Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Literature, british isles'
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Franco, Chelsea E. "The (Wo)Man in the Masque: Cross-Dressing as Disguise in Early Modern English Literature." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1780.
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Characters’ identities are integral to how audiences relate to them. But what happens when the character suddenly alters his or her outward appearance? Are they still the same person? This thesis seeks to argue that disguise does not alter a character’s true nature, as evidenced by Pyrocles in Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia and the Prince in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure. Both Pyrocles’ suit of Philoclea and the Prince’s suit of Lady Happy are successful because, however subversive they appear at first, they ultimately adhere to societal norms of the time. The relationship between the cross-dressed prince and his love interest in both works only appears to subvert heteronormative expectations for the time, but ultimately adheres to these societal norms once the disguised character’s true identity is revealed to his chosen partner.
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Cauley, Alexandra M. "Delight in Possibility: Female Community and Elizabeth Gaskell." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/446.
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This thesis defines and traces female community across Elizabeth Gaskell's novels Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters. Gaskell utilizes the fictionality of these communities to explore different ways of being for women. Here women control not only the plot, but their own lives.
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Hertz, John J. "“The Heighe Worthynesse of Love”: Visions of Perception, Convention, and Contradiction in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde." VCU Scholars Compass, 2017. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4829.
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This thesis examines three images associated with the manuscripts and early printed editions of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde which I have dubbed “Prostrate Troilus,” “Pandarus as Messenger,” and “Criseyde in the Garden.” These images are artifacts of contemporary textual interpretation that “read” Chaucer’s text and the tale of Troilus. They each illustrate the way in which Troilus, Pandarus, and Criseyde “read” images, gestures, symbols, and speeches within the narrative, and they show how these characters are constrained and influenced by their individual primary modes of perception. Troilus reads but does not analyze. Pandarus actively reads his own meanings into messages. Criseyde’s reading is reflective. Ultimately, the different interpretive strategies that Chaucer explores in Troilus mirror those of Chaucer’s readers.
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Hanrahan, Gregory Scott. "Love Affairs as Power Struggles in English Court Life: John Donne's "The Apparition," "The Extasie," and "The Canonization"." W&M ScholarWorks, 1988. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539720292.
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McLeod, Sylvia. "An examination of biography in Possession by A.S. Byatt and Dickens by Peter Ackroyd." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 1997. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/881.
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This thesis is an examination of Possession by A.S. Byatt and Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, and aims to contribute to the Poetics of biography. Although there has been a paucity of literature about biography until the latter part of the twentieth century, a growing number of writings, by biographers and scholars, reflects the interest in developing a body of theory of the biography genre. My thesis is a part of this initiative. The two works which I have chosen for this project are critiques of biography, albeit from different perspectives. Possession is a novel which narrativises issues of biography, while Dickens takes the form of a fictionalised biography. Since there is a metabiographical element in both works, they provide scope for a radical approach to an examination of biography. I am unaware of any criticism which addresses theoretical issues of biography using two different genres. The issues under examination in this thesis begin with an attempt to define biography. By means of Possession and Dickens, I explore the nature and parameters of biography. I then examine the issue of truth in biography, and the possibility of distilling the essential nature of a subject from diverse, and probably unreliable sources. Associated with this issue is the question of the authoritative stance of the biographer, both with regard to transmitting the truth about his or her subject, and concerning issues of representation of women in biography. Finally, I examine textual design in biography, and the problematics of fusing factual with aesthetic elements in what purports to be a non-fictional form. My aim is to synthesise the theories expressed by Peter Ackroyd and A.S. Byatt, and a range of other biographers and critics, and thereby generate my own. By contributing to the Poetics of biography, I hope to enhance readers' appreciation of this literary form.
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Conover, Andrea. "Post-Wartime vs. Post-War Time: Temporality and Trauma in Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Years." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1195.
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In these novels, Woolf demonstrates the ways in which wartime trauma affects post-war life, from the societal trauma of losing an entire generation in Jacob’s Room, to the continuation of wartime beyond the end of the war for traumatized soldiers and anyone whose lives they touch in Mrs. Dalloway, to recovery through the creation of art and family ties in To the Lighthouse, to the question of futurity inherent in wartime trauma in The Years.
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Joanna Baillie’s Columbus: A Response to Current British Notions About Empire." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/3224.
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Glosson, Sarah G. "Performing Jane: a cultural history of Jane Austen's fans in America." W&M ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539720290.
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Jane Austen's American fans have a vibrant history. This dissertation traces how fans have sustained devotion to Austen, her works, and her world since the early nineteenth century through a set of practices still current among fans today: collecting objects and knowledge; writing imitative works; and carrying out literary pilgrimage.;I argue that these three modes of engagement are performative. Through practices such as creating and collecting material objects, and writing and reading fan fiction, fans engage in acts of what Joseph Roach has called surrogation. This is a performative means through which fans seek a substitute for a past affective experience that can never be repeated in the same way, such as reading a beloved novel for the first time. These acts take place within the everyday lives of fans who seek pleasure from Austen's world. Through pilgrimage fans enter into a liminal space, apart from the quotidian, where they may perform subjectivity as fans. These performances are enacted during pilgrimage to Austen-related sites, as well as to special events like those sponsored by the Jane Austen Society of North America.;Throughout this dissertation I offer evidence of fan practices overlooked or underrepresented by past studies. This evidence reveals nearly two hundred years of continuity within the American Austen fandom. These fans enjoy a nostalgic, personal connection to Austen, her characters, and her era. their practices offer means of entering Austen's world, seeking pleasure, fulfillment, and community; they also offer means of re-engaging with the original texts, always in search of something new within the familiar.;This case study of Jane Austen fandom contributes to the larger understanding of fans and fan practices. The Austen fandom boasts unique qualities and has a history predating the term "fan," yet it resembles recent popular culture media fandoms. Through a history of three modes of fan practices, I describe and theorize how performativity and surrogation work within fandom, proposing new, more specific ways of understanding the subjectivity, history, and practices of fans---representing prevalent and creative ways American culture consumes literature and narrative media.
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Forester, Gus. "Was Gawain a Gamer?" Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/249.
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Describes a theory of gaming inspired primarily by Jean Baudrillard’s claim that gaming is characterized by a “passion for rules.” Key elements of the theory include that games are an attempt to create a new reality, that games create a space for individuality even in an otherwise homogenized world, and that pain and happiness are not diametrically opposed concepts to the gamer. The theory also emphasizes the importance of the player’s meeting with the “superplayer,” the player’s own constructed ideal that he tries to imitate within the game world. This theory of gaming is then applied to the 14th century British poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both as a demonstration of the theory and to offer a new perspective on the poem. Gawain’s character in the poem is argued as being the archetype of the modern gamer, escaping from an oppressive hegemony by daring to follow the superplayer’s seduction into the passionate world of gaming.
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Ferguson, Lisa. "Lady Macbeth and Gertrude: A Study in Gender." TopSCHOLAR®, 2002. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/656.
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The detailed examination of two of Shakespeare's female leads, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, is designed to determine whether or not these particular characters were free from the confines of their society, or if they were content within its oppressive grasp. A combination of Feminist Criticism and New Historicism reveals that Lady Macbeth and Gertrude did not overstep the bounds of their gender, but in fact were suppressed within them. The limited rights and freedoms of a woman during the Renaissance is heavily discussed, and aids in giving the reader a vivid impression of Lady Macbeth's and Gertrude's subjugation. As Renaissance women were considered and treated inferior to their husbands in all respects, so are these two characters. Once the supposed driving force behind her husband's actions, Lady Macbeth makes a swift but devastating departure after Macbeth expels her from both his personal and political matters. No longer needing his wife to appease his conscience, Macbeth finds his own aptitude for evil. Torn between her roles as a wife and mother, Gertrude forfeits her happiness to please her overemotional son. Long before her actual death, Gertrude sacrifices a part of her identity to meet Hamlet's expectations. Both women relinquish their hopes and dreams to fulfill those of the men around them. Their blinded selflessness and misplaced devotion result in their ultimate undoing. Though the typical reader of Macbeth and Hamlet sometimes considers these particular female characters to be strong, bold, and selfish, the values of Shakespeare's era and his actual text suggest otherwise. The playwright's time was marked by a bitter gender struggle that pervaded all areas of Renaissance life, including his own work. Upon first glance, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude might come across as women who were strikingly independent. Throughout the progression of the plays, however, both women take a backseat to more important matters, such as politics and war. Even their deaths do not truly belong to them, as they seem to serve as mere asides to the inevitable "manly" action. Striving to meet the expectations of the men they loved, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude lose themselves in the process.
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Pickett, Lewis. ""In What Particular Thought to Work": Hamlet and Manic-Depression." TopSCHOLAR®, 1996. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/797.
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By means of contemporary diagnostic criteria, Prince Hamlet may be demonstrated to be a Bi-Polar I Manic Depressive. Because current genetic research suggests that this disease is inherited, it is logical to ask if Claudius also suffers from this disorder. It can be demonstrated that he does. We may conclude that Claudius murdered the late King of Denmark during a manic episode similar to the one in which Hamlet kills Polonius.
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Elhefnawy, Nader. "D.H. Lawrence and civilization: a study of D.H. Lawrence's "leadership" novels, Aaron's rod, Kangaroo and the plumed serpent." FIU Digital Commons, 2002. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3135.
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D.H. Lawrence's "leadership" novels, namely Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent, dealt with the ramifications of industrial civilization. This thesis uses a "Tofflerian" approach, drawing on the works of the futurist Alvin Toffler's "trilogy" of noted books on the rate, direction and consequences of "civilizational" change, Future Shock, The Third Wave and Powershift. This thesis argues that Lawrence recognizes the demise of the "love-urge" that had sustained civilization in Aaron's Rod; seeks and fails to find a solution in the political movements of his time in Kangaroo, demonstrating the impossibility of a modem solution to inherently modern problems; and in The Plumed Serpent, seeks an answer in a way of life apart from industrial civilization entirely.
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Reid, Joshua. "Using Questioning in the Classroom." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2867.
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Slagle, Judith Bailey. "Thomas Shadwell." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/482.
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Book Summary Provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the poetry, drama, fiction, and literary and cultural criticism produced from the Restoration of the English monarchy to the onset of the French Revolution Comprises over 340 entries arranged in A-Z format across three fully indexed and cross-referenced volumes Written by an international team of leading and emerging scholars Features an impressive scope and range of subjects: from courtship and circulating libraries, to the works of Samuel Johnson and Sarah Scott Includes coverage of both canonical and lesser-known authors, as well as entries addressing gender, sexuality, and other topics that have previously been underrepresented in traditional scholarship Represents the most comprehensive resource available on this period, and an indispensable guide to the rich diversity of British writing that ushered in the modern literary era
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Hill, Jonathan. "Composing the Postmodern Self in Three Works of 1980s British Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3247.
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This thesis utilizes Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self” to examine three texts from 1980s British literature for the ways that postmodern writers compose the self. The first chapter “Liminality and the Art of Self-Composition” explores the ways in which liminal space and time contributes to the self-composition in J.L. Carr’s hybrid Victorian/postmodern novel A Month in the Country (1980). The chapter on Jeanette Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) titled “Intertextuality and the Art of Self-Composition” argues that Winterson’s intertextual play enables her protagonist Jeanette to resist the dominance of religious discipline and discourse and compose a more autonomous, artistically oriented self. The third chapter, titled “Spatial Experimentation and the Art of Self-Composition,” examines R.S. Thomas’s collection The Echoes Return Slow (1988), a hybrid text of prose and poetry, arguing that Thomas explores spatial gaps in the text as generative spaces for self-composition.
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Sauzer, Dunn Lauren K. "Examination, Exertion, and Exemplification: Wives of Anglican Clergymen in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2015. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2025.
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Jane Austen’s Anglicanism shaped her works, especially her novels Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. Austen is didactic regarding the future of the clergy of the Church of England through the clergymen in these novels (Henry Tilney, Edward Ferrars, and Edmund Bertram, respectively), but her didacticism is clearest through these characters’ wives, Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, and Fanny Price. Mansfield Park and the marriage of Edmund and Fanny are the most explicit exploration of Austen’s view of what was necessary for the future of the Church as it continued changing in the nineteenth century.
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Powell, Caitlin E. "Man Pain in the Man Booker Prize: A Quantitative Approach to Contemporary Canon Formation." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/425.
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This project examines the corpus of novels that have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize and, using the prize as a creator of a contemporary literary canon, attempts to develop a model of a contemporary best text. Using the distant reading techniques proposed by digital humanities scholar Franco Moretti to track and graph a variety of formal and structural variables across the corpus of nominees, it becomes apparent that the kind of novel that typically wins the Booker Prize and thus the kind of novel that qualifies as a contemporary best text fits a distinct mold. These novels are solemn, serious texts written by British or Irish men, and the stories they tell concern young British or Irish men struggling, often alone, in pain, and under the threat of impending age, through a brutal, violent, and amoral world.
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Westover, Daniel. "R. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2011. http://a.co/0Kggfyi.
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Daniel Westover traces Thomas's poetic development over six decades, demonstrating how the complex interior of the poet manifests itself in the continually shifting style of his poems.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1100/thumbnail.jpg
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Weiss, Katherine. "Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2007. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2281.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Beckett's "Happy Days": Rewinding and Revolving Histories." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2010. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2283.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Harold Pinter’s Other Places (Staged Reading)." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2309.
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ETSU Patchwork Players will perform a staged reading of Other Places – 3 Plays by Harold Pinter in Studio 205 of Campus Center Building at 7:30 p.m. free of charge. The reading is under the direction of Theatre & Dance faculty member Melissa Shafer and advising of Department of Literature & Language Chair Dr. Katherine Weiss, acting as dramaturg.
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Kennedy, Seán, and Katherine Weiss. "Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2010. https://www.amzn.com/0230619444.
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This volume comprises ten essays challenging the dominant account of Samuel Beckett’s engagement with history. As the first full-length volume to address the historical debate in Beckett studies, Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive provides both ground-breaking analysis of the major works as well as a sustained interrogation of the critical assumptions that underpin Beckett studies more generally. Drawing on a range of archival materials, and situating Beckett in historical context, these essays pose a strong challenge to the prevailing critical consensus that he was a deracinated modernist who cannot be read historically.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1185/thumbnail.jpg
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Weiss, Katherine. "Book Review of Samuel Beckett’s Plays on Film and Television by Graley Herren." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2008. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2289.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Book Review of A Companion to Samuel Beckett edited by S.E. Gontarski." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2011. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2290.
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Reid, Joshua. ""Love Forswore Me in My Mother’s Womb”: Richard III and the Medical Humanities." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2863.
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McGee, Katherine Marie. "Responsibility and Responsiveness in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5376.
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This dissertation looks at the ways in which humans interact with and respond to other humans and nonhumans in Ann Radcliffe's and Mary Shelley's novels. I argue that in light of the social and political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, Radcliffe and Shelley call not so much for Revolution or drastic reform but for a change in the ways in which individuals respond to the needs of others, both human and nonhuman, and take responsibility for each other. The ways in which humans interact with the nonhuman inform the positive and negative practices that they should use to interact with other humans and vice versa.
Chapter One considers the connection between nature and culture in Radcliffe'sA Sicilian Romance, The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The Italian to argue that Radcliffe's "explained supernatural" occupies a liminal space between nature and culture. Furthermore, some of the upper class are able to discern that the "real," or material, supernatural does not exist while still acknowledging that some form of spiritual supernatural presence is possible, thus reflecting a heightened awareness of concepts beyond the material.
Chapter Two looks at Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian to argue that characters who are able to appreciate nature, particularly landscape, are more admirable than those who ignore it. Specifically, these characters indicate an openness to forming reciprocal relationships with the landscapes, allowing the views offered by the landscapes to offer them peace or comfort while simultaneously respecting the power the landscapes hold. Drawing from the theories of place theorists Tim Cresswell and Yi-Fu Tuan, this chapter posits that landscapes can be classified as being on the verge of place.
Chapter Three looks at Frankenstein and The Last Man to argue that Shelley demonstrates the types of reciprocal relationships people should form with both humans and nonhumans. Donna Haraway's idea of "contact zones"--places where the human and nonhuman can communicate--inform this reading of the relationships between the human and nonhuman in these two novels. It investigates how Victor Frankenstein and the creature define "human" and then asserts that in Frankenstein the creature cannot form a place for communication with any of the humans whose acceptance and companionship he seeks because no one is willing to do so. The Last Man's Lionel Verney, on the other hand, is able to form reciprocal relationships with both the human and the nonhuman, thus enabling him to ultimately become the "last man."
The fourth and final chapter looks at Shelley's Valperga, Lodore, and The Last Man, set in the past, present, and future, respectively, arguing that Shelley uses these different time settings in order to demonstrate that many of the struggles people have are similar to ones that others had in the past and will continue to have in the future if people do not adjust the ways in which they respond to disaster. By presenting readers with specifics about location and environment, Shelley creates settings that readers can connect to and then entertain the idea that these characters' struggles are like their own.
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McIntyre-McCullough, Keisha Simone. "Teachers’ Experiences in and Perceptions of their12th-Grade British Literature Classrooms." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1012.
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The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences and perceptions of 12th-grade literature teachers about curriculum, Post-Colonial literature, and students. Theories posed by Piaget (1995), Vygotsky (1995), and Rosenblatt (1995) formed the framework for this micro-ethnographic study. Seven teachers from public and private schools in South Florida participated in this two-phase study; three teachers in Phase I and four in Phase II. All participants completed individual semi-structured interviews and demographic surveys. In addition, four of the teachers were observed teaching.
The analysis yielded three themes and two sub-themes: (a) knowledge concerned teachers’ knowledge of British literature content and Post-Colonial authors and their literature; (b) freedom described teachers’ freedom to choose how to teach their content. Included in this theme was dilemmas associated with 12th-grade classrooms which described issues that were pertinent to the 12th-grade teacher and classroom that were revealed by the study; and (c) thoughts about students described teachers’ perceptions about students and how literature might affect the students. Two subthemes of knowledge were as follows:(1) text complexity described teacher responses to a Post-Colonial text’s complexity and (2) student desirability/teachability described teachers’ perception about how desirable Post-Colonial texts would be to students and whether teachers would be willing to teach these texts.
The researcher offers recommendations for understanding factors associated with 12th-grade teachers perceptions and implications for enhancing the 12th-grade experience for teachers and curriculum, based on this study: (a) build teacher morale and capacity, (b) treat all students as integral components of the teaching and learning process; teachers in this study thought teaching disenfranchised learners was a form of punishment meted out by the administration, and (c) include more Post-Colonial authors in school curricula in colleges and schools as most teachers in this study did not study this type of literature nor knew how to teach it.
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Weiss, Katherine. "’Am I as much as … being seen?’ The Necessary yet Agonizing Act of Looking and Being Looked at in Samuel Beckett’s Play." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2006. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2275.
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Bell, Nicholas. "Reason And Imagination." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2134.
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Gyenizse, Debbie Linda. "Sexual and artistic manipulation : Elizabeth's and Leicester's key for survival in the Elizabethan era." FIU Digital Commons, 2004. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3974.
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The purpose of this thesis is to outline a new understanding of the relationship between England’s Queen Elizabeth I and her favorite courtier, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This new understanding proposes that their childhood experiences and education were fundamental to their relationship as adults. They learned their manipulative abilities as a key to survival early in their lives, and repeatedly manifested this pattern throughout the years, as willing participants in a sexual and artistic game lasting only as long as both players followed the rules. The highpoint of this union was reached during the summer of 1575 when Leicester entertained Elizabeth at his palatial country house, Kenilworth.
Critical interpretation and a multidisciplinary research approach, including history, child psychology, architecture, and literature, provide significant proof that Elizabeth and Leicester sexually manipulated each other in order to survive the turbulence of sixteenth century England.
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Sawyers, Amanda G. "“I’ve Been Given the Wrong Mother:” Reconsidering Absent Mothers in Postmodern British Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3506.
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Nineteenth-century British authors, in particular, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Jane Austen, often turned to orphaned children as a means to drive the plot of their novels. While struggles such as displacement were often accurately depicted, the abovementioned authors and their contemporaries often glossed over or completely disregarded the trauma and psychological implications felt by these orphans. As psychology gained prominence as a discipline through the works of Sigmund Freud and others, modern British literature saw a shift in its consideration of orphans and, additionally, emotionally absent mothers. This thesis will examine three modern British novels; Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and Graham Swift’s Waterland with respect to their exploration of the psychological and possible traumatic impact of their protagonists lives in a variety of disrupted family dynamics.
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McGill, Anna. "Magic and Femininity as Power in Medieval Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/293.
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It is undeniable that literature reflects much about the society that produces it. The give-and-take relationship between a society and its literature is especially interesting when medieval texts are considered. Because most medieval plots and characters are variants of existing stories, the ways that the portrayals change has the potential to reveal much about the differences between medieval societies separated by distance and time. Changes to the treatment of these recurring characters and their stories can reveal how the attitudes of medieval society changed over time. Perceptions of magic and attitudes toward its female practitioners, both real and fictional, changed drastically throughout the Middle Ages among clergy members and the ruling class. Historically, as attitudes toward women became more negative, they were increasingly prohibited from receiving a formal education and from gaining or maintaining positions traditionally associated with feminine magical power, such as healer, midwife, or wise woman. As the power of the Church grew and attitudes changed throughout the Middle Ages, women’s power in almost all areas of life experienced a proportional decrease. Using a combination of historical and literary sources, this paper will explore whether this decrease in power is evident in literary portrayals of magical female characters in medieval literature. Specifically, it will examine the agency and potency, or the intrinsic motivation and effectiveness within the story, respectively, of female characters within medieval narratives, comparing the characters to their earlier iterations. This research will offer a unique perspective on the roles of magical women in medieval literature.
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Jones, D. Michael. "The Byronic Hero and the Rhetoric of Masculinity in the 19th Century British Novel." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://www.amzn.com/1476662282/.
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From action movies to video games to sports culture, modern masculinity is intrinsically associated with violent competition. This legacy has its roots in the 19th-century Romantic figure of the Byronic hero--the ideal Victorian male: devoted husband, sexual revolutionary and weaponized servant of the state. His silhouette can be traced through the works of authors like Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde. More than a literary genealogy, this history of the Byronic hero and his heirs follows the changes that masculinity has undergone in response to industrial upheaval, the rise of the middle class and the demands of global competition, from the Victorian period through the early 20th century.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1121/thumbnail.jpg
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Bazlen, Chloe. "Depictions of the Western Artist in Colonial South Africa: Turbott Wolfe." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1127.
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This thesis explores what the role of the artist provides to the colonial novel. Using William Plomer's novel Turbott Wolfe, the role of the Western artist in colonial South Africa is examined and critiqued, putting it in conversation with the art theory of Roger Fry and the Primitivism movement. In doing so, it explores themes such as desire, miscegenation, complexity, and carnival, showing that while artists partake in society, they also remain critical of it, responding to it in their artwork.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Book Review of John Bolin, Beckett and the Modern Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2013)." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2291.
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Eachus, Jacqueline. "D.H. Lawrence's Philosophy of Human Relationships as Seen in Four Novels." TopSCHOLAR®, 1987. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2276.
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The growth of an individual into mature selfhood is the primary basis of the Lawrentian relationship. Lawrence describes a mystical kind of rebirth of the self into a deeper level of the unconscious. He says that one should explore the impulses and desires of the unconscious in order to find a deeper, more fulfilled self. Ursula of The Rainbow and Paul of Sons and Lovers are the characters who most successfully begin this growth into separate selfhood.
According to Lawrence the journey into the unconscious is to be accomplished through sensual experiences. He mistrusts the intellect because he feels that the mind distorts reality. The bodily sensations are more concrete, and therefore more real. Lawrence demonstrates in Walter Morel of Sons and Lovers, Birkin and Ursula of Women in Love, and Connie and Mellors of Lady Chatterley's Lover that spontaneous, sensual experiences are necessary to live a fully sensual life.
For Lawrence, the failure to discover the deepest, sensual self results in the need to control others. Characters who embrace abstract intellectualism and modern industrialism are the ones who attempt to force every living thing into submission to their egos. The compulsion to dominate others gives the characters a temporary feeling of fulfillment but is ultimately destructive. Gertrude, Miriam, Gerald, and Hermione are destructive characters who strive to control others. They are weak and dependent, needing another person's strength of self to feel complete.
The acknowledgement of a separate self is crucial to Lawrence's philosophy of relationships. According to his philosophy a person discovers the separate, fundamental self at the unconscious level through sensual experiences. Abstract intellectualism and industrialism are responsible for causing man's alienation from himself; his failure to discover and acknowledge a deeper self generates destructiveness which is manifested in his domination of other living beings.
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Major, David. "Charles Dickens & the Breakdown of Society's Institutions for Children." TopSCHOLAR®, 1986. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2563.
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As a social critic, Charles Dickens carries an attack against the mistreatment of children throughout his career. At first reacting in the defense of wronged children, he develops a view of the process of social breakdown that results from mistreating children. Adults fai3 in their duty to children because they fail to recognize the needs of children as children and even fail to recognize the human rights of children. This mistreatment is implemented by social institutions that are supposedly dedicated to caring for children. The family fails to bring up the child with love and care. The child's education rarely teaches him anything of use and often abuses him. An orphaned child, if he has no friends or relatives to take him in, may receive empty gestures of support from an institution but most often does not and is ignored or openly mistreated by society. Indeed, whether cast upon themselves or not, most of the children in Dickens have lost one or both parents, and this loss symbolizes the lack of care they receive. In his early novels, Dickens uses philanthropy to bring about happy endings, and in later works philanthropy continues to be the only alternative to the failed social institutions; however, Dickens later sees that society's failure is too great to be neatly corrected by individual philanthropy. In destroying its young citizens, society is slowly destroying itself. This study examines the breakdown of the family, education, and care for orphans in Dickens's novels Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, and Great Expectations.
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Herald, Patrick Steven. "BOUNDARIES OF KNOWLEDGE: EXPERTISE AND PROFESSIONALISM IN BRITISH AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/60.
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The social sciences have developed robust bodies of scholarship on expertise and professionalism, yet literary analyses of the two remain comparatively sparse. I address this gap in Boundaries of Knowledge by examining recent Anglophone fiction and showing that expertise and professionalism are central concerns of contemporary authors, both as subject matter in fiction and in their public identities. I argue that the novelists studied use and abuse expertise and professionalism: they critique professions as participant observers, and also borrow the mantle of expert credibility to bolster their own cultural capital while documenting the pitfalls of expertise in their fiction.
My first chapter shows how acquired technical knowledge and professionalism are the central concerns of Ian McEwan’s Saturday. In the novel, Henry Perowne’s professionalism is the site from which various ethical and political debates radiate. Perowne—depicted as a rather heroic expert in comparison to the other novels studied in the dissertation—is disturbed by a total outsider in the form of Baxter, a man with no prospects or future, professional or otherwise. McEwan aligns himself more closely with Perowne: in part through extensive research for Saturday, he has developed a reputation as a public figure who straddles the “two cultures” of the sciences and humanities, a reputation that exists in a synergistic relationship with his particular brand of realist fiction, which emphasizes hard work and professional credibility.
Next, I demonstrate how Zadie Smith’s On Beauty reveals a deep suspicion of academia, which in the novel serves to cut disciplinary experts off both from the world outside campus and from an appreciation of the subjects they study. Smith’s academic professionals are well-intentioned but unable to look beyond field-specific boundaries to appreciate their objects of study (and unintentionally harm outsiders along the way). Larger issues such as race are always present but at the margins of the interpersonal drama that plays out between the novel’s numerous characters. I read Smith herself as reluctantly accepting academic life, teaching at New York University while maintaining a qualified distance from American academia in articles and interviews.
Chapters one and two are broadly about the advantages and drawbacks of expert knowledge, respectively. In my third chapter, Abdulrazak Gurnah offers the most circumspect view of experts yet with a fear of a “summarizing” expert or colonizer of knowledge that is only resolved by the arrival of a more authentic Zanzibari expert. In an analysis of Gurnah’s By the Sea, I show how professional networks--the United Kingdom’s immigration and refugee system, the colonial education system in Zanzibar, and the professoriate--raise questions about who is entitled to and capable of narrating people’s lives. These questions dovetail both with the novel’s shifting narrative form and with the concerns of Gurnah’s own work as a scholar of literature.
Beginning with McEwan and ending with Gurnah, Boundaries of Knowledge travels from the most socially and economically secure, elite experts to those left behind by contemporary professionalism. My title reflects this troubled landscape of expert knowledge and professionalism: who knows what, the benefits and drawbacks of the accompanying cultural capital, and the barriers between various fields, sets of knowledge, and finally people.
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Bolisay, Ronald. "Imperial hybrids in the age of colonialism : Maintaining dominance over and negotiating desire for the native." FIU Digital Commons, 1998. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1722.
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Hybridity is typically formulated in post-colonial theory as a means of resistance, subversion, or liberatory strategy in the hands of the present-day post-colonial subject or theorist. This project, however, demonstrates hybridity as a means of securing dominance and maintaining control when wielded by the imperialist in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans (1826), Kipling's Kim (1901), and Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes (1914). The strategic deployment of hybridity in these texts also serves as an opportunity to negotiate the ambivalence and desire for the native that slips out of that hybrid space-- not necessarily sexual desire that flows between two polarized bodies, but rather, triangulated through other mediating terms such as class, nationality or manliness. Across these novels, the location of the native shifts, until it settles within the white body itself in Tarzan. Desire for the native, then, is returned to the white body in a narcissistic circle of self-glorification.
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Kim, Stephanie B. "Postcolonial Literature: Dualities in the God of Small Things." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/659.
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This thesis delves into the postcolonial genre, examining the novel, The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, and how it highlights the duality in gender roles, social class, and postcolonial society through the narrative style and language.
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Brudevold, Siri M. "The Wisdom in Folly: An Examination of William Shakespeare's Fools in Twelfth Night and King Lear." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/681.
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This thesis explores the complexities to be found in the characters of Lear's Fool from King Lear and Feste from Twelfth Night. It begins with an investigation of the history behind the taxonomy of fools that William Shakespeare created in his works. The rest of the thesis is devoted to examining the many facets of the two aforementioned fools, with the goal of discovering just how important and influential they are to their respective plots and to the world of literature. Finally, there is a brief coda that explores the other striking similarities that the two plays have in common.
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Cusimano, Maria. "Temptation, Sin, and the Human Condition in Shakespeare's Macbeth." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2015. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1969.
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William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is colored with religious overtones. His play incorporates elements of religious beliefs of Renaissance England. Aside from its historical basis, Shakespeare’s Macbeth alludes to stories from Scripture as well as Renaissance religious practices and beliefs, particularly regarding witchcraft, prophecy, and the dangers of sin. Through this myriad of sources, Shakespeare offers a vivid and grotesque depiction of a man demise due to his involvement with sin, offering a profound caution to his audience of the dangers of temptation and sin.
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Miller, Beth Katherine. "Re-Construction Through Fragmentation: A Cosmodern Reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2524.
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A cosmodern reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas creates a positive vision of the future for readers through various techniques of fragmentation including fragmentation of voice, language, and time. By fragmentation, I have in mind the consistent interruption of the novel’s voice, language, and time that requires an active and aware readership. The reader’s interaction with the text makes the novel re-constructive. In fact, the global nature of Mitchell’s novel, its hopeful ending, and its exploration of the effects of globalization can be considered as a means of exploring the dynamic relationships between the characters, the reader, and Mitchell’s authorial voice. Rather than falling back on familiar postmodernist truisms such as the hopelessness of genuine communication or the impossibility of truth, Mitchell creates a hopeful vision of the future of the world, one that champions the life, agency, and personal narrative of the individual.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Samuel Beckett’s Film: A Tribute to James Joyce." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2006. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2276.
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Toth, Leah Hutchison. "Resonant Texts: Sound, Noise, and Technology in Modern Literature." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/29.
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“Resonant Texts” draws from literary criticism, history, biography, media theory, and the history of technology to examine representations of sound and acts of listening in modern experimental fiction and drama. I argue that sound recording technology, invented in the late 19th century, equipped 20th century authors including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, and Samuel Beckett with new resources for depicting human consciousness and experience. The works in my study feature what I call “close listening,” a technique initially made possible by the phonograph, which forced listeners to focus exclusively on what they heard without the presence of an accompanying image. My study examines the literary modernists’ acute attention to the auditory in their goal to accurately represent the reality of the subjective, perceiving self in increasingly urban, technologically advanced environments.
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Radford, Laura E. "Accepting the Failure of Human and State Bodies: Interactions of Syphilis and Space in "Hamlet" and "The Knight of the Burning Pestle"." FIU Digital Commons, 2013. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1034.
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The purpose of this thesis is, first, to explore the presence and meaning of Foucault’s heterotopia within William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”and Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.” The heterotopia is a privileged space of self-reflection created by individuals or societies in crisis. In each play, the presence of crisis is explained though the metaphor of syphilis; to which individual characters respond by entering the reflective space of the heterotopia in order to countenance and “cure” their afflictions. The second purpose of this thesis is to examine the ways in which the crises acted upon the stage reflect pressing social anxieties of late – Elizabethan and early- Jacobean England: succession to the throne and shifting market structure. Both playwrights create heterotopic space for their audience through the structure of their dramatic work, and ask their audience to enter this reflective space, and consider –and learn from – their remarks upon the state of society.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Beckett’s Ruined Landscapes: Dystopian Visions after WWII." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2252.
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Weiss, Katherine. "The Plays of Samuel Beckett: Author Meets the Critics." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2254.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Traces from a Forgotten Past: Beckett’s Last Plays." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2255.
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Weiss, Katherine. "Haunted by the Blitz: History, Trauma and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/2257.
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