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The first chapter, using texts by Sir William Hamilton, Hester Piozzi, and Priscilla Wakefield, argues that in the late eighteenth century important aspects of volcanoes, like their impact upon human life and their existence through time, were beginning to be defined in texts ranging from the scientific to the educational. The second chapter focuses on works by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Lyell to demonstrate the ways that volcanoes were stripped of metaphysical or symbolic meaning as the nineteenth century progressed. The third chapter contrasts the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa with Constance Gordon-Cumming’s travels to Kīlauea. The chapter shows how even towards the end of the century, trying to connect human minds with the process of volcanic phenomenon was a substantial challenge, but that volcanoes like Kīlauea allowed for new conceptions of volcanic action. The last chapter, through a post-apocalyptic novel by M. P. Shiel, shows how volcanoes were finally beginning to be categorized as a primary agent within the environment, shaping all life including humanity. Ultimately, I argue that the change in thinking about volcanoes parallels today’s shift in thinking about global climate change. My work provides insight into how we imagine ecological catastrophes like volcanic eruptions or climate change in the past and present and what that means for their impact on people.
In the United States, the majority of the population suffers from some form of trauma. There are many ways that an individual can cope and accept their trauma, but two practices stand out as an inexpensive, flexible option for many. Bibliotherapy is the use of reading literature as a way to learn more about and understand one’s trauma through the perspective of others. Expressive writing is the practice of writing and reflecting about one’s own traumatic experiences, as well as the emotions that are tethered to it. In this paper, I explore the fields of bibliotherapy and expressive writing as forms of therapy by reviewing the history, use, goals, and effects of each in the context of mental and emotional well-being. Intertwined with the scholarship is my own self-guided bibliotherapy of reading memoirs and poetry collections related to my trauma and self-guided expressive writing in which I wrote a short collection of personal essays and poetry, finding that both fields, separately and used together, are effective avenues for trauma healing.
Drawing attention to imperial commodities used as theatrical props on the Restoration and eighteenth-century stage, I reassess commonly studied plays as well as critically overlooked works. Foreign “things” in performance, such as spices and produce in seventeenth-century Lord Mayor’s Shows, china in William Wycherley’s _The Country Wife_ (1675), jewels from the East in Oliver Goldsmith’s _She Stoops to Conquer_ (1773), and the Indian shawl in Elizabeth Inchbald’s _Appearance is Against Them_ (1785), informed reception of the works they appeared in while also influencing how the people of London understood the role of those commodities in their everyday lives. As the commercialism of British society increased, imperial commodities became necessary “actors” in British social relations; the British stage responded in kind by showcasing how such goods dictated and mediated communal relations and constructions of the self. I argue that the way in which exotic goods were utilized in performance served to create, investigate, underwrite, and/or critique a British national and personal identity constructed upon access to and control over imperial commodities.