Honors Projects

Thy Father and Thy Mother

Natalie Lalagos '12 — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:38:41 PDT

A collection of poetry by Natalie Lalagos.

exercising with my demons

Bryn Saunders '12 — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:38:40 PDT

A collection of poetry by Bryn Saunders.

Rural Queen

Amanda Williams '12 — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:38:39 PDT

A collection of poems by Amanda Williams.

water burial

Korey Williams '12 — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:38:38 PDT

A collection of poems by Korey Williams.

A Schema-Theoretic Approach to Agreement and Disagreement in Literary Interpretation

Amy Fairgrieve '12 — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:33:51 PDT

In "Interpreting the Variorium," Stanley develops his theory of reader response, one which he had already begun articulating in "Literature in the Reader," into one capable of not only describing some of the processes of reading that contribute to meaning making, but also situating the individual reader within her wider surroundings. "Interpreting the Variorium" comes at the middle of a set of essays making up Fish's book Is There a Text in this Class?, and in many ways this essay marks a transition from Fish's concern with reader response, specifically the importance of time in the process of reading, to a concern with the social forces that affect reading and the power of those forces to influence the reading process as well as agreement and disagreement between readers.

Tragic Vision in the Age of Shakespeare

Mr. Fredman et al. — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:10:23 PDT

The following

essays - investigative, critical, or interpretativee -were selected from the 1964 Senior Seminar in English.

It was the primary purpose of this Seminar to penetrate into the three types of tragedy written during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods: the de casibus, Italianate, and Domestic. Nadeleine Doran's Endeavours of Art was used as the basis for categorizing the various plays studied during the semester. Of the papers herein bound, only two of the above categories are represented: de casibus tragedy in Coriolanus, Dr. Faustus, and Bussy D'Ambois; ltalianate tragedy in The Spanish Tragedy, Othello, and The Duchess of Malfi.

The Ubermensch-Artist of Friedrich Nietsche and Thomas Mann

Dale Whitney — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:10:21 PDT

There is at once a thin line and an enormous gulf between the artist-philosopher and the philosopher-artist. Where one spreads out his ideas in a dazzling and often bewildering array, the other builds a framework with them and constructs the fictional experiences of a latent philosophy. Where Nietzsche exultantly screams an aphorism, Mann constructs a novel.

George Elliot: A Conflict of Heart and Mind

Janet Polsgrove '75 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:05:34 PDT

It is the purpose of this paper to explore this continuing conflict within George Elliot and the various resolutions of the conflict which she achieved.

Only Dull Readers Escape: Framing Humor and Materiality in Stephen Crane's The Black Riders and other lines

Andrew J. Dorkin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:55:28 PDT

In this essay, I attempt to reorient the scholarship of Stephen Crane’s first book of poems, The Black Riders and other lines (1895), towards understanding the text’s affective purpose. I begin by illuminating the subtle but pervasive humor of The Black Riders, a critically underdeveloped, but nonetheless major, component of the reader’s experience; too often, it seems, this humor is marginalized by the assumption that Crane’s verse consists primarily of philosophical aphorisms meant to be taken seriously. After orienting my reader to the humor of the lines, I use Catherine Emmott’s Contextual Frame Theory as a model for the way readers engage the text; this theory, as I have applied it, accounts for the way our interpretive processes are shaped by our own “contextual frames,” which organize the information we receive from the text and the assumptions we make about it. Having established a frame of The Black Riders that recognizes its humor and, consequently, our own laughter response, I contend that we as readers will be primed to find ourselves directly subject to the condemnation of insensitive laughter contained in the text. The succeeding frame of The Black Riders as possessing both a subtle humor and a remarkable degree of reader interaction primes us to accept Jerome McGann’s claim about the “typographical wit” in Crane’s lines; this, in turn, establishes a new frame of typographical and material awareness that integrates the effects McGann has articulated and moves beyond them, ultimately incorporating another presentational feature, the original page turns.

The Dark Places of Psychology: Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's Major Novels

Linda Martin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:43:21 PDT

In a 1919 essay, Virginia Woolf wrote that “[f]or the moderns ‘that,’ the point of interest, lies very likely in the dark places of psychology.” For Woolf, this assertion represented a career-long interest in the mind and consciousness; she made a project of describing and explaining the mystery of subjective experience in her fiction. In my paper, I argue that specific, turn-of-the-century psychologists’ and scholars’ theories of consciousness influenced and inspired Woolf to integrate their ideas into her fiction. Further, through an in-depth exploration of Woolf’s middle fiction (Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves), I demonstrate that Woolf proactively interrogated consciousness theory in her novels, ultimately rejecting the reigning models and, in The Waves, forming her own unique conceptualization of consciousness. Finally, I critique Woolf’s innovative theory in terms of contemporary, 21st century consciousness theory, concluding that Woolf’s aesthetically-developed theory of consciousness, in fact, predicted and draws many similarities to current consciousness scholarship.

Advisors of the age of reason: The periodical essays of Steele, Addison, Johnson, and Goldsmith

Carol Meyers — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:44:33 PDT

The periodical essay of the eighteenth century invited men of the Age of Reason to pour into it their talent and thought; it was a form in which they could make their points briefly and effectively; it was flexible, and was eventually familiar enough to be well-received. The form itself reflected the common-sense practicality, restraint and moderation that the periodical writers were advocating.

Descent into Chaos: Ways of Reading St. Thecla

Betsy Phillips '96 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:12:09 PDT

I find reading a hypertext akin to finding shapes in a cloud. One minute, the cloud clearly looks like two people in a row boat, then the wind blows and the cloud becomes a dinosaur. In a hypertext, just when an incipient shape presents itself in the text, then one clicks the mouse, and that meaning can completely change. In fact, unlike a cloudy sky, in which the context of the clouds, the sky, remains the same, the whole context of the text can change. Trying to analyze a particular hypertext, then, could be likened to trying to convince a friend that the cloud I see really does look just like a dinosaur. Even if she does see the same cloud, which I can never be sure of, she might not see the dinosaur; she may see an Indy car, instead. With all the opportuity for confusion, I understand how a little guidance or insight might be helpful for a reader drifting around in my text, St. Thecla: A Woman in Translations.

Responding to Romanticism

Valerie Higgins '08 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:40 PDT

My vision was aided by the fact that this course on the Romantics encouraged me to engage with the material in ways that were both critical and creative. In addition to critical essays and papers, one assignment required that students keep a notebook of personal responses to course readings. The seeds for the essays in this project were planted and germinated in that assignment. Thus, it was my creative and critical reactions to the work of the Romantics, combined with the creative and critical works of the Romantics themselves, which provided me with examples of a different kind of engagement with texts, illustrating the possibility of a response that was both visceral and reflective, emotional and intellectual, imaginative and theoretical.

My Little Force Explodes: A Re-creation of the Assembly of Emily Dickinson's Fasicicle 18

Katie Brokaw '02 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:38 PDT

It is hard to recall my exact first encounter with Emily Dickinson. In some ways, I feel as though I have always known her. I remember quoting A word is dead! When it is said, / Some say. / I say is just / Begins to live / That day to my Junior High language arts class. Throughout the years, Dickinson has grown with me, in me. In the summer of 2000, I began an independent study focusing on ED's fascicles. It was during that summer that I chose to focus on F.18, by virtue of the fact that it contains "After Great Pain," a poem which is the quintessence of my fascination with ED. I came to see this fascicle as a microcosm, a distilled version of ED's personal crises and her crucial relationship with the world.

Mediating Between the Mediums: The Changing Shakespearean World

Rebecca Ewert '91 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:37 PDT

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has been described as "poetry, ritual, ballet, and circus rolled into one" (Bryden 17). Encompassing so many different mediums of performance and human experience, these various levels incorporated the realms of words, music, movement, and spectacle as integral parts of Shakespeare's production. Music was, of course, by the sixteenth century an accepted addition to the spoken language of the plays. Louis Elson, for example, writes that "[a]11 performances of [Shakespeare's] epoch were preceded by three flourishes of the trumpets," and it was only after the third flourish that the curtain was drawn and the prologue spoken (318). In addition to boasting the inclusion of such incidental music which, admittedly, played a decidedly subservient role to the action on stage, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream dignified the role of music by incorporating it directly within the drama. Where incidental music occurred as background effects (i.e., fanfares or dance music), as entertainment between scenes, or as a postlude to the play itself, stage directions within Shakespeare's play specified the need for music to be performed in conjunction with the action on stage, to reflect the actual text.

Eating Away: A Study of Women's Relationship with Food in Literature

Sheila Bauer '93 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:35 PDT

Women struggle against a male dominated structure to grasp control and shape their own identities. In her analysis of the "feminine mystique," Betty Friedan states "It is my thesis that the core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity -a stunting or evasion of growth" (Chernin 17). Friedan is correct--many women cannot define the boundaries of the self and, further, cannot find an identity within the larger social structure to claim for themselves. These three issues--self, autonomy, and identity--are interwoven as causes behind the development of eating disorders.

(Un)dress and (Dis)empowerment): The Relationship Between Women and Dress from the Cavaliers to the Romantics

Elashik A. Kimberly '93 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:32 PDT

References to women and their dress continually recur in British literature, especially predominant between the mid-seventeenth century (the Cavaliers) and the early nineteenth century (the Romantics). Clothing, or lack thereof, becomes one means for male authors to write about women. In John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes" and "Delight in Disorder" (1648), and John Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" (1819), the authors undress the individuals to render them vulnerable, often weaving eroticism and voyeurism into their examinations. Other works, such as Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714) and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722), detail the temporary power contained within the manipulation of attire, but reaffirm the patriarchy's ultimate control by reclaiming women's limited influence. Finally, the essays and conduct manuals prevalent in eighteenth century England directly detail the immense importance of dress imposed upon women by the patriarchy. Wetenhall Wilkes' religiously-based A Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice to a Young Lady (1740) and John Gregory's social view in A Father's Legacy to his Daughters (1774) offer repressive guidelines to women regarding their attire. Set against these numerous "feminine ideals" are Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest (1694) and Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), essays which uncover various fallacies of the period, including the fashion preoccupation, and call women to nurture their mind rather than their dress. Whether women are dressed or undressed, empowered or disempowered, pious or ornamental, the close link drawn between women and clothing by male authors falsely defines femininity and restricts a woman's value to her physical beauty.

Order and Orderlessness in Gravity's Rainbow: A Dialectic

Richard A. House '94 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:23 PDT

Gravity's Rainbow is a notoriously unreliable text. The perspectives of the strange narrator and various characters give an account of the novel's events that is clearly problematic in terms of the degree of "reality" that can be ascribed to various episodes: fantasies, hallucinations, and paranoid delusions are often indistinguishable from the events which may cause them or to which they may refer. To an unusual degree, then, the fundamental plot-question-"What happens?"-becomes a point of depa.rt"u!e for a sort of textual metaphysics. Often, arguments about the significance of passages may be upstaged by arguments about the plot itself: what "really" happens and what is illusory? The reader faces the same difficulties that plague the characters: all seek knowledge of, or at least a coherent theory about, the fictional world of which the characters are inhabitants and the reader is a curiously stationed observer. Definitive answers are impossible; Pynchon's work revels in its ambiguities. However, Gravity's Rainbow is spectacular in the vastness of the fictive world it creates and chronicles, prompting a tremendous array of claims about the ways in which it functions. Thus, it seems appropriate to inquire into questions which are as fundamental in Pynchonian metaphysics as in the IJreal" world. Probably the most important question is the one of whether or not ultimate order exists. Is the world of the novel orchestrated, ordered, or structured by some outside-the-System force or basic organizing principle, or is it characterized by randomness, with each event falling into a universal Poisson distribution?

The Living Metaphor of Orlando: Duration, Gender, and the Artistic Self

Michele L. Herrman '95 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:17 PDT

Virginia Woolf knows from the beginning what Orlando learns in the end: to be an artist is to be a living metaphor-a self which is not static and discrete, but evolving and "capable of others," to quote Cixous (Laugh, 345). In Orlando, Woolf represents the realization of the artistic self as a "creative evolution" through time; Orlando experiences time as a duration, unlike her peers, which separates her from society and its moment-to-moment constitution of self through gender, allowing her to experiment-with gender masquerade and develop the sensibility with which she can create metaphor.

Adult Attachment Style and Attitudinal Assessment of Preferred Timing of First Marriage

Elizabeth J. Arthur '97 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:26:16 PDT

The study assessed the factors contributing to expected ages of marriage in two student populations that are presumed to differ in academic achievement and goals. A primarily goal of this study was to describe the influence that adult attachment style has upon a person's expected age at marriage. A secondary goal was to explore other social and goal-oriented influences on timing of marriage in the two populations. There were no significant differences in attachment style for men and women. The more Avoidantly a person ranked, the later the age at which they expected to get married. University students' ideas about marriage were more influenced by educational goals than the community college sample. There were significant differences between men and women in expected age at marriage and the degree of influence of certain goals. It was found was that the community college students considered themselves to be adults at a younger age than the university group and ideally wanted to start a family at an earlier age.