Department of English

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The convent of measure: prosodic passing and stable subjectivity in Margaret Cavendish's The convent of pleasure
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2011) Swanner, Seth Logan; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Although contemporary criticism of Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure often focuses on Happy's convent as a site of queer resistance, my prosodic analysis of the verse structure of the 4.1 pastoral scene suggests that Lady Happy's convent is not defined negatively in relation to the patriarchy (as in resistance); rather, her convent is established to reflect her positively defined homoerotic desires. The Prince's successful infiltration of Happy's convent depends, then, upon not only his temporary rejection of patriarchal imperatives but also upon his assumption of the "feminine" discourse that Happy establishes as the discursive currency of her convent. The ways in which Happy delivers prose in scenes prior to 4.1 suggest that she prefers both content that glorifies nature and structure that demonstrates speed and poetic continuity. Likewise in the 4.1 scene, the disguised Prince delivers to Happy an erotic suit that succeeds because of its smooth, swift iambic trimeter form. The Prince's gender mimicry, then, extends beyond the standard adoption of cross-gendered clothing to an appropriation of positively defined, "feminine" ways of speaking. With this poetic gender mimicry, the Prince is able to infiltrate Happy's feminine utopia and collapse it from the inside by insinuating the patriarchal imperative of marriage into his otherwise feminine discourse. The poetic mode that Happy espouses represents a mode of feminine resistance that is borne out in Butlerian theories of gendered resistance. Happy's convent, then, characterizes a need to move beyond received (and largely inaccurate) notions of Butlerian performativity and to shift focus toward the more manageable terms of iteration and citation.
"Cracked within the ring": the spillable female body in Shakespearean tragedy
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Luca, Carmen Abigail; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
This thesis explores the myriad ways in which the invocation of the female body enriches Shakespearean tragedy. Beginning with an Aristotelian definition of tragedy and then moving through a survey of Elizabethan and Jacobean scientific and cultural beliefs, I will show how both depictions of the female body and connotations given to the female reproductive system enrich tragedy through the stimulation of pity and terror, both of which are key dramatic emotions for Aristotle. In an examination of several of Shakespeare's tragedies, I would like to suggest that the intrinsic connection between the female reproductive system and tragedy stems from the idea of the womb as a container, a container whose contents and continence, whether perceived or actual, are of utmost economic importance to the hero. The open womb, whether evoked literally in the bodies of mothers and daughters, or figuratively in the weak and failing bodies of tragic heroes, by virtue of its vessel-hood, becomes an embodiment of the possibility of spillage, of loss, of an ever-threatening tragic change of fortune. The theoretical foundation of my argument comes from the works of Gail Kern Paster and Thomas Laqueur, and over the course of the paper, I focus on Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Othello, touching on other Shakespearean tragedies in a less in-depth manner.
"Like life in excrements": natural philosophy, hair, and the limits of the body's vitality in early modern English thought
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Geisweidt, Edward James; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
This study focuses on early modern understandings of hair as a means to investigate English thought about life, the soul, identity, and the place of the human in the natural world. Hair is a useful body part for exploring such natural philosophical issues because the competing theories about hair's ontology--regarding it as either a living body part or harmful, lifeless excrement--touch on philosophically weighty debates about the body and soul. As a characteristic shared across all forms of earthly life, hairiness provided the English with an anatomical index for the vitality they shared with non-human life. Moreover, the indeterminability of hair's ontological nature made it especially apt for figuration in literary discourse. Poets and playwrights of the period registered the cultural ambivalence over hair to various ends in the construction of character, commentary on art's relation to nature, and the exploration of human affinity with the natural world. In chapter one, I explore the concept of the ensoulment of individual body parts and the "all in all, all in part" theory of the soul's residence in the body, a topos of not only theological but also poetic interest. Focusing on natural philosophies of body part formation, chapter two presents the competing theories of hair growth that fueled the cultural ambivalence toward hair, which served as a literary theme. Chapter three treats the various connections between hair and plants, examining the vegetable life hair was thought to possess. Shakespeare and Spenser write about hair as a corporeal indication of humans' vegetable affinities. In chapter four, I explore how hair and fur were thought to demonstrate likenesses between people and animals, particularly horses. I also consider the way in which horse hair's spontaneously generative power provides a central image for Shakespeare's exploration of human and animal life. Chapter five deals with the competing constructions of human identity in the two versions of Sir Thomas More. Not only does long hair bring into question one character's humanity, it is also central to sustaining and altering his identity. The play's revisions, I argue, demonstrate the way hair's culturally contested status affected literary character construction.
A loom of her own?: weaving men and spinning women in Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Merritt, Catherine Marie; McElroy, Tricia A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
To show how popular (male) sentiment pushed against female participation in cloth production during this period, I will look closely at Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury, a romance novel whose protagonist conquers the weaving world by subjugating powerful women who claim (or could claim, if they so chose) economic authority. This novel, my primary text, reveals how early Renaissance authors deliberately warped images of spinning women from traditional economies and classical mythology in order to redefine the occupation's boundaries. As this literature entered public discourse, spinning became more and more associated with marital and domestic responsibilities, so it is no coincidence that the word "spinster" now changed from a neutral, denotative term describing one's occupation to a pejorative, connotative term describing one's marital status. As this final point suggests, my thesis's central goal is to show how Renaissance literature distorted historical records and reappropriated popular narrative motifs in order to create highly effective economic propaganda. Deloney is an apt figure to examine in this effort because he was himself a yeoman silk weaver who frequently distorted the past (both literary and actual) in an effort to reform his guild through the written word. My approach to the topic of femininity and literary/cultural production has been heavily influenced by Jack Zipes' article, "Spinning with Fate: Rumpelstiltskin and the Decline of Female Productivity," and Roger A. Ladd's article, "Thomas Deloney and the London Weavers' Company." Zipes' work describes the economic changes that punctuated the spinning industry during the 18th and 19th centuries that provided the sociohistorical backdrop for the Rumpelstiltskin tale. I argue, in response to this claim, that the movement, and indeed the evolution of the spinning woman as a fairy tale archetype, can be traced to a much earlier point in time. The place and prestige of women within the métier began to suffer before industrialization significantly altered the spinning profession, as guild documents from the London Weavers' Company clearly exhibit. Ladd's article, on the other hand, has shaped my discussion of authors/literary figures and their affect on economic policies as it relies heavily on these same documents and other economic records.
Making past present: Henry V in contemporary performance
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Jobe, Alaina Elizabeth; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Traditionally, Shakespeare's Henry V is viewed as either pro- or anti-war, but the play actually revels in its own political ambiguity. Thus, in order to make some sort of socio-political statement, directors have to, in effect, make war with the text, compressing and cutting the play in order to fit a certain agenda, no matter what that agenda may be, anti- or pro-war. This thesis is primarily a case study of Henry V in production, focusing on the 2009 University of Alabama performance, the choices that were made and the effects of those choices. Similarly, it explores the ramifications of producing the history plays in contemporary performance. The genre itself can be troubling for contemporary audiences, and the lack of context makes it difficult for twenty-first century spectators to fully grasp it as a history. Instead, contemporary productions rely either on making connections to current events (with mixed success as the play tends to resist such overt parallels) or focusing on the characters themselves as the means of making this play relevant. By using the force of character, productions can in fact appeal to their audiences, creating something that is meaningful, and sometimes something that is in fact political, but in a much more sophisticated (and therefore less obvious way): doing so allows the audience to draw their own conclusions about the kind of issues that we see in Henry V, to make their own comparisons between the past and the present, and to perhaps look more critically at the nature of war and politics. In contemporary performances of Henry V, the focus tends to shift away from the history of the history play and moves toward how the events presented in the play relate to the here and now.
The pleasure pier of amusements & curios
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) McMillin, Erin Bracken; Bilwakesh, Nikhil; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Collection of short stories.
Thou art unreal, my ideal: nostalgia as ideology in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Showers, Zachary Elijah; White, Patti; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
The satirical novels of Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell share a sense of nostalgia for an imagined past as well as a fatalistic and entropic view of the future. Rather than advocating a wholesale reformation of society, these novels instead argue in favor of the status quo and regard change as counterproductive. In this way, the novels reflect certain ideologies strongly held in England during the transition from the colonial to the postcolonial period. Through an examination of their treatment of class relations, social norms and outside influences, this study argues that Waugh, Huxley and Orwell maintained the superiority of English culture and civilization instead of questioning it, and focused their satire on elements they believed threatened this established hegemony. In doing so, they each used a nostalgic and idealized portrait of English society to challenge elements of their present that they found unsatisfactory. The production of the idealized past challenges commonly held perceptions of the way these satires function. They are not critiques of the establishment but rather supporters of it; they call for a static society rather than a dynamic one. Evelyn Waugh's novels Decline and Fall and Black Mischief support a presumed English ideology over that of its colonial peripheries. Aldous Huxley's novels Brave New World, Ape and Essence, and Island deal with questions of overpopulation and stereotyped attributes of perceived non-intellectuals in their relationship to Huxley's preferred class structure. George Orwell's novels Burmese Days, Coming Up For Air, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm each presuppose an idyllic but nonexistent English society and use this construct to critique the future of Englishness.
Zhivago in Chicago
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2010) Colon, Lewis Robert; Behn, Robin; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
This is a book of poems.

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