In her 1818 novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley experiments with the importance of narrative perspective in storytelling. In particular, she employs the technique of frame narration, a narrative style that offers readers multiple interpretations of a story based on which character narrates a specific passage. Through this technique, Shelley invites a variety of interpretations regarding whether... Continue Reading →
Silko’s Exploration of Humanity and Nature in Ceremony
In her novel Ceremony (1977), Leslie Marmon Silko examines the importance of living harmoniously with nature to the mental recovery of the protagonist, Tayo, whose modern education and deployment in World War Two have separated him from the traditional beliefs of his home tribe, the Laguna Pueblo. Silko primarily accomplishes this through the lessons taught... Continue Reading →
Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s Erasure of Native Identity
In the late 1800s, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs began an initiative to eradicate Native American identities across the country. A major component of this initiative was the implementation of Indian boarding schools that sought to educate Native Americans in European culture with the ultimate goal of assimilating them into “civilized” society. However,... Continue Reading →
Wordsworth’s Concept of the Poet Reflected in “Tintern Abbey”
In his seminal 1798 poem “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth retrospectively offers an idealized description of the landscape surrounding the Tintern Abbey from his position above the River Wye. Through his manipulation of the landscape to fit his desired image, Wordsworth inadvertently highlights his egotistical approach to writing autobiographical poetry,... Continue Reading →
Familial Morality: Wright’s Argument for Prevention in Mansfield Park
“Prevention as Narrative in Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park,’” Erika Wright’s 2010 sociological criticism of Austen’s third novel, examines the relationship between the metaphorical prevention and treatment of characters’ “diseased” moralities. Wright claims that Mansfield Park employs a preventionist narrative that subverts readers’ expectations of an “illness-cure trajectory,” in which a novel’s characters must be “cured”... Continue Reading →
Valperga Literature Review 