Browsing by Author "Sharon Setzer, Committee Member"

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Challenging Gender Roles in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Virginia Woolf's Orlando
(2005-07-08) Jones, Joanna Medlin; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member; Leila May, Committee Chair; Laura Severin, Committee Member
Clothing reinforces gender roles culturally assigned to men and women by emphasizing individuals' biological sex and encouraging them to behave in specific ways based on their sex. However, individuals can manipulate their clothing to challenge the gender roles assigned to them. The primary characters in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Virginia Woolf's Orlando wear gender-deviant clothing to point out the constructed nature of gender and to assert their own identities independent of specific gender roles.
Colley Cibber and the Negotiation of Mode: Sentiment and Satire in Love's Last Shift and The Non-Juror
(2008-04-06) Cartwright, Christina Ann; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member; Michael Grimwood, Committee Member; John D. Morillo, Committee Chair
The purpose of this thesis is to show that Colley Cibber's works are important to studies of both genre and mode in 17th-and 18th-century British literature. This thesis explores the important lessons that Cibber's negotiation of mode teaches us about Cibber and his influence in the movement toward and away from certain modes (sentimentalism, satire, and comedy). In order to achieve this goal, I look at two different genres — dramatic sentimental comedy and dramatic satire — as they are seen in two works of Cibber: Love's Last Shift (1696) and The Non-Juror (1717). Scholarship tends to focus on the sentimental comedy of one (Love's Last Shift) and the political satire of the other (The Non-Juror) without necessarily addressing the presence of both modes in both plays. Both of Cibber's plays contain both modes, and these modes are similar in that they instruct. By examining the changes that occurred across the 21 years between Love's Last Shift and The Non-Juror, in the areas of both satire and sentimentalism, we are able to understand more about the evolution of certain forms. In The Non-Juror Cibber mimicked the works of famous satirists of his time in an attempt to create a successful play. However, unlike other satirists, Cibber, referring back to the success of Love's Last Shift, added an element that made his work distinctive: sentimentalism. The important connection between the two plays is the presence of these two modes — the sentimental and the satirical — because both modes share the idea of instruction. However, one suggests an appeal to feelings of pity and empathy, and a lesson by example; the other suggests an appeal to feelings of shame and, perhaps as a side effect, a lesson by ridicule. However, Cibber's success comes from his ability to use these two modes to complement each other. This unique mix of two seemingly divergent modes not only suggests changes in the nature of satire at the time, but it also indicates the presence of sentimentalism in a genre different than the usual focus of sentimental studies and at a much earlier date than traditional scholarship has suggested.
More Than One Shape: Unity Among Fred Chappell's Varied Literary Works
(2004-01-12) Piver, Courtney Lorraine; Michael Grimwood, Committee Chair; Lucinda MacKethan, Committee Member; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member
The purpose of the research has been to develop a theory of unity between Fred Chappell's prose and poetry. His works thematically range from Southern gothic, regional Appalachian, magical realist, and science fiction. One application of this theory of unity has been explored through the idea of a common heroic character. Another application of this theory of unity has been explored through the reliance on fantasy during the hero's journey in the search for truth. But there is a danger in fictive realities — they can both hinder and help the hero reach his goal. Ultimately Chappell's more regional works predominately use fantasy to allow a protagonist to gain truth in self-knowledge while his more gothic and science fiction works tend to use fantasy in order to lead the hero away from truth.
Sexuality and Coming of Age in Two Works by George MacDonald
(2003-04-16) Ware, Stephanie Lynne; Tony Harrison, Committee Member; Leila May, Committee Chair; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member
This study attempts to follow George MacDonald as he engages in the strange juggling act by which he simultaneously idealizes women and releases them from the grasp of idolizing males, proclaims their purity and concerns himself with their healthy maturation into sexuality. A comparison of Phantastes and Adela Cathcart reveals the complicating role of sexuality in the coming of age process of both males and females. The male protagonist of the fantasy work Phantastes is asked to learn to control his sexuality and to abandon selfishness in love, and he does so in part by understanding that women, too, have sexual natures. In Phantastes, however, MacDonald hesitates between idealizing, and thus desexualizing, women and accepting sexuality as part of women's nature, as Anodos's continuing celibacy upon his return from Fairy Land illustrates. The realistic setting of Adela Cathcart compels MacDonald to address women's sexuality. The novel demonstrates that a woman can fulfill her traditional angelic role even while confronting the demands of her sexuality. Women are fallen angels who must be taught how to live in their fallen bodies without compromising their angelic calling. In order to become the 'angel in the house,' the moral center of the home, individual women must undergo a coming of age process similar to that of the males who struggle so much with handling their sexuality. To mature successfully, and to stave off the selfishness that is threatening to manifest itself in her, Adela, like Anodos, embarks on a journey through fantasy, though she will be borne there through the imagination and words of others. Taken together, these two works by MacDonald manifest both the importance of the image of women's natural innocence in the nineteenth century and a growing awareness of the inadequacy of that image.
Travelling in the direction of mortality': Wandering the Topography of Wordsworthian Selfhood
(2004-06-24) Chernik, Aria Fortune; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member; Thomas Lisk, Committee Member; John Morillo, Committee Chair
One of the primary attributes of a wanderer, as one who is in constant motion, is that he or she is not beholden to traditional spatio-temporal constructs, and, thus, to traditional constructs of life and death. This thesis examines some of Wordsworth's seminal wanderer figures, such as the peripatetic speaker and his uncanny double, the Leech Gatherer, in 'Resolution and Independence' and the transcendent Wanderer in the first book of The Excursion, 'The Wanderer,' and investigates the way in which movement functions as an integral component of the phenomenological and ontological construction of Wordsworthian selfhood. In 'Resolution,' wandering allows the speaker to traverse the natural boundaries of his environment and arrive at a place of liminality where he encounters his spectral other, the Leech Gatherer. Applying Freud's theory of the uncanny, I reveal how the Leech Gatherer ameliorates the severe anxiety within the speaker about dying in 'despondency and madness' because of failed artistic accomplishment in a world of materiality, and thus never attaining literary fame, a kind of immortality after death. In contrast, while the Wanderer may certainly be characterized as an immortal figure, he achieves immortality not by negating the existence or permanence of death, but by perfecting a dynamic, relational selfhood that synthesizes the Kierkegaardian dialectic of selfhood. Under Kierkegaard's vision of selfhood, transcendence is achieved by constantly balancing the finite, temporal body and soul and the infinite, atemporal spirit. Wordsworth's wandering figures are not limited to poetic characters, however. Wandering is also an intrinsic element of some rhetorical tropes. Employing Paul de Man's analysis of the rhetorical figure of prosopopoeia as a figure propelled by 'the art of delicate transition,' this thesis unearths the way in which Wordsworth, in 'Essay upon Epitaphs,' portrays epitaph as an archetypical example of prosopopoeic transition. Indeed, in 'Essay,' Wordsworth writes extensively about the epitaphic function of granting a voice, and thus life, back to the dead and explains how, shrouded within the context of prosopopoeia and epitaph, a sepulchral monument is not a final resting place, but merely a platform from which the dead speak and through which they journey back.