Browsing by Author "Sorrentino, Paul M."

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Bringing Lippard Back: Biblical Allusions, Narrative Structure, and the Treatment of Women in George Lippard's The Quaker City
    Lauzon, Autumn Rhea (Virginia Tech, 2010-04-30)
    George Lippard, a name scarcely recognized in today's American literature classrooms, was the author of the most popular American novel prior to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 - The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall. Despite producing such a popular and risqué novel, Lippard and his work have been curiously absent from the American literary and historical canon. In this paper I have chosen to focus on three aspects of the novel that I believe to be important for analysis - Biblical parallels, narrative structure, and female characters. Lippard uses the narrative structure and plot to incite curiosity in his readers and to appeal to audiences' instincts of sexual curiosity, pleasure in revenge, and the punishment of "evil." I will explain how Lippard uses two of the themes to reflect major issues of the time period and one as a metaphor for the plot of the novel.
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    Conjuring as a Critique of Medical Racism in Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
    Blansett, Bruce Collin (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-27)
    Charles W. Chesnutt has long been regarded as one of the most influential African American writers of the 19th-century, and his works have been lauded for their skillful maneuvering of language, audience, and cultural forms. The The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales has often been considered Chesnutt's most influential work and has attracted great interest from readers and scholars alike. Though Chesnutt scholarship often focuses on new ways of reading the works or the effectiveness of the author's subversive techniques, one focus that has been mostly overlooked is the work's ability to challenge racist medical dialogues prevalent throughout the 19th-century. This project uses a lens of conjuring, one of the most powerful and compelling forces in Chesnutt's work, to examine ways that The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales can be read as a subversion of 19th-century medical doctrine.
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    Fluid Sexualities in Frank Norris's McTeague
    Brantley, Dana Michelle (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-10)
    Frank Norris's novel McTeague can be read as an intense reflection on the limitations of language surrounding fluid sexualities in late-nineteenth century America. Through a queer theoretical lens, I examine the ways in which Norris collapses his characters and narrative in order to demonstrate those limits. Trina and McTeague suffer acutely from their inability to articulate their sexualities, and the narrator of the novel does little to compensate for the characters\' failure to speak. The novel, which is a collection of broken genres, further exposes the fact that various kinds of rigid narrative forms cannot sufficiently frame or articulate fluid sexualities. Through character, narrative, and genre breakdown, Norris reflects how the nineteenth century's lack of language regarding those who occupy a variety of sexualities can tear people and language apart.
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    The Literary Reception of Paul Hamilton Hayne and His Place in the American and Southern Literary Canons
    Newbill, Ralph Steven (Virginia Tech, 2004-04-23)
    Although Paul Hamilton Hayne was the acknowledged poet laureate of the South at the time of his death in 1886, he and his poetry have virtually disappeared from the recent American literary histories and anthologies. Even the literary histories and anthologies of Southern literature tend to down play his role as a man of letters and poet of consequence. This diminution of Hayne's literary reputation has taken place despite the respect for his poetry and criticism that came from leading poets and critics in the United States and England during the mid to late nineteenth century. In this thesis, I analyze the neglect of Hayne's work by first outlining his reception history as a poet. Certain trends are evident, specifically a movement in the United States away from the Anglo-American tradition to a new style of poetry, best represented by Walt Whitman. This change in what was fashionable in poetry has had the effect of undermining Hayne's reputation as a poet. Moreover, Hayne's literary reputation became more tenuous after the War Between the States given his strong affiliation with the conquered Confederacy. To bolster my argument that Hayne's reputation ought not be left to the whims of literary fashion, I conduct a preliminary examination of Hayne's poetry by analyzing several poems. I conclude, after examining the evidence, that Hayne deserves inclusion in the literary canons of American and Southern literature as an important representative nineteenth-century Southern poet writing within the Anglo-American tradition.
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    Mythic Metamorphosis: Re-shaping Identity in the Works of H.D.
    Mitchem, Sarah Lewis (Virginia Tech, 2007-04-13)
    In section fifteen of the poem The Walls Do Not Fall author Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) address her audience and articulates the purpose of the poet in the following lines: "we are the keepers of the secret,/ the carriers, the spinners/ of the rare intangible thread/ that binds all humanity/ to ancient wisdom,/ to antiquity;/â ¦every concrete object/ has abstract value, is timeless/ in the dream parallel" (Trilogy 24). H.D. mined her own life for charged relationships which she then, through writing, connected to the mythic characters of antiquity whose tales embodied the same struggles she faced. Reading concrete objects as universal symbols which transcend time, her mind meshed the 20th century with previous cultures to create a nexus where the questions embedded in the human spirit are alive on multiple planes. The purpose of this research project is not to define her works as "successful" or "unsuccessful," nor to weigh the works against each other in terms of "advancement." Rather it is to describe the way she manipulates this most reliable of tools, mythic metamorphosis, in works stretching from her early Imagist poetry, through her long poem Trilogy, and finally into her last memoir End To Torment, taking note of the way she uses this tool to form beauty from harsh circumstances and help heal her shattered psyche.
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    The Novel of Business and the Business of the Novel: W.D. Howells' Examination of Prosperity Archetypes
    Fellers, Thomas J. (Virginia Tech, 2008-04-18)
    This thesis examines William Dean Howells' two most notable novels of business, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), suggesting that the business of literature, in its dissemination of success myths and its ultimate internalization of these myths, was complicit in America's industrial strife during the 1880s. Both novels operate meta-critically. In Silas Lapham, for instance, Howells dramatizes several unhealthy business behaviors that derive from prosperity tropes found in newspapers and other popular writings. In this novel, the focus is on the ways these tropes affect the individual - both the reader who consumes them and the writer who must produce them. Meanwhile, Hazard explores the effects of these myths within the industry of literary production, showing how the publishers themselves are susceptible to the same romanticized economic ideals they disseminate. These novels do not correct the problematic behaviors that popular writing likely had a role in inspiring. They certainly do not resolve the seemingly contradictory values within the publishing industry. But Silas Lapham and Hazard generate a clearer picture of the complex relationship between literature and business, in a time punctuated by literary disputes between realists and romantics, and violent strikes between the labor class and the capital class.
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    Reading Consciousness: Analyzing Literature through William James' Stream of Thought Theory
    Casto, Andrew Christopher (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-26)
    Proceeding from the assumption that psychoanalytic theory has yielded insightful literary interpretations, I propose that equally legitimate readings result from analyzing consciousness in literature. William James' "Stream of Thought" offers a psychological theory of consciousness from which I develop a literary theory that counterbalances the Freudian emphasis on the unconscious. Examining two works by Henry James, I demonstrate how assessing the elements of a character's consciousness leads to conclusions at which other theories do not arrive. This analytical approach leads to not only an alternative critical agenda but also a fuller understanding of the psychological function of the character's and, by extension, the human mind.
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    Reading Through Displacement: Functionality of the Underlying Theme in Tim O'Brien's Fiction
    McClure, Benjamin Taylor (Virginia Tech, 2011-05-02)
    Tim O'Brien, a contemporary author writing mostly about his combat experience in Vietnam, has written eight books to date. All involve Vietnam in some way—overtly, for the most part. He and his stories are well known stylistically for several traits including the blurred distinctions between what actually happened and "story truth," something that did not really happen, but is true nonetheless. Within the story, he also blurs the line between what actually happens and what is imagined by the narrator or one of the characters; and, although he sometimes makes the distinction, he often does not. To help shed some light on this, there are a number of published interviews and articles wherein he discusses the themes, forms, and methods of his writing as well as his experiences. Research and analysis of O'Brien and his works show that, although his stories overtly deal with a myriad of other issues and themes, the complex and specific theme of displacement caused by trauma is present in all of his work, and can even be considered the engine that drives his stories and how they work with the reader. Additionally, O'Brien's well-known method of writing is actually a subtle yet intensely effective performance and enactment of this underlying theme of displacement. When used as a reading strategy, the theme itself clarifies and unlocks several points of contention about his texts such as O'Brien's generally negative treatment of women.
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    A reassessment of the influence of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein upon Ernest Hemingway
    DeFazio, Albert John III (Virginia Tech, 1985-08-05)
    This study challenges the common assumption that Hemingway's early style is indebted to the work of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein and finds the evidence less than compelling. Unlike previous examinations, this study considers Hemingway's early journalism and correspondence as well as his first published fiction; additionally, it suggests models of influence other than Anderson and Stein, such as Ring Lardner and Stephen Crane. Because the critical tradition most often identifies "repetition" and "colloquialisms" as bases for attributing influence to Anderson and Stein, I discuss those characteristics individually, concluding that Hemingway's debt to Stein's use of repetition and Anderson's use of colloquial style has been overstated. I also assess the individual style of each author and identify the fundamental differences among them. And, finally, I suggest promising avenues which may lead to new associations between Hemingway and the forces which helped to shape his style.
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    Stephen Crane: A life of fire
    Sorrentino, Paul M. (2014-09-23)
    With the exception of Poe, no American writer has proven as challenging to biographers as the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane's short, compact life—"a life of fire," he called it—continues to be surrounded by myths and half-truths, distortions and outright fabrications. Mindful of the pitfalls that have marred previous biographies, Paul Sorrentino has sifted through garbled chronologies and contradictory eyewitness accounts, scoured the archives, and followed in Crane's footsteps. The result is the most complete and accurate account of the poet and novelist written to date. Whether Crane was dressing as a hobo to document the life of the homeless in the Bowery, defending a prostitute against corrupt New York City law enforcement, or covering the historic charge up the San Juan hills as a correspondent during the Spanish-American War, his adventures were front-page news. From Sorrentino's layered narrative of the various phases of Crane's life a portrait slowly emerges. By turns taciturn and garrulous, confident and insecure, romantic and cynical, Crane was a man of irresolvable contradictions. He rebelled against tradition yet was proud of his family heritage; he lived a Bohemian existence yet was drawn to social status; he romanticized women yet obsessively sought out prostitutes; he spurned a God he saw as remote yet wished for His presence. Incorporating decades of research by the foremost authority on Crane's work, Stephen Crane: A life of fire sets a new benchmark for biographers.
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    YouTube is the New Tube: Identity, Power, and Creator-Consumer Relationships in a New Culture (Cottage) Industry
    Calkins, David Richard (Virginia Tech, 2014-05-28)
    YouTube is a new kind of media, offering new ways to search for meaning and identity in the digital information age. In this study, I explore how the struggle to establish meaning and identity is played out in this new cultural space, centering on amateur creators as they navigate tensions and test semiotic relationships with their productions online. I first situate YouTube within a larger context of cultural criticism that sees meaning as socially negotiated by consumers as active participants with cultural productions. I then discuss television as a cultural force and the effects of a new digital territory for these forces. By grounding my discussion in an understanding of media ecology that assumes a more varied and diverse collection of available cultural material will yield a healthier media ecology and thus healthier cultural subjects, I argue that YouTube is a positive intensification of television because it allows more viewers to participate in and more importantly participate in this media system. I then use two particular YouTube creators (Philip DeFranco and Hannah Hart) to demonstrate how these ideas are articulated in practice and how this process is not without its own problems.