Issue number one
Welcome to our first issue of the brightONLINE literary and creative online journal. We have no special theme for this issue, simply our selection of the best work we have received since our call for papers at the end of summer term. The issue includes two departmental prize winners in Ben Westlake and Rosanna Wood.
We hope you enjoy reading the work.
Articles from our latest edition.
Chartacre: How does Samuel Beckett's Trilogy use scepticism of language to question traditional theories of consciousness?
Final year dissertation including practice-led writing methodology
Using a methodology of imaginative writing set alongside textual criticism, Ben Westlake explores how the limits of language are tested by writers. Ben's dissertation uses the understanding gained from his own creative practice to balance other levels of understanding through close critical analysis of modernist texts.
Ben Westlake
Daniel Deronda: A Study in Characterisation and Psychology
Final year dissertation on Victorian literature
Concerned with George Eliot’s final novel, Daniel Deronda, this essay examines the nature of character, drawing upon definitions and attitudes to that term. It looks at how certain of Eliot's characters are formed, considering them in their varying levels of success as representations of people, and how they have been received by critics over time.
Rosanna Wood
Fame or Shame
Experimental work in short fiction from Creative Writing module
"The walls of the dance studio were almost entirely covered in mirrors... Gareth pranced around in the company and audience of himself .... In his periphery, amongst the scattered streamers and few loose socks, Gareth noticed a briefcase.... Much to Gareth’s surprise, the case was unlocked and opened with a simple flick of a buckle. Much more to his surprise were the contents."
George Gould
‘Semblative a woman’s part’: Why and how are considerations of gender and sexuality important in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice?
Critical essay from Early Modern Literature module
Shakespeare's female characters in these two major comedies seem to remodel the 17th Century notions of femininity and the woman's social role. This essay examines gender issues in the plays, looking at cross-dressing, homosexuality and issues surrounding the carnival breaking of social expectations.
Hannah Aspinall
Compare and contrast doubling in The Monk and Dracula with emphasis on how notions of the Gothic have been articulated, developed and/or rewritten over time.
Critical essay in Gothic fiction
Written at the ends of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries respecitvely, The Monk and Dracula exemplify the use of doubling in Gothic literature. In this essay, style and plot are considered alongside the double nature of characters that is central to Gothic fiction and the overarching 'doubleness' of the novels' themes.
Olly Hunt
How critical are Seventeenth century writers of emergent colonialism?
Critical essay from Early Modern Literature module
With reference to early modern paradigms of colonialism, this essay considers how authors such as Swift, Behn and Milton use their contemporaries' polarised notions of civilisation to challenge readers' understanding of European culture and its relationship to the 'other' of colonised races.
Kirstin Papworth
Travelling with a Beat: An exploration into the use of music to express travel in On the Road and Latcho Drom
Critical essay on sound in Twentieth century narrative culture
The 'universal language' of music as a narrative tool is examined through analysis of two works - book and film - and their use of music as structure and symbol as well as an evocation of environment. The essay recognises music's relationship with identity and culture as well as its bridging between language and tacit communication.
Louis Kirby
Marginality and exile in Murphy and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Critical essay on Modernist literature
This essay looks at two seminal works of the early-twentieth century, considering 'character' and the sense of language as instances of psychological exile. Marginality, it is argued, is an extension of individuality, and the confusion inherent in the self's gradual absorption into society is at the heart of a Modernist sense of alienation.
Toby Shearwood
Two Little Birds
Creative experiment in short fiction
They had always been little bony things... When they were younger she would gather up their sharp little limbs in her arms and squeeze them tightly. They hated when she did that and would push against her embrace like small birds flapping their wings. She sometimes worried she would hold them too tightly, and they would break. They always seemed so easily broken, so devastatingly transient.
