Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

Reading a ghostly company of lyric and epic poetry, treatises on aesthetics and poetics, manuals of technical prosody, and works of occult speculation across one and a half centuries, "The Phantoms of a Thousand Hours" argues that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets and poetic theorists seize on the ghost as the inchoate form of poetry itself. Beginning in the pious meditations of the eighteenth-century "Graveyard School," these writers spectralize the operations of the poem and fashion poetic structures into chambers of vigil where the ghost might be awaited and encountered. Alive to the recursive directions of contemporary historical poetics, this study challenges the emerging scholarly consensus on the ghost in the long nineteenth century as either a creature of fiction, born almost coeval with the novel in the work of Defoe, or a residual form, a remainder from folklore and oral balladry that glides uncertainly into Gothic's set dressing. Rather, just as poets envisioned their craft as instinct with ghostly measures, rhythms, and pauses, occult writers from antiquaries to Spiritualists substantialized and realized the ghost through the opaque lyricism and manifest technique of poetry. Accepting neoformalism's sound insistence on the historicity of form itself, my work nonetheless eschews New Formalism's frequent dismissal of the specter from the spectral: even the most evanescent, technical traces of the ghost in the poetry of the long nineteenth century recall and reflect living structures of preternatural belief and occult vision. Like Shelley in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," these poets "sought for ghosts," and, if they were "not heard" and "saw them not," they could yet take solace in "the phantoms of a thousand hours," of the myriad ideal visions of poetry's ghosts across a long Graveyard Century. Across the Graveyard Century spanning from Thomas Gray to Thomas Hardy, this study argues that the ghost haunts poetry's sense of its own form precisely (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jill Galvan (Committee Co-Chair); Sandra Macpherson (Committee Member); Hannibal Hamlin (Committee Member); Jacob Risinger (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Literature

Bachelor of Science in Education, Miami University, 2011, School of Education and Allied Professions - Middle Childhood Education

Madison Julius Cawein (b. March 23, 1865, d. December 8, 1914) was a prolific Kentucky poet – he was known as the “Keats of Kentucky,” as the majority of his work is regional romantic poetry in traditional verse forms – and also a distant relative of the author of this thesis. While Cawein was acclaimed and popular in his day, he is now all but forgotten, save for the recent discovery that T.S. Eliot likely plagiarized from his poetry. It is my contention not only that Cawein's work is undeservedly neglected by readers and critics, but also that his oeuvre is a mirror to the cultural upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; he provides a missing link between different literary periods. It is thus my intention to examine both Cawein's life and the vagaries of his poetic career in the service of demonstrating why his quite fine work should be remembered in its own right. Furthermore, I provide a detailed analysis of Cawein's poetry based upon a careful reading of his collected works, and in doing so, I also offer a concise anthology of some of Cawein's best poems.

Committee: Tom Romano PhD (Advisor); Richard Turner PhD (Committee Member); Paul Cawein PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Comparative Literature; Literature

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2009, English

In elementary school, there was one game that we played time and again that extended beyond the confines of the playground: “Opposite Day.” There wasn't much to it, really, both in terms of structure and outcome. One would make a statement to someone else, and after that individual reacted to said statement, the initiator responded with “It's Opposite Day!” That was it; a silly way for us to pass the time before that long-awaited bus ride home. It was a funny game, especially if the class clown had the guts to involve the teacher. In such an instance, an interaction like this might occur: Ernie: I love math, Miss Vaughn. Miss Vaughn: That's great, Ernie. I'm glad to hear that. Ernie: It's Opposite Day! The classroom would erupt in laughter, and a lot of times it included the teacher (depending on his or her mood). However, the game could also be cruel. Kids are mean, and “Opposite Day” could be used more as a prank than a game. The kid who always gets picked on is approached by a group of popular kids; one of them says something like “Hey, we want you to be a part of our club” or “We're having a sleepover tonight – you should come.” Instantly, an innocent childhood game turns into a heartless joke. At times, life can be quite similar. For example, much of what we are taught is a truth about the world is, in fact, the opposite. We have expectations and hopes about life that end up with opposite results. And we often find ourselves saying and doing the opposite of what we've told ourselves we would. But just like the ridiculed child who returns to school the next day to face his tormentors, we shake it off and press on toward whatever positive outcomes we might possibly find. Because, in the end, this is just a game.

Committee: Mark Halliday PhD (Advisor) Subjects: English literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2012, English

My dissertation identifies a significant aporia in Enlightenment thought concerning human and animal life. Eighteenth-century moral philosophy, I argue, predicates social relations on face-to-face identification. However, sympathetic identification limits itself to human form. Sympathy, like species form, promotes twin impulses: the formation of group identities and the exclusion of dissimilar others. Consequently, sympathy recognizes animals as other and excludes them from the social sphere. Eighteenth-century novels, for instance, struggle with the limitations of sympathy, brimming with human sensibility although equivocal about whether it can be directed toward animals. These concerns about the nature of sensibility and affect animate not only eighteenth-century sentimental novels but also surface as one of the central problems of Romanticism. Conventionally, the Romantic period has long been understood as a fulfillment of the Enlightenment promise that autonomous human subjects will govern the social and political imaginary. But this conventional narrative obscures how Romantic thought critiques this institutionalization of what are, in fact, biopolitical narratives that shape human-animal relationships. Romanticism demonstrates how the universalizing gestures of egalitarianism guarantee humans freedom only at the expense of the non-human. Moreover, such universalizing gestures legitimate competing exclusionary narratives that authorize prejudice, suppression, and subjugation of the other however that other is construed (in other words, humans conceived as non-human). As I argue, species form is the twilight of sympathy between not only humans and animals but between humans as well. Following prosopopoeia—the trope that links face and voice with personhood—I show how this trope undermines sympathy's specular insistence on the human form and refutes species determinism as integral to maintaining sociopolitical systems. Prosopopoeia both limns and attenuates f (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Laura Mandell Phd (Committee Chair); Tobias Menely Phd (Committee Member); Mary Jean Corbett Phd (Committee Member); Jonathan Strauss Phd (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2006, Music Performance/Voice

Building on recent biographical research, this thesis examines coded references with possible connections to homosexuality and/or desire in approximately twenty-five Schubert Lieder. Several recurring images will be identified in the texts of sixteen poets, specifically Bruchmann, Goethe, Holty, Huttenbrenner, Klenke, Mayrhofer, Platen, Rochlitz, Ruckert, Salis-Seewis, Schiller, Schlechta, Schlegel, Schober, Schubart, and Seidl. Some of these poets were associated with the Linz circle, which was a society of writers formed in 1815 as a club for youth. Recurring images that may reference homosexuality or desire include “fishing” and “fishermen,” “roses” and “rosy cheeks,” “brooks” and “streams,” “East wind breezes,” “a thousand [kisses],” “verdant groves” and “driven search.” A chart with alternate meanings for the targeted images will be provided as a reference for the singer. An awareness of these references in Schubert's Lieder enhances the singer's understanding of this composer's cultural milieu and thus aids in a more informed interpretation.

Committee: Myra Merritt (Advisor) Subjects: Music