Theses and Dissertations
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Browsing Theses and Dissertations by Department "English"
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Item A comparison of the value patterns of early Hebrews and early Greeks(1968) Law, Barbara C.,1936-; Bellar, LeonardPurpose: It was the purpose of this study to explore the differences and similarities in the value patterns of the early Greeks and the early Hebrews. Five topics concerning the value patterns of these cultures were considered: (1) the view of life; (2) the view of death and the after-life; (3) the relationships between gods and men; (4) the characteristics of heroes; and (5) the status of women. Methods: The methods used to obtain data for this study were (1) close textual analysis of primary source material; and (2) comparison of conclusions with those of secondary sources. Findings: From the evidence presented in this study the following conclusions appear to be in order: 1. The value patterns revealed in the Homeric epics are, of course, more consistent than those of the early books of The Old Testament because the latter reflect various cultural levels and practices over a longer period of time. 2. Although many similarities existed between early Greek culture as revealed by Homer in his epics, and Hebrew culture as revealed in The Old Testament, these similarities generally were those which unite all cultures. Certain basic differences in philosophical outlook were found which sharply divided the early Greek mind from that of the Hebrew. 3. The early Greek culture contained the seed of humanism which also characterized Golden Age Athenian culture, and which has been the social and political motivating force in European civilization since the onset of the Renaissance. Hebrew culture and concepts, on the other hand, furnished the impetus toward the metaphysical and toward ethical monotheism which has guided European civilization as strongly as has Greek humanism.Item A study of Moderation and its concomitant motifs in the treatment of the Phaedra Myth by Euripides, Seneca, and RacineWalker, Margaret Stanfield.; Condray, JeanItem An analysis of the ethical language of William James(1967) Hughen, Barbara Jean,1943-; Pierce, Vaudau P; Leonard Zellar; Earline Dolive.It was the purpose of this study to show the effect of language on philosophy and that the language of ethics can simultaneously have more than one of the four functions of evaluative, emotive, prescriptive, and descriptive language. The methods used to fulfill the purpose involved an analysis of the language of moral judgements used by William James in three of his most representative essays on ethics: " Is Life Worth Living?" " The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life", and "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings." From the evidence presented in this study the following recommendations appear to be in order: 1. It should be recognized that the language of ethics can have more than one function simultaneously, which is a recognition at variance with some linguists of philosophy. 2. It should be recognized that the meaning of philosophical writings, in this case ethical contexts, can be made clearer through the analysis of the language used.Item Black Cats and Puma Women: Marginalized Bodies and Violence in Gothic Literature(2021-04-29) Hageman, Margaret; Hall, JulieAmerican and British Gothic literature has an extensive history of addressing social issues crucial to nineteenth-century discussions, with subjects of particular interest including race and gender. In the Gothic mode of literature, people of color and women are overtly represented as marginalized bodies. While scholarship recognizes this process, there are few studies that use an intersectional approach in their examination of marginalized bodies in Gothic literature. This study examines the intersectionality of violence against women and violence against people of color in nineteenth-century Gothic literature. Additionally, in nineteenth-century American and British Gothic literature, there is a prevalence of authors depicting marginalized bodies via animal characters. The codification of marginalized bodies as animal figures allowed authors to comment on contemporary social issues without directly interacting with these controversial subjects. While this process is particularly notable in Poe’s “The Black Cat,” other authors similarly applied these motifs to their work. Using Poe’s titular black cat as a narrative template, Stoker and Wells employ their own variations of the black cat archetype in their texts. This continuous application of an animal archetype conveys the prevalence of hybridized figures characterized by both their femininity and blackness. Moreover, these authors’ overlapping depictions of gendered and racialized violence emphasizes the prevalence of abuse that these vulnerable populations faced. This study intends to examine three authors’ literary portrayals of violence against marginalized bodies and their correlations with historical conceptualizations of race and gender.Item Central American Women Migrants: A Feminist Exploration of Migrant Literature(2022-08-01T05:00:00.000Z) Funes, Cynthia Carolina; Shemak, April A; Dowdey, Diane; Soto, EvelynCentral American women confront unique experiences in their countries that lead to their decisions to migrate to the United States. Their migration should be looked at through gendered perspectives due to the patriarchal structures that force them to migrate in search of better opportunity. Colonialism, postcolonialism and neocolonialism have continuously affected and stifled the role of women in Central America. The Northern Triangle of Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, are plagued with poverty, violence, and corruption that hinder any progress for women. In order to gain liberties that they are not allowed to have in their home countries, women must break many chains that have suppressed their ability to think and act. Through migration, women connect with their spirituality, demand autonomy over their own bodies, and overcome familial trauma. In migrant literature, the Central American woman’s narrative is often placed in a supporting role. This negatively portrays the experience of women as secondary to men in importance. In the texts, "We Are Not From Here", "The Far Away Brothers", and "Enrique’s Journey", this is perceived through the supporting female characters. Through a gendered perspective, using feminist and postcolonial theory, I analyze the narratives of women migrants in order to understand the obstacles they face in Central America, the process of migration, and life as a new migrant in the United States. In the first chapter of this study, I address the background and history of the Northern Triangle in order to gain an understanding of its implications on women. In the second chapter, I address the topic of spirituality in relation to Central American women’s migration in "We Are Not From Here". In the third chapter, I focus on the portrayal of migrant women’s commodification in "The Far Away Brothers". In the fourth chapter, I concentrate on family disintegration and the trauma that ensues from it in Central American women and children in "Enrique’s Journey". At the end of the study, the gendered perspective to migration will provide clarity to the importance of women as primary characters in migrant literature and in the conversation of migration.Item Complex networks: Author-editor relations and cultural change in the golden age of Victorian periodicals--Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens; Anthony Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray; George Eliot and John Blackwood(2019-04-17) Arensdorf, Nadia J.; Courtney, LeeThis thesis examines three pairs of author-editor relationships, whose authors published one of their major works through a form of serialization in the Victorian periodical press. The three pairs, their works, and their respective periodicals are Elizabeth Gaskell, author of North and South, and Charles Dickens, editor of Household Words; Anthony Trollope, author of Framley Parsonage, and William Makepeace Thackeray, editor of The Cornhill Magazine; and, George Eliot, author of Middlemarch, and John Blackwood, editor of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. For each of these relationships, I analyze one-to-one correspondence and other primary sources, concluding that in tandem these pairs of authors and editors contribute to the ever-changing cultural growth occurring in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens notoriously had a tempestuous relationship, but, in spite of their difficulties in serializing North and South, their shared legacy should be as the twin social commentators of their time. By contrast, Anthony Trollope and W. M. Thackeray maintained a businesslike relationship, with Trollope offering Framley Parsonage as the quintessential English novel to the fledgling Cornhill Magazine. In parallel fashion, Thackeray and Trollope worked to promote the new gentlemanly ideal to their middle-class public. Finally, George Eliot maintained a long and robust correspondence with her editor, John Blackwood, relying on him for encouragement to keep writing. With his consistent and abundant affirmation of her true-to-life writing style that is most fully represented in Middlemarch, Eliot and Blackwood contributed to the establishment of literary realism that was developing towards the end of the nineteenth century. Each of these authors, editors, novels, and periodicals has a story to tell, and, in combination, they helped to create a publishing culture that reflected the dynamic social and literary transformations arising in nineteenth-century Britain.Item FEMALE QUIXOTES: LENNOX’S AND AUSTEN’S APPROPRIATION OF JOHN LOCKE(2019-04-22) Oliver, Erica P.; Child, PaulThe primary obstacle to analyzing the political and educational statements found in eighteenth-century women’s fiction is that all texts, fictional or not, were subject to intense scrutiny by the dominant culture, which disallowed women a political voice; therefore, most political or educational arguments authored by women are heavily obscured. This thesis seeks to contextualize female quixotic texts—namely Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey—within the long eighteenth-century’s educational debates and to analyze each text’s veiled advocation for female learning. In so doing, John Locke’s notions concerning the tabula rasa, the conduct of the mind, and education are paramount because female writers, including Lennox and Austen, appropriated his individualistic theories to advocate for intellectual parity. When viewing the female quixotic tradition as a dialogue between female authors and contemporary educational debates, both The Female Quixote and Northanger Abbey signify an emerging ideology that both presents the flaws inherent in gendered education and also calls for more equitable female learning.Item Finding the Human: Hidden Disability in Star Trek(2022-05-01T05:00:00.000Z) Lawrence, Garrett (Emily); Tayebi, Kandi A; Hubrig, Adam L; Dowdey, DianeIn this thesis, I explore depictions of characters in Star Trek (ST) media that question what it means to be human and how those depictions match narratives in disability studies. While criticism has explored both liberal and conservative depictions of various disenfranchised groups in ST, very little has focused on characters with disabilities, and even less on those with hidden disabilities. Thus, this thesis aims to explore a media touchstone and place it within the larger conversation of rhetoric, identity, and disability. Chapter I is an introduction to ST itself, to disability studies, and the scholarship surrounding both before establishing the characters and arguments that will be discussed. In Chapter II, I focus on Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) to examine the depiction of his mental state and the comparisons drawn between him and Spock from the Original Series. This allows a discussion of the accurate and inaccurate depictions of neuroqueerness and how that impacts a watching audience. In Chapter III, I focus on the EMH from Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) to examine the unique struggles he faces through lack of accessibility and how these struggles affect his own mental state and the people around him. Using Donna Reeves’ concept, I examine the effects of psycho-emotional disablism on EMH. In Chapter IV, I examine Julian Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) to show the era’s ideas and understanding of disability and the cure narrative so entrenched in disability studies and medical knowledge. This allows a complication of the either/or view of ST as entirely liberal or conservative in its depictions of the Other and of the medical/curative understanding of disability that it was commenting on during the events of its era. This thesis concludes that ST’s writing pushed the bounds of what was known and accepted, contributing to its lasting power in the public consciousness and scratching the surface of how the humanities and popular media have influenced each other, and society, despite being generally ignored in scholarship as unimportant.Item Imperatives in Advertisements: A Study of Politeness Strategies in a Persuasive Genre(2018-11-29) Dietrich, Hannah E.; Halmari, HelenaThe aim of this research project is to evaluate why the use of direct language, imperatives specifically, in printed advertisements would be considered appropriate when they blatantly meet Leech’s (2014) description of the strongest face threatening act and are therefore deemed impolite. I will also evaluate if the regularity of imperatives has shifted in the history of printed advertisements. In order to investigate this usage, I analyze the advertisements in the 1940 January through March, 1960 January through February, 1980 January, 2000 January, as well as the 2016 January through September issues of Vogue magazine. Data were collected regarding the number of ads, the number of ads with full sentence written components, and the number of ads using imperatives in order to quantify any change. Building on the research of Zjakic, Han, & Liu (2017) and Simon, & Dejica-Cartis (2015), I analyze the imperatives for both the syntactic context and the surrounding materials. Also, following the research of Harris (2001) I inquire as to justification of directness within the genre of advertising. The results of this study show whether, over time, advertisements, as a genre, are not restricted by the same politeness expectations of other genres, or if various additional politeness techniques are invoked to reduce the face threat of the imperatives.Item Indians of Texas in legend and poetry(1941-08-01) Mead, Mildred Ford; Stewart, Charles O.No AbstractItem Inside the Labyrinth: Assembly of Ladies and Chartres Cathedral(2020-07-10) Knox, Jennifer; Bell, KimberlyThis thesis explores the possible meanings and functions of medieval labyrinths and mazes in architecture and literature. Information on labyrinths, including historical and oral traditions, as well as descriptions in narrative texts, are considered. In this project, I examine medieval attitudes toward labyrinths and how those attitudes influence function in the setting of the hedge-maze in the anonymous fifteenth-century poem, Assembly of Ladies, and the labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral in France. Ultimately, I argue that labyrinths, whether literary or physical, are more than merely diversions or entertainment, but sacred sites of ritual performance. The rich history of the labyrinth lends authority to the ecclesiastic rituals at Chartres and, in turn, gives narrative authority to the AL narrator.Item John Sjolander - Poet of Cedar Bayou A Collection(1950-05) Thompson, Martha Wood; Joseph L. Clark; Mary S. EstillA thesis presented to the faculty of Sam Houston State Teachers College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Master of Arts.Item Lavender, Lilac, and Language: A Study of Linguistic Variation in Alice Walker's The Color Purple(2020-11-30) Campbell, Mackenzie R; Halmari, HelenaSince its publication in 1982, The Color Purple has been widely discussed. However, few of these analyses focus on the novel from a linguistic perspective. That is not altogether surprising considering that stylistics (the linguistic analysis of literature) has a contentious place in literary criticism. In part, this thesis aims to bridge the gap between linguistics and literary criticism by demonstrating how linguistics can aid in literary analysis. More specifically, however, the objective of this thesis is to answer the following research question: How does Alice Walker use language variation and for what purpose? My claim is that Alice Walker uses language variation to negotiate power, construct her characters’ identities, challenge the dominant culture, and expand the range of voices to be heard in American literature. To answer my research question, I collected data from all of Celie’s epistles in The Color Purple, which amounted to 47,057 words. In this corpus, I analyzed dialect usage and dialogue. The data quantify the language variation over the course of the novel. What I found was that Celie’s nonstandard dialect usage drops slightly over the course of the novel and she grows quantitatively in her conversations. Both of these represent her empowerment in her language. Ultimately, African American Vernacular English is a way for Celie and Walker to identify themselves and orient their position among speakers and authors who use Standard American English.Item Literary Game Theory and Monstrous Femininity(2020-11-02) Daniel, Sarah Nicole; Blevins, Jacob; Demson, MichaelThroughout time, powerful women have been perceived as threats to systems of masculine control. These women have been deemed UnWomen—other than what Woman should be—and are read, throughout literature, as the archetypal, monstrous femme fatale. This UnWoman embodies Kristeva’s abject and Freud’s uncanny, being perceived by her culture as generally monstrous. When this type of woman is read from the Game Theory perspective, the monstrous woman—disturbing to masculine power structure and veiled in the uncanny—often fulfills the role of game-master. Within the theoretical structure of the godgame, specifically, the game-maker (and primary game-master) are similarly veiled within a type of “undecidability.” When the reader ventures to explore beyond the archetypal label of femme fatale, the characters who have often been designated to this flat role prove to possess more controlling power than is typically considered. This thesis employs a combination of feminist, queer, and game theoretical readings to explore five of these women: Morgan la Faye and the Lady of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Eve of Paradise Lost, and Westworld’s Dolores and Maeve. Using this type of theoretical approach, each of these women prove to possess significant, though often veiled, controlling power over their respective gamespaces, making them into, not mere femme fatales, but rather autonomous and complex game-masters who work to dismantle and control the game’s male-dominated power structure.Item LITERARY GAME THEORY AND THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE IN SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, AND KIMETSU NO YAIBA(2023-05-01T05:00:00.000Z) Bazan Davila, Edson Ronaldo; Bell, Kimberly K; Demson, Michael T; Tayebi, Kandi ACultural Game Theory began as a historical/anthropological interpretation of games as integral to culture and society. Over time, the understanding of games expanded to include the playful dynamics that occur in literary texts. This thesis applies cultural game theory to explore the idea of a godgame in three literary texts. In godgames, characters act as gamemasters, the ones who control and manipulate the other characters. Characters as gamemasters not only control the games, but their roles are hidden from the understanding of the other characters: the gamemasters thus act as directors, the gods who function as unknown but influential deities. As I will show in this thesis, when gamemasters take action to change other players’ fortunes, they come to symbolize the Roman Goddess Fortuna’s control over people on her Wheel; as a result, the gamemasters’ games function as metaphorical Wheels. This thesis studies several literary texts representing different genres to explore how concepts of the goddess Fortuna influence the tactics of these gamemasters: Morgan la Faye from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Edmond Dantès from The Count of Monte Cristo, and Muzan Kibutsuji from Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer). Using this type of theoretical approach, I will show how each of these characters possess a hidden, controlling power over their respective gamespaces, but whose unique personalities reveal different extents of a gamemaster’s power over the game while in conflict with their players, who work to dismantle and control the game themselves.Item Measurement and analysis of linguistic development in six three-year-old children(1966) Whitescarver, W. David,1940-; Rushing, Dorothy; Frances K. Darden; Oliver M. Refsell.It was the purpose of this study to measure and analyze the linguistic development of six three-year-old children. Special consideration was given environmental influences, vocabulary, speech, and usage. Because of the growing interest in the language of pre-school age children, this study was timely and potentially useful.Item Monstrous 'Others': The Legacy of Race, Hybridity, and Intersectionality in the Nineteenth-Century Novel(2019-11-05) Oualline, Valerie Beth; Tayebi, KandiIn the late eighteen and early nineteenth centuries, the construct of race became fixed in the collective consciousness of Europeans, in large part due to the efforts of Enlightenment-age scientists who sought to classify and define all species. Much of their research is eventually used to justify both slavery and colonization. The racial stereotypes established by these race scientists also permeate the literature of the nineteenth century. Into this world are born Frankenstein’s Creature, Bertha Mason, and Heathcliff, three characters who function as racial ‘Others’ in their respective texts, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. However, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë, the three women writers who craft these characters, both confirm and challenge race stereotypes. The first four chapters of this thesis will explore the construct of race and how it is reflected and subverted through the characters who function as racial ‘Others.’ The three nineteenth-century novels that comprise the primary focus of this thesis each present characters that reflect nineteenth-century beliefs about racial ‘Others’; however, these characters are more than just flat stereotypes or mere caricature. Instead, they are so complex, so compelling, so nuanced, that they demand reinterpretation. The final chapter will explore three twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts that have adapted and updated the characters: Victor LaValle’s Destroyer, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. The three twentieth- and twenty-first-century reimaginings of these characters—a prequel, a sequel, and a remake—are compelling enough individually to demand close study of the way LaValle, Rhys, and Condé address issues of race and gender in their own time by reinterpreting nineteenth-century characters. Together, these three texts extend the discussion on how nineteenth-century attitudes toward race and empire continue to impact discourse and attitudes regarding racial Otherness in the twenty-first century.Item Monstrous Silhouette: The Development of the Female Monster in British Literature(2017-07-11) Woodworth, Savannah J.; Courtney, LeeIn this thesis, I analyze the effects of social, political, and economic change and the historical effects of said change on the literary representations of female monsters as portrayed by male authors in medieval and Victorian literature. To contextualize the literature selected, each chapter involves extensive research which I argue influenced the presentation of the characters selected. Each chapter also includes extensive textual analysis to show direct examples in the text relating to the historical context, followed by a section tying the ideology of the thesis with the context provided in the historical and textual analysis sections. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate the repercussions of social change on the social standings of women and the manifestation of those changes within literature as a form of expression for the conflicting representations of the nature of femininity and the anxieties of the male writers in these moments of upheaval. At the beginning of this analysis, there was some expectation for a direct correlation between masculine anxieties and increases in female independence resulting in wholly negative portrayals of women, resulting on monstrous images; however, each character, despite their clearly monstrous traits, was nuanced in a way that was frequently empathetic, particularly when placed within the historical context of social change.Item Mægð Modigre or Þeodnes Mægð: Judith's Heroism in the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon JudithLewis, Kristina; Bell, KimberlyStudies on female heroism in Old English literature have recently taken hold, and many scholars of the Old English anonymous poem Judith perform such analyses by comparing Judith’s display of heroism to other conventional expectations of the hero, namely the female saints Juliana and Elene or the epic hero Beowulf. Such arguments, though the aim is to understand and seemingly conventionalize Judith’s heroism in the poem, are possibly limiting our understanding of Judith’s potential as a female heroine by forcing her into one of two categories in which she does not fully meet the expectations. Thus, I move to reexamine the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet’s source, Jerome’s translation of Judith in The Vulgate, and reconsider the literary model for Judith’s heroism, the story of Jael in Judges 4, to bring to light the poet’s intentional and significant modifications to his version of Judith’s character. I also move to examine Judith within the generic contexts that scholars often limit the Judith poem to, the female vita and the epic poem, in order to demonstrate that such comparisons are problematic and, ironically, do not bring scholars closer to understanding Judith’s display of female heroism. I conclude by providing two possible avenues I see future research on this subject taking: a deeper look into the poem’s authorship or a greater understanding of the limitations applied to fictional women in Old English literature.Item Of Pyrates and Picaros: The Literary Lineage of Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates(2017-11-13) Morris, Adam R.; Payton, Jason M.Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates is a text that exists at the nexus of Atlantic history, Atlantic literary studies, and oceanic studies. Though the study of Johnson’s work has most often been the province of historians, this thesis establishes the need to reconsider it as a literary artifact and explores its literary legacy and lineage through the use of material history and genre theories. The initial chapter examines the evolution of A General History in transnational and transatlantic contexts, with an emphasis on its material history. This approach affords the opportunity to examine how changes to the text serve the rhetorical purposes of girding Johnson’s credibility with his audience and of emphasizing the critical socio-political themes in the text, namely European culpability in the rise and perpetuation of piracy, and how these changes reflect a fluctuation in eighteenth-century concerns with piracy. Chapters two and three maintain a generic focus. Chapter two establishes the work as a piece of literature with divinable characteristics belonging to many genres and specifically acknowledges the picaresque novel’s influence on the text, noting that the work borrowed from the Spanish literary tradition and that some figures in the text, Bartholomew Roberts in particular, function as English picaros. Chapter three focuses on the text’s distinct political commentary and Johnson’s mobilization of the English picaro as a vessel of criticism. The socio-political criticism evident in the English picaro female pirate narratives—those of Mary Read (and Anne Bonny, to a lesser extent)—is the manifestation, illustration, and extension of criticisms introduced in the preface and introduction, both of which mark the text as a critique of English/European imperial practices and inefficiencies. A close reading of Johnson’s text reveals a nuanced view of eighteenth-century piracy. Ultimately, Johnson leverages the picaresque and other fictional elements for the sake of socio-political criticism and satire and argues that the scourge of piracy is a byproduct of the structural and administrative shortcomings of the European state at large, emphasizing the English role in the incubation of piracy.