Department of English
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Browsing Department of English by Subject "British and Irish literature"
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Item Churchyards and crossroads: monuments, tombs, and commemoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Whitver, Harry Austin; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis project explores how tombs and monuments erected for the dead function in the early modern playhouse, both when used as stage locations in dramatic scenes and when invoked imaginatively by characters grappling with questions of identity, social position, and legacy. I examine Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, other contemporary writings about tombs, and surviving stone monuments of the period in order to contribute to an understanding of the complex ways early moderns viewed commemoration, memory, and their own mortality. Tombs of this era served to preserve information about the dead and to offer moral instruction to the living. The combination of text, symbols, and images on tombs conveyed information to both literate and illiterate alike. Audiences' familiarity with a range of tombs, combined with the flexibility of the early modern playhouse, allowed playwrights to utilize the symbolic potential of tombs in a variety of ways. Nonetheless, a majority of these symbolic deployments of tomb imagery gravitate into three broad categories. First, in the History Plays of the 1580s and 1590s, monuments serve as repositories of the mythic power of the past, helping individuals both remember ancestors and access their influence. This recording potential also allows the living to prepare their own enduring legacy. Second, tombs function on stage as legitimizing agents for fictions. A tomb need not tell a true story, and playwrights of the period frequently have their characters use tombs to support or preserve their own misrepresentative, edited, or fraudulent accounts of events. Finally, plays after 1600 tend to stress the power of tombs to serve as sites of spiritual and moral instruction. Tombs as illustrative of a complete life story fall out of fashion in the playhouse; instead of presenting a layered narrative, monuments become tools to turn the deceased into an exemplar of a variety of idealized virtues.Item Deceived from within: monstrosity and villainy in William Shakespeare's Richard III(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Bone, Kirstin Marie; McElroy, Tricia A.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaWilliam Shakespeare's Richard III has been the victim of a gross crime: For four hundred years, he has been condemned as a dastardly villain. Scholars and performers alike have declared that Richard is obviously evil, but little do they realize that they have been deceived. Richard's villainy is not as apparent as it would seem, but instead is a construction that comes from within the play itself. Ultimately, this construction is Shakespeare's, and, like a magnifying glass, it is meant to direct our attention to the fallacy of conflating deformity and villainy. We are not meant to believe the relationship presented in the text; instead, we are meant to question it. By critically examining how Richard's identity shifts from a valorous war hero in the Henry VI plays to the destructive Machiavel of Richard III, a more nuanced and dynamic representation of Renaissance monstrosity emerges. Shakespeare's text functions as an exploratory space that challenges his audience to consider the nature of internal discourse and the role of deformity in shaping a man's nature. In doing so, it can be shown that deformity did not equate to evil; instead, the only true course to villainy was through a person's actions.Item Deny thy father, yet seek to please him?: subversive Shakespeare and the authoritative desire of Shakespearean teen films(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Loper, Natalie Jones; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis dissertation examines questions of authority in teen adaptations of Shakespeare. Drawing on the fields of Shakespeare studies, film studies, and cultural studies, I focus on four Shakespeare film adaptations ‒ Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You, Tim Blake Nelson's O, and Michael Almereyda's Hamlet ‒ and maintain that discussions of these films must be grounded in discussions of Shakespeare's plays and of the teen film genre. By comparing Shakespeare's plays to other early modern texts, examining early modern cultural practices, and considering the plays' critical and theatrical histories, I argue that Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, and Hamlet present radical challenges to particular structures of authority in early modern England, including marriage, gender roles, racial and cultural difference, and tyranny; these plays seek a future in which traditional forms of authority are questioned, reworked, and reformed. In contrast, teen films, according to scholars of the genre, promote and uphold hegemonic values, typically represented in the form of patriarchal control. Authority operates on different levels, as the films themselves reflect the values of the adult generation and as the young characters within the films express a desire for more, not less, authority in their lives. Using these studies, I argue that Shakespearean teen films frequently present restrictive views of teen autonomy. Rather than challenge, subvert, or rebel against received social structures, these films depict young characters who yearn for parental or social acceptance; similarly, the films themselves limit challenges to authority by presenting a return to order. In comedy, this restoration appears as protagonists learn to navigate social expectations, thus winning approval from peers and adults alike; in tragedy, the police restore authority by arriving to survey the scene and punish wrongdoers, or the media anesthetizes the tragedy by reporting it as just another story on the evening news. In this dissertation, I do not privilege Shakespeare's plays over contemporary films, but rather attempt to demonstrate how Shakespearean teen films adapt and interpret their source texts within a particular set of generic and historical conventions.Item From mythography to mythopoesis: the politics of romantic mythmaking(University of Alabama Libraries, 2014) Hopper, Natalie Nicole; Pionke, Albert D.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThis dissertation seeks to expand the way we approach myth in Romantic literature, regarding it not just as classical content but as a process by which authors--including modern ones--are able to universalize and disseminate specific political, poetic, and religious agendas. Mythography is only one aspect of the broader category of mythopoesis, a category that allows us to consider how generic decisions, rhetorical maneuvers, and formal devices can also be used to lend authority and credibility to an author's underlying message. Scholars interested in Romantic uses of myth traditionally explore the religious subversiveness of the Second Generation's pagan subjects or myth's role as a means of reconciling the ideal past and flawed present. While these studies have greatly improved our understanding of the relationship between literary myths and historical concerns, they approach myth only in terms of mythographic content, thereby dismissing Romantic authors' active participation in the mythmaking process. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the foundational work of conservative rhetoric and mythmaking, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, but otherwise focuses on poetry composed between 1814 and 1822, the years leading up to and immediately following the Peterloo Massacre. Chapters in the dissertation explore conservative mythmaking, the responsibility Romantic poets assumed of using poetry for civic purposes, radical mythmaking leading up to Peterloo, and the growing intensity of myths produced in the massacre's aftermath.Item Heterotopia and early modern friendship within Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona"(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Morris, Sarah Elizabeth; O'Dair, Sharon; University of Alabama TuscaloosaCritics and scholars alike have often overlooked the role of the forest within Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona in reinforcing the play's focus on homosocial bonds. Viewing this setting according to Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia, though, establishes the forest as a transformative space which rivals the nature of Shakespeare's latter sylvan settings in complexity. In Two Gents' forest scenes, the protagonists' actions and social statures are realigned through the representation, inversion, and contestation of the spatial and social relationships presented earlier in the play. Although Valentine and Proteus begin the play as equals, by the time they enter the forest Valentine has been banished and lost his social standing (although he still acts like a gentlemen), while Proteus is only a gentleman in name. The forest acts as a space where the social hierarchy can flip, giving Valentine the power to bar Proteus from their friendship, just as he was banished from the Duke's court, and then to forgive Proteus, foreshadowing his own reinstatement into the Duke's court. The protagonists' social relationship is defined by their spatial one, or, in other words, how their friendship hinges on equality, since they are one soul in two bodies. The forest, as a heterotopic space, allows the protagonists to regain equal stature, and thus, reinforces the play's emphasis on homosocial bonds.Item "If the heart be moved": the triumph of the heart in Milton, Herbert, and Donne(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Perdue, Cori Miller; Ainsworth, David; University of Alabama TuscaloosaJohn Milton, George Herbert, and John Donne all struggle to hold onto the heart as the center of man and the place of inspiration and volition. In the seventeenth century, four intertwined challenges to how people think about the heart collide. In anatomy, Harvey's treatise On the Motion of the Heart and the Blood (1628) persuaded many people to think of the heart as a mere pump rather than a mysterious seat of knowledge and volition. Milton, Herbert, and Donne respond to this controversial shift and work to realign the heart with the mystical presence of God. In philosophy, Descartes's theory of dualism changed how people thought of the connection between the heart and the mind. Milton confronts Descartes's dualistic theories by upholding monism in his epic Paradise Lost and portraying his archfiend, Satan, as a dualistic philosopher. In economics, anxieties concerning the mass-production of books complicated the Judeo-Christian belief that God writes on individual hearts in a personal, non-manufactured way. Herbert chooses to avoid mass-producing his works during his life due to his fear that "copying out" the writing in his heart would be diluted through the printing process. Milton, however, chooses to use the vehicle of print to advance his belief that the most lasting monuments are inscriptions written by God in hearts. In theology, the impassioned controversy about the interiority versus outward signs of belief that erupted in the sixteenth century continues to be debated in the seventeenth century and affects how these theological poets conceptualize the heart. Herbert and Donne characterize the heart as an intimate sphere that God must personally break and appropriate, whereas Milton demonstrates in "The Passion" that the crucifixion of Christ is a distinct and revered topic that cannot be expressed on physical paper but must be completed by the Spirit of God inside each believer's fleshy heart. This project shows how Milton, Herbert, and Donne reinforce the presence of God working and writing in believers' hearts when the very nature and understanding of the heart is evolving and moving away from any connection with the divine.Item The short story composite and the roots of modernist narrative(University of Alabama Libraries, 2012) Matheny, Kathryn Grace; Whiting, Frederick; University of Alabama TuscaloosaWhile the story cycle form has been popular for centuries, as seen in works like 'The Decameron' and 'One Thousand and One Arabian Nights,' it is especially important to modern Anglo-American literature. Twentieth century short story composites by James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway represent high points not simply for the genre, but also for modernist literature. Despite the centrality of these texts to the genre and to the period, the connection between time and form has often gone unexplored. Indeed, short story composite theory is still a bit unfocused, defining itself in reaction to the genres with which the composite is often confused, especially the novel. While it is important to disentangle the short story composite from these other genres, paradoxically, it is counterproductive, even harmful, to do so without acknowledging the ways in which they do undeniably overlap. Particularly, a refusal to draw comparisons between modernist novels and short story composites represents a missed opportunity to consider the field of modernist narrative holistically. Clearly, a more nuanced articulation of short story composite theory is necessary. It would provide clarity for composite works and help articulate the structural properties of composite narrative more generally, a concern central to understanding modernist narrative practice. Through examining works that range from high to low to popular, I argue that the short story composite encompasses a variety of forms and modes of writing but displays similar central characteristics organic to the period. The first two chapters work to situate the debate within various dovetailing contexts, including the history of the short story genre in the nineteenth century as well as the twentieth century shift of literary and critical production to the academy. Another chapter will also identify the concept of 'textual autonomy' as an especially problematic aspect of composite narrative theory, determined as it is by those contexts that shaped the genre and its criticism. Finally, a final chapter interrogates the relationship between modernity and narrative through the lens of WWI fiction. Writers discussed include Joyce and George Moore; Anderson and Hemingway; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder; Sarah Orne Jewett, John Steinbeck, and Willa Cather; and John Dos Passos, William March, and e. e. cummings.Item The social network in Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit(University of Alabama Libraries, 2013) Porter, Jessica Lynn; Pionke, Albert D.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaIn the foundational text, George Eliot and Blackmail, Alexander Welsh charts the development of modern society, from the birth of our information culture to the emergence of new community patterns, and he explains how the tensions created by publicity fostered a widespread interest in secrecy. In outlining the conditions that intensified this need, Welsh provides a useful interpretative model for studying the human networks in Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit. The worlds portrayed in these historical and domestic novels—with their emphases on local information, social mobility, and accountability—illustrate how an overall increase in publicity weakens the traditional community structure. In particular, the communities in Barnaby Rudge articulate a conscious desire to regulate information at the local level, even as modern technology encroaches upon them and threatens to undermine their authority. Similarly, the divers branches of the Chuzzlewit network attempt to displace traditional authority by attaining individual social prominence. Using the tools of contemporary social network theory, this project examines the community models in Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit, and it demonstrates how Dickens inscribes his concept of authorial power within the network structure. Individual chapters focus on the specific network models employed in each novel, including the small world, prominence, affiliation, proximity, and distribution. This thesis intersects with existing criticism on Dickens and the publishing industry of the 1830s, and it provides an alternative interpretative frame—one that relies heavily on the theoretical support of Alexander Welsh, E.P. Thompson, and Georg Simmel. Ultimately, reading Dickens through the lens of network theory reveals his prescient knowledge of the patterns of societal organization more commonly associated with social networks, and it illuminates the structures of meaning within his individual novels.