Vanderbilt English Department Honors Theses: Recent submissions
Now showing items 21-40 of 44
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-15)*Overlord* by Jorie Graham requires a theoretical paradigm which can account for the Overlord within it; this paradigm, I will argue, is Jacques Derrida’s différance. Just as différance produces an endless chain of violent ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-16)In this thesis, I will read detective fiction, particularly from the Holmes canon, in light of two linguistic and philosophical theories: the theory of semiotics expounded by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-16)I argue that one of the most major focuses in Toni Morrison’s novels is the exploration of trauma, specifically the forms of trauma that have afflicted the African American community. Although Morrison’s novels predominantly ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-16)In these pages, I will examine the dissonant voices of Faulkner the author and the Faulkner the man alongside the voices of the characters and narrators in his fiction. My interest lies not in finding a satisfactory ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2014-04-11)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17)
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(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17)
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(Vanderbilt University, 2013-04-17)
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17)
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-24)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, ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-13)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-18)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-18)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-17)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2012-04-16)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 ...
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(Vanderbilt University, 2010-04-29)
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(Vanderbilt University, 2010-04-29)Tracking patriarchal control through three Hitchcock films: North By Northwest, Notorious, and Rear Window.