▼ In Jude the Obscure, Hardy couples the use of architecture with more overt indicators to voice his message. Hardy’s metaphors of landscape, skylines, and even open spaces comprise such a craftily calculated critique that he proves his mastery as both author and architect. From the Christminster colleges to Farmer Trouthham’s field, Hardy relies on varying environments to make a thorough commentary. This paper argues that the creators of those buildings, the architects, are the novel’s true antagonists. Advisors/Committee Members: Inboden, Robin.

▼ The best-selling novel of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne, is not commonly read today; neither is Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These books, published only twelve years apart, share strikingly similar sensational elements and common themes. However, they were received very differently; while the early critics disapproved of the subject matter of the both books, they praised East Lynne highly yet criticized The Tenant, setting the stage of each book’s fate through the first part of the twentieth century. As I show in this section of my honors thesis, it is first and foremost the form of these books – point of view, style, and structure – that determines their early treatment. Since the Victorian era refused to give voice to the experience of vicious living, The Tenant threatens the Victorian disguise of respectability by allowing the reader to witness – through a first-person narrator and a structure composed of a letter and a diary – scenes of debauchery and immoral behavior. East Lynne, on the other hand, distances the reader from the immorality in the book by using a third-person, storyteller perspective, thus presenting the story as exactly that – a story, rather than a truthful account. Advisors/Committee Members: Robin, Inboden.

▼ Breaking Eggs is a collection of interconnected fiction. The stories of the collection contain the same characters, but are meant to stand alone as individual stories as well as work toward the collection as a whole. When Breaking Eggs was first conceptualized, the initial idea was to create stories that focused on the lives of women. But more importantly, to focus on the struggles women encounter in their modern day roles and societies changing expectations of them. These roles are examined both within the family and in the outside world and these conflicting ideals were incorporate into the lives of the three central characters of the collection. The author greatly researched the form of the interconnected story collection during her research and was greatly influenced by the work of Canadian writer Alice Munro. Advisors/Committee Members: Dixon, Kent.

▼ Mark Edmundson takes a pragmatic approach to literature and argues that we should readin order to alter our Final Narratives, the fundamental ways we conceptualize the world. I apply this argument to how we construct canons, including classroom syllabi. Specifically, I claim that as the classroom environment is essential to our literary education, we need to read in a pragmatic manner in the classroom, not least of all because doing so is capable of improving our lives and the lives around us. Taking this understanding of a literary education, I then run Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis through this machinery. The result is that we are able to produce viable, significant arguments for both authors’, but more importantly King’s, canonization. This result is contrary to the canonical views of thinkers such as Mark Edmundson and Harold Bloom who believe that we ought not to engage King in the classroom. By conceptualizing reading, and specifically canonization, as a pragmatic process, we are able to articulate why Stephen King might be a significant part of our literary education. Advisors/Committee Members: Smith, J. Fitzpatrick.