2011 Spring English Senior Honors Theses (MU)
The items in this collection are the 2011 spring semester Senior Honors Theses. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Beneath, before and beyond: how characters achieve a true identity through alternative education in Song of Solomon, The bear, and Things fall apart.
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Dear Reader, let me tell you a story. In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a black man named Milkman goes in search of his true identity. He had grown up learning to be a certain type of person: one who, like his father, ... -
From the boulevard to the boudoir: the prose poem's evolution from Baudelaire's scenes of French daily life to Nin Andrew's contemporary portrayal of the individual
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Compared to many forms of poetry, the prose poem is one of the most experimental and understated. It is a "genre of poetry, self consciously written, and characterized by the intense use of virtually all devices of verse" ... -
Judgments on witness reliability from written transcripts
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)A myriad of research has been done on the ways in which different linguistic features can affect perceptions made about the speaker. The judgments made about a speaker can be particularly important in legal settings, like ... -
Making Pierre Menard author of the Quixote: critics, creators, and context in Borges
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Though it has not always been so, it is now possible to conceptualize the act of reading as a process in which we necessarily form an interpretation of a piece of literature, and in so doing, create the work, or the meaning ... -
Influence: the linked stories of Olive Kitteridge and developing creative work
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)This collection of stories stemmed from reading Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence. For this project, I chose to “misread” Olive Kitteridge, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Elizabeth Strout. Strout's novel is a ... -
Two works in creative non-fiction: The Marine wife and Novosibirsk
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)The two memoirs in my thesis universalize personal experience by linking it to larger historical events (war or the fall of the Soviet Union), and illuminate the historical through the lens of intimate life. The first piece ... -
Young adult novels and their film adaptations
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)When novels first originated in the mid eighteenth century, they were seen as lowbrow and unworthy of serious study. Now, the study of novels is a staple to academia, but certain types of novels are still considered with ... -
The relevance and controversy of Dorothy Parker's works
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Dorothy Parker -- writer, poet, satirist, journalist -- was in her literary prime in 1920s and 30s America. America at the time was faced with considerable tensions, much of which was due to the burgeoning Women's Movement. ... -
Value and exchange in Hemingway's The sun also rises
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)The characters in The Sun Also Rises follow a code of exchange instead of a traditional moral code. This emphasis on exchange matches the new found booming economy of the 1920s. Characters follow this code of exchange ... -
Race, class, gender and property in women's writing of the Harlem Renaissance
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)By the 1920s, although slavery had been abolished in America decades before, many social, economic and legal inequalities remained between whites and blacks. This is well-known United States history, although to many, it ... -
Losing sight of literature: the commodity of book packaging
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)In every young writer's heart there is a dream, a dream that one day all of their hard work will lead to a successful, published novel. And not just any novel, but the next Great American novel that will be taught in classes ... -
The violent Mr. Hyde versus feminism: horror cinema's response to female sexuality in film adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)As one of the most adapted literary works of all time, filmmakers throughout the twentieth century have tried to answer one inexplicable question in Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Why ... -
Ideal gender roles and individual self-expression in the novels Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)The wide range of scholarship centered on Jane Austen is full of contention. Some put forth that she was ahead of her time in regards to feminist ideology. Others say she did not go far enough, at least in comparison to ... -
The nature of nervous conditions in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous conditions
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions is, primarily, a novel about nervous conditions. It's about many other things, too. It's about power. It's about women. About men and poverty and riches. It's about education and ... -
Days of the dim: the postmodern poetics and hope of Anne Waldman
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Language defines the survival and persistence of the human species. Poetics has been one of the most revered forms of both oral and written languages. Over the ages, poetry in the English language has morphed and evolved ... -
The symbolic significance of vice in Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love: blue-collar despair transcending class distinction
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)Raymond Carver's literary reputation is often defined as a minimalist writer who is known for his ability to effectively chronicle blue-collar despair. Because of his affinity to focus on characters of a lower class ... -
Comically serious: trauma and shame in coming-of-age graphic narratives
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)The visually arresting nature of the graphic form has appealed to youth from its international emergence in the early twentieth century. Comics of the past, from Little Nemo to The Yellow Kid, were brief and insubstantial, ... -
The critique of women in Shakespeare's plays
(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2011)In many of William Shakespeare's plays, women play a central role in moving the plot forward. These women become catalysts for the drama that unfolds, especially in Shakespeare's tragedies, where the reactions of the other ...