Love and Adventure: Chivalric Emphasis in “Lanval” and “Sir Launfal”

The Breton Lai is a short, episodic poem that was typically intended to be accompanied by music. Lais are generally considered by critics to be a sub-genre of the romance, their content dealing most often with the romanticized ideals of courtly love, the supernatural or the world of the fae, and knighthood or chivalry. Marie de France’s “Lanval” was written during the twelfth century and Thomas Chestre’s “Sir Launfal” was written in the fourteenth century. Both are considered Breton Lai’s because of their length and content. According to William Stokoe in his article “The Sources of Sir Launfal,” the origins of Chestre’s story are both Marie’s lai and another anonymous lai titled “Graelent” (392). However, despite Marie being the source for Chestre’s piece, the two works have different focuses in terms of chivalry. Marie focuses most on love and loyalty whereas Chestre focuses on bravery in battle, prowess, and generosity, though both the themes mostly through the characters of Lanval and Sir Launfal. My argument is that even though these stories are essentially the same in plot, what shaped the chivalric emphasis was their respective historical and social constructs.

Lost in Adaptation: Presence of Illusion and Reality in the 1966 Film Adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In many ways drama is the most similar medium to film: both use actors in dramatic situations and take advantage of visual and verbal composition to portray themes and meaning. In Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? there are very few stage directions especially in terms of setting: there are stairs, a bar, a front door leading into the living room, and even wind chimes that hang near the door, but all of the action takes place in one room: the living room. However, in Mike Nichols’ 1966 film adaptation of the play, the camera follows characters in the house (in the closet, kitchen, and bedroom), around the house (in the yard, on the porch, through the college campus), and even on a car ride to a desolate roadhouse. Desmond and Hawkes state in their book Adaptation: Studying Film & Literature, “film audiences expect realism, stage audiences will accept artificial sets and illusion” (162). It is clear that Nichols and his production team had this thought in mind while filming Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because through the changes in setting and character in an attempt to make it more realistic, the film loses the play’s absurdist qualities that exist to enhance the conflict of reality and illusion. I am defining reality as what is verifiable fact and illusion as false creation of the mind.

“Ice and silence”: Motherhood in Anaïs Nin’s “Birth”

The short fiction piece “Birth” by Anaïs Nin can be found in a larger collection of her works titled Under a Glass Bell. However, the story can also be found, practically word for word, in Nin’s book Incest: From “A Journal of Love” - The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin. This is because it is a true story, so technically the piece should be considered creative nonfiction. In the introduction to Nin in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, it states that Nin intended to “capture the living moments of her emotional reactions to experience” (588), and she is more than successful in doing so within this short piece through both language and imagery.  I want to analyze the historical influences on Nin as a woman living in 1930’s France and how, by utilizing the contrasting images of both fire and ice throughout the story, Nin has successfully captured the contradictory emotions of a woman who both loves and hates the thing she has created.

“She’s discontent.”: The Nuclear Family and The Cold War in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee wrote his famous play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, during the peak of the Cold War. There is much symbolism of patriotism in Albee’s play, from George and Martha’s names alluding to George Washington and his wife Martha and George’s speech against altering chromosomes could be seen as a metaphor for the popular fear that communism would take over the world: “There will be a certain… loss of liberty...diversity will no longer be the goal. Cultures and races will eventually vanish...the ants will take over the world” (Albee 73). In her book Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, Elaine Tyler May explores the direct link between “the suburban American dream and the international dynamics of the cold war” (153). In this book, she reveals that the idea of the “nuclear family” and the “American dream” were government tactics created to sway international voters away from the Communist party and to keep Americans “preoccupied with procurement” as a “safeguard against the threat of class warfare and communism” (157). My theory is that the big bad Virginia Woolf's metaphor in Albee’s play is infact the illusion of the American dream and displays this predominantly through the baby symbolism, focusing specifically on Martha.

“Inside of my body there are fires”: Fire and Ice Imagery in Anaïs Nin’s “Birth”

Anaïs Nin’s short story “Birth” is a part of a larger work titled Under a Glass Bell, and Other Stories, which, ultimately, relates back to The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin. In this version of Nin’s Diary, in the volume labeled Incest, Nin goes into detail about the horrors of delivering a stillborn child, the father of whom is never clearly stated. In the introduction to Nin in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, it states that Nin intended to “capture the living moments of her emotional reactions to experience” (588), and she is more than successful in doing so within this short piece through language and imagery. More specifically, by utilizing the contrasting images of both fire and ice throughout the story, Nin has successfully captured the contradictory emotions of a woman who both loves and hates the thing she has created.

“Thank heavens, the fog is gone”: Fog as Symbol in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

In the forward to Long Day’s Journey into Night, Harold Bloom states that the play is considered by many critics to be Eugene O’Neill’s “masterpiece” not only for its honesty as a semi-autobiographical play, but because O’Neill captures the realistic story of an American family and presents their story in a new type of tragedy. In this essay, I want to examine the role of fog within this play not only as an atmospheric device but also as a symbol for the Tyrone family’s “blindness” and Mary’s addiction.

“Rowing in Eden”: Sea and Bird Imagery in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Emily Dickinson is considered today to be one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century despite being portrayed by some critics as an eccentric recluse, a spinster subjugated by unrequited or lost love, and the typical “madwoman in the attic.” These theories do have some basis since it is not untrue that Dickinson did spend most of her life indoors, but in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, the introduction to Dickinson says that “her adult life was marked not so much by longing for lost love as by aesthetic and intellectual commitment to her art” (1038). The negative portrayals of Dickinson most of the time influence how an audience reads her: without a separation of author and speaker. However, despite all of these different theories, I believe that Dickinson did feel trapped, both physically and mentally, and she portrays these feelings through the usage of bird and sea imagery in her poetry.

Tragedy and Theory: Antigone, Macbeth and Hedda Gabler

Three popular theorists when it comes to tragic theory are Aristotle, Hegel, and Nietzsche and each have distinct views on what are the important components of tragedy. Aristotle focuses on plot and the “tragic hero”, emphasizing hamartia and catharsis. Hegel coined the “Hegelian dialectic” that claims the conflict between a thesis and an antithesis creates a synthesis, in other words, there are two forces colliding within a play and neither is completely good or bad. Lastly, Nietzsche used the juxtaposition of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as a metaphor for the tension of artistic forces within tragedy. The three plays we have read so far, Antigone, Macbeth and Hedda Gabler, could have any of these theories applied to them, but some work better than others. The combinations I think work best are: Antigone - Hegel, Macbeth - Aristotle/Nietzsche, and Hedda Gabler - Nietzsche.

“It doesn’t go with the rest of the things.”: Suicide in Hedda Gabler

There has been debate among critics since the play’s debut about why the title role commits suicide at the end of Hedda Gabler. There are theories that she was attempting to create a “beautiful” death because Lövborg was unable to, or that she finally has a psychotic break, or that she had lost all of her freedom. I would like to argue the latter, that she committed suicide due to a lack of freedom, but also touching on the fact of Hedda’s obvious depression and the warning signs given throughout the play that she was in fact on the path to suicide.

“Unfit for light”: The Puritan Mindset, Anne Bradstreet, and “The Author to Her Book”

Anne Bradstreet is a famous poet from the 17th century noted for interweaving the everyday life of a housewife with moral Puritan values. This mix can be seen in her poems “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” “Meditations Divine and Moral,” and “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666. Copied out of a Loose Paper,” in which Bradstreet portrays herself as devoted wife, mother, and Puritan. In her poem “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet uses the extended metaphor of the mother and her child but works it onto a more critical level to slyly comment on the state of women writers at the time.

“Uncursed with Reason”: Symbolism in Charlotte Smith’s “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic”

Charlotte Smith was writing as a part of the early Romanticism movement in literature, which is characterized by the poet’s self-expression of natural emotion and the preference for rural living over urbanized living. It is interesting how Smith chooses to use the sea in many of her poems to set the atmosphere rather than the farm, meadow, or forest of the typical romantic poem. The sea can represent many different things such as subconscious thought, the primal state of being, or emotion and I believe she is utilizing all of these ideas in her poem “On Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It was Frequented by a Lunatic.” Smith characterizes the “lunatic” by making him a “wretch” (1) of the sea, in other words, the representation of the sea; she has placed the “lunatic” by the sea, rather than in a meadow or other rural area, because like the sea, his mind is wild, untamed, and uncontrollable. The speaker says, “I see [the lunatic] more with envy than with fear” (10) because “He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know / The depth or the duration of his woe” (13 - 14). This implies that the speaker is cursed with reason and the knowledge of their “woe,” which I believe woe here is referring to the speaker’s lifespan, for a rational person realizes their time on Earth is limited and is constantly burdened by that knowledge whereas the “lunatic” is as free-minded and wild as the ocean waves that come and go along the surf. Also, by setting her poem on a “giddy brink” (line 9), the speaker is physically located at the edge of a cliff but is also on the “brink” of either doing or thinking something: is the speaker on the brink of throwing her life to the “sea-born gale[s]” (5) and living freely, or is she on the brink of madness, or worse, suicide?

"‘Tis Unnatural”: A Disruption of Reality in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

In Act 1, Scene 3, Macbeth sees the three witches for the first time and they tell him the prophecy that sets the entire bloody play in action: “All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter” (act 1, scene 3, line 50). Despite the ambiguous nature of the play, Macbeth takes these words at face value and interprets them literally, including the second half of the prophecy:

1 WITCH: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

2 WITCH: Not so happy, yet much happier.

3 WITCH: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail Macbeth, and Banquo (act 1, scene 3)

Macbeth hears this prophecy and immediately begins plotting in his mind as soon as he sees part of it has come true. However, as it is seen in Act 4, Scene 1, the witches’ prophecies are a sort of riddle, which true meanings are only discovered after the prophecies have come true. Though Macbeth seems to complete the prophecy by killing Duncan and becoming the king himself, he does so by taking fate into his own hands and forcing the prophecy forward despite being aware that things might fall into place if he sits idly by: “ If chance will have me king, why chance may / crown me, without my stir” (act 1, scene 3, line 146 - 148). My theory is that Macbeth was never meant to become king in the way that he does, and because he does take his own course of action he causes a sort of “disruption of reality” within the play.

Hungry Like the Wulf: The Early Elegy Wulf and Eadwacer as a Werewolf Tale

The critical debate over the poem Wulf has gone on for many years but no general consensus has been made as to what exactly the poem is about except that there seems to be four characters: the speaker (presumably a woman), Wulf, Eadwacer, and the child. The translation found in The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology seems to have chosen diction that implies a love triangle in which the speaker mourns for her lost love, Wulf, as she now lives with her new husband, Eadwacer. However, this interpretation leaves holes. Who is the child? What is the meaning of the last two lines? Why would Wulf be torn to pieces? This is why I chose to use a translation by Michael R. Burch, a notable poet and scholar. In this translation, Burch uses diction that calls forth dog, or wolf, imagery which would support my interpretation that Wulf and Eadwacer is actually a tale about a werewolf. The text of the translation is attached at the end of the essay.

My interpretation of the poem is as follows:

Antigone

The title of a tragedy usually tips the audience off as to who is the tragic hero of the play. For example, Hamlet, Oedipus the King, and Dr. Faustus are all famous plays in which the hero plays the title role. However, Sophocles’ Antigone raises eyebrows when its title character dies off screen and the antagonist is left alive in the final moments of the play, full of regret and sorrow. For many years, critics have questioned if the character Creon was actually the intended hero of the play, not Antigone. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, the tragic hero is the character with whom the audience feels pity for and fears a similar condition, but the issue with Antigone is that it works on many different levels: male vs. female, subject vs. ruler, father vs. son, family vs. politics, human law vs. supernatural law. This makes it hard for the audience to resonate with only one character which is why Antigone and Creon serve the purpose of warning the audience of two different types of blindness: blindness in faith and blindness in power.

Beowulf and Christianity

A big issue with the anonymous heroic poem Beowulf is that it began as a poem that was memorized and recited orally, maybe sometime around 700 - 800, but wasn’t written down until around 1000 in the West Saxon language. So, for critics to claim that the poem is either essentially Christian or essentially pagan is a tricky feat because the content of the poem is about a pagan, Germanic culture but was believed by critics to have been written by a Christian author. Although the poem does include many references to Christianity, such as the poet’s song about the Genesis Creation, Grendel’s ancestry to Cain, and to explicit references to God’s intervention, the poem’s backbone is based on a pagan theme: good triumphs over evil through the virtues of bravery, strength, and loyalty.

“Song” by Mary Wroth

In the time of the English Renaissance, women did not have a voice. They were allowed to speak, but their opinions either fit perfectly in line with those of men or they were labeled an outspoken “shrew.” However, the Renaissance was not only a period of skepticism and doubt caused by many scientific discoveries, it was also the period in which the printing press was invented. Women’s writings could now be spread widely, though they were still expected to keep a low profile. Mary Wroth wrote “Song” as one of the ending poems of the first book of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania and she was criticized by many courtiers in her time for her “roman a clef” which featured thinly veiled “fictional” characters based on real life people.

Let’s Get it On (Let’s Love, Baby): A Psychoanalytic Approach to “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell’s most famous poem, “To his Coy Mistress,” is thought of by critics as an epitome of the carpe diem poem (Wheeler 90). The carpe diem style of poetry dates back to Horace’s Odes, where the phrase “seize the day” is thought by critics to have originated, and was rediscovered and made popular in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century by writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Herrick. The idea began as simply “seize the day” but was transformed during the renaissance into a mix of a carpe diem poem and a lover’s complaint, as many were used in attempt to persuade a young lady to yield to the speaker’s sexual advances (Scruton). “To his Coy Mistress” is similar in the way that the speaker is using the basis of “carpe diem” to convince his “lady” into engaging in sexual activity with him. However, many analyses of this poem simply accept the speaker’s logic of “we must make love because we will one day die” but do not delve into the motivations of the speaker. Why is it so vital that he has sex with this woman? Why does his argument fail if it is logically correct? In my essay, I am going to apply a psychoanalytic lens to the poem and uncover the unconscious motivations of Marvell’s speaker through connotation, metaphor, and symbolism.

Sex, Death, and Society: A Psychoanalytic Perspective of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The conflict between civilization and nature is a well-known, and well-discussed, feature of the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For example, in his essay “Nature and the Inner Man in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” William F. Woods discusses the juxtaposition between culture and nature and how this ultimately affects the development of Sir Gawain’s “inner man.” However, I think this idea of brutish, primal nature versus the moral, civilized society, when applied to Sir Gawain, can be looked at through a psychoanalytic lens, specifically focusing on Freudian theory. The id, ego, and superego are the components that make up Sigmund Freud’s famous tripartite theory of personality, and my goal within this essay is to expand psychologically upon Woods’ and other critics’ theory of culture versus nature to examine the characters of The Green Knight, Lord Bertilak, and Sir Gawain as physical representations of the superego, the id, and the ego, respectively and discuss how, through this approach, a new, unconscious motive for Sir Gawain’s quest appears.

Civil Unrest in Eden: Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” and the Country House Poem

Ben Jonson strived to imitate the style of the classical Roman and Greek poets, finding himself a major figure in the Neoclassical Literature style. One of his more famous poems was “To Penshurst,” a country house poem written for the Sidney family, of Sir Robert Sidney and his son Sir Philip Sidney, who owned the Penshurst estate. According to “The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics,” the definition of a country house poem is a poem that “celebrates the home of a patron, friend, or model of the poet, treating the house and its landscape as an instance of civility and culture” (Hibbard). There are many other notable poems from this sub-genre of Renaissance literature, such as Aemilia Lanyer’s “Description of Cookeham” and Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House,” but the most famous is probably Jonson’s “To Penshurst.” “To Penshurst” was originally a part of a group of nonepigrammatic poems entitled “The Forest.” It is a 102 lined poem consisting of rhyming couplets that seem to be influenced by the poems of the Roman poets Horace (65-8 b.c.e.) and Martial (40-103 c.e.) (Budra). However, even though the poem is a great example of the country house poem sub-genre, it also doubles as a satirical poem. My argument is that “To Penshurst” is Jonson’s way of slyly offering his social criticism of the state of England’s social order in the 1600’s by disguising it within what is typically just a poem of praise and embellishment.

Teen Idols and Idolized Teens: Novel to Film Comparison of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Using literature as inspiration for film has been a tactic used by filmmakers since the beginning era of film. The genres of detective fiction, horror, romance, and even Shakespearean plays have had their fair share of adaptations. In more recent years, the inspiration for many movies has come from the realm of Young Adult Fiction. Movies such as Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars were all contracted from their novel counterparts, have all been very successful in the box office, and have created large, loyal fan bases. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a novel-film combination that fits into this category, but in the adaptation there are multiple differences in characters, themes, and plot. Chbosky is both the author of the novel and the director of the film, a combination not frequently seen in film, and in my essay I want to explore the dynamic of how he uses the different mediums of novel and film to express the same story and why he makes the changes he does for the film adaptation.

Les Femmes: Portrayal of Women in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress

The entire life of a character, in both novel and film, is at the mercy of the one who creates them. The job of a film adaptation is to realize and shape the characters of the original work on-screen in a believable, enjoyable, and successful way. In the novels The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum,  The Big Sleep, and Devil in a Blue Dress, the main female characters, Katharina Blum, Vivian Rutledge, and Daphne Monet, respectively, are each depicted in a specific way by the authors and all are significantly reshaped in their film counterparts. Through each character change in both development and personality of these female characters, the themes from novel to adaptation are diluted.

Are You There God? It’s Me, John: Symbolism and Metaphor in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet #14

The metaphysical poets of seventeenth century England are characterized by their use of conceit, or extended metaphor, and their common themes of love, religion, and death. John Donne is considered by many to be one of the most predominant figures of the metaphysical poetry movement. He wrote in many different forms and styles over the course of his life, but all of his works flow with his signature sensual style. Even after he became a cleric for the Church of England, his religious poetry and prose still included puns, paradoxes, and unlikely metaphors. The Holy Sonnet #14, alternatively titled “Batter my heart” is one of Donne’s most famous sonnets. Through conceit and form, Donne successfully executes an unlikely comparison between religious or holy love and common, earthly love and the violent metaphors within the sonnet ultimately comment on the extreme need for willpower in faith.

In The End: Dysfunctional Relationships and Film Endings in Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer, and Brokeback Mountain

The tragedy is typically characterized as a form of drama that involves human suffering, fatal flaws, and death. The plays Hamlet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Closer and the short story “Brokeback Mountain” all include tragic elements that mostly revolve around the dysfunctional relationships portrayed in each work. Their film adaptations, which all share the same name, have changed the endings of the works in different ways, but each ending seems to be more positive than their written counterparts. I want to argue that by changing the dynamic of particular relationships in the film adaptations, the endings are also affected in positive ways.

Who is the Movie For?: The Audience’s Role in the Film Adaptations of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square

When a director decides to adapt a literary work into film, there are many things for them to consider: structure, character, setting, plot, and the audience. One of the most important aspects of turning a literary work into a film is attracting a wide audience. The attraction to film adaptations of literature is because people like to see books visualized or see famous actors play recognizable characters. However, because of the limitations of film, the director must make decisions on what aspects of the original work stay or are cut, resulting in adaptations that can be categorized by least to most faithful: loose, intermediate, and close. In the case of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square, the changes between the literary source and the film adaptation were made by the directors, writers, and all the other film crew were chosen in order to broaden the appeal of the adaptation to not only the original fan base of the literary work, but to a wider audience.

Masked Love: The Metaphor Behind “Love” in Wyatt’s “Farewell, Love” and Sidney’s “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot”

The typical life of a courtier living during sixteenth century England, also known as theTudor period, was not as glamourous as those involved with it may have liked. The court was the center of power but was also the center of cultural influence, with holds in fashion, art, theater, and poetry, and whatever was popular in the courts shaped the entire country’s thoughts about culture. However, despite the court being a place for advancement when it came to politics, wealth, and influence, it was also a dangerous place for those in close proximity to the King/Queen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature directly states that “the courtiers were torn between the need to protect themselves and the equally pressing need to display themselves” (533), meaning that putting oneself into the public sphere also puts one into the spotlight where secrets and faults could potentially be exposed to all of the court, which could ruin someone’s life, and even get them killed. Since both Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542) and Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586) were not only courtiers but influential courtiers and poets, they had to be especially careful when it came to expressing their true thoughts and feelings since their works would be most likely widely distributed and read by all. Wyatt’s sonnet “Farewell, Love” and the second sonnet of Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, titled “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot” are both about the hardships of being in love but they have a common feature: within both poems, the word “love” is capitalized, which not only personifies the concept, but also creates an extended metaphor where “Love” represents not only love itself but the person whom the poem is really about.