Literature in English, North America Commons^™

A Dark Record: Criminal Discourse And The African American Literary Project, 1721-1864, Brian Baaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A Dark Record charts the emergence and traces the evolution of a central figure in American culture, the myth of the black criminal. It does so both to explore the ideological effects of print, and to present an alternative history of African American literature. Historians have long maintained that the association of African Americans with crime solidified in our national culture during the post-Reconstruction period, the nadir for African American civil rights, with a corresponding rise in the over-policing of black individuals and communities. For its part, my study looks back from the post-Reconstruction period, and examines the role earlier …

Review Of Joyce Carol Oates's The Doll-Master And Other Tales Of Terror, Eric K. Anderson

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

Review of Joyce Carol Oates's book of short stories The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, focusing on elements of genre and the tradition of American storytelling.

Animals As Projections Of The Self In “The Raven” And “The Black Cat”, Samantha Payerl

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In both “The Raven” and “The Black Cat,” Edgar Allan Poe has the narrator project himself into an animal in order to fulfill the manifestation of his desire. Each animal is a projection of the narrator’s subconscious desire, which allows him to embrace his manic, sadistic tendencies. The manifestation of desire through animals in these stories can be best understood through two lenses: Jacques Lacan’s theory about the mirror stage and contemporary animal studies. Poe’s narrators are stuck in the mirror stage, which hinders them and does not allow their egos to grow and mature. Rather than developing crucial coping …

Daisy Miller: Picking-Up James’S Psychological Breadcrumbs, Amanda D'Amore

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This essay attempts to investigate the evolution of social hierarchy among Europeanized Americans as described by Henry James in Daisy Miller: A Study. Social Darwinism is utilized, in conjunction with theories regarding the cultivation and development of nineteenth century civilization, in order to illuminate the psychological impact of social restrictions placed upon agents functioning within this society.

Overcoming Sin: Comparing Dante’S Inferno And The New Testament To Cormac Mccarthy’S Outer Dark And Child Of God, Tammy S. Hanson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

There are many textual and thematic similarities between Dante’s Inferno and Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark. There are also significant textual similarities between the New Testament and McCarthy’s third novel, Child of God. Juxtaposing Outer Dark and Child of God to Inferno and the New Testament, respectively, suggests a common trope that redemption requires characters’ name and repent of sin.

The Family Gothic: Identity And Kinship In The American Gothic Tradition, Meagan Elizabeth Riley

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

American Gothic literature contains many stories of families under duress, or individuals struggling to reconcile their family identity with their national identity. These stories often coincide directly with the anxieties of the American nation. Through the works of three authors, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft, I will study how the families of their works represent the concerns of the entire nation, and how Gothic terms catapult these stories into the American canon.

Regimes Of Prestige And Power: Transnational Authorship And International Acclaim In Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, Kyle Eveleth

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This essay will examine the reception of Rutu Modan’s international-award-winning graphic novel Exit Wounds (2007) in the massive cultural centers of the United States and France by situating its success within the inter/transnational dynamics of the contemporary comics market, or what James English would term an “economy of prestige.” My essay reconsiders Exit Wounds beyond its popular status as an international phenomenon—that is, one that crosses national borders but which maintains distinctions between those nations it enters and its home state—by considering it a transnational work—one which blurs the lines between nation-states in its form, function, and reception. To do …

Liberating Irony: Investigating Postmodern Techniques In David Foster Wallace's Short Fiction, Timothy Urban

Master’s Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Facing Our Future: An Examination Of Age And Gender In Margaret Atwood's The Stone Mattress, Makenzie Krause

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

This thesis examines the intersectionality of age and gender in Margaret Atwood's The Stone Mattress. Atwood is well known for her speculative fiction, and she uses this style of storytelling to create futuristic worlds that easily mirror what our own future will look like. I find that Atwood's characters are marginalized in these worlds, not solely because of their age and gender, but because of the interdependency of age and gender. The fact that Atwood's societies rely so heavily on these discourses causes the characters unnecessary suffering and thus prevents them from living to their fullest potential. Because Atwood's …

"Out Of The Dark Confinement!" Physical Containment In Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature, Allison Lane Tharp

Dissertations

Most scholarship on American protest literature tends to focus on the protest literature of specific, politically marginalized groups, such as black protest, women’s protest, or working class protest. My project redefines how we read nineteenth-century American protest literature by investigating the connections between the protest texts of these three marginalized groups. In particular, I argue that mid-nineteenth-century protest authors incorporate images of physical confinement and entrapment within their texts to expose to privileged readers the physical and ideological containment and control marginalized subjects encounter in their daily lives. Drawing from rhetorical theories of argumentation and audience engagement, and incorporating historical …

The Scarlet Letter And Novel Structure, Cade S. Miller

Research in Literary Studies (ENG 321)

“The Scarlet Letter and Novel Structure” examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of narrative role and conflict in The Scarlet Letter. To start, the paper examines the novel’s opening chapter “The Custom-House” as a device utilized by Hawthorne to establish a narrator-reader relationship early in the work, and how this allows Hawthorne to influence the reader’s interpretations of the novel’s main trio: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. The paper then moves on to examine the utilization of conflict throughout the novel, which is structured in a unique way, when compared to other novels of the time, thanks to …

Transforming The Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’S "High Society" With George Cukor’S "The Philadelphia Story" As An Emphasis On The Importance Of Theatre, Dana T. Speight Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, …

The Scripture Of Helices, Jessica M. Ramer

Master's Theses

This thesis comprises poems written during my two years of study for the Master of Arts Degree in English with a creative writing emphasis. The majority of the poems are written in either a received or contemporary form, although a substantial minority are written in free verse. Many of the poems deal with extreme circumstances such as combat and imprisonment. Others address family stresses due to birth, death, remarriage, and clashes of values. Some poems have a religious emphasis while others are firmly rooted in the natural world. All, however, are explorations of human nature.

Lost Generations And The Problem Of American Identity : The Emergence Of Racial Nativism In American Culture (1890s-1920s), Gloria Lugo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis problematizes traditional generic groupings (such as realism, naturalism, and modernism) since such categories segregate texts into literary periods defined largely by artificial formalist criteria. These ahistorical distinctions tend to deemphasize social and cultural import and also occlude analyses of texts as cultural products that express the dominant ideology of a particular epoch. A historical analysis focusing on cultural ideology can offer new insights to how various canonical texts perpetuate American mythologies and stereotypes. When interrogating texts of the Progressive and Modernist Eras, a pattern emerges that conflates racism and nativism in an effort to define Americans as elite …

William Faulkner's Southern Landscape, Rachel V. Ford

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

The American South is a region full of rich and complicated history, undergoing slavery, war, poverty, ecological devastation, and racial violence. One of the most famous and distinctly southern writers of the twentieth century is William Faulkner, whose works challenge the idealistic Lost Cause mentality of white supremacy and highlight major issues within southern society. Faulkner’s writings are set in Mississippi, grounded with a distinct sense of place. The southern landscape provides more than simply a backdrop to the stories, but plays an active role in plot and character development. This thesis examines three of Faulkner’s novels, discussing their historical …

Robert Frost’S Ulteriority: Saying One Thing In Terms Of Another – The Inexpressible, Nicolette S. Stackhouse

Honors Theses

Robert Frost’s poetry, which is famously rich in double meaning—saying one thing but meaning something else—is also concerned with pragmatism. Pragmatism implies that there is no one fundamental universal truth. I contend that Robert Frost’s poetry says that duplicity of meaning, or ulteriority, is something to be embraced. Frost wants the uncertainty of meaning to be understood by the reader as vital to life and the mind’s processes. The simple fact that so many readers search for the hidden meanings in his poetry justly proves this point. As a pragmatist, Frost was aware that the process of getting to a …

Jazz Epidemics And Deep Set Diseases: The De-Pathologization Of The Black Body In The Work Of Three Harlem Renaissance Writers, Shane C. Hunter

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that the Harlem Renaissance was, in part, a response to Victorian-era medical and scientific racism, and that the three writers on which it centers, Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Wallace Thurman (1902-1934), and Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987), participated in subverting these racist discourses. I focus on elements of their creative work that de-pathologize the black body. Specifically, I consider how these writers undermine Victorian-era medical racism that had, by the 1920s, come to inform American racial politics. Hughes’s, Thurman’s, and Nugent’s work from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s is at least partly concerned with undermining medically racist ideology …

“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the complexities of civilian identity and the crisis of gender in twentieth century fiction produced after World War I. Of central concern are four novels written by prominent women authors, novels that deal with themes of trauma, violence, and shifting gender roles in a post-war society: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s Room. Although these novels do not directly portray the battlefield experiences of war, I argue that, at their core, they are “war novels” in the fullest sense, concerned with the …

Keats And America: Attitudes And Appropriations, Jessica Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While John Keats never traveled to America and only wrote a handful of admittedly hostile lines about it in his poetry, American writers and readers have consistently regarded Keats as one of the greatest and most influential poets of the past two centuries. His critical reputation in America has been stable since the 1840s, enduring throughout changing tastes and movements, and his biography and work have been utilized in manifold appropriations by American poets and writers. I examine Keats’s attitude toward the United States—which was in conflict with the general feeling regarding the country by his fellow Romantic poets—and briefly …

Master Buddha & The Jolly Golly Fun Time Gang., Todd Edward Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is the first two chapters of a novel. The novel parodies the capitalist and consumerist United States of the 21st Century in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Donald Barthelme.

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the stories, reading them …

Flannery O'Connor And The Poetics Of Prayer: The Analysis Of A Prayer Journal, Emily Wilson

Masters Theses

Prior to the recent discovery of her college prayer journal, kept between 1946 and 1947, knowledge of Flannery O’Connor’s religious influence and activity had been restricted to her letters and published works, such as Mystery and Manners and The Habit of Being. Works such as these shed light onto O’Connor’s background and religious views, making her Catholic faith obvious and explicit. This prayer journal exposes a new aspect of her faith – that is the personal relationship between herself and God shown through narrative. Her prayer journal makes it clear that her external expression of faith, showcased in most of …

Perceptions Of Southern Culture And Writing Program Effectiveness At A Community College: A Phenomenology, Mary Fetters

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this hermeneutical phenomenological study was to develop a deeper understanding of the perceptions of students, faculty, administration, and visiting Southern authors of the effectiveness of Chattanooga State Community College’s Writers@Work program for encouraging composition student writing and learning about Southern culture. Southern culture is defined as phenomena which shape the regional experience and resonate through the lives of individuals native to the US South. Participants in the study that was conducted in Chattanooga, Tennessee consisted of two current English administrators, four current English professors, eight composition students who participated in the Writers@Work program, and two visiting Southern …

An Anthropological Exploration Of Latino Immigrant Identity In Contemporary Migration Literature, Laura Hoppe

Honors Capstone Projects

Immigration remains one of the hottest topics of debate in the United States. As a country constructed by immigrants and home to over one million newly admitted immigrants each year, the immigration phenomenon has contributed extensively to the multiculturalism seen in the United States today. While many immigrant groups have historically lived in marginalization, the 21st century has proven especially difficult for Latino immigrants--those from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. As the current largest immigrant group, Latinos have received a lot of backlash and discrimination in the U.S. Many of these immigrants, whether they immigrate to the U.S. temporarily or …

Huckleberry Finn And The Picaresque As Lens Against Debt Peonage, Cory Dahlstrom

Annual Graduate Student Symposium

The literary genre of picaresque originated in Sixteenth Century Spain, but has become a prominent staple in American culture–especially post-Civil War. This project specifically discusses the role Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn played in analyzing the failures of reconstruction’s provision toward African American freedom and equality.

Penelope’S Daughters, Barbara Dell`Abate-Çelebi

Zea E-Books Collection

A feminist perspective of the myth of Penelope in Annie Leclerc’s Toi, Pénélope, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Silvana La Spina’s Penelope.

At the origin of Western literature stands Queen Penelope—faithfully waiting for her husband to come home: keeping house, holding on to the throne, keeping the suitors at arm’s length, preserving Odysseus’ place and memory, deserted for the pursuit of war and adventures, and bringing up a son alone, but always keeping the marriage intact. Yet recently the character of Penelope, long the archetype of abandoned, faithful, submissive, passive wife, has been reinterpreted by feminist criticism and re-envisioned by …

Antitheatricality And Irrationality: An Alternative View, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Over the last three decades, antitheatrical authors like Stephen Gosson, Phillip Stubbes, and William Prynne have become increasingly visible in the literary and cultural studies of the early modern period. Even so, the tendency has been to treat these authors as ideological extremists: reactionary hacks whose opposition to stage plays originates in outrageous ideas of the self, impossible notions of right and wrong, and bizarre beliefs about humanity’s susceptibility to external suggestion. This characterization can be traced back to several of the pioneering studies in the field, including Jonas Barish’s The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1985) and Laura Levine’s Men in Women’s …

The Weight Of “Glory”: Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, And Women’S Issues In Middlemarch, Megan Armknecht

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Activism, Community And Cultural Heritage: “Communitism” In Creek Literature, Rachel Maria Cain

Honors Theses

"Communitism" refers to literature that encourages activism by celebrating and promoting American Indian communities. This thesis investigates how the literary works, The Fus Fixico Letters (1902 – 1908) and Drowning in Fire (2004), are communitist by supporting specific political and social changes in Creek communities. Through The Fus Fixico Letters Alexander Posey promoted his progressive political convictions, including that Creeks should embrace land allotment and endorse the creation a separate state for American Indians. Drowning in Fire, by Craig Womack, takes place throughout 1904 – 1993 and relates traditional Creek stories and practices to modern life. The novel delves …

Selected Nick Adams Stories: Ernest Hemingway’S Sense Of Place, Brendan M. Raleigh

Student Publications

This thesis examines how Ernest Hemingway’s use of natural imagery and physical elements in several of his semi-autobiographical Nick Adams stories offer insights into his character, especially Nick Adams. It analyzes Adams’s interactions with the physical world and compares these interactions with his interpersonal relationships and his own development. The short stories that this thesis examines include “Indian Camp,” “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “Now I Lay Me,” “The End of Something,” “The Three Day Blow,” and “Big Two-Hearted River.” In these stories, Hemingway uses the natural world as a defense mechanism for Nick Adams, a character who turns …