Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, English

Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) has been dismissed by scholars since it first became a subject of literary critique in the 1960s. The Last Man comments on a biographical sketch of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a conflicted lineage and Romantic inheritance, a millennial conflict about the need to look forward and backward simultaneously, and a single author's desire to locate her writing in a long classical literary history. Shelley's text is at once a categorical failure of the Gothic genre, and it exemplifies post-apocalyptic, or dystopian, literature. Scholars often criticize Shelley's book through the lens of feminist theory and on the basis of historical—both political and personal—contexts. In my thesis, “Mary Shelley's The Last Man: A Critical Analysis Of Anxiety And Authorship,” I recuperate the literary importance of The Last Man in the context of feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and the Gothic genre by showing how Shelley's novel foregrounds various forms of personal and culturally embedded anxiety. Although readers often see Shelley's anxiety as a psychological or social weakness, it is central to my thesis to show how anxiety is at the core of her work. Shelley's anxieties as demonstrated in her texts exemplify an innovative approach to not only comment on her personal and political struggles, but they also distance her from her contemporaries, therefore allowing her to create a new literary genre. By critically analyzing the anxiety of illness, national isolation, and authorship through psychoanalytic theory and juxtaposing them with an underdeveloped feminist approach, I suggest that Mary Shelley's The Last Man is influential in the continuously growing genre of post-apocalyptic literature in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Committee: Erin Labbie PhD (Advisor); Allan Emery PhD (Other) Subjects: Literature

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2009, English

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.

Committee: J. Fitzpatrick Smith PhD (Advisor); D. Scot Hinson PhD (Committee Member); Heather Wright PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2012, English (Arts and Sciences)

Stephen King has been lauded for his creation of realistic and believable male and child characters. Many critics, however, question his ability to do the same with female characters, pointing out that King recycles the same female stereotypes over and over in his fiction. However, a closer look at his female characters reveals not only that his use of female stereotypes, which correspond to the classic Gothic female stereotypes, is part of a larger overall pattern of the use of Gothic elements, but also that there are five female characters, Annie Wilkes from Misery, Jessie Burlingame from Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne from Dolores Claiborne, Rose Daniels from Rose Madder, and Lisey Landon from Lisey's Story, who do not fit into these stereotypes. My thesis explores the ways in which these five characters deviate from King's stereotyped female characters as well as their overall impact on his representation of women.

Committee: Joanne Freed (Committee Chair); Marsha Dutton (Committee Member); Paul Jones (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Literature