http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/literary-theory Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:54:17 -0400 Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:54:17 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1961/unity-in-virginia-woolf-and-hannah-arendt-creating-reality-in-the-insensitive-and-inaccessible By Esteban A. Sanchez - Woolfian Scholars regularly denote the moments where Woolf’s characters feel inexplicably connected and inseparable from one another as representing the spiritual and mystic beliefs of their author. I want to reframe this notion, considering Woolf's moments of unity, not as a metafictional tool, but as a rebellion against the insensitive and inaccessible natural world. Wittgenstein's refutation of the linguistic contentions in Plato’s Cratylus will outline language’s relationship to reality and how Woolf rejects Platonic Forms. Woolf along with Hannah Arendt will consider thought... Thu, 22 Sep 2022 10:48 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1961/unity-in-virginia-woolf-and-hannah-arendt-creating-reality-in-the-insensitive-and-inaccessible http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1958/the-relationship-between-gender-and-trauma-in-donna-tartts-the-goldfinch By Katie K. Strubel - The Goldfinch (2013) by Donna Tartt is a novel that explores the conditions of grief and escalating lengths characters will go to survive the traumas and mysteries of life. This story of guilt and loss—intermixed with love and longing—is far detached from the traditional coming-of-age trope. I argue that one of the most tantalizing aspects found in this piece of literary fiction is the fascinating and sometimes questionable relationship between main characters, Theodore Decker and Boris Pavlikovsky. Reading this novel through a queer/gender studies lens and the use of a dialogic journal... Mon, 19 Sep 2022 02:37 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1958/the-relationship-between-gender-and-trauma-in-donna-tartts-the-goldfinch http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1948/fragile-aesthetics-the-problematics-behind-thomas-gainsboroughs-landscape-paintings By Connor E. Yen - The 17th and 18th centuries saw a wide proliferation of aesthetic discourse through which the picturesque emerged to capture the type of beauty derived from the exchange of in vivo vigor for the spirit of artistic medium. While the metaphysical project of 18th century aesthetic theory masquerades as apolitical, placing Thomas Gainsborough’s landscape paintings in dialogue with picturesque beauty reveals an underlying anxiety of peasant encroachment and class conflict. This paper parses the complex interplay between the “smooth” and the “rough” in Gainsborough&rsquo... Fri, 01 Apr 2022 01:04 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1948/fragile-aesthetics-the-problematics-behind-thomas-gainsboroughs-landscape-paintings http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1625/literary-repetition-and-revision-as-healing-harryette-mullen-and-suzan-lori-parkss-collective-solution-to-historical-trauma By Zeena Y. Fuleihan - Music functions as a source of healing in Toni Morrison’s Jazz, both to the bird who is inexplicably sad and for the broken relationship between Violet and Joe, the novel’s two main adult characters. The bird cheers up and regains its appetite once it hears music, and Violet and Joe begin to repair their love after a younger character brings a record player into their home. Borrowing from the musical forms of jazz, and more specifically jazz played by black musicians, Morrison structures her book as a series of solos from various characters, moving forward and backward in time to expand... Tue, 11 Apr 2017 09:09 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1625/literary-repetition-and-revision-as-healing-harryette-mullen-and-suzan-lori-parkss-collective-solution-to-historical-trauma http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/679/dialogic-conflict-and-speech-identity-in-jean-rhys-let-them-call-it-jazz By Grace E. Afsari-Mamagani - The books at her disposal, about murder and ghosts, speak to society’s understanding of crime, punishment, and the afterlife. But, for Selina, it is not “at all like those books tell you”: the stories offered within their pages do not apply to her, are not written in the language through which she understands herself. By presenting the narrative in the patois of the West Indian immigrant to Britain, Rhys produces both interior and exterior dialogic conflict. The narrator’s vernacular serves as one within a series of signifying systems, or, as Mikhail Bakhtin posited, speech... Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/679/dialogic-conflict-and-speech-identity-in-jean-rhys-let-them-call-it-jazz http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/29/from-comrades-to-lovers-the-hollow-men-and-the-broken-homosocial-spectrum By Rebecca A. Demarest - In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Sedgwick proposes the idea that not only women, but also men, can travel along a social spectrum that ranges from friends to lovers. However, she argues that the male homosocial spectrum is broken up by male homophobia in society. This is illustrated in various literature, from works by openly gay authors to stories and poems by writers who are either straight or of a questionable orientation (Sedgwick). One such work is T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” in which the poem’s speaker uses word choice and imagery... Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:32 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/29/from-comrades-to-lovers-the-hollow-men-and-the-broken-homosocial-spectrum