Vanderbilt English Department Honors Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/1628

Includes Baccalaureate theses from the Vanderbilt English Department Honors Program.

For more information on the English Department Honors Program go to their webpage.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

"All thinking things" and "Objects of all thought": Materiality and Thought in Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats
(Vanderbilt University, 2009-04-20) Williams, Martha; Porter, Dahlia
Writing the Vampire: Constitutions of Gender in Carmilla, Dracula, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(Vanderbilt University, 2009-04-22) Mai, Emily; Dever, Carolyn; Schoenfield, Mark L.
Examination of the constitutions of gender and sexuality in three texts centered on vampires.
Fictions of Escape and the Economy of Gender in Victorian Children's Literature
(Vanderbilt University, 2009-04-28) Berube, Rachel
No Game for Knights: The Arthurian Legend in Hardboiled Detective Fiction
(Vanderbilt University, 2009-04-29) Preston, Andrew J.; Schoenfield, Mark L.; Bell, Vereen
The Perils of Patriarchy
(Vanderbilt University, 2010-04-29) O'Neal, Ellen; Schoenfield, Mark; Young, Paul
Tracking patriarchal control through three Hitchcock films: North By Northwest, Notorious, and Rear Window.
"I always wanted to be historical" : The Crack-Up of the Self from the Outside
(Vanderbilt University, 2010-04-29) George, Sarah; Levy, Ellen; Schoenfield, Mark
Resounding Footnotes Understanding the Pre-Romantics Through the Footer
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-13) Snyder, Travis; Juengel, Scott; Wollaeger, Mark
Labels can be highly problematic metaphysical entities when they suggest and lead to the creation of unity where little exists. When exactly did the Romantic Period start and stop? Some individual works are certainly seminal to a period, but who were its progenitors and at what point does a collection of eccentricities constitute a new era? It seems to me to be the case that the only answer to these origin issues is to accept that there is an inexhaustible multiplicity of histories, aesthetic regimes, and critical lenses. By highlighting the tensions within the “Romantic” label, I do not wish to declare it impotent, but rather take a sympathetic look at the nomenclature and think about the philosophical problems I will encounter as I offer a revision for how we think of pre-romanticism. I will argue that while sentiment did in fact play a crucial role in the development of Romanticism, it did so as an adversary and not just as an aid. Through the adoption of the term “post-Augustan” as the new era nomenclature, we will free ourselves as 18th century scholars from the critical mindset of “overlooking” that “pre-Romantic” construal provides us.
The “Universal Cannibalism” of Things: A Historical, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Melville’s Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, and Billy Budd
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-16) Webb, David Potter Townsend; Dayan, Colin; Wollaeger, Mark
This study will evaluate Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, and Billy Budd as evidence of Melville’s embrace of an historical view of the U.S. and will further analyze these novellas using a methodological framework that attempts to synthesize a historical lens and psychoanalytic perspectives. While the historical and psychoanalytical approaches may sometimes appear to resist reconciliation, they will generally complement each other. It is only through analysis that takes into account both the psychoanalytic and the historical that we can comprehend how intensive is Melville’s sense of a social degeneration that affected both the internal subjective demands on citizenship and the external evidence of history.
"The French Book Saith": Malory’s Adaptation of His Sources
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17) Stanley, Jennifer; Wollaeger, Mark; Plummer, John
Speaking with the Subaltern: An Exploration of the Voices of South Asian Women in Literature and Film
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17) Young, Laura; Tran, Ben; Wollaeger, Mark
If the subaltern could speak, what would she say? Would the women of India and South Asia talk about arranged marriages, sati (the sacrificial burning of widows), bride burnings, clitoridectomy, purdah, pativratadharma (husband worship), or female infanticide? Would they talk about the expectation of a woman’s community or the roles ascribed to them as mothers, caretakers, and the bearers of tradition? Would they talk about the denial of education, property rights, domestic violence, or denial of female sexuality? Or are these the topics on which a white Western feminist would have them speak and, if unsatisfied with what they have to say, speak for them? The key to my inquiry here is the fundamental problematic: can the subaltern represent herself and be heard in Western discourse? The subaltern is best characterized by the economically dispossessed individual whose identity is his/her difference from the elite group. For my thesis, I explore the works of three artists (literary and visual): Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, and Deepa Mehta. The women of my thesis, though born in India, hardly constitute what Spivak defines as the “true subaltern” (27). All of the women I study were born into privileged or middle-class families and all but one obtained higher levels of education.
Trauma in Lyric: A National Reading of 20th Century Postwar Lyric
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17) Muenchrath, Anna; Garcia, Humberto; Wollaeger, Mark
Grounded in postwar German and British poetry, this thesis explores the dynamic tension between the historicity located in poetic language and the trans-temporality of the identification mechanism facilitated by the lyrical “I” in order to theorize lyric as a medium for communicating national trauma.
Campbell, Frye, and Girard: Myths, Heroes & Ritual Violence in Literature
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-18) Jones, Jesse; Clayton, Jay; Wollaeger, Mark
In my thesis, I analyze the literary theories of Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye, and Rene Girard for their ability to address political concerns in literature. In the movement from Campbell -- who treated politics with an active disregard -- to Girard -- who has given interviews directly linking his theory of literature with political events such as 9/11 -- I hope to reveal that a theory like Girard's successfully incorporating political concerns is not an invitation to subjectivity, but instead a crucial method of ensuring the theory's adaptability to the ever-changing world in which we live.
Burning Castles in Sherwood Forest: The Construction and Destruction of Political Ideology in Scott, Peacock, and Conan Doyle
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-18) Herbon, Margaret; Teukolsky, Rachel; Wollaeger, Mark
For this study, I have chosen to concentrate on three historical novels from the nineteenth-century that are set in the medieval period: Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott; Maid Marian, a reworking of the Robin Hood legend by Thomas Love Peacock; and The White Company, by Arthur Conan Doyle, the story of a young Englishman who goes to seek military adventure in France with the famous (and fictitious) White Company during the Hundred Years War. As realistic novels, all three seek to transport the reader into a medieval world that is true to historical “life.” In an exploration of imagery in medievalist historical fictions, I will focus my analysis around two popular, imagistic settings which, together, encompass both angles of the political debates about this form of fiction: the forest and the castle. The following pages provide a general summary of the range and reach of British medievalism: how and why it originated, the many different forms it took, and, crucially, the different ideologies bound up in portrayals and “mobilizations” of the medieval past. I will also, however, question these established ways of thinking about medievalism, providing examples from the three main primary texts of this project.
Roadblocks to Publishing Obscenity and Blasphemy in Ulysses and The Satanic Verses
(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-24) DeBell, Liz; Gottfried, Roy; Wollaeger, Mark
The publishing industry is in such turmoil—thanks to digital publishing platforms which offer higher royalties and instant gratification to authors—that nearly every day a new story comes to light of a bookstore closing, or a digital publishing success, giving doomsayers foretelling the death of the industry and the downfall of publishing houses endless material. While their claims are, in part, correct—the industry cannot go back to the way it was before the introduction of e-readers and Amazon—a glance backward to self-publishing in the past suggests that the industry is constantly in flux, and changes, whether in the realm of obscenity, blasphemy, or technology, inevitably impact the industry. Of course, even using the words “self-publishing” brings to mind a very specific definition, yet this definition has changed over time. Once, it brought to mind images of vanity presses, but now most of the buzz surrounding self-publishing is in the digital world. These developments have given rise to a number of anxieties in the publishing community: how will publishing houses make themselves relevant in the digital publishing world? What is the future of the publishing industry? Does a text carry the same weight as “literature” when published online as when published in print? Do we value literature less when it’s sold at discount prices? While I don’t presume to have the answers to these questions, my hope is that examining cases of self-publishing in the past will shed light on the new developments in the industry. With these issues in mind, in the following pages I will turn to Ulysses, examining three different written texts that appear: Martha’s letter, Deasy’s published letter, and Stephen’s unpublished verse. Turning next to The Satanic Verses, we see that blasphemy, not obscenity, forced Salman Rushdie to evade the traditional publishing system, even though his novel was initially much heralded in literary circles. Then, in a brief final discussion, I will reflect on how these issues of obscenity, blasphemy, and self-publishing play out today in the digital realm.
Binary Domination and Bondage: Blake's Representations of Race, Nationalism, and Gender
(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17) Calvin, Katherine; Wollaeger, Mark; Garcia, Humberto
The Fury and the Mire: Readers, Reading, and Our Digital World
(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17) Combs, Chris; Wollaeger, Mark; Clayton, Jay
Rancière’s Political "Perceptible" and Perversions of Marxist Ideology: An Analysis of Narrative Politics in Brecht, Bulgakov, and Ishiguro
(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17) Lindell, Katherine; Wollaeger, Mark; Tran, Ben
The Anorexic Aesthetic: An Analysis of the Poetics of Glück, Dickinson, and Bidart
(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11) Rigl, Alexandra Haley; Hilles, Rick; Wollaeger, Mark
My argument acknowledges the complex liminal space within which the artist creates—one in which art may constitute an act of self-assertion or a deliberate pattern of self-sabotage, among other non-symptomologic, aesthetic purposes. Anorexia is a disease of contradiction. Through attentive discipline and deprivation, it provides a kind of indulgence through perceived power. This conjuring of self-control leaves the anorexic feeling overcome by impotence. Anorexia is a disease of the mind that attempts to divide the body from the self, to acquire an identity through the act of renunciation. The anorexic ironically thrives and creates through the very act of self-annihilation. Paradoxically, the compulsion undergirding anorexia is to become visible by disappearing—contradictorily emaciating one’s self in an effort to recreate the body into a form so confronting that it cannot be ignored. I suggest that the integrated fields of literature and medicine provide the theoretical and analytical means to posit a kind of anorexic aesthetic: neurosis (metaphorically and stylistically) embodied in writing and, more specifically, anorexia nervosa embodied in poetry. While I choose to explore the rendering of anorexia in poetry, I by no means celebrate eating disorder as a gateway to creative genius or suggest that the anorexic style necessitates a disordered poet at its core. Quite to the contrary, I analyze this stylistic trend in the work of three “anorexic poets,” a term which I operationally use in a stylistic rather than a diagnosing sense. The experiential histories of the poets I choose to analyze vary: first, Louise Glück, officially diagnosed with anorexia nervosa; second, Emily Dickinson, a known ascetic whose apparent anxieties parallel those associated with anorexia nervosa; and, lastly, Frank Bidart, occupying the narrative persona of a woman officially diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Each of these poets’ works embodies in its own way the vast contradictions built into the contrarian impulses of anorexia and the complex processes by which the margins of often harshly self-disciplined expression are continually redefined. I analyze the poetic aesthetics of these representative authors’ works, allowing each chosen reading to interact with the symptomology, therapy, and neutralization of disorder. In doing so, I deconstruct instances of both “anorexic” poiesis and mimesis throughout the respective collections.
Literary Treatments of Blindness from Sophocles to Saramago
(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11) Camp, David; Gottfried, Roy; Wollaeger, Mark
Blindness plays a prominent role in literature and is frequently turned into a metaphor associated with wisdom or divinity. There are certainly other ways to interpret blindness, but literature consistently links blindness and insight in one way or another. In this project I hope to trace blindness through several important works of literature spanning various time periods and genres, observing how the literary understanding of blindness has developed. Early works establish the connection between blindness and wisdom primarily through the blind prophet figure. The short stories of the twentieth century never completely abandon the metaphor of blindness as wisdom, but the symbolism becomes more sophisticated, and the depictions of blindness become more realistic. Each of the short stories expands the theme of blindness by complicating the blind prophet figure and posing questions that anticipate the work of the of disability studies. Finally, José Saramago’s novel Blindness deconstructs the glorification of blindness and explores the blind identity and its interaction with competing identities.
Becoming Jane: Subject and Narrative Formation through the Language of Suicide and Marriage in Charlotte Brontë’s *Jane Eyre*
(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11) DeAngelo, Elizabeth; Dever, Carolyn; Wollaeger, Mark
Scholars have understood Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a quintessential female Bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel, as ultimately a conservative work, since the marriage at the end of the novel appears to subsume and domesticate the rebellious, feminist actions of the eponymous protagonist. As both a Bildungsroman and a fictional autobiography, the novel, published in 1847, tracks the psychological development and maturation of Jane that allows her to become a productive citizen and the author of her own story. From the beginning of the novel, Jane is aware that she must actively cultivate herself as a subject to establish her place in society. This awareness complicates the conservative understandings of the novel, because it compels Jane to develop her narrative abilities so that she can determine her own fate and suggests that Victorian women can do the same. Both as the narrator and the protagonist, Jane uses language to differentiate herself from the “other” and to redefine what constitutes success and failure in her life. More specifically, she uses the language of suicide and marriage to describe failed and successful processes of development for herself and other characters throughout the novel, demonstrating her awareness of these developmental processes. Jane’s self-conscious development as both a subject and a narrator parallels Brontë’s blending of the Bildungsroman and autobiography. By tracking Jane’s development as both a subject and a narrator and demonstrating Jane’s awareness of this process through the narration of her own story, Brontë provides a model for Victorian women to assert themselves by becoming the authors of their own lives.

Browse

Browsing Vanderbilt English Department Honors Theses by Issue Date

Results Per Page

Sort Options