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- Title
- The celebration of uncertainty through gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights.
- Creator
- Copeland, Kimberly., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
While critics have argued that the Gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights merely illuminate the psyches of her characters, I show that these moments allow Brontèe to reveal a unique tension and overflow of emotion that arises between her two main protagonists. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these displays --scenes of ghostly hauntings, bloody violence, and excessive emotion--create a desirable uncertainty about the limits of life and love in this novel. This...
Show moreWhile critics have argued that the Gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights merely illuminate the psyches of her characters, I show that these moments allow Brontèe to reveal a unique tension and overflow of emotion that arises between her two main protagonists. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these displays --scenes of ghostly hauntings, bloody violence, and excessive emotion--create a desirable uncertainty about the limits of life and love in this novel. This uncertainty constitutes an escape from and an alternative to the conventional romantic relationship prescribed by social and narrative standards in which two people fall in love, get married, have children and die. In my thesis, I argue that the revelation of this desired uncertainty is made possible by Brontèe's use of Gothic devices and could not have been as successfully achieved by any other literary mode.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209987
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Gothic revival (Literature), English fiction, History and criticism
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- " Merely to officiate light": the subordination and glorification of God the Son in Paradise Lost.
- Creator
- Cruikshank, Kathryn H., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis considers the role and function of God the Son within the anti-Trinitarian system John Milton envisions in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In the poem, God the Father frequently acts independently of His Son, and the divine attributes that traditionally describe the Son, including His timelessness, no longer apply to the character Milton constructs. Despite this apparent degradation, Milton still elevates the Son and considers Him to be a character worthy of our respect. To account...
Show moreThis thesis considers the role and function of God the Son within the anti-Trinitarian system John Milton envisions in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In the poem, God the Father frequently acts independently of His Son, and the divine attributes that traditionally describe the Son, including His timelessness, no longer apply to the character Milton constructs. Despite this apparent degradation, Milton still elevates the Son and considers Him to be a character worthy of our respect. To account for this seeming paradox, I propose a reading of Paradise Lost that does not dismiss Milton's heretical belief in a subjected Son, but rather uses it as a way envision a new form of power. To do so, I compare the relationship between God the Father and His Son in terms of light and sun imagery, to demonstrate how power is divided and distributed between the two, according to the scientific principles of Milton's day. In addition, I consider how Michel Foucault's concept of the docile body both applies to the Son and explains His deference to the Father. Through these analyses, I hope to demonstrate that the Son's power exists as the result of properly exercising His free will, a will that would not have been His own had He been one with His Father.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209988
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Religion, Symbolism in literature, God in literature, Religion and literature, Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The " living presence" and the "ideal character": sex, fantasy, and photographs in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
- Creator
- Taylor, Margaret, Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
In my thesis I will argue that the source of the major conflict in Jude the Obscure - the traumatic relationship between Sue and Jude - is Jude's viewing of his cousin's photograph early in the novel. Because of his tendency to idealize the individuals around him, Jude projects a desired image onto a photograph of Sue before meeting her in real life. This projection takes on an aspect of reality for Jude which he can not escape, despite Sue's efforts to disillusion him and introduce him to...
Show moreIn my thesis I will argue that the source of the major conflict in Jude the Obscure - the traumatic relationship between Sue and Jude - is Jude's viewing of his cousin's photograph early in the novel. Because of his tendency to idealize the individuals around him, Jude projects a desired image onto a photograph of Sue before meeting her in real life. This projection takes on an aspect of reality for Jude which he can not escape, despite Sue's efforts to disillusion him and introduce him to her actual self. Since his projection starkly contrasts to Sue's actual being, not only does Jude believe that the two are compatible when they are not, but he believes that Sue's attempts to disillusion him are in fact deceitful. Thus the initial impetus of the photograph eventually leads to their conflicted relationship and the tragedy of the novel overall.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/210004
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Imagination in literature, Despair in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- "Our fellows in mortality": kindness to animals in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
- Creator
- Brockway, Jessica L., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
In Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy depicts characters who are especially sensitive to the suffering of all living creatures and thus engages his novel in the topic of animal rights. In this project I examine the human-animal relationships in Hardy's novel in terms of the ideas of two different philosophers: Peter Singer and Cora Diamond. I argue that, while Singer at first seems to provide a useful model for understanding these relationships in Jude, Diamond's account of these relationships is...
Show moreIn Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy depicts characters who are especially sensitive to the suffering of all living creatures and thus engages his novel in the topic of animal rights. In this project I examine the human-animal relationships in Hardy's novel in terms of the ideas of two different philosophers: Peter Singer and Cora Diamond. I argue that, while Singer at first seems to provide a useful model for understanding these relationships in Jude, Diamond's account of these relationships is ultimately a more helpful tool for understanding Hardy's ideas about animals. Diamond helps us see that Hardy believes people should help all living creatures in pain, no matter the cost to themselves, not because they recognize their suffering, but because they recognize a shared commonality with all sentient creatures.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3334248
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Animal rights (Philosophy), Human-animal relationships in literature, Symbolism in literature, Animals and civilization
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- "One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!": twinship and doubling in Twelfth Night.
- Creator
- Puehn, Amanda M., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis considers the relationship between scientific advances, identity formation, and literature in an early modern print culture. As medical theorists made their discoveries and defended their work they did so within the literary world; turning to the printed word to cultivate their personal identity and rebut dissenting colleagues. Subsequently, playwright William Shakespeare employed common medical knowledge within his plays. Twelfth Night presents male and female twins within the...
Show moreThis thesis considers the relationship between scientific advances, identity formation, and literature in an early modern print culture. As medical theorists made their discoveries and defended their work they did so within the literary world; turning to the printed word to cultivate their personal identity and rebut dissenting colleagues. Subsequently, playwright William Shakespeare employed common medical knowledge within his plays. Twelfth Night presents male and female twins within the scope of a comedy that plays upon the issues of cross-dressing and mistaken sexual identity. During the Renaissance, it was believed that male and female seed was co-present in every person and through dominance a distinct sexual identity was developed. This thesis argues that while Shakespeare initially convoluted this by allowing one of the twins to cross-dress; he resolved the anatomical doubling by presenting both characters together on stage at the close of the play.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3335455
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Identity (Psychology) in literature, Sex role in literature, Literature and medicine, History
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- " Hover through the fog and filthy air": weather witching in Macbeth.
- Creator
- Clifford, Brooke., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
- Abstract/Description
-
This paper examines early modern climatology in order to analyze a correlation between weather, witchcraft, and their combined effects on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Contemporary climactic patterns including hailstorms, tempests, and other unusual phenomena drastically affected not only England but much of Europe. Religious and scientific texts of the period examined links between weather phenomena and witchcraft, suggesting that the weather afflictions were caused by witchcraft. Shakespeare...
Show moreThis paper examines early modern climatology in order to analyze a correlation between weather, witchcraft, and their combined effects on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Contemporary climactic patterns including hailstorms, tempests, and other unusual phenomena drastically affected not only England but much of Europe. Religious and scientific texts of the period examined links between weather phenomena and witchcraft, suggesting that the weather afflictions were caused by witchcraft. Shakespeare incorporates this suggestion into Macbeth, as well, but takes the connection even further ; the witches in the play not only use their weather magic to afflict Scotland but also control the events of the play.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3359303
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and literature, Symbolism in literature, Witchcraft in literature, Witchcraft, History
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The Far winter.
- Creator
- Rodrigues, Elizabeth., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This collection of poems engages narratives of geographical and emotional displacement on a journey toward a place from which to begin writing. The inciting narrative is one of travel - Brazil, to England, and to adulthood. A second narrative emerges as a gradual realization that these first displacements will never be truly resolved and that this lack of resolution is the only occasion from which to write. As the collection continues, the speaker of these poems is less and less comfortable...
Show moreThis collection of poems engages narratives of geographical and emotional displacement on a journey toward a place from which to begin writing. The inciting narrative is one of travel - Brazil, to England, and to adulthood. A second narrative emerges as a gradual realization that these first displacements will never be truly resolved and that this lack of resolution is the only occasion from which to write. As the collection continues, the speaker of these poems is less and less comfortable with pronouncement and more and more comfortable with action. The act of doing something - moving, driving, walking, escaping, returning, floating down a river of ice - is what creates the silence needed to proceed. Through the body, deafening directives can be temporarily suspended.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/177013
- Subject Headings
- Poetry, Symbolism in literature, Displacement (Psychology)
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Mother's forgotten garden.
- Creator
- Zimmerman, Cory Daniel., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
The thesis proposed for my M.F.A. in creative writing is a collection of conceptual American short stories written in a variety of forms that properly suit their respective subjects. Like a handful of miscellaneous wild seeds scattered over a tilled garden, the goal of the project is to represent the wild asymmetry of Nature via a collection of unlikely companions. For this reason, the conceptual form of each story often takes root in scientific or symbolic representations of Nature (i.e....
Show moreThe thesis proposed for my M.F.A. in creative writing is a collection of conceptual American short stories written in a variety of forms that properly suit their respective subjects. Like a handful of miscellaneous wild seeds scattered over a tilled garden, the goal of the project is to represent the wild asymmetry of Nature via a collection of unlikely companions. For this reason, the conceptual form of each story often takes root in scientific or symbolic representations of Nature (i.e. sine and cosine curves, the yin-yang, etc.). The plot of loose soil holding these collective experiments together is their earthy thematic focus-namely, the way in which Nature has been systematically backgrounded by western ideology. On occasion, a story's conceptual focus may stray from these ecofeminist principles, but only for the purpose of leveling a more critical or satirical eye upon common American ideologies.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/186303
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Nature in literature, Short stories, American
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Can I call you brother?.
- Creator
- Norberg, Elizabeth Andrea., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
The following manuscript is a novel intended to explore the confusing nature of butch lesbian gender identity and the unique bonds of friendship butch women often share with one another. Lesbian culture, today, sometimes puts pressure on the term butch and pushes butch women to choose between transgender, femme and androgynous. The lead character in this novel, Sarah, struggles to come to terms with her own sexual identity amidst all this pressure to conform. She watches her friends and...
Show moreThe following manuscript is a novel intended to explore the confusing nature of butch lesbian gender identity and the unique bonds of friendship butch women often share with one another. Lesbian culture, today, sometimes puts pressure on the term butch and pushes butch women to choose between transgender, femme and androgynous. The lead character in this novel, Sarah, struggles to come to terms with her own sexual identity amidst all this pressure to conform. She watches her friends and searches for a model of what butch is and is not but she continues to feel emotionally and physically cut off from the people she cares about. Ultimately, Sarah realizes she can move fluidly between many genders. When she stops trying to be a stereotype, she is finally able to connect with the people she cares about.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/186332
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Lesbians, Attitudes, Homosexuality, Philosophy, Stereotype (Psychology)
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Bingo and other stories.
- Creator
- Peacock, Richard., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
"Bingo" and Other Stories is a collection of short stories whose individual primary characters are forced to make profound changes in the wake of a discovery that comes about as a result of a tragedy or strained personal relationship or a combination of both. This collection is multigenerational in its collective scope and it reflects influences that come from the African-American and Southern literary traditions. In addition, it uses realism to create the settings for and sensibilities of...
Show more"Bingo" and Other Stories is a collection of short stories whose individual primary characters are forced to make profound changes in the wake of a discovery that comes about as a result of a tragedy or strained personal relationship or a combination of both. This collection is multigenerational in its collective scope and it reflects influences that come from the African-American and Southern literary traditions. In addition, it uses realism to create the settings for and sensibilities of the characters who populate the stories. Stories in the collection are also connected in how they conjure up various geographical locations in Florida, especially regions of Florida that identify with the traditional American South.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/186770
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Short stories, American, Conduct of life, Southern States, In literature, African Americans in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Existential consciousness, redemption, and Buddhist allusions in the work of Saul Bellow.
- Creator
- Durbeej, Jerry K., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Within the past two centuries, massive industrialization, technological and scientific advances, wars, diseases, failures in social systems, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts have produced an existential angst that has saturated the collective consciousness of modern man. The atrocities of World Wars I and II induced European and American authors and artists to confront this state of disillusionment, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and dread; consequently, much of our modern...
Show moreWithin the past two centuries, massive industrialization, technological and scientific advances, wars, diseases, failures in social systems, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts have produced an existential angst that has saturated the collective consciousness of modern man. The atrocities of World Wars I and II induced European and American authors and artists to confront this state of disillusionment, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and dread; consequently, much of our modern literature reflects this nihilistic darkness. In this state of grave doubts and uncertainties, the modern man finds himself alienated and disconnected from the very essences that ground him. Scholars of literature, philosophy, and the various arts and social sciences, having examined this contemporary dilemma, find just cause to question our western belief that science, technology, and materialism put the world in order. The further indictment is that these rational and materialistic forces have usurped the place of God and dismantled the ancient mythologies that once grounded our existence. This study examines the selected work of Saul Bellow and argues that his recurring themes of suffering, compassion, humanity, and renewal of the human spirit are antithetical to this collective existential angst. My argument introduces the doctrine of Existentialism and then explores the basic existentialist theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. From this platform, I later establish that Bellow takes a stand against this collective nihilism in favor of community and the celebration of life that are defined by a moral framework. Bellow's most representative novel in this vein of existential dislocation is Dangling Man., From this novel, I argue that there is an inherent flaw in the notion that man's essential existence can only be defined through his agency as an individual, and that man, not God, is ultimately responsible for his actions and destiny. This pursuit of existence based on personal freedom and intellectual synthesis is prone to failure; Bellow's point of view is that the existentialist, having disconnected himself from God and community, plunges into an abyss fraught with angst and turmoil. Bellow's theme of humanity instructs that our redemption lies not in our personal quest, but in our absorption and participation in a community framed by moral precepts and the respect for God. Finally, and from another angle and through Bellow's Herzog, I establish a connection to Buddhism. From these Buddhist allusions, I further affirm that the quest for authentic existence and redemption demands a confrontation with our angst and an acknowledgement of our suffering.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1870695
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Existentialsim in literature, Symbolism in literature, Buddhism and literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The war within houses.
- Creator
- Boles, Hillary., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This work of creative nonfiction is meant to explore the effects of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder in American war veterans and their families. As a work of blended literary journalism and memoir, the author interviewed afflicted veterans from World War II to the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars, included scholarly research, and reflected on how her father's dealings with the disorder have affected her family.
- Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/187205
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Patients, Family relationships, Reportage literature, Technique, Creative writing (Higher education), Veterans, Mental health, War, Psychological aspects
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Wool and water.
- Creator
- Frederick, Kira., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Wool and Water is a creative work of 36 poems. This collection examines the relationship between the silent and vocal, between the pastoral and urban. By reconfiguring and retelling the fairy tales and nursery rhymes, this collection seeks to challenge the status quo through trickster-like diction. Themes that are prevalent include: alienation, nourishment, anonymity, and the female body. From the concrete to the lyric, Wool and Water relies upon the process of questioning patriarchal guises....
Show moreWool and Water is a creative work of 36 poems. This collection examines the relationship between the silent and vocal, between the pastoral and urban. By reconfiguring and retelling the fairy tales and nursery rhymes, this collection seeks to challenge the status quo through trickster-like diction. Themes that are prevalent include: alienation, nourishment, anonymity, and the female body. From the concrete to the lyric, Wool and Water relies upon the process of questioning patriarchal guises. These poems intersect in order to rectify the past and make amends with the present. The female voices that drive these poems are multi-generational.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/187210
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Poetry, Feminist poetry, American
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Of offal, corpses, and others: an examination of self, subjectivity, and authenticity in two works by Alexandra David-Neel.
- Creator
- Jones, Robert William, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an "authentic" picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism...
Show moreThis thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an "authentic" picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism. This project argues that the advanced meditation techniques practiced by Alexandra David-Neel allow her to access a transcendent self that is able to overcome the self/other dichotomy. It also discusses the ways in which abjection and limit experiences enhance this breakdown. Finally, this thesis examines the roles that gender and a near absence of female Tibetan voice play in complicating the problems of self, subjectivity, and authenticity within these texts.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1927604
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Influence, Self in literature, Symbolism in literature, Spiritual life, Buddhism, Buddhism, Doctrines
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The philosophy of the animal in 20th century literature.
- Creator
- Johnson, Jamie, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
The following dissertation examines the philosophy of the animal as it appears in twentieth-century British and American literature. I argue that evolutionary theory, along with the Romantic emphasis on sympathy, creates an historical shift in our perception of humans and nonhumans. Beginning with Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby-Dick, the whale represents what I call a transitional animal figure in that the whale not only shows the traditionally symbolic literary animal but also the...
Show moreThe following dissertation examines the philosophy of the animal as it appears in twentieth-century British and American literature. I argue that evolutionary theory, along with the Romantic emphasis on sympathy, creates an historical shift in our perception of humans and nonhumans. Beginning with Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby-Dick, the whale represents what I call a transitional animal figure in that the whale not only shows the traditionally symbolic literary animal but also the beginnings of the twentieth century shift toward the literal animal-as-subject. My proposed comparative analysis consists of a return to classic existential and phenomenological philosophers with animal studies in mind. A handful of critical essays in recent years have conducted just such an analysis. My contribution extends these philosophical endeavors on the animal and applies them to major literary authors who demonstrate a notable interest in the philosophy of animals. The first chapter of the dissertation begins with D.H. Lawrence, whose writings in selected essays, St. Mawr, and "The Fox" continue considerations made by Melville concerning animal being. Because Lawrence often focuses on gender, sexuality, and intuition, I discuss how a Heideggerian reading of animals in Lawrence adds value to interpretations of his fiction which remain unavailable in analyses of human subjects. In Chapter Two, I move on to William Faulkner's classic hunting tale of "The Bear" and other significant animal sightings in his fiction and nonfiction. For Faulkner, the animal subject exists in the author's particular historical climate of American environmentalism, modernism's literary emphasis on visuality, and race theory., This combination calls for a natural progression from a Heideggerian existential phenomenology: a contemporary Sartrean reading of animal being. Finally, the last chapter examines J.M. Coetzee, an author whose texts show the accumulated existential and phenomenological progression in the philosophy of the animal with a combined interest in current political and social issues surrounding animal life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/192984
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Animals (Philosophy), Human-animal relationships in literature, Animals in literature, American prose literature, Criticism and interpretation, English prose literature, Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Isle of bones.
- Creator
- Watson, Courtney., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This novel is a work of historical fiction that explores the aftermath of the execution of a local doctor who became infamous after preserving the corpse of his beloved. The two protagonists journey to Key West from Miami during the summer of 1952 to investigate the disappearance of the girl's missing bones, but soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that plumbs the most terrifying depths of love and its disquieting entanglements. The tale follows the protagonists, Lens Burnside and Iris...
Show moreThis novel is a work of historical fiction that explores the aftermath of the execution of a local doctor who became infamous after preserving the corpse of his beloved. The two protagonists journey to Key West from Miami during the summer of 1952 to investigate the disappearance of the girl's missing bones, but soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that plumbs the most terrifying depths of love and its disquieting entanglements. The tale follows the protagonists, Lens Burnside and Iris Elliot, as they navigate the island's darkest corridors and expose a few of its most unusual secrets on a journey of love, mayhem and madness as they fall under the spell of the island and fall in love with each other.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/192992
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Man-woman relationships
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Let them run wild: childhood, the nineteenth-century storyteller, and the ascent of the moon.
- Creator
- Czerny, Val., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Drawing from literary criticism, ecological philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the wisdom of the female principle - or what Paula Gunn Allen perceives as "Her presence," the "power to make and relate"- this interdisciplinary study challenges dominant assumptions that habitually prevail in western cultural thinking. Let Them Run Wild investigates alternative, "buried" articulations which emerge in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century narratives that especially engage an audience of both...
Show moreDrawing from literary criticism, ecological philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the wisdom of the female principle - or what Paula Gunn Allen perceives as "Her presence," the "power to make and relate"- this interdisciplinary study challenges dominant assumptions that habitually prevail in western cultural thinking. Let Them Run Wild investigates alternative, "buried" articulations which emerge in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century narratives that especially engage an audience of both children and adult readers. Recognizing the fictions inherent in linear-driven thought, these articulations celebrate narrative moments where reason is complicated and reconjectured, where absence is affirmed as presence, and where tale-tellers disappear behind the messages they relate. By spotlighting legendary characters, Chapter One, "The Jowls of Legend," explains how "wild consciousness" resists legendary status. Chapters Two and Three discuss the interweaving journey of the wild arabesque in the Arabian Nights and untamed desire within Anne's transformative language in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Chapter Four, examining the death drive in Frank Norris's The Octopus, describes how it is reconceived in E. Nesbit's The Railway Children. Lastly, the Epilogue explores Juliana Ewing's "Lob Lie-By-the-Fire," tracing the manifestation of the female principle through its most wild activity - not hindered by gender - of service rendered through mystery and adventure. Wild consciousness advances through the collective identity of what Frederic Jameson has called the "political unconscious"and commissions older, better approximations of ideology through willing, spontaneous service., It acknowledges Homi K. Bhabha's articulation of "cultural hybridity," while, simultaneously, it directs such hybrid constructions of history, space, and negotiation outward toward a wild feminist critic Elaine Showalter has characterized as the "wild zone," customarily understood as a borderland space, is further reinterpreted as a borderless, expressive, timeless calling forth of receptive minds to engage in wildly compassionate, nonsensical acts and cunning, non-heroic feats in order to transform the inert, polemic systems that define our western collective mind. In short, this study refigures what Vandana Shiva identifies as cultural "patents on life," where "civilization" becomes small - a mere idea in a forest's deep heart.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209982
- Subject Headings
- Symbolism in literature, Ecofeminism and literature, Philosophy of nature in literature, Narrative (Rhetoric), Criticism and literature, Storytelling in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Spenser's spiritual vision: the Faerie Queene as a teleological romance.
- Creator
- Groves, Laura Hendricks., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
A recent trend in Spenser studies that relies heavily on materialist thinking either undervalues or misses altogether The Faerie Queene's inherent spiritual quality along with the irreducible interaction and ultimate reciprocity of earth and heaven. This thesis argues that Edmund Spenser's spiritual vision in The Faerie Queene expresses itself in a teleological romance that assumes a condition of mutability over stasis in the temporal earthly realm, as its first three heroes ascend a ladder...
Show moreA recent trend in Spenser studies that relies heavily on materialist thinking either undervalues or misses altogether The Faerie Queene's inherent spiritual quality along with the irreducible interaction and ultimate reciprocity of earth and heaven. This thesis argues that Edmund Spenser's spiritual vision in The Faerie Queene expresses itself in a teleological romance that assumes a condition of mutability over stasis in the temporal earthly realm, as its first three heroes ascend a ladder of perfection that evokes the heavenly and eternal, while at the same time heavenly glory reaches down into the story "romancing" the characters and exerting its own influence on the action.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/210523
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Spirituality in literature, English literature, Criticism and interpretation
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Meis Oculis: eyes in the early poetry of T.S. Eliot.
- Creator
- Richards, Joshua., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
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This study is an examination of ocular imagery in the secular poetry of T.S. Eliot. As a symbol, eyes begin as a metonym for the panoptic vision of society. In the earliest poems, Michel Foucault's conceptions of discipline illuminate the acerbic paranoia attached to ocular imagery and its source in the culture of turn-of-the-century Boston. Towards 1919, the image of eyes becomes an objective correlative for the figure of Dante's Beatrice who represents both earthly and divine love. The loss...
Show moreThis study is an examination of ocular imagery in the secular poetry of T.S. Eliot. As a symbol, eyes begin as a metonym for the panoptic vision of society. In the earliest poems, Michel Foucault's conceptions of discipline illuminate the acerbic paranoia attached to ocular imagery and its source in the culture of turn-of-the-century Boston. Towards 1919, the image of eyes becomes an objective correlative for the figure of Dante's Beatrice who represents both earthly and divine love. The loss of sight by the various speakers in both - "Gerontion" and The Waste Land is then the loss of connection to both the earthly woman and God. Finally, in The Hollow Men, the tenor and vehicle merge completely so the eyes themselves become the object of desire.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/215286
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Postmodernism (Literature), Imagery (Psychology) in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- A good woman is hard to find: discovering the voice of the woman satirist in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood.
- Creator
- Paxton, Virginia A., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
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While Flannery O'Connor's characters and narrative landscape may share a history with those of other works often labeled "Southern gothic," her heavily judicious narrative voice utilizes the depravity of the South struggling to find its identity as a means to explore her vision of God's mercy and distinguishes her work as satirical criticism. This thesis analyzes her construction of a distinctive satirical narrative voice for Wise Blood, particularly as it deviates from how she initially...
Show moreWhile Flannery O'Connor's characters and narrative landscape may share a history with those of other works often labeled "Southern gothic," her heavily judicious narrative voice utilizes the depravity of the South struggling to find its identity as a means to explore her vision of God's mercy and distinguishes her work as satirical criticism. This thesis analyzes her construction of a distinctive satirical narrative voice for Wise Blood, particularly as it deviates from how she initially wrote the first chapters as presented in earlier short stories like "The Train" and "The Peeler." Here, the ways in which O'Connor revises her diction and syntax to create a satirical tone will be examined closely. For the purposes of this paper, satire is defined as a literary work aimed at utilizing irony, hyperbole, or sarcasm to reveal, critique, and correct some moral, ethical, or social phenomenon or situation that the author finds reprehensible.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/221951
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Feminism and literature, Didactic fiction, American, Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
- Format
- Document (PDF)