Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Sex, Drugs, And Mingling Spirits: Teaching Nineteenth-Century Women Poets, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Book abstract:

Twentieth-century modernism reduced the list of nineteenth-century American poets to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and (less often) Edgar Allan Poe. The rest were virtually forgotten. This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching marks a milestone in the resurgence of the study of the rest. It features poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who were famous in their day, as well as poets who were marginalized on the basis of their race (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alexander Posey) or their sociopolitical agenda (Emma Lazarus, John Greenleaf Whittier). It also takes a fresh look at poets …

Woman At War: How I Won My Battle With Domestic Violence, But Continue To Fight The War, Krista R. Holcomb

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Woman at War: How I Won My Battle Against Domestic Violence But Continue to Fight the War, is a depiction of my experience in an abusive relationship. The project presents the initial experiences that draw the victim to her future abuser, the forming of a bond between the couple, the feelings of fear and desperation that overwhelm and often paralyze the victim in the midst of abuse, and the final escape and eventual advocacy for other victims. While most of the project is presented as personal narrative, letters, journal entries, and lists appear in order to show the mindset of …

Maine Stream: A Bibliographical Reception Study Of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kathrine Cole Aydelott

Sarah Orne Jewett: Bibliography

The critical reception of Sarah Orne Jewett has oscillated dramatically over the last century. Contemporary reviews praised her as a writer whose appreciation for and deep understanding of New England and its people transcended local concerns and brought sympathetic, realistic depictions of Maine to the far coasts of the United States and Europe. Literary critics from the 1930s and 1940s, however, stereotyped Jewett as "an old-fashioned local colorist" whose writing was too simplistic to warrant critical attention. Since the 1970s, however, and particularly thanks to feminist literary critics, Jewett has been rediscovered and is now well reestablished in the canon …

At Home In The City: Urban Domesticity In American Literature And Culture, 1850-1930, Elizabeth Klima

University of New Hampshire Press: Open Access Books

An interdisciplinary study of urban literature and domestic architecture in the United States from 1850-1930. With chapters on the hotel, Central Park, tenement houses, and apartment buildings, At Home in the City juxtaposes literary criticism with a history of the built environment to show the inception of American modernity. Works treated include: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern, The Bostonians by Henry James, How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist urban utopias, and Nella Larsen's Quicksand.

Pasado Soterrado Y Ánima Reprimida En La Muñeca Reina Y Chac Mool, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Faulkner's Mothers: The Relationship Of Fact To Fiction In The Sound And The Fury And As I Lay Dying, Spring P. Zuidema

Theses & Honors Papers

The author explores the relationship between actual events and circumstances in Faulkner’s own life and the fiction hat he wrote in his novels. William Faulkner was able to write his best work because he expected nothing from it. He was previously rejected by publishers, but furthermore rejected by his own family and two love interests. His mother was the only constant in his life. However she lacked love and caring and was domineering. These feelings of inferiority in Faulkner reflect in the children he wrote about and the traits of his mother reflect in the mothers in his novels as …

Journeys: A Critical Analysis Of The Diary Of Sarah L. Wadley, Regina C. Davis

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

As a young woman living in Louisiana during the Civil War, Sarah Lois Wadley documented in her diary the fractured, conflicted perspective that was her experience as a woman living in the war ravaged South. Her writing is evidence of the confusion she felt as a result of the discrepancy between the expectations of Southern patriarchal society and her own needs as a woman. Wadley’s diary is a complex text similar to a novel in that it relates events through a construct that reflects her response to her reader’s/society’s expectations. From a deconstructionist perspective, the power of Wadley’s text lies …

John Irving, Female Sexuality, And The Victorian Feminine Ideal, Tara Coburn

Masters Theses

In an interview about The Cider House Rules, John Irving states, "It is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel" (qtd. in Herel, para. 18). However, in book reviews, jacket blurbs, literary criticism, and Irving's own writing, readers and critics and Irving often assert that he is a neo-Victorian novelist, and the Victorians were a notoriously political bunch. Though Irving does not admit to the political nature of his writing, the way he treats feminist politics in his fiction has drawn particular notice by the media, who often label him as a feminist writer. …

The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring: A Critical Look At Flower Imagery In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Elizabeth Peloso

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

No abstract provided.

Linda Grace Hoyer Updike: Woman, Author, And Mother, Leslie Hoffman

Library Summer Fellows

Linda Grace Hoyer was a brilliant individual. She graduated from Ursinus College at the age of nineteen, received a master's from Cornell University, and after many years of diligent work, published two novels and a myriad of short stories. She lived an unusual life: reflective, feminine in her thought processes, but nevertheless somewhat stubborn in a time when women were meant to fill a subordinate role. I have found through my research that Hoyer's brilliance did not lie in her intellect and writing alone. In fact, as demonstrated by her literature's autobiographical nature, her brilliance as a writer seemed to …

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 3 Fall 2001

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

No abstract provided.

Del Relato A La Pantalla: La Alteridad En Cabeza De Vaca, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Masculinidad Natural Y Masculinidad Autoconsciente En Don Segundo Sombra Y El Reino De Este Mundo, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Hour Of Millennium: A Representation Of The Communion Ritual In "Babette's Feast", Pamela Lane

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

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On History: New Orleans's Women In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Anne Rice's The Feast Of All Saints, Stacey Morgan Ford

Theses & Honors Papers

The thesis examines the perspectives on history in New Orleans ' women in William Faulkner 's Absalom, Absalom and Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints. This thesis looks at historical sources, the most detailed and unbiased of which have been written within the last twenty-five years. The information is then applied to the works of Faulkner and Rice. The thesis concludes that both of the writes provide portrayals which serve their own purposes. Faulkner’s image of the world is vivid, but, it is still only an image, a picture. Faulkner’s purposes serve only as the symbol of slavery at …

Reading Elizabeth Bishop As A Religious Poet, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Elizabeth Bishop is usually described as a modernist poet with a skeptical mind. This essay contests the critical tendency to dismiss religion as a serious concern in her poetry, by first challenging the widespread dismissal in the United States of all religious approaches to modern poetry and then challenging the tendency to disclaim attempts to read Elizabeth Bishop in religious terms. The essay includes a close reading of “The End of March” as a text which invites intertextual commentary from a Christian perspective.

Nación Y Masculinidad En La Narrativa Decimonónica: El Caso De Sab Y Aves Sin Nido, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Modelos Masculinos En El Cautiverio Feliz: El Ideal Medieval Y El Presente Degradado, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sex/Textual Conflicts In The Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath's Doubling Negatives, Renée C. Hoogland

English Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Strength Within--Love: The Story Within The Story, Wanda T. Talbott

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

From Belle To Whore: Southern Stereotypes In John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn And William Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury, Sandra Compton Simmons

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Antimodern, Modern, And Postmodern Millay: Contexts Of Revaluation, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this chapter, Walker examines questions concerning renewed scholarly interest in Edna St. Vincent Millay toward the end of the twentieth century. Specifically, these questions center on whether to rethink the principles of establishing the canon of American literature--indeed, whether the poet changes literary fashions or literary fashions change the poet. Walker's answer is the latter, and her essay examines how Millay is different received through three different periods: antimodern, modern, and postmodern. She argues that whether a poet becomes central to literary study has less to do with the "quality" of the poetry than with complex cultural factors that …

The Double In The Bell Jar, Kimberly Kae Allen

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on Sylvia Plath and the idea of doubleness in The Bell Jar. Plath's past experiences are closely linked to the novel. Her psychological breakdown and recovery provided Plath with basic plot structure. It also influenced Plath's preoccupation with the concept of the double. In forming these double characters, Plath studied several psychoanalysts, including Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank.

Women And Family In The Fiction Of Barbara Kingsolver, Laura Ann Gussett

Theses & Honors Papers

Realizing the situations facing the American family and the changes it underwent, Kingsolver chooses to use her works as a means to explain how nontraditional families can succeed in American society. Kingsolver describes the evolution of Taylor Greer from a woman trapped in a hopeless situation into one with opportunities for success. Taylor discovers who she is but additionally learns through her relationships and from nature’s cycles that her interdependence with others permits the simultaneous growth of her identity and family. Her new found acquisition of an abused child, her new-found motherhood, and her decision to establish close ties with …

The Inner Voice, Janis Ruth Bagnall Cochrane

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The scope of this project is two-fold. The key purpose is to demonstrate the relationship between the voice of Lee Smith, a Southern writer from Appalachia and the voice of the author, another Southern writer from the Outer Banks. The foremost conclusion that has been drawn is that a writer's voice comes from deep inside the writer's unconscious. It is a product of generations of experiences that have embedded themselves in the writer's psyche. Some of the assumptions and prejudices surrounding southern women are discussed to some degree.

The second purpose is for this writer to show her work. This …

The Female Body As Icon: Edna Millay Wears A Plaid Dress, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

The female body has never been so prominently displayed or so critically examined as it is today under the dominance of late capitalism. The results of this display, we can now see, have been mostly negative: women regard themselves at best self-consciously, at worst with disgust. Given this emphasis on self-scrutiny, it comes as no surprise that middle-aged women experience a reduction of self-confidence regarding their physical presences and a concomitant increase in self-dissatisfaction. It is also worth noting that a querulous tone often afflicts them as they grow older, suggesting that they are at odds not only with others …

A New Sense Of Time In Female Development: Linearity And Cyclicity In Atwood's Surfacing And Cat's Eye, Diana L. Unes

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Grupo Ubú: El Edificio De La Identidad En Barriendo Sombras, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Dickinson As A Gen(I)Us: Emily Among The Women, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this article, Walker argues that those who teach the poetry of Emily Dickinson should not only compare her to other recognized and lauded American poets, such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore. This method offers no cultural context to provide ligature. It views high art as to be only about language and, on the score of tropological discourse, any two poets could be connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance. While it's useful for students to see how elements of her work connect her not only …

Women Pioneer Diaries, 1820-1920: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Sonia Alvarez Wilson

Theses & Honors Papers

The works of twenty women whom participated in the westward expansion at some time between 1820 and 1920 are represented. The women have participated by immigration, emigration, homesteading, or simply living a trans-Mississippi community during the aforementioned time period. The work as a whole provides a variety of examples of the lifestyle and challenges of the period, which may highlight the uniqueness of each woman, while at the same time showing some common experience. Diaries have been selected to represent as many states as possible, in as many time periods as possible within the one hundred year time span, in …