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- ItemA "Consummate Artist" and "Consummate Rascal:" De Profundis, Imaginative Resistance, and the Queer Erotics of Prison Writing(2021) Murphy, Jack; Mohan, Rajeswari"I sit between Gilles de Retz and the Marquis de Sade," Oscar Wilde writes to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known affectionately as "Bosie," from the solitude of his prison cell (54). The letter – given the title De Profundis – was the last full work of the Irish aesthete and playwright who fell from stardominto obscurity after his sentencing for "gross indecency," a crime of homosexuality, in May of 1895 (Tóibín xxiii). Throughout the letter, Wilde continues todraw on the muses of other prison writers: he praises the "perfect lives" of "Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin," and compares his mother kindly to "Madame Roland" (130, 140). In its self-announced lineage, De Profundis offers a basis to evaluate the aesthetics of prison writing. Firstly, the letter must be read in terms of mimesis, or how the prison materially shapes the text. Gramsci's theory of the subaltern clarifies how time and language in prison impress upon Wilde's writing, creating a fluidity of prose and a strategic turn to essentialism. Subsequently, the letter can be read in terms of anti-mimesis, or how the text creatively shapes the prison in acts of expropriative refashioning. Wilde resists the religious indoctrination of the prison by encoding a homoerotic portrayal of Christ. In doing so, Wilde reasserts his imaginative preeminence by employing the body of Christ as a symbol for the fluidity of sexuality and for an ethics of bodily care amongst the imprisoned men. In De Profundis, Wilde not only challenges the narrative of defamationon trial but also produces an artistic work that employs the pressures of confinement as features of its self-expressed agency.
- ItemA Blackface Masque: Blackface and the 'Claim' of Lyric Identity in John Berryman's '77 Dream Songs'(2005) Rowe, Michael H.; Benston, Kimberly W.
- Item"A Blurred World": Impressionism and the Rendering of Urban Spaces in Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and George's Mother (1896)(2010) Stutman, Gabe; McGrane, Laura
- Item"A Broken Wall of Books, Imperfectly Shelved": Constructing and Deconstructing Race and Gender in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus(2013) Hawkins, Lauren; Solomon, Asali
- ItemA Call to Dance: The Transformative Power of Dreams and Grief in Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz(2023) Serebrenik, Avi; McGrane, LauraThis essay shows how The Baltimore Waltz channels the playwright’s, Paula Vogel’s, regret about not going on a journey through Europe with her brother before his passing from AIDS, to dream of a world where victims of HIV/AIDS aren’t stigmatized, where they are treated like the dream world’s protagonist, Anna, and a future where victims of HIV/AIDS are honored and remembered for being the multitudinous people that they are. The essay explores how each element of the Freudian dreamwork plays its part in this process, allowing the audience not only to see the hidden shame around HIV/AIDS but also to begin grieving for Carl, Anna’s brother and a victim of AIDS, which according to Judith Butler is a recognition of someone’s humanity. Butler also shows us how grief and mourning are ongoing transformative processes, and this essay argues that The Baltimore Waltz harnesses this potential to call upon the audience to carry the affect of grief with them and extend it towards others who suffer, or more specifically, the HIV susceptible people in their communities. The play acknowledges that the cruelties of the real world can’t be denied, but through its dream vision, it makes us question what reality could be. Ultimately, AIDS is no longer so strongly in the public consciousness, but this essay argues that the play has taken on a new life as an archive of the early years of the AIDS crisis and a guide toward challenging and transforming our communities to recognize queer lives.
- Item"A Coming On and a Coming Forth": Desire, Space, and Becoming in "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"(2012) Gaffney, Victoria; Finley, C. Stephen
- ItemA Creature among the Landscape: Defining the Sublime Experience in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'(2006) Donaldson, Lauren; Finley, C. Stephen
- ItemA heap of signifying : narrative, materiality, and reification in Ralph Ellison's Invisible man(2002) Sharp, Matthew T.Ralph Ellison's multi-nuanced novel seems to veer continually between real and surreal planes, between mimesis and metaphor, without ever resting fully in either one. Ellison's most striking departures from verisimilitude are material in nature, taking the form of physical spaces and interactions with material things. These material details carry the weight of narrative itself: rather than being peripheral to the flow of narrative, as is the conventional role of material description, they seem to convey it within themselves. This material condensation has two related effects. First, it calls attention to the complete disjunction between any narrative and the events which the narrative conveys. Second, Ellison's full utilization of this disjunction, which allows him to tell his narrative in material terms, conveys with particular effectiveness the play of reification between the narrator and the world around him. This essay examines the material narration of Invisible Man and the way it condenses relationships of reification and power, first through the spaces that effect the narrator's reification, and then through the things with which he strikes back. Literary theories of Deconstruction and Marxism are brought together by using Jacques Derrida's theories of language to explicate Ellison's narration of Georg Lukacs' politics.
- ItemA Journey in Understanding the End: An Analysis of Stream of Consciousness, Emotion, and Repetition in The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner(2016) Ainsley, Jeffrey; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
- Item"A line there, in the centre": Temporality, Narrative, and the Rewriting of Loss in 'To the Lighthouse'(2012) Emery, Lydia F.; Benston, Kimberly W.
- ItemA Livelier Vein of Conversation: Reading the Influence of Gothic Conventions on Feminist Criticism Through Dialogue(2015) Fagan, Jacqueline; Stadler, GustavusJane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel, follows the protagonist, for whom the title is named, in a rags-to-riches bildungsroman told as an autobiography. Jane's new, distinctively personalized voice gave rise to the novel's place as one the most widely studied nineteenth-century texts and feminist critics, in particular, have found the novel a generative one (Kaplan 16; Lodge). Within the feminist critical body of literature, Bronte's appropriation of the Gothic genre in Jane Eyre has not gone unnoticed. The relationship between the two plays a role in informing Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's landmark text The Madwoman in the Attic, as well as many other critical works that expand upon and push against Gilbert and Gubar's. Gilbert and Gubar propose that Jane's anger within the novel is a product of the frustration and anxiety associated with both the enforcement of gender norms and the suppression of her inner passion. Gilbert and Gubar then show how a Gothic trope, the double, works within the novel, proposing that Bertha Mason, Edward Fairfax Rochester's unstable wife, serves as Jane's angry double and, to some degree, Bronte's. Their primary concern, however, is not the role of the Gothic genre, though their framework brings forth the link, also seen in later readings, between critical feminist interpretations and Gothic conventions. I will argue that the relationship Gothic conventions have to feminist readings may be better understood specifically through Jane's focus in relaying her time at Mr. Rochester's estate, where her compelling interactions with Mr. Rochester are at the forefront of her experience.
- ItemA New Model of Literary Criticism: Kay Redfield Jamison’s Exploration of Bipolar Disorder, Dueling Identities, and Learning to Conquer the Beautiful Beasts Within(2018) Rocanelli Veale, Elena; Devaney, Thomas
- ItemA PORTRAIT OF A STRANGER(2018) Earl, Lauren; Devaney, Thomas
- ItemA Question of Balance: A Short Story(2006) Musci, Ricky; Benston, Sue
- Item"A Word Is Also a Picture of a Word": The Imagistic Consciousness and Historical Representation in Don DeLillo's Libra(2009) O'Toole, Dan; Stadler, Gustavus
- ItemA “Culpably Helpless” God: An examination of Henry Perowne in Ian McEwan’s Saturday(2013) Pryor, Katherine; Bennett, AshlyHenry Perowne, the protagonist of Ian McEwan's novel, struggles with various forms of guilt as he attempts to have a relaxing Saturday. Despite Henry's job as a neurosurgeon, none of the guilt‐inducing situations that McEwan presents are due to failed surgeries. They emerge, as his Saturday progresses, from his accidental viewing of a plane crash, then a car crash Henry is partially responsible for, and finally a visit to his senile mother. It is his inaction during the plane crash that causes him guilt, but after this first event the source of and solution to his guilt become increasingly complex. While his guilt after the plane crash fades over the course of the novel, the guilt he feels about his mother is cyclical and appears as if it will never be assuaged. At first it appears that his guilt about the car crash will also fade, but Baxter, the other driver, reappears at the end of the novel and Henry is forced to confront the guilt he felt he had already atoned for. Henry is originally presented as a character who has become callous to everyday events due what he calls “the growing complication of the modern condition, the growing circle of modern sympathy”. He has replaced his sympathy with guilt, an emotion that can conceivably be cured through atonement, unlike sympathy. Guilt too, however, proves to be an uncontrollable emotion and ultimately Henry faces his guilt and is forced overcome the emotional distance he has created to protect himself from sympathetic feelings. Henry's solution for his problem of sympathy is shown to be both unrealistic and destructive through McEwan's Saturday causing the reader to contemplate new solutions for this modern problem.
- ItemAeonian Music and the Touch from the Past: Epiphany and Consolation in Alfred Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'(2008) Smith, Eric; Finley, C. Stephen
- ItemAestheticizing The Self: 'Krapp's Last Tape' and Identity in the Age of Technology(2004) Wool, Jason; Devenney, Christopher, 1961-
- ItemAh, the Reader Would Take the Narrative Beyond: Disengaging from the Narrator in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth(2016) Madigan, Sarah; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-
- ItemAlfred Hitchcock's Psycho: Control over Madness and Convention Through Cinema(2004) McLean, C. LeMar; Ransom, James