Essays
The Arts and Marriage in Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot follows the interwoven stories of Gwendolen Harleth, a spoiled socialite, and the novel’s namesake Daniel Deronda, a wealthy young man unsure of his purpose in life. It is an ambitious piece of fiction, grappling with issues such as the Jewish identity in Victorian England, the societal constraints on women, the legitimacy of the theory of predestination, and many more. […]
Doublespeak in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare’s plays are infamous for their elaborate turns of phrase and poetic contemplations, often daunting first-time readers of his tragedies and comedies, making them feel as though they are working through a sort of narrative riddle—the answer to which requires copious amounts of glosses and footnotes. […]
Superlatives in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Milun
Who exactly is “the greatest of all time”? Perhaps Shakespeare or Mozart or even Tom Brady come to mind. Now, this is not a new question; it has occupied space in the minds of authors for centuries, with medieval heroic literature being of particular note. […]
Makeup and Manipulation: Metatheatricality in The Duchess of Malfi
Does art imitate life or life imitate art? In John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, it is art that mimics art. The play is replete with self-aware references to the theater and the stage. […]
A Critique on the Strength of Terror and Astonishment in Frankenstein
It is the task of a writer to carefully and purposefully guide readers through a sequence of emotion, making fictitious the so-called highs and lows that define our reality. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a prose story that exemplifies this emotional succession: tracing the rise from grief to sorrow, astonishment to terror, horror to rage. […]
Research
Gender Representation in the Media
Feminist media studies first came about in the early 1970s, around when color television became more common than black and white in American households. They were brought on by second-wave feminism which sought to broaden female societal positions in order to bring about work related and educational equality. The movement saw the changing technologies as opportunities for revolution and felt that it was necessary to understand them […]
Celestial Bodies in Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy follows the life of Tess Durbeyfield, a peasant who endures numerous hardships at the hands of men with whom she has relationships, being raped and impregnated by one and abandoned and forced to murder by the other. Hardy fills this tragic tale with poetic writing, often using light and shadow—that is, day and night, sun and moon, Heaven and Earth—to create it […]
Symmetry and the Quantification of Attractiveness
Symmetry and attractiveness are at the center of one of the biggest trends on the short-video application TikTok. People film themselves using the “beauty filter” called “mirror reflection,” which copies the left side of their face onto their right. A few seconds into the video, the creator turns off the filter—shockingly revealing that their face is, in fact, asymmetrical […]
Geohumoralism and the Color of Blood in The Merchant of Venice and Othello
The motif of blood courses through the text of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Othello. It, of course, stains scenes of physical violence, such as the trial of Shylock and Antonio and the murder-suicide of Othello and Desdemona, but moments of anti-semitism and racism are the most bloody. Blood reflects the northern and southern, English and Italian, humoral tensions and insecurities of the Renaissance in each play, specifically through its color: either red or white […]
Decentralized Climate Funds (DCF) in Mali: A Research Journal
Decentralizing Climate Funds (DCF) is a research project in four semi-arid countries, including Mali, the one on which I will focus. DCF proposes a financial model that diverts funds from large national governments to smaller local communities who possess expertise on how best to address their specific climate issues. […]
Angelina Scarlotta | Dartmouth College 2023