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- Title
- The discourse of confession and the rhetoric of the devil: unnatural attraction and gender instability in Wuthering Heights and The Master of Ballantrae.
- Creator
- DeFalco, Dana., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
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Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ;...
Show moreOften overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3170602
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Homosexuality in literature, Symbolism in literature, Confession in literature, Desire in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- " Feasting with panthers": unstable sexual identity and the pedagogic Eros in the Divine Comedy.
- Creator
- Morris, Albert., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
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The purpose of this study is to analyze the problem posed by homosexuality in Dante's Commedia. I look at several topics and questions : A) What are the implications of homosexuality in regards to both justice in the polis and to divine justice in the next world? B) What are the poetics of queer variance? C) What are the oedipal issues surrounding the Dantean father-figures VIrgil, Brunetto Latini, and other males? D) What is the role of the pedagogic Eros in promoting a strong national bond...
Show moreThe purpose of this study is to analyze the problem posed by homosexuality in Dante's Commedia. I look at several topics and questions : A) What are the implications of homosexuality in regards to both justice in the polis and to divine justice in the next world? B) What are the poetics of queer variance? C) What are the oedipal issues surrounding the Dantean father-figures VIrgil, Brunetto Latini, and other males? D) What is the role of the pedagogic Eros in promoting a strong national bond and social ethos? E) Where does Dante situate "sodomites" (and, by extension, what role does desire play) in the schemata of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and why is this important? All of these questions are interrelated and have a bearing on Dante's notion of the good society and divine justice.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3358756
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Homosexuliaty, History, Love in literature, Criticism and interpretation, Desire in literature, Criticism and interpretation, Mind and body in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The painful state of pleasure in Charlotte Brontèe's Jane Eyre.
- Creator
- Cannon, Michelle., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
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The heroine of Charlotte Brontèe's Jane Eyre is torn between her physical desire to remain close to Mr. Rochester and her psychological need for distance from him. Jane's need for distance tends to dominate her desire for closeness, and this internal conflict is reproduced externally in her relationship with Rochester, with Rochester's desire for physical proximity conflicting with Jane's desire for distance. These internal and external power struggles create a healthy sense of tension...
Show moreThe heroine of Charlotte Brontèe's Jane Eyre is torn between her physical desire to remain close to Mr. Rochester and her psychological need for distance from him. Jane's need for distance tends to dominate her desire for closeness, and this internal conflict is reproduced externally in her relationship with Rochester, with Rochester's desire for physical proximity conflicting with Jane's desire for distance. These internal and external power struggles create a healthy sense of tension necessary both to Jane, and to her relationship with Rochester because it prevents either of them from being fully satisfied, and ensures that both remain in a perpetual state of self-inflicted suffering. The suffering these characters impose on themselves and each other is necessary for the preservation of desires, which would be destroyed by fulfillment. Through my reading of the novel we gain a greater understanding of how the pain of unfulfilled desires becomes synonymous with pleasure, and the beneficial role pain, tension and unfulfilled desires plays in the text.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209985
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Self in literature, Criticism and interpretation, Desire in literature, Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)