This dissertation analyzes the relationship between the surrealist painters of the twentieth century and the verbal images of Herman Melville in his masterpiece Moby-Dick. The work examines Melville's lifelong affinity for the visual arts, his strange visual images, and the relationship he has to the surrealists of the subsequent century. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2003. / April 23, 2003. / Surrealist Painters, Religious Images Verbal Images / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Treatise; Roberto Fernandez, Outside Committee Member; Joseph McElrath, Committee Member; Dennis Moore, Committee Member.

The latter half of the nineteenth century was a turbulent time for American theatre, and dubious was the occupation of the professional actress. To be successful, leading ladies needed to be independent, innovative, and appealing. Few were more so than Charlotte Cushman and Adah Isaacs Menken. Treading center stage and bathing in the hot footlights, both mesmerized their rowdy audiences with their compelling breeches or drag performances. The breeches convention was, of course, not new when Cushman first portrayed Romeo in 1837. As early as the seventeenth century, women acted male roles, usually boys or romantic leads, in British productions. Breeches roles were popular because the bodily display of the performer fulfilled heterosexual desire. However, breeches performances undermined heterosexual ideology by blurring concepts of gender. Culminating with the 1845 London Haymarket production, Cushman infused the role of Romeo with a new subversive energy. Not conventionally feminine, the tall and commanding Cushman was a convincing Romeo, for some spectators were not aware of her actual sex. In contrast, Menken's breeches depictions were not purposely realistic as the coquettish Menken often underscored her feminine appeal in the play Mazeppa. Debuting the play in 1861 at the New Bowery Theatre, Menken played the hardy Ivan Mazeppa, a nobleman betrayed by his lover and wrongly punished to death by being strapped to a wild horse. While her costume choice of scanty tunic and flesh-colored tights enticed many spectators to attend this equestrian drama, critics overlooked Menken?s gender critique implicit in her costume and athleticism. In fact, Cushman and Menken's performances were subliminally liberating as they showcased independent, strong women and allowed female spectators to engage in homosexual feelings without condemnation. What distinguishes Cushman and Menken is that their challenges occurred onstage and off, for many of their subversions were more symbolic than literal. They were liberated individuals in their personal lives and shrewd self-promoters triumphing on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite the sometime tarnished reputation of the actress, both actresses fashioned their images to appeal to middle-class society. Fiction like Cushman's "The Actress" and poetry like Menken's collection Infelicia not only kept their names on the readers' minds but also legitimized their artistic talents. Analyzing contemporary publications and writings, I am interested in Cushman and Menken as self-made icons and will focus on the role of the popular press and photography as sites of image construction. Through their literary output and manipulation of public persona, Cushman and Menken assured the potential of the professional woman. Onstage, in the press, and in their personal lives, Cushman and Menken transcended the discourse of containment that would confine them strictly to the domestic sphere. By transforming the image of the actress, Cushman and Menken were rebellious yet respected American celebrities. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2003. / November 17, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Professor Directing Thesis; Mark Cooper, Committee Member; Leigh H. Edwards, Committee Member.

This thesis discusses female friendship in three plays, by a prolific dramatist of eighteenth century England, Susannah Centlivre. I extend recent feminist criticism of Centlivre through an in depth analysis of how female friendship transforms patriarchal institutions. I argue that Centlivre's writing reconstructs the emergent bourgeois ideal that supported fraternity and found women to be weak and emotionally unstable. I examine female friendship throughout The Beau's Duel, The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret, and The Artifice to show that Centlivre's radical feminist writing creates agency, for women, through friendship. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2005. / April 12, 2005. / Friendship, Susannah Centlivre, Bourgeois / Includes bibliographical references. / Helen Burke, Professor Directing Thesis; Sheila Ortiz-Taylor, Committee Member; Nancy Warren, Committee Member.

My thesis charts the progression of the discourse of sexuality through the genre of the epistolary novel beginning in the 18th century and ending in the 20th century. The first libertine work to be analyzed in this context is Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses which presents two rakes, one male and one female: The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. Liaisons presents a perfect example of Michel Foucault's model described in the History of Sexuality which shows a repressed society that will not discourse on sexuality but instead writes about it. Even the rake figures fall into the trap of while adopting a different code, still being bound and oppressed by that code, and when it is not followed the punishment that follows, because of their internalization of that code, is severe. While still adhering to discipline through surveillance and self-policing, Diary of the Seducer, written by Soren Kierkegaard, modifies the discourse of sexuality by introducing first an aesthetic rake, who is not solely pleasure-seeking, as the rakes in Liaisons appear to be, but is instead interested in the reflective and introspective analysis of his seductions. This innovation of the libertine figure is coupled with the further innovation of a seducer who not only discourses with his victim through the written word, but likewise discourses with himself. Johannes does not need or want an audience before which to rehearse his sexuality and perform theatrically the way Valmont and Merteuil must do. He does not want a confidante or audience and thus turns to his journal to catalogue his conquests and returns time and time again to those seductions to learn how he was able to change his victim and how his victim changes him. Johannes chooses to live outside of society's rules and codes by living in the world of the imaginary searching for the "interesting," but he stagnates in his search and does not reach a higher plane of development and that is his ultimate punishment. Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, takes the discourse of sexuality in a completely different direction by introducing the aspect of "illegitimate sexualities" through his alleged homosexuality and then dismissing that as not being important to his discussion at all. What is more important to him is his redefining of values and determining what is truly "criminal" and "sinful." He finds that the crime he is guilty of and deserves punishment for is his crime against Art. Wilde finds that his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) was an un-intellectual friendship that resulted in his being unable to work or create. His relations with Bosie also affected his ethics negatively and thus in that sense is deserving of punishment. The punishment cycle here transitions away from a society of surveillance and self-discipline with internalized guilt and codes, to one of prison reform. However, Wilde, while a true example of prison reform in one sense, creates a counter-discourse through his work, by arriving at a conclusion much different than the one society would deem appropriate. Wilde does use his solitary confinement as he should in that he confronts his conscience and examines his sins. However, he does not repent for the crimes that society found him guilty of, instead by his re-definition of values, he discourses publicly on private truths of real importance: Art, religion, and ethics. He thus supports both the epistolary genre and the discourse of sexuality by making the private, public and forcing these matters to be acknowledged. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2004. / November 4, 2004. / Rake, Epistolary Novel, Libertine, Wilde, Foucault, Aesthetics, Discourse of Sexuality, Confession, Sexuality, Punishment, Laclos, Kierkegaard / Includes bibliographical references. / Barry Faulk, Professor Directing Thesis; Karen Laughlin, Committee Member; William Cloonan, Committee Member.

My dissertation, The Knowing in the Neck: Memoir of a Girlhood in the Glades, is divided into three sections. The genre of this dissertation may be categorized as creative nonfiction, memoir or autobiography, but I feel "memoir" works best overall. The first section particularly fits the definition of creative non fiction in that each chapter is a construction of information based on what Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction, names "the 5 Rs" or "reading other people's work, 'riting on a regular schedule, reflection, research (information/reportage) and real life." I'd categorize the second section as "memoir" due to the distinctly short shapes of the chapters which are created from moments of my childhood and center on my subjective memory. Reflection and research are absent in these small vignettes; I only create a scene using traditional creative writing techniques of dialogue and description. Often, I employ present tense in this section similar to chapters in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes or Sheila Ortiz-Taylor's Imaginary Parents. The last section most closely resembles the genre "autobiography" because I build a chapter trying to explain many years in a certain period. It is reflective and encompassing, but does not employ researched information. Unlike autobiography, this section does not cover my entire life, but only a few years. Because of this narrow focus, it is more similar to memoir. For a while now, the genre of memoir has not been limited to those who have lived a full, noteworthy life. Mary Carr's The Liar's Club and Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior have shown readers they could make simple relatives into mythic characters. It is my observation that one of the most important things about a lived-life is understanding that life and recognizing the epiphanies that occurred and articulating the unarticulated. Recognizing these moments required only that I examine sharp visuals to see what made them sharp. The pay-off was often enlightening and could not have been pre-planned. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2004. / December 3, 2003. / Memoir, Glades / Includes bibliographical references. / Sheila Ortiz-Taylor, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jean Graham-Jones, Outside Committee Member; Virgil Suarez, Committee Member; Joann Gardner, Committee Member.

"That Inimitable Art": Magic in Early Modern English Culture examines representations of magical practitioners and their beliefs and practices as they appear in a variety of canonical and non-canonical early modern cultural productions. Drawing on the practice theory of De Certeau and Bourdieu, as well as on Keith Thomas's important work on early modern magic, I elucidate literary and historical moments in which magical practices appear as practices, consider magical discourse in relation to other early modern discourses, and explore ways in which magical identities were constructed (by others), performed (by the subject and by the community), and even actively sought, appropriated, and shaped (by the subject). In chapter one, I look at intersections between discourses of poverty and witchcraft, by way of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Nashe's Pierce Penniless His Supplication to the Devil, and Middleton's The Black Book. I argue that Middleton's pamphlet highlights the economic foundations of early modern cultural attitudes about witches and rogues and revises the rhetoric of witch and rogue pamphlets, showing the subjects of each in a more sympathetic light. In chapter two, I investigate representations of women workers of magic in Fletcher and Massinger's The Prophetess, Edmond Bower's Doctor Lamb Revived, or witchcraft condemn'd in Anne Bodenham, and Jonson's The Alchemist. I assert that in both Fletcher and Massinger's play and in Bower's pamphlet, women practitioners of magic display features typically associated with the male magus, but whereas the magus is associated with privilege and leisure, these women are involved in active labor—they use their magic to earn a living. In chapter three, I suggest that we broaden our understanding of the emergent public sphere in early modern culture to include "possession events," or moments in which communities gathered to witness the magical practice of possession, whether divine or demonic. It was amid such events that women prophets like Anna Trapnel emerged as public figures. This chapter considers Trapnel's and John Milton's experiences and representations of divine possession, their self-fashioning and emergence as public prophets, and their interactions and engagements with magical discourse and practices, and reveals ways in which gender was simultaneously limiting and enabling for each as they negotiated their public and prophetic identities. Chapter four turns from divine to demonic possession as I discuss plays such as Jonson's Volpone and The Devil is an Ass, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and Rowley, Dekker, and Ford's The Witch of Edmonton in light of contemporary beliefs about possession. I demonstrate that stage representations of possession are ambiguous and do not necessarily disable belief, even if they satirize it. While chapter four emphasizes the possibility of belief, chapter five focuses on skepticism as it is expressed in Thomas Middleton's mock-almanacs and mock-prognostications, as well as in his invocation of the genre in dramatic works like No Wit / Help Like a Woman's. I argue that Middleton's several contributions to the popular genre reveal the author playing with its conventions and expressing a distinctive skeptical impulse. I thus close this study by looking at this other strand of magical belief—that is, anti-magical belief—and consider its relationship with the beliefs considered in the previous chapters. Together, these chapters turn our attention to important but understudied early modern texts; they emphasize the overlap among religion, magic, and science; and they complicate the Enlightenment narrative that tells the tale of benighted Renaissance culture giving way to eighteenth-century rationality. If the seventeenth century eventually saw a decline in magic, it also saw the coexistence and confluence of magic and skepticism, religious belief and reason, superstition and science. This study acknowledges such convergences and illuminates the persistent and complex role of magic in the production of early modern culture. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2009. / March 2, 2009. / Rogue Literature, Witchcraft, Prophecy, Demonic Possession, Almanacs, English Renaissance Literature / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce Boehrer, Professor Directing Dissertation; John Corrigan, Outside Committee Member; Gary Taylor, Committee Member; Daniel Vitkus, Committee Member; Nancy Warren, Committee Member.

In The English Usurer, or, Usury Condemned (1634), John Blaxton writes of the "usurer," "Every Bond he takes of others, enters him onto a new obligation to Satan: as he hopes his debtors will keepe day with him, the divell expects no lesse of himselfe. Every forfeit he takes, scores up a new debt to Lucifer: and every morgag'd land he seizeth on, enlargeth his dominion in hell" (44). In Doctor Faustus, Lucifer's aim is to "Enlarge his kingdom" (2.1.39), and he does so by sending Mephistopheles out to acquire the capital of human souls he needs. After his successful temptation Eve in the garden of Eden, Milton's Satan remarks off-handedly, "A world who would not purchase with a bruise?" (10.500). This thesis explores representations of devils as capitalists and capitalists as devils in texts ranging from Thomas Wilson's anti-usury treatise, A Discourse Upon Usury (1571) to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Milton's Paradise Lost. Anti-usury authors inveigh against "usury"—by which was meant a broad range of what we now would call capitalist practices—and ascribe its existence and its detrimental effects to the devil. As capitalism emerges in early modern England, the anti-usury authors are not alone in their anxious treatment of the quickly changing economic milieu. This anxiety, I argue, makes its way into Marlowe's drama and Milton's epic as well. Marlowe's play warns against bourgeois social-climbing and the tendency, created by capitalism, to commodity everything—including the soul itself. Milton's epic similarly casts Satan as a capitalist—and capitalism as satanic. Milton also offers faint intimations of a divine economy which requires of the postlapsarian faithful productive labor with a grateful mind; Milton reminds the reader to have faith in "the meaning, not the Name" (7.5). Drawing on the economic theory of Marx, as well as current scholarship that is concerned with the interconnections between early modern religious thought and emergent capitalism, I demonstrate that Renaissance subjects perceived the rise of capitalism with apprehension. The texts I examine are fraught with anxiety; I read them as expressions of a culture's fear that early modern England, with its burgeoning capitalist economy, was indeed the devil's playground. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of the Arts. / Spring Semester, 2005. / March 23, 2005. / Usury, Satan, Marx, Commodity Fetishism, Contracts / Includes bibliographical references. / Daniel Vitkus, Professor Directing Thesis; Bruce Boehrer, Committee Member; Nancy Warren, Committee Member.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America is an interesting time when examined through the lens of property ownership and self ownership. Technically and legally, married women could own property and many had enjoyed this right since the first Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s. Technically and legally, African Americans enjoyed freedom and the rights as citizens of the United States. Additionally, authors were gaining rights of ownership over their published texts in a manner striking in its contrast to the culture of reprinting that thrived mid-century. We can understand these three systems of ownership as interrelated as they all connectively feature in the debate over who will have power and access to power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and as they all have a significant role to play in the attempt to preserve national manhood. The literature of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain posits the questions of debates over access to power and autonomy and explores the roles property and self-ownership play in the defense of national manhood. Each author offers a rather dark perspective on these issues. The heroines of Chopin, Wharton, and Chesnutt's works all die, either through suicide or some terrible accident. The effect of these tragic endings is unsatisfying to the reader, deliberately, in order to provoke thought about the inability of these othered characters to successfully participate as propertied members of society. The literary works here demonstrate the prevalent thought of Critical Legal studies that the law is written and/or adjudicated in such a way during this time period as to maintain existing systems of power, which exclude and other women and African-Americans. Because of the power of custom created by American law, it is difficult if not impossible for certain groups of people to succeed in self-ownership or property ownership. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2006. / July 24, 2006. / National Manhood, American Literature, Chopin, Wharton, Chesnutt, Twain, Property, Self-Ownership, Law, Critical Legal Studies / Includes bibliographical references. / Leigh H. Edwards, Professor Directing Thesis; Andrew Epstein, Committee Member; Ned Stuckey-French, Committee Member.

Five Stories contains the imaginative work of Jason Freels. The thesis concentrates on the craft of writing short fiction, and will demonstrate the creative abilities of the author by successfully producing stories in this form. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2005. / April 4, 2005. / Creative Short Fiction / Includes bibliographical references. / Erin Belieu, Professor Directing Thesis; Barry Faulk, Committee Member; Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Committee Member.

Enlightenment institutions dominate our cultural landscape. Perhaps no idea is as problematic as the belief in "Cartesian dualism" — the separation between mind and body, interior and exterior, subject and object. Since Descartes, philosophers and literary critics have been trying to reconcile that dichotomous relationship in order to create strong epistemological models of subjectivity. This thesis explores the ways in which pragmatism allows modern poets like Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens to challenge the notion of Cartesian subjectivity. By encouraging their readers to dissolve the subject/object distinction, these poets attempt to bridge the subjectivity gap between independent minds. As these disembodied voices manifest themselves in our consciousness — appearing in the one place they don't belong — they challenge our notion of epistemological independence and enable us to enact a more social-self. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2008. / April 7, 2008. / James, Idealism, Radical Empiricism, Dewey / Includes bibliographical references. / Andrew Epstein, Professor Directing Thesis; RM Berry, Committee Member; Tim Parrish, Committee Member.