After dissecting the dichotomy established through the opening monologues and examining the rhetoric behind the characters’ diction, the third chapter of my thesis presents a close reading of selected passages, which present the facts of Maria’s situa . . .

The purpose and intent of this thesis, then, is to discuss the stylistic variances throughout Melville’s works. These works have stylistic devices that are common among all of his works, such as hypotaxis, parataxis, attribution, and erotesis. These s . . .

In the century since its publication, Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula has become the preeminent source of inspiration for a massive genre of fiction which continues to grow in popularity. The role of the vampire in fiction is varied and often highl . . .

Given that Flannery O’Connor openly claimed to incorporate her Catholicism into her works, many critics have noted the various types of violence in her stories that are often connected with those moments in which her characters become receptive to gra . . .

The purpose of this thesis is to understand and analyze Aldous Huxley’s presentation of neo-colonialism in his utopian novel Island. Particular attention will be given to his portrayal of economic relations between first world powers and the third wor . . .

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a celebrated classic, and it is often the first favorite classic among young women who identify with the heroine and indulge in her fairy-tale romance with Edward Rochester. However, as Jane Eyre is the fairy tale of th . . .

This thesis incorporates, and attempts to reconcile, both sides of this debate. In doing so, it seeks to accomplish two purposes. First, it explores the possibility that The Scarlet Letter is a novel about sexual slavery for both men and women—on both . . .

Reading “The Clerk‟s Tale” can be a frustrating experience, for it seems to mean something, but—even barring modern sensibilities from the analysis—it seems confused or even self-contradictory in its conclusions. Is it the ideal marriage or not? A lit . . .

The textual, biographical and historical inquiry into Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre will center on the explicit and implicit Christianity of the novel and how it was possibly influenced by Charlotte Bronte's own unconventional religious perspecti . . .

A study of equivocation will yield that this practice commanded a vast amount of attention during the Renaissance, the time period of 1450-1600, in which Jesuitical equivocation was an ongoing phenomenon. The practice became part of the Renaissance er . . .

In this thesis, I seek to resolve the debate over Tiresias’s ability to unify The Waste Land by offering a new perspective—Tiresias as a Modernist Maypole. I propose that Tiresias’s inability to perfectly coalesce the different voices and themes withi . . .

Originally published in 1898 in serial form, The Turn of the Screw has undergone many incarnations. The short story was published again, complete with a preface, in Henry James’s New York Edition, 1907-1909. The version I have chosen to use, edited by . . .

To approach these concerns, this project seeks to provide an evaluation of the intellectual and personal relationship between authors Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke as viewed through the lens of personal correspondence. A review of selected letters d . . .

If Shakespeare “invented the human,” a claim made rather spectacularly by the critic Harold Bloom in a 1998 book, then the six British poets who comprised what was to become known as the Romantic Period perfected the mode. Shakespeare, in Bloom’s term . . .

This thesis, entitled “The Politics of Cultural Trauma and Violence in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” asserts that transgenerational trauma takes place in the aftermath of the 1930-1961 reign of Dominican president Rafael Leonidas . . .

The text offers a barren landscape and desolate setting, governed by a violent zealot. We are presented with characters whose minds we cannot penetrate and an unresolved ending, with our only potential hero dying off just like the rest of them, except . . .

Barnes’s works are steeped in overt grief and rage, and all of her longer works can be directly traced back to traumatic events in her life. Antiphon and Ryder both are vicious retellings of her early family life. Themes of incest, rape and stolen vir . . .

Critics have been known to connect Fitzgerald’s personal life with the characters and events in Gatsby. Once a reader does research on Fitzgerald’s life, obvious connections can be made such as the attitudes and names that some of his characters share . . .

Much research and critical analyses have been done concerning Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, The Canterbury Tales. The various characters in this work have been examined thoroughly and the mechanics of the poem have been scrutinized and dissected mercilessl . . .

University and college students today are reading and writing more than ever before, but in spite of this they often do not consider themselves successful writers. This is because the material they read and respond to is mostly electronic, is constant . . .

In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” does Chaucer merely retell the story popularly known as “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell?” These two stories are essentially the same, except that Chaucer’s is more humorous. In order to argue against the claim . . .

The literature and drama of the long eighteenth century is overpopulated with nuns, and they are all transgressors of patriarchal society in one way or another. These nuns are all vow-breakers, fornicators, and fallen women; whether they were ruined a . . .

In the play of Othello, Shakespeare perfectly explores the issue of racial tension that existed in the Elizabethan era. Othello, a loyal soldier and the protagonist of the play, appears as an outsider in Venice because of his dark skin; he is repeated . . .

This paper is dedicated to improving the classroom experience of students enrolled in writing courses one level below university level composition. Everyone's goal is persistence and completion. The question this paper seeks to answer is, what do inst . . .

Melancholy, enigmatic, haunting, spectral. These are words often used to describe W.G. Sebald’s prose style. Critics and lay readers who find themselves enmeshed in Sebald’s enchanting, dark web of words sometimes find his work difficult to categorize . . .

One of the biggest problems facing incoming freshmen in American colleges today is lack of preparation in appropriate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. These abilities are necessary for success not only in college but also in the profess . . .

Little is known regarding the reliability of translations of epic poems such as the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. This is partly because of the time period in which the Beowulf manuscript was created, approximately 1000 A.D. For this manuscript, most Ang . . .

Spurred by an exciting thought, a woman rises from the river bank and hurriedly walks across the university lawn, only to be reverted, by the gaze of a man, to the gravel path. Returning to the designated pathway, the woman—the unnamed fictional narra . . .

The purpose of this thesis is two-fold – on the one hand translation and on the other analysis of Sappho’s influences and depictions in English art and literature. I will include own translations of selected fragments of Sappho of Lesbos taking into c . . .

The debate over the correct political interpretation of Dracula has been waged by critics for decades. It is unlikely to achieve a clear resolution in the near future. However, one aspect of the postcolonial question that has been largely ignored is t . . .

Milton was without a doubt the seventeenth century's most intelligent and prolific artist. He was also the most ambitious counting himself among the most learned and talented men of the era. Idealistic and ambitious he appeared to have personified eve . . .

The Introduction to this thesis defines a number of key terms and concepts related to the study of paratexts in historiographic metafiction. The chapters that follow describe how paratextual forms operate within specific historiographic metafictional . . .

Ever-Becoming Whitman: mythic perceptions cast long showers

In this thesis, I explore philosophical influences underlying various portrayals of werewolves in language, religious texts, law, and myth, discussing depictions from the earliest in antiquity—the first in The Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Mesopotamia . . .

For the bulk of my project, I will be using the Oxford English Dictionary to single out words recorded for the first time in three plays (Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest). The tragedies, Hamlet and King Lear, were chosen for their high levels of em . . .

There seems to be a general resistance to humanizing or analyzing the motivations and inner lives of these “evil” women. In my opinion, if Shakespeare wrote such a fully developed character in Cordelia, who only appears alive in four scenes of the pla . . .