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Rain and Diagonal Light: Nature Imagery in the Novels of John Cheever

Description: John Cheever uses nature imagery, particularly images of light and water, to support his main themes of nostalgia, memory, tradition, alienation, travel, and confinement in his five novels. In the novels these images entwine and intersect to reveal Cheever's vision of an attainable earthly paradise comprised of familial love and an appreciation of the beauties and strengths of the natural world.
Date: December 1987
Creator: Baker, Cynthia J. (Cynthia Jane)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Always Painting the Future: Utopian Desire and the Women's Movement in Selected Works by United States Female Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Description: This study explores six utopias by female authors written at the turn of the twentieth century: Mary Bradley Lane's Mizora (1881), Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant's Unveiling Parallel (1893), Eloise O. Richberg's Reinstern (1900), Lena J. Fry's Other Worlds (1905), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), and Martha Bensley Bruère's Mildred Carver, USA (1919). While the right to vote had become the central, most important point of the movement, women were concerned with many other is… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Balic, Iva
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Saul Bellow's Creation of Ambiguity and Deception in Herzog and The Dean's December

Description: Argues that Bellow purposefully creates ambiguity and deception using impersonal narration and free indirect discourse in order to present Herzog and The Dean's December as reflections of an ambiguous and deceptive world. The discussion of impersonal narration is based on Wayne Booth's theories about the confusion of distance resulting from impersonal narration; the discussion of free indirect discourse is drawn from a number of definitions. Utilizes a number of specific references to the texts… more
Date: August 1993
Creator: Banks, Paul J. (Paul Jerome)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Epoch Stages of Consciousness in The Rainbow

Description: In The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence departs from traditional literary techniques, going below the level of ego consciousness within his characters to focus on the elemental dynamic forces of their unconscious minds. Using three generations of the Brangwen family, Lawrence traces the rise of consciousness from the primal unity of the uroboros through the matriarchal epoch and finally to full consciousness, the realization of the self, in Ursula Brangwen. By correlating the archetypal symbols character… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Bardas, Mary Louise Ivey
Partner: UNT Libraries
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From Boyd City to the Big City and Beyond: Six Stories with a Critical Introduction

Description: The critical introduction to this collection of short fiction argues that writing is reading and that reading is writing. The argument draws descriptions of writing as reading from such diverse sources as Sherwood Anderson, Roland Barthes, Neil Simon, J. Hillis Miller and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as well as from the author's own experience. Descriptions of reading from phenomenological and subjective criticism, including the theories of Georges Poulet, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish and David Bleic… more
Date: December 1993
Creator: Barringer, Bobby D. (Bobby Dewayne)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Orality, Literacy, and Heroism in Huckleberry Finn

Description: This work re-assesses the heroic character of Huckleberry Finn in light of the inherent problems of discourse. Walter Ong's insights into the differences between oral and literate consciousnesses, and Stanley Fish's concept of "interpretive communities" are applied to Huck's interactions with the other characters, revealing the underlying dynamic of his character, the need for a viable discourse community. Further established, by enlisting the ideas of Ernest Becker, is that this need for commu… more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Barrow, William David, 1955-
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Poetic Voice and the Romantic Tradition in the Poetry of Maxine Kumin

Description: The purpose of this study is to explore elements of the Romantic tradition in the poetry of Maxine Kumin and the poetic voice of Ms. Kumin as she writes in this tradition. The poet's choice of poetic-persona illustrates a growth of the consciousness, an identity of self. Of particular interest is the poet's close interaction with nature and use of natural symbols and images. A principal motif in Kumin's poetry is the common man. Another theme is the poet's role in the family. In poems exalting … more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Barton, Beverly D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Act I, Scene 2 of Hamlet: a Comparison of Laurence Olivier's and Tony Richardson's Films with Shakespeare's Play

Description: In act I, scene 2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, one of the key themes presented is the theme of order versus disorder. Gertrude's hasty marriage to Claudius and their lack of grief over the recent death of King Hamlet violate Hamlet's sense of order and are the cause of Hamlet's anger and despair in 1.2. Rather than contrast Hamlet with his uncle and mother, Olivier constructs an Oedipal relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude--unsupported by the text--that undermine's the characterization of Hamle… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Baskin, Richard Lee
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Mark Twain's Representation of the American West

Description: The purpose of this paper is to picture the West as Mark Twain saw it. Many books have been written which describe Twain's Western years, but few have given much consideration to the accuracy of his account of the West in the 1860's. This paper attempts to portray Twain not only as a social and political satirist, but also as a possible historical satirist.
Date: August 1953
Creator: Bass, Jeanne H.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Epic Element in Hiawatha

Description: By tracing the development of the epic, oral and written, as in Chapter III, the qualities that are characteristic of the epic and the devices associated with the epic through continued usage were found to be the constant factors upon which the definition of the epic is formulated. The application to Hiawatha of the epic definition in terms of form, theme, subject matter, characters, tone, the use of the supernatural, and the use of characteristic devices, strengthens the thesis that Longfello… more
Date: August 1953
Creator: Bass, Mary Laura
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Noh Plays of William Butler Yeats: Accomplishment in Failure

Description: This paper is a study of the effect of W. B. Yeats's contact with Japanese Noh drama on his work. The immediately discernible effect on his work can be seen, of course, in his adaptation of Noh dramatic form to his Four Plays for Dancers and The Death of Cuchulain. It is the thesis of this paper, then, that, despite many handicaps, Yeats's aesthetic background was not only sufficient to discover what suggestion did lie in the limited information available to him concerning Noh, but also suffi… more
Date: May 1971
Creator: Bays, Carol Ann
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Wake

Description: Preface: A consideration of the New Sincerity movement in contemporary American poetics in the work of Tao Lin, Matt Hart, and Dorothea Lasky. Creative work: A three section book of poetry exploring elegy, form, and the intersection of strangeness and domesticity.
Date: December 2016
Creator: Beard, Christopher Aaron
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Bifurcated Personalities of Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Reflected in Their "Sister Poems"

Description: Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti both suffered from ambivalent feelings concerning the role female sexuality plays in the salvation of the soul. These ambivalent feelings ranged from seeing female sexuality as leading men to salvation, to seeing it as a trap for the destruction of women's souls as well as men's. The contradictory feelings of the Rossettis' typifies the Victorian people's experience and was caused by the nature of the times. Using the analysis of the period by Walte… more
Date: December 1988
Creator: Becherer, Nadine L. (Nadine Lee)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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John Donne's Double Vision : Basic Dualities in the Sermon Literature

Description: This thesis is concerned with establishing the basis for evaluating John Donne's sermon literature as a thematic whole. In order to demonstrate this thematic unity and continuity, this study shows how Donne employes several bodies of imagery which reflect his double vision of man and sin and provide the basis for discussing the basic dualities in the bulk of Donne's 160 extant sermons.
Date: May 1971
Creator: Beck, Allen D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Miscegenated Narration: The Effects of Interracialism in Women's Popular Sentimental Romances from the Civil War Years

Description: Critical work on popular American women's fiction still has not reckoned adequately with the themes of interracialism present in these novels and with interracialism's bearing on the sentimental. This thesis considers an often overlooked body of women's popular sentimental fiction, published from 1860-1865, which is interested in themes of interracial romance or reproduction, in order to provide a fuller picture of the impact that the intersection of interracialism and sentimentalism has had on… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Beeler, Connie
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Problem of the Artist in Society : Hawthorne, James, and Hemingway

Description: The relationship of James to Hawthorne and of Hemingway to James certainly indicates the close literary relationship of the three writers. This development makes it seem only natural that three such self-conscious artists would have recourse to similar interests and would employ in their writings common themes, ideas, and methods.
Date: August 1960
Creator: Beggs, Jane K.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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East, West, Somewhere in the Middle

Description: A work of creative fiction in novella form, this dissertation follows the first-person travails of Mitch Zeller, a 26-year-old gay man who is faced with an unexpected choice. The dissertation opens with a preface which examines the form of the novella and the content of this particular work.
Date: December 1997
Creator: Behlen, Shawn Lee
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Graham Greene and the Idea of Childhood

Description: A marked preoccupation with childhood is evident throughout the works of Graham Greene; it receives most obvious expression in his concern with the idea that the course of a man's life is determined during his early years, but many of his other obsessive themes, such as betrayal, pursuit, and failure, may be seen to have their roots in general types of experience which Greene evidently believes to be common to all children.
Date: June 1966
Creator: Bell, Martha Frances
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Thomas Mann's Use of Myth

Description: The subject of Mann's early fiction is a very modern one, dealing almost exclusively with the problems of the artist in bourgeois society. His work can be divided generally into two parts: the early writings, which examine the different aspects of the dilemma of the artist and the search for a unifying myth, and the later works, which explore the "lived myth" as a way to life and art.
Date: January 1970
Creator: Bell, Rea Moody
Partner: UNT Libraries
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