Browsing by Author "Taylor, Cynthia, committee member"

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Open Access
Dialogic and material influence on the formation of identity in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) O'Brien, Ann Diefendorf, author; Souder, Donna, advisor; Taylor, Cynthia, committee member; Ribadeneira, Alegria, committee member; Frank, Katherine, committee member
The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway are texts that creatively and poignantly reveal how personal identity can be shaped. The construction of identity as portrayed in the characters of these novels goes beyond sexual orientation and constricted roles for women, two areas frequently highlighted in analyses of these books, to the essence of "being" and especially to how self or identity evolves in one's everyday place and time. The focal women in the books, though fictional creations, provide an opportunity to consider how identity evolves within particular ideological settings and how it is influenced by one's material, day-to-day circumstances and personal relationships. I examine identity formation as reflected in the protagonists with the ultimate goal of better understanding, as Bakhtin scholar Michael Holquist states well, "an activity in which we are all implicated. . . creating the ultimate act of authorship [that] results in the text which we call our self," (315). I draw upon the theories of Mikhail M. Bakhtin to apply his model of identity development and his thinking regarding how dialogics, language, ideology and a person's unique acts sculpt identity. My thesis emphasizes kairos, used here to indicate the particular time, place and socially charged environments in which each of the key female characters in Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours are portrayed. Not only do these texts mirror one another, they also keenly mirror human consciousness as it participates in forming personal identity. Applying a Bakhtinian critique to these novels illuminates the creation, sustainment and potential for change in individual identity, or in Bakhtin's words, "consciousness becoming." A Bakhtinian perspective also calls attention to the choices individuals make of their own accord and the responsibility created because of these choices. This is important in the academic setting today because increased awareness about how identity is formed, both by ideological influences and material reality, can contribute to individual empowerment and belief in the possibility of enacting change in self and in others.
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Endless seasons
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Badovinac, Emily, author; Morales, Juan, advisor; Taylor, Cynthia, committee member; O'Connor, John, committee member
Endless Seasons is a short novel that presents an example of enduring female friendship for the feminist literary canon. While examples of exceptional male friendship, also called heroic friendship, abound in the primary canon, female writers and subjects in contemporary American literature tend away from even an echo of what is presented by and for males. Endless Seasons takes one more step forward and provides this example of enduring female friendship in a rich multi-cultural setting where female silences are explored within religion and culture as the main character, Isabelle "Izzy" Juarez, traverses between childhood and womanhood. Endless Seasons is meant to make way for American female authors to rediscover virtue in the female bond, where love, acceptance, comfort and loyalty defeat the prototypical jealousy and betrayal within literary female friendships.
Open Access
Herman Melville's use of animals: the chain of natural science, anthropomorphic symbolism, and literary naturalism in Moby-Dick and "The Encantadas"
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Lamberson, John Gregory, author; Furrh, Douglass Madison, advisor; Taylor, Cynthia, committee member; Vanden Heuvel, Brian, committee member
In Moby-Dick and "The Encantadas," Herman Melville's narrators often assume the role of a naturalist, in the mode of natural history. Beginning with careful and realistic explication, Melville understands different animals in terms of their physical characteristics and behavior, in a manner influenced by Charles Darwin. After establishing an accurate picture, he proceeds to take the animals and transform them to concepts related to literary naturalism in a process of anthropomorphic symbolism. Melville's ambiguous stance on animal awareness and pain further clarifies his project of using animals to be representative of mostly human concepts. Moby-Dick and "The Encantadas" illustrate this chain with Melville's naturalistic treatment of whales and tortoises, respectively. With the precision of a scientist and the spirit of an artist, Melville uses animals as symbols of concepts that anticipate literary naturalism, most notably determinism. Melville's utilization of natural science as a means to symbolism made him a precursor to literary naturalism, which itself grew out of the influence of Darwinian ideas.
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Small bird movements: feminist prose poetics and the poet as shaman
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Kosovich, Varina, author; Morales, Juan, advisor; Eskew, Doug, committee member; Taylor, Cynthia, committee member
Small Bird Movements follows the poet past youth to a budding awareness of feminist issues. The manuscript's four sections detail the structure of a bird feather, ending with the section Flight to illustrate this change in the poets view on the world. Through verse and prose poetry the manuscript highlights the personal female but also global women's issues, often times stemming from violence against minority women. Using the text Borderlands, by Gloria Anzaldúa as a theoretical base, the manuscript details imagery, rather than societal labels, as a method to construct identity to better reflect the individual. The poet as shaman allows for development of community through writing and shared imagery. For the community, the poet creates writing, but also transfers language to the population. In Small Bird Movements, the poet strives for strong female voice as a tool to challenge a patriarchal capitalist agenda. Rather than alienate, the poets' goal is to connect, utilizing the oral roots of poetry and the form of the prose poem. Often this combination is used by minority poets to expand language and experiment with form to transgress patriarchal discourse. Small Bird Movements focuses on themes of youth, violence against females, methods of identity construction, and female agency with the intent to emphasize construction of identity and the value of female concerns, personal or global. The themes found in the manuscript reflect an enactment of Anzaldúa's Nepantla, construction of identity through change and imagery.
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The whisper apparatus
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Kendall, Klayton Elliot, author; Morales, Juan, advisor; Taylor, Cynthia, committee member; Souder, Donna, committee member
The Whisper Apparatus details the poet's lifelong withdrawal (and subsequent suffering) from the world of techne-logos to one of poiesis. The manuscript's tripartite structure corresponds directly to the poet's life and subtly depicts via occult motifs a journey inward and a return outward, a psycho-spiritual transformation occurring along the way. The Whisper Apparatus attempts, via the medium of verse, to speak the only linguistic alternative to techne-logos available to human beings on a dying planet: the language of witchcraft, the poetics of voodoo, the instructive "midwifery" of the pre-Socratic pagan philosophers. The poet offers an alternative to the misappropriation of Aristotelian mimesis by utilizing taxonomies of intuition, not scientific empiricism, by cataloging the subconscious via trance and dream. For the true sorcerer of words, Platonic anamnesis involves the logic of correspondence, not mathematical identity. The Whisper Apparatus, utilizing occult themes such as demonic possession and ritual drug use as a means of overcoming the psychotic symptoms and tendencies of a capitalist, patriarchal, and Puritanical upbringing, fits squarely in the Renaissance tradition of flirting with taboo, a transformation aesthetic employed by Sir Philip Sidney in Astrophil and Stella.