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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
A Monstrous [Un]-Becoming: Defining The Final Boy, Rhys Crumpton
A Monstrous [Un]-Becoming: Defining The Final Boy, Rhys Crumpton
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Through an exploration of horror theory, monster theory, queer theory, and disabilities studies, this thesis defines a 21st century archetype within the serial horror narrative, known as “the Final Boy.” This character is a manifestation of a queer, often neurodivergent man in peril at the hands of a monstrous society. This harmful socionormativity is narratively represented by a monster wearing the face of a man, one whom the Final Boy must subdue and overcome if he wishes to survive. The seven tenets found in this project highlight the fluctuating morality the Final Boy is forced to engage in per the …
The Elite And The Illicit: Women, Power, And History In Cormac Mccarthy’S All The Pretty Horses And Cities Of The Plain, April Trepagnier
The Elite And The Illicit: Women, Power, And History In Cormac Mccarthy’S All The Pretty Horses And Cities Of The Plain, April Trepagnier
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Much of the discussion concerning female characters in Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre revolves around assertions of narrative misogyny and subjection resulting from overly reductive criticism based on identity singularity. Had the critics taken this approach with McCarthy’s male characters, there would be little discussion of his work today as they, too, would have appeared as shallow stereotypes. Such readings are of limited interest or usefulness. Rather, when readers pay attention to the richness of the literary craft of McCarthy’s works, it is possible to read his male characters with great complexity. The same treatment, applied to his female characters, reveals precisely …
The Imposition Of Power: Modernity And Nature In Hemingway And Mccarthy, Danielle Ball
The Imposition Of Power: Modernity And Nature In Hemingway And Mccarthy, Danielle Ball
Honors College Theses
This thesis focuses on the role of nature in opposition to modernity in Ernest Hemingway's “The Last Good Country” and “The End of Something” as well as Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. Each author places the forces of modernity, such as the logging industry or the introduction of the railroad, at odds with the untouched state of the natural world. Specifically, I emphasize the different portrayals of the natural world from each author. Hemingway’s nature is very closely tied to Romanticism, as nature is a spiritual and healing force for those who choose to commune with it. However, McCarthy portrays …
Ethics In Literature: A Case Study Of Hades And Persephone, Mckenzie A. Howard
Ethics In Literature: A Case Study Of Hades And Persephone, Mckenzie A. Howard
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
The increased ethical scrutiny on art in the modern era places an emphasis on how those art forms are being taught in the classroom. This thesis seeks to answer the question: how do we teach ethics, if we should at all, when we teach literature to a modern audience? This thesis explores this question by looking at how modern adaptations of an ancient text, the “Hymn to Demeter,” change the ethical issues in the original text, to show the relevance of these issues in the source text and the modern adaptations. Through an argument that the ethical concerns are often …
Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste
Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
After World War II, spiritual and emotional healing was needed in America, despite a dependence upon materialism and conspicuous consumption for success. J.D. Salinger’s short-story cycle, Nine Stories (1953), explores what loss and trauma look like from all sides of war—mother, child, soldier, lover—all are harmed by war. Nine Stories emphasizes the need for nationwide spiritual healing and suggests that mothers offer the necessary antidote to consumeristic America. In fact, eight of Salinger’s Nine Stories employ one of three types of mothers: the self-serving and ineffectual mother; the spiritual, often surrogate maternal guide; and the ideal mother. While the ineffectual …
“What Do Any Of Us Really Know About Love:” A Discussion Of Irony Within Raymond Carver’S Short Story Cycle What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Niyonna Johnson
“What Do Any Of Us Really Know About Love:” A Discussion Of Irony Within Raymond Carver’S Short Story Cycle What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Niyonna Johnson
Honors College Theses
With minimalist technique, Raymond Carver manages to accurately depict a depressed working-class America. Current contemporary criticism has focused on the main themes of Carver’s work such as the struggle with identity, alcoholism, disconnection, and domesticity hardships; the one ideal that has seemed to be missing is the irony that lies within the lives of the characters. This paper will analyze, in depth, short stories from a short story cycle of Raymond Carver and detail how their current situations are directly juxtaposed by their occupations and how this benefits the currently discussed themes of his work.
Ruptures In Indentures In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And Unaccustomed Earth, Prabal D. Gupta
Ruptures In Indentures In Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter Of Maladies And Unaccustomed Earth, Prabal D. Gupta
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967) is one of the prominent American writers of Bengali descent, contributing mainly to diaspora literature to depict the nuanced aspects of Bengalis in their immigrant lives. Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008) illustrate the challenges of the Bengali diaspora due to their indentured identity, which I have used to refer to the Bengali people’s culturally-rooted identity. This study investigates how the diaspora’s native cultural identity fluctuates in connection with the host culture. The research renders a reconfigured image of “home” because the concept of home changes for these people after migration in …
Unmasking The Monster: Cathy Ames In John Steinbeck's East Of Eden, Julia N. Parker
Unmasking The Monster: Cathy Ames In John Steinbeck's East Of Eden, Julia N. Parker
Honors College Theses
Critics have considered Cathy Ames, the heinous villain of East of Eden, to be John Steinbeck's most complicated character. Although she is at times truly despicable, readers are prejudiced against her before she is even introduced by the narrator, who couches her entire existence as something monstrous and withholds information that might garner her any sympathy until her literal hour of death. Through a study of both Steinbeck's narrative techniques and his letters to his editor about her, we can see that she may not be as villainous as she is presented to be, but she is most certainly …
Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman
Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Using Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this thesis outlines how to ethically and effectively teach literature that deals with trauma. My personal teaching philosophy as well as the current pedagogy surrounding trauma literature preface a detailed syllabus, lesson plans, assessments, and activities that would be useful in teaching a course centered around literature that deals with trauma. This thesis highlights the merits of teaching trauma fiction in the literature classroom.
Maladaptive Grief: Irish And American Experiences Of Loss, Mourning, And Trauma, Abby Hey
Maladaptive Grief: Irish And American Experiences Of Loss, Mourning, And Trauma, Abby Hey
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Literature that responds to loss and expresses mourning, a genre referred to as the elegy, traditionally follows an adaptive pattern in which a mourner reaches consolation and comfort. In the modern period, however, mourning transformed into destructive experiences that were notably private. With this phenomenon of greater social and emotional isolation, writers like Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, and Elizabeth Bishop expressed rumination and irresolution. In contrast, before the twentieth century, elegies were not only more consolatory, but there was a greater emphasis on shared feeling, and this communal type of mourning is more often adaptive. By grieving together in the …
Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy
Nine Stories And The Society Of The Spectacle: An Exploration Into The Alienation Of The Individual In The Post-War Era, Margaret E. Geddy
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This thesis analyzes the thematic links between three of J. D. Salinger’s short stories published in Nine Stories (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Down at the Dinghy,” and “Teddy”), ultimately arguing that it is a short-story cycle rooted in the quandary posed by the suicide of Seymour Glass. This conclusion is reached by assessing the influence of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” on these stories, something that is understood through the Marxist frame of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, And Nowhere: The Influence Of Place On Bildungsroman, Brady Gwynn
Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, And Nowhere: The Influence Of Place On Bildungsroman, Brady Gwynn
Honors College Theses
This research focuses on two metropolitan cities, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, and addresses their connection to the novel form. Bildungsroman texts are necessary for this analysis of place because adolescence allows for the awakening of oneself and one’s surroundings. On the brink of adulthood, these protagonists reminisce on home while exploring a new landscape: the city.
Gone With The Wind And The Lost Cause, Caitlin Hall
Gone With The Wind And The Lost Cause, Caitlin Hall
Honors College Theses
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is usually considered a sympathetic portrayal of the suffering and deprivation endured by Southerners during the Civil War. I argue the opposite, that Mitchell is subverting the Southern Myth of the Lost Cause, exposing it as hollow and ultimately self-defeating.
Speculative Fiction And Speculative Ethics: Society, Science Fiction, And The Thomas Theorem, Daniel O. Missroon
Speculative Fiction And Speculative Ethics: Society, Science Fiction, And The Thomas Theorem, Daniel O. Missroon
Honors College Theses
The Thomas Theorem suggests that Speculative Fiction creates possible futures that motivate contemporary individuals to create those futures. This work explores the futures created and denied in three SF texts by modern masters Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, and Dan Simmons.
"Solace For [The] Very Soul": The Role Of Trees Within The American Short-Story Cycle, Breanna B. Harris
"Solace For [The] Very Soul": The Role Of Trees Within The American Short-Story Cycle, Breanna B. Harris
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Over the last couple of centuries, the American short-story genre became characterized by its observations of life and human nature—specifically by using scenes of nature to highlight characters’ development and the underlying theme. While much critical attention has been given to the role of nature in the American short-story cycle, very little consideration has been given to the purpose of trees and their specific breeds within the genre. This project focuses on three distinct pedagogical approaches to analyzing trees in three short-story cycles. Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the rhizome and Freud’s theory of dream-thoughts are applied to Mary Wilkins …
Books And The Big Screen: The Book Is Always Better, Sheri A. Brown, Samantha Ertenberg
Books And The Big Screen: The Book Is Always Better, Sheri A. Brown, Samantha Ertenberg
Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy
What happens when an English professor and a librarian share their love of books and reading? A campus book club is born. Many students associate reading with what happens in the classroom or studying towards a specific goal. They don’t see the power of reading for enjoyment, entertainment, and pleasure. Stephen Krushen, in The Power of Reading, defines free voluntary reading (FVR), as “reading because you want to: no book reports, no questions at the end of the chapter. In FVR you don’t have to finish the book if you don’t like it. FVR is the kind of reading …
The Significance Of The Game Of Pool In Ernest Hemingway’S “Soldier’S Home”, Molly J. Donehoo
The Significance Of The Game Of Pool In Ernest Hemingway’S “Soldier’S Home”, Molly J. Donehoo
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In his 1929 A Farewell to Arms, American Author Ernest Hemingway provides the thesis for all of American Modernism when he writes, “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” (216). If the world breaks everyone Hemingway’s focus becomes not in the breaking but in the solutions for becoming strong at the broken places. Throughout his canon Hemingway presents the healing rituals and therapeutic patterns that govern sports and game as a solution to becoming strong at the broken places. While critics have closely analyzed and scrutinized some of his most recognized short-stories, stories …
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
“There Was That In Her Face And Form Which Made Him Loathe The Sight Of Her”: Disfiguration And Deformity Of Female Characters In 19th Century American Women’S Literature, Kelsi E. Cunningham Miss
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman challenge the way that society treats and views the disabled and deformed. Through different representations of the disabled characters, the three short stories by these authors reveal the realities that women faced in the 19th century in response to rigid beauty standards and expectations. The authors in this study address the marginalized position of the disabled characters and show how society’s attempts to “normalize” the women confine them to a fixed identity. Analyzing the texts in relation to disability studies and the authors’ perceived effectiveness of social charity will …
Female Art And Artisans In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth, The Custom Of The Country, And “Roman Fever”, Julia B. Welch
Female Art And Artisans In Edith Wharton’S The House Of Mirth, The Custom Of The Country, And “Roman Fever”, Julia B. Welch
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In early twentieth century old and new New York social circles, the marriage market’s commodification of women acted as the controlling factor for relationships, female power, and personal identity. When considering Wharton’s works for the first-hand viewpoint that she provided of the marriage market, it becomes clear that her interest in art plays heavily into the way women comport themselves within her novels. In order to discuss this relationship in Edith Wharton’s works, I’ve created terms that delineate the various ways female characters respond to the pressures of the marriage market. The best way to analyze Wharton’s women is by …
"Goo-Prone And Generally Pathetic": Empathy And Irony In David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Benjamin L. Peyton
"Goo-Prone And Generally Pathetic": Empathy And Irony In David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Benjamin L. Peyton
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Critical considerations of David Foster Wallace’s work have tended, on the whole, to use the framework that the author himself established in his essay “E Unibus Pluram” and in his interview with Larry McCaffery. Following his own lead, the critical consensus is that Wallace succeeds in overcoming the limits of postmodern irony. If we examine the formal trappings of his writing, however, we find that the critical assertion that Wallace manages to transcend the paralytic irony of his postmodern predecessors is made in the face of his frequent employment of postmodern techniques and devices. Thus, there arises a contradiction between …
The American Pastoral Tradition And The Stories Of Breece D'J Pancake, Christopher Blackburn
The American Pastoral Tradition And The Stories Of Breece D'J Pancake, Christopher Blackburn
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In the late twentieth century, Breece Pancake carried on the American pastoral tradition by both featuring and modifying characteristics of early American pastoral literature. Breece Pancake does not directly imitate his predecessors, but instead brings the spirit of the nearly 200-year-old tradition in which he participates to a twentieth-century audience. Part of the enduring relevance of the literature in the American pastoral tradition, including The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, is that at the heart of these stories is a theme that has defined and continues to shape the American experience: the struggle with living in liminal spaces.
From This Dark Place To The Other: Violence And Connection In The Poetry Of Brian Turner, Alan R. Swirsky
From This Dark Place To The Other: Violence And Connection In The Poetry Of Brian Turner, Alan R. Swirsky
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
Brian Turner is a poet and American soldier who served in Iraq at the start of the 21st century. His poetry is about his experiences as a soldier interacting with the Iraqi people, his time in America following the war, PTSD, and the endless violence in the war zone. As a comparatively recent entry into the genre of War Poetry, his work pays homage to the writers who preceded him, like Wilfred Owen and Bruce Weigl, while also referencing Middle Eastern poets typically outside the scope of American literature. Through Turner’s recurring themes and motifs, connections are established between …
Blood As A Binding Agent In Cormac Mccarthy's _The Crossing_, Erin M. Martin
Blood As A Binding Agent In Cormac Mccarthy's _The Crossing_, Erin M. Martin
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
In Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing, one of the most important aspects of blood is the way it connects Billy Parham to his family and the world around him. Billy's actions are driven largely by his desire to maintain his moral code and his connections to nature and his maternal grandmother. His link to nature begins with an encounter with a wolf pack and continues with an attempt to return a she-wolf to her homeland. The connection to his grandmother provides him with the means to do so when he crosses the border from New Mexico into Mexico. Billy's ability …
“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman
“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman
College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations
This paper focuses on the contradictory merging of the differentiating forces that drive the natural world and the people in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, with the most prominent being Billy’s persistent naïve view of the world as he grows from a boy to a man on his journey. The Border Trilogy chronicles the coming of age journey of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. The second installment, The Crossing, focuses on the various dichotomies that construct the natural world—all of which are mirrored in Billy’s relationships with the mystical she-wolf, his brother, Boyd, the various people that he meets on his …
Spencer Wallace Cone Family Papers, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections
Spencer Wallace Cone Family Papers, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections
Finding Aids
This collection consists of materials related to the Spencer Wallace Cone family spanning 1810-1976 with the majority of materials dated between 1810 and 1892.. Materials include nineteenth and early twentieth century correspondence between members of the Cone family, including Spencer Houghton Cone and Spencer Wallace Cone. Also included are military documents related to the 61st New York Infantry regiment, legal documents, biographical information, sermons and notes by Spencer Houghton Cone, records of the Oliver Street Church (1825-1840), a household account book, photographs, and records relating to the settlement of Spencer Houghton Cone II’s estate. Spencer Wallace Cone’s literary works, including …