The Sonnet in Irish Poetry from the Literary Revival to the Present Day

This thesis examines the sonnet in Irish poetry from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day, considering how a range of poets use the form in order to shape and reflect the concerns of their work. Poets discussed include W. B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory, Eva Gore-Booth, Alice Milligan, Patrick Kavanagh, Blanaid Salkeld, Brendan Kennelly, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Ciaran Carson, David Wheatley, Justin Quinn, Vona Groarke, Leontia Flynn, and Trevor Joyce. The thesis is arranged thematically, exploring the sonnet through its engagement with multiple currents within modern and contemporary Irish poetry. The first chapter thinks about the sonnet in the work of poets of the Irish Literary Revival, considering how questions of form played out at a moment in Irish history when poets were induced to address the relationship between poetic and political imperatives. The second considers nation, focusing primarily on ideas of postnationalism and transnationalism in Irish poetry and criticism, and the way the sonnet catalyses these debates through its invocation of specific European and global poetic influences. The third chapter addresses literary and artistic history through an examination of biography, ekphrasis, and allusion in the Irish sonnet, discussing poets’ use of these devices to examine poetry’s relationship with the real and with various cultural traditions. Chapter Four explores the sonnet in the work of Paul Muldoon, with a focus on his use of the form to write the Northern Irish conflict and to examine contradictions, discrepancies, and slippages in language and identity, and Chapter Five thinks about the Irish sonnet and history, discussing colonial and revolutionary history, Irish poets’ readings and rewritings of early modern English literature, and the relationship between history and fantasy. The final chapters look at place—natural and agricultural in Chapter Six, domestic and architectural in Chapter Seven—and the ways Irish poets have used the sonnet to embody physical space and associated ideas of work and the home. Throughout the thesis, I work at the intersection of formalist and materialist readings of poetry, seeking to integrate both by considering form as expressing, interrogating, and commenting on social, historical, and political concerns. I also challenge readings of the Irish sonnet as necessarily a response to England and the English poetic tradition, thinking instead about how Irish poets’ renderings of the sonnet engage with and animate a range of other cultural histories and push back against the idea that there is an inherent tension in Irish use of the form

THE SEDIMENT AND CRUSTAL STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

The Southeastern United States (SEUS) preserves a detailed geologic record of the continental collision and rifting that has shaped it over billions of years. Currently the SEUS lies on a passive margin far away from ongoing tectonics, yet retains the ability to produce damaging earthquakes. It has long been suspected that the current seismicity in the SEUS is related to zones of weakness inherited from past structural boundaries; however, the mechanisms that dictate the size and location remain poorly understood and the ground shaking hazard posed by widespread sedimentary basins remains poorly quantified. P-to-S converted waves, analyzed through the receiver function technique, enable detailed imaging of lithospheric structure, but suffer from contamination in sedimented regions. Therefore, I implement a method for constraining average crustal thickness and seismic velocities while correcting for the effects of sediments. I then use high-frequency constraints on sediment structure to construct a reference velocity model for the Atlantic Coastal Plain, discussing its implications for seismic hazard. Finally, using Sp and sediment-corrected Ps receiver functions, I image the structure of the crust and mantle lithosphere across the SEUS, applying sediment corrections and identifying abrupt changes in crustal thickness that appears to be associated with active seismic zones. I discuss these structures in the context of the region’s tectonic past and future seismic hazard

Confabulation: Photographs, Memory, and Painting

This thesis is in regards to paintings created by Erin Cunningham for the completion of her MFA in Visual Arts at Boise State University in the spring of 2011. She primarily discusses the tenuous connection between photography and memory. Examining ideas developed by Roland Barthes, she set out to prove that while there is a distinct difference between the factual language of photography and the fictive language of memory, that the two have a type of symbiotic relationship. Particularly in regards to familial photography, the paintings she has developed from this concept examine the construction of memoir using images that are unfamiliar within personal memory and how those images are consequently re-authored with the attachment of personal narrative. The artist also examines how a representational quality that is painted similarly to photography can affect the viewer’s conception of the work due to the inherent trust granted to the photographic image

How Metacognitive Awareness Relates to Overconfidence in Interval Judgments

Making judgments is an important part of everyday life, and overconfidence in these judgments can lead to serious consequences. Two potential factors influencing overconfidence are metacognitive awareness, or the awareness of one’s own learning, and the hard-easy effect, which states that overconfidence is more prevalent in difficult tasks while underconfidence is more prevalent in easy tasks. Overall, we hypothesized that participants’ metacognitive awareness would significantly relate to their overconfidence levels. Specific hypotheses were that those participants who display higher levels of metacognitive awareness will have lower levels of overconfidence, that harder questions will elicit higher levels of overconfidence and easy questions will elicit underconfidence (congruent with the hard-easy effect), and that the lower range and upper range will on average be equal, with the exact estimate as the midpoint. Participants (N = 49) completed a questionnaire containing a set of hard and easy general knowledge questions followed by the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. The correlation between metacognitive awareness and confidence was negative for hard questions and positive for easy questions. Furthermore, the ranges for easy questions were smaller, resulting in more overconfidence, and the ranges for the hard questions were larger, resulting in underconfidence, thus, showing the opposite of our expected hypotheses.Faculty Sponsor: Erin M. Buchana

That Bitter Spring

The purpose of writing this novel was to see if I could write something longer than fifteen pages. It is a melodrama. It is a romance. It is a gothic horror that I never intended to create, but then one never intends to end up with their own Frankenstein, do they? The story is set in a small town in North Carolina in the summer of 1941. It is the same as every tired plot; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, but this time girl decides that life is better off without him anyway. Images and the concept of time have always been of great importance to me and these were the themes that I focused on in the beginning of the writing of this novel. I spent hours constructing chapters that could be read backward or forward, but alas that has been removed for reader clarity. Read Fahrenheit 451. It was a long journey. I learned a lot about myself, about writing, and politics, thusly, pages upon pages have become ashes along the way. Perhaps you would enjoy picking up the latest New York Times best seller. I can guarantee you it is better than what your about to read

How Metacognitive Awareness Relates to Overconfidence in Interval Judgments

Making judgments is an important part of everyday life, and overconfidence in these judgments can lead to serious consequences. Two potential factors influencing overconfidence are metacognitive awareness, or the awareness of one’s own learning, and the hard-easy effect, which states that overconfidence is more prevalent in difficult tasks while underconfidence is more prevalent in easy tasks. Overall, we hypothesized that participants’ metacognitive awareness would significantly relate to their overconfidence levels. Specific hypotheses were that those participants who display higher levels of metacognitive awareness will have lower levels of overconfidence, that harder questions will elicit higher levels of overconfidence and easy questions will elicit underconfidence (congruent with the hard-easy effect), and that the lower range and upper range will on average be equal, with the exact estimate as the midpoint. Participants (N = 49) completed a questionnaire containing a set of hard and easy general knowledge questions followed by the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. The correlation between metacognitive awareness and confidence was negative for hard questions and positive for easy questions. Furthermore, the ranges for easy questions were smaller, resulting in more overconfidence, and the ranges for the hard questions were larger, resulting in underconfidence, thus, showing the opposite of our expected hypotheses