Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and field out the appropriate web form. / Poetry collection. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

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This dissertation examines the literary and political significance of the Argentine writer Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938). Part One provides an account of Lugones’ reputation, largely from the point of view of his critics. He has often been accused of ideological contradictions. Initially labeled as a passionate socialist, he went on to advocate liberalism; in his final years, he became a staunch defender of hierarchy and political order. As a result, the contemporary image of Lugones is associated with Argentina’s complicated historical experience with military coups and dictatorships. He is pictured as a man who favored strong government, the coercion of political opponents, the restriction of individual liberties, and the use of systematic imprisonment and torture. Consequently, he has been judged as a figure who leans toward fascism and populism. Complicating the issue of Lugones’ reception is the fact that he might have suffered from mental instability. Among other things, it has been suggested that he was overly “sensitive.” Part Two suggests that this so-called “sensitivity” not only served as a pre-condition for his social consciousness, but that it also provided unique personal insight throughout his literary and political trajectory. After reviewing a substantial number of Lugones’ early writings, it is argued that he developed a philosophy of history. Just as Nietzsche felt that after “God had died,” major political consequences could follow, Lugones thought that he was living through a period of decay, not material and social in nature, but spiritual. Part Three presents a view of Lugones’ political project as he envisions himself as Argentina’s national writer. The political landscape he paints follows a populist approach, proposing an ideology that leans towards the mythic, the ultimate goal being the political unity of a people for the sake of “individual liberty.”

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Short stories and a novel about a newspaper in fictional, rural parish in South Louisiana. / 2031-01-01

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Poetry manuscript / 2031-01-01

My dissertation, The Alchemy of Sexuality in Early Modern English Lyric Poetry examines the complex relationship of poetry, sexuality and religion to alchemy in early modern England. I analyze poetic representations of transgressive sexuality by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Carew. What emerges from my study is the profound link between alchemical metaphors and poetic expressions of sexuality. These poetic expressions of sexuality develop the poets' interrogation of gender hierarchy in early modern England. This dissertation has theoretical implications for how we read early modern English poetry, but there are also physiological dimensions. I examine representations of sex and the disciplined Foucauldian early modern body. Notwithstanding, my primary focus of this disciplined body are the humoral processes that were thought to govern early modern physiology and their Galenic ties to alchemy. As my study makes clear, alchemy represents an interventionist conjunction within the Galenic-Humoral economy that predominated in early modern England. In each chapter I illuminate the means by which the poets utilize alchemical iconography to codify a transgressive body and therefore illuminate an illicit sexuality. In the introductory chapter, I outline the history of alchemy and its relationship to sexuality and religion, and by extension to the early modern body. I end the introduction by asserting that the poets' use of alchemy is not only a symbol of the creative imagination, but also an attempt to map the contours of desire and the poetic mind. Chapter two focuses on books 2 and 3 of Spenser's epic, The Faerie Queene. In this chapter I seek to develop a theory which will account for the excessive erotica found in these books. At first glance the anachronistic term of pornography would seem to account for the sexual activity found in these books. Nonetheless, pornography's contextual later development, and the slipperiness of the term fail to accommodate early modern theories of erotic reading and the disruptive emotions engendered by such readings. Therefore, I suggest the term of passionate discourse which more fully explains the voyeuristic nature of Spenser's epic and his ability to suspend the assault on the body which erotica could potentially provoke. In chapter three I continue my examination of alchemy and its ties to sexuality by a detailed analysis of Shakespeare's "procreative sonnets." I discuss Shakespeare's use of alchemy which enables his creation of a sexually appropriate hermaphrodite thus challenging regimes against the practice of sodomy. While chapter three focuses on Shakespeare's hermaphroditic creation, chapter four considers Donne's appropriation of alchemy in order to substantiate what I term an alchemic transcendental sexuality. Donne's alchemic sexuality is constituted by the metaphors of alchemy as well as the religious discourse of Familism. As with Spenser and Shakespeare, Donne ultimately challenges sexual understandings of the body and the systems that sought to impose artificial and sexual boundaries on the early modern body. Similarly, chapter five contemplates sexual challenges to religious understanding of the body. My focus is Thomas Nashe's "The Choise of Valentines" and Thomas Carew's "A Rapture." Both Nashe and Carew use their speakers to trope sexual performance as alchemical labor and to interrogate women's reproductive potential. Lastly, I conclude this study by commenting on the aesthetic success of the poems. I believe that those poems which have found a prominent place in the English literary canon owe their prominence to how well they have integrated the discourses of alchemy, sex, and religion in their more overtly sexual poetry. Yet ultimately, this dissertation is about the process of embodiment, and therefore I assert that each poet in this dissertation anchor themselves in the slippery terrain of alchemy in a concerted effort to find meaning among the chaos of the body. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / February 4, 2015. / Alchemy, Donne, Renaissance, Sexuality, Shakespeare, Spenser / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce Boehrer, Professor Directing Dissertation; Charles Upchurch, University Representative; Anne Coldiron, Committee Member; David Johnson, Committee Member; Daniel Vitkus, Committee Member.