. In her precise focus on the language and natural landscape that bind this novel together, her characters emerge as representative of the psychological complexity produced by the coexistence of the mundane and the extraordinary. My thesis focuses on the effects of the natural landscape and the forces that …

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“Lay Down My Soul At Stake”: Of Female Friendship In The Merchant Of Venice, Othello, And The Winter’S Tale, Audrey-Melody Cubas May 2020

“Lay Down My Soul At Stake”: Of Female Friendship In The Merchant Of Venice, Othello, And The Winter’S Tale, Audrey-Melody Cubas

Student Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I will not only shift a critical eye on both male and female friendship, but more specifically and extensively, I will examine how Shakespeare treats female friendship in three of his plays: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. The female pairs of focus, in play order, will be Portia and Nerissa, Desdemona and Emilia, and Hermione and Paulina. Additionally, I will give an overlook of the history of Renaissance friendship portrayal in both the literary and historical accounts. This historical background will serve to highlight the clear contrast between the emphasized …

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The Poetry Of History: Irish National Imagination Through Mythology And Materiality, Ryan Fay May 2020

The Poetry Of History: Irish National Imagination Through Mythology And Materiality, Ryan Fay

English Honors Theses

The thesis culminates in the twentieth century and yet it begins with the Ulster Cycle, a period of Irish mythological history that occurred around the first century common era. Indeed, since the time frame was before the arrival of the Gaels, Normans, or Christianity, the extent of this mythology’s relevance today is whatever extent it is conceptualized as “Irish.” As such, the first chapter locks onto an aspect that could feasibly transcend time and resonate with modern Irish society: gender. Of course, the epistemological dynamics of gender[1] in the first-century common era are vastly different than the twentieth century …

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European Imperialist Violence And Feminine Influence In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, Katlyn S. Davenport May 2020

European Imperialist Violence And Feminine Influence In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, Katlyn S. Davenport

English Department Theses

This thesis explores themes of influence and resistance to imperialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. To contextualize the feminine control and resistance of imperialism and colonialism, the thesis first examines Marlow’s and Kurt’s roles as agents and representatives of the Company, and thereby reveals their complicity in the brutalities carried out against the native people of the Congo. Additionally, it compares the vivid descriptions of violence inherent in imperialist domination with the vaguer characterization of violence among the tribespeople. Finally, by examining relationships between male and female characters as well as the ideals of the Anglo/American New Woman, this …

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"And Gladly Wolde He Lerne": Facilitating Discussion Based Learning About Medieval And Regency Literature Through Interactive Technologies, Emma Vallandingham May 2020

"And Gladly Wolde He Lerne": Facilitating Discussion Based Learning About Medieval And Regency Literature Through Interactive Technologies, Emma Vallandingham

Honors Projects

A series of reading guides for Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Frankenstein, that utilize interactive technologies to facilitate student engagement with and discussion of the texts. Each reading guide consists of an overview of the text, relevant historical context, and reading and discussion questions for students to answer. Some reading guides also have corresponding answer guides that provides sample answers as well as hints and tips for answering the questions.

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Playing To Win: The Marriage Market In Jane Austen’S Northanger Abbey, Sense And Sensibility And Emma, Caroline Elizabeth Nall May 2020

Playing To Win: The Marriage Market In Jane Austen’S Northanger Abbey, Sense And Sensibility And Emma, Caroline Elizabeth Nall

Honors Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the implications of the marriage market in Jane Austen’s novels Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. In these books, the main focus will be on Isabella Thorpe, who is actively participating in the “game” of the marriage market, Charlotte Palmer, who has won the “game” of marriage, and Miss Bates, who has lost the “game” of marriage. The historical context of these situations, taking place in eighteenth and nineteenth century England, has been taken into account. Austen has created characters to demonstrate the many aspects of a female’s life and how it relates …

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