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- Title
- The reality of fiction: diagnosing white culture through the lens of mother/nature in Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee.
- Creator
- Butler, Rita C., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Zora Neale Hurston's last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, can be read as a sociopolitical critique of what she once referred to as the false foundation of Anglo-Saxon civilization. An overview of the history of race as a concept and the development of racial awareness in the United States provides a background/context for understanding the world Hurston was diagnosing: her analysis implies that the social construction of whiteness contains within its ideology the seeds of its own...
Show moreZora Neale Hurston's last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, can be read as a sociopolitical critique of what she once referred to as the false foundation of Anglo-Saxon civilization. An overview of the history of race as a concept and the development of racial awareness in the United States provides a background/context for understanding the world Hurston was diagnosing: her analysis implies that the social construction of whiteness contains within its ideology the seeds of its own destruction. Feminist notions of origin, context, and foundation highlight the narcissistic nature of patriarchal social systems that exploit not only the female body but nature as well. In a society that supposedly honors the maternal and praises the beauty of nature, Hurston's novel suggests that both motherhood and nature are exploited by a patriarchal culture focused on competition and material gain. In addition, by highlighting the narcissism of her male protagonist, who presumably represents a socially admired standard of normalcy, she undermines the narrative of superiority that privileges a white patriarchy.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/108065
- Subject Headings
- Political and social views, Race awareness in literature
- 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
- Radicalism at sea: literary pirates in Emmanuel Appadocca to The Scar.
- Creator
- Kelly, Elizabeth., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis explores radicalism at work in M. Maxwell Philip's Emmanuel Appadocca (1854) and China Miâeville's The Scar (2002). These novels highlight piracy as a means of rejecting systems of power and social order. Through speculative fiction, each author finds the means to resist the hegemonic power of genre, race, empire, and knowledge that pervade each author's social and historical milieu. This work examines the historical and literary context of piracy as a metaphor for radicalism, the...
Show moreThis thesis explores radicalism at work in M. Maxwell Philip's Emmanuel Appadocca (1854) and China Miâeville's The Scar (2002). These novels highlight piracy as a means of rejecting systems of power and social order. Through speculative fiction, each author finds the means to resist the hegemonic power of genre, race, empire, and knowledge that pervade each author's social and historical milieu. This work examines the historical and literary context of piracy as a metaphor for radicalism, the project of legitimization and resistance to generic categorization of both texts. Emmanuel Appadocca resists racial stereotypes, and both texts exhibit clear resistance to colonial expansion. This resistance is made possible by each author's use of the sea as the site of insurgency and challenging boundaries of knowledge. Thus both novels lend themselves to interpretation as works of postcolonial fiction.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/186337
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Pirates in literature, Radicalism in literature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Trilling R's: meditations on immigration, assimilation, and language.
- Creator
- O'Brien, Shannon., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Immigration has become a hot button issue across the United States. Television newsmen dedicate hours of time to excoriate the "illegal invasion." I viewed the immigration debate as something not directly concerning me. I am a legal citizen of Hispanic descent. My mother is a naturalized citizen from Mexico. However, as the government conducted raids looking for illegal immigrants, my mother became more aware of her place as a Mexican woman living in the Midwest. She wondered whether people...
Show moreImmigration has become a hot button issue across the United States. Television newsmen dedicate hours of time to excoriate the "illegal invasion." I viewed the immigration debate as something not directly concerning me. I am a legal citizen of Hispanic descent. My mother is a naturalized citizen from Mexico. However, as the government conducted raids looking for illegal immigrants, my mother became more aware of her place as a Mexican woman living in the Midwest. She wondered whether people would assume she was illegal because of her accent and appearance. Our discussions prompted me to think about of my place in the story, and about my lack of connection with the Hispanic culture. I set out to interview migrants living in South Florida, and to document my and my mother's experience with immigration and assimilation.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/186683
- Subject Headings
- Emigration and immigration, Assimilation (Sociology), Pluralism (Social sciences), Social adjustment, Hispanic Americans, Cultural assimilation, Emigration and immigration, Government policy
- 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
- John Updike: the role of women in his short fiction.
- Creator
- Rosen, Cindy M., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
There remain two recurring criticisms of John Updike's fiction. The first comes from feminist critics who condemn his negative portrayal of women, accusing his fiction of denigrating women. The second comes from late twentieth century critics who accuse him of avoiding political and historical discussions in his fiction. However, it is my contention that Updike is willing to address both of these concerns, and I arrive at such an argument by carefully analyzing his collection of short stories...
Show moreThere remain two recurring criticisms of John Updike's fiction. The first comes from feminist critics who condemn his negative portrayal of women, accusing his fiction of denigrating women. The second comes from late twentieth century critics who accuse him of avoiding political and historical discussions in his fiction. However, it is my contention that Updike is willing to address both of these concerns, and I arrive at such an argument by carefully analyzing his collection of short stories compiled in Too Far To Go: The Maples Stories. Within these stories, Updike's female characters illustrate the shifting gender paradigms over the course of the fifties, sixties, and seventies amidst the middle-class, suburban American milieu. Updike's women act as agents of history providing testament to the shifting gender paradigms and historical, cultural, political, and social milestones of a maturing country and its growing pains.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1927298
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Women in literature, American fiction, History and criticism
- 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
- Revis(it)ing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: women, symbolism, and resistance.
- Creator
- Smith, Kathryn M., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is, admittedly, a text with many racist, imperialist and sexist subtexts. A feminist literary analysis, however, can extract women's empowerment and agency. This thesis takes a closer look at the Mistress (also known as the African woman) and the Intended, two women with vastly different racial and class backgrounds who, in their own ways, demonstrate resistance. This thesis analyzes Mr. Kurtz's often ignored sketch in oils, arguing that the sketch itself...
Show moreJoseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is, admittedly, a text with many racist, imperialist and sexist subtexts. A feminist literary analysis, however, can extract women's empowerment and agency. This thesis takes a closer look at the Mistress (also known as the African woman) and the Intended, two women with vastly different racial and class backgrounds who, in their own ways, demonstrate resistance. This thesis analyzes Mr. Kurtz's often ignored sketch in oils, arguing that the sketch itself demonstrates the colonial mentality of difference and the disruption of that difference. It then explores both the Mistress and the Intended in detail, positing that while the Mistress uses the colonizers' fear of the wilderness and its silence to her advantage, the Intended takes control over her own domestic circumstance. Overall, this author asserts that the Mistress and the Intended, while often dismissed, are noteworthy, important, and influential characters in Heart of Darkness.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/192989
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Feminism in literature, Racism in literature, Imperialism in literature, Literature and society, 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
- Bleeding roots: the absence and evidence of the lynched black female body.
- Creator
- Williams, Tinea., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
Scholars of the literary depictions of lynching have given the majority of their attention to the emasculation of the black male, but the representation of the black female lynch victim has been overlooked. My thesis examines the deaths of black women that had the same effect as lynching practices used against men. This specific literary form of lynching will concentrate on two plays: Mary P. Burrill's They That Sit in Darkness (1919) and Marita Bonner's Exit: An Illusion (1929) and two...
Show moreScholars of the literary depictions of lynching have given the majority of their attention to the emasculation of the black male, but the representation of the black female lynch victim has been overlooked. My thesis examines the deaths of black women that had the same effect as lynching practices used against men. This specific literary form of lynching will concentrate on two plays: Mary P. Burrill's They That Sit in Darkness (1919) and Marita Bonner's Exit: An Illusion (1929) and two novels by Toni Morrison, Beloved and Sula. Considering the contours of these black female deaths we can expand the traditional definition of lynching to include the black female lynch victim. The aspects that make her death a lynching are encased in more subtleties than a traditional definition of lynching allows for, and less visible.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/199329
- Subject Headings
- African Americans, Crimes against, Lynching in literature, African Americans in literature, Race relations, History and criticism
- 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
- A dark, uncertain fate: homophobia, graphic novels, and queer identity.
- Creator
- Buso, Michael., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
This thesis focuses primarily on homophobia and how it plays a role in the construction of queer identities, specifically in graphic novels and comic books. The primary texts being analyzed are Alan Moore's Lost Girls, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Michael Chabon's prose novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Throughout these and many other comics, queer identities reflect homophobic stereotypes rather than resisting them. However, this thesis argues that,...
Show moreThis thesis focuses primarily on homophobia and how it plays a role in the construction of queer identities, specifically in graphic novels and comic books. The primary texts being analyzed are Alan Moore's Lost Girls, Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and Michael Chabon's prose novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Throughout these and many other comics, queer identities reflect homophobic stereotypes rather than resisting them. However, this thesis argues that, despite the homophobic tendencies of these texts, the very nature of comics (their visual aspects, panel structures, and blank gutters) allows for an alternative space for positive queer identities.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2100584
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Sex in literature, Homophobia, Gender identity, Comic books, strips, etc, History and criticism
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Power politics: gender and power in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins's No Name.
- Creator
- Smith, Rebecca Ann., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
- Abstract/Description
-
While literary critics acknowledge Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins's No Name as sensation novels that were considered popular literature during the 1860s, many critics often fail to recognize the social and political implications embedded within these texts. In No Name, for instance, Collins's use of a heroine that is disinherited and deemed illegitimate by the law emphasizes the overpowering force of patriarchy. In response to patriarchal law, therefore, the...
Show moreWhile literary critics acknowledge Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins's No Name as sensation novels that were considered popular literature during the 1860s, many critics often fail to recognize the social and political implications embedded within these texts. In No Name, for instance, Collins's use of a heroine that is disinherited and deemed illegitimate by the law emphasizes the overpowering force of patriarchy. In response to patriarchal law, therefore, the heroines of Lady Audley's Secret and No Name attempt to improve their social positions in a society that is economically dependent upon men. Braddon's Lady Audley and Collins's Magdalen Vanstone are fictional representations of women who internalize the inequality of patriarchy and strive to contest male domination. By centering their novels on heroines who endeavor to defy Victorian social norms, Braddon and Collins highlight the problem of the female in a male-dominated society.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/210519
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, English fiction, Criticism and interpretation, Literature and society, Sex role in literature, Patriarchy 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)