UNT Theses and Dissertations - 91 Matching Results

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W. B. Yeats's "The Cap and Bells": Its Sources in Occultism

Description: While it may seem that "The Cap and Bells" finds its primary source in Yeats's love for Maud Gonne, the poem is also symbolic of his search for truth in occultism. In the 1880s and 90s Yeats coupled his reading of Shelley with a formal study of magic in the Golden Dawn, and the poem is a blend of Shelleyan and occult influences. The essay explores the Shelleyan/occult motif of death and rebirth through examining the poem's relation to the rituals, teachings, and symbols of the Golden Dawn. The … more
Date: May 1995
Creator: Saylor, Lawrence (Lawrence Emory)
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The Evolution of Survival as Theme in Contemporary Native American Literature: from Alienation to Laughter

Description: With the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn. N. Scott Momaday ended a three-decade hiatus in the production of works written by Native American writers, and contributed to the renaissance of a rich literature. The critical acclaim that the novel received helped to establish Native American literature as a legitimate addition to American literature at large and inspired other Native Americans to write. Contemporary Native American literature from 1969 to 1974 foc… more
Date: December 1994
Creator: Schein, Marie-Madeleine
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Natural Grammar: a Painless Way to Teach Grammar in the Secondary Language Arts Classroom

Description: Natural Grammar provides a way for the junior high or high school English teacher to draw upon students' "natural," or subconscious, knowledge of the systems and structures of spoken English. When such subconscious knowledge is conceptualized (brought to the conscious level), the students can transfer that knowledge to their writing. Natural grammar, in other words, allows the teacher to begin with what students already know, so that he or she may help students to build upon that knowledge in t… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Scott, Leslie A. (Leslie Ann)
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The Dostoevskyan Dialectic in Selected North American Literary Works

Description: This study is an examination of the rhetorical concept of the dialectic as it is realized in selected works of North American dystopian literature. The dialectic is one of the main factors in curtailing enlightenment rationalism which, taken to an extreme, would deny man freedom while claiming to bestow freedom upon him. The focus of this dissertation is on an analysis of twentieth-century dystopias and the dialectic of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor parable which is a precursor to dystop… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Smith, James Gregory
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Appropriating Language on the Usenet

Description: The Usenet is a global computer conferencing system on which users can affix textual messages under 4500 different categories. It currently has approximately 4,165,000 readers, and these .readers have appropriated language by adapting it to the Usenet's culture and medium. This thesis conceptualizes the Usenet community's appropriation of language, provides insights into how media and media restrictions cause their users to appropriate language, and discusses how future media may further cause … more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Spinuzzi, Clay I. (Clay Ian)
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In the Beginning was the Word: Hebraic Intertextuality and Critical Inquiry of Ambrose Bierce

Description: This study corroborates theories that ordinary representation of narrative time as a linear series of "nows" hides the true constitution of time and that it is advantageous for us as readers and critics to consider alternatives to progressive reality and linear discourse in order to comprehend many of Ambrose Bierce's stories, for his discourse is fluid and metonymic and defies explication within traditional western language concepts. The Hebraic theory of intertextuality encourages limitless c… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Streng, Rodney L. (Rodney Lin)
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Sharing the Light: Feminine Power in Tudor and Stuart Comedy

Description: Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-sevent… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Tanner, Jane Hinkle
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Fanny Fern: A Social Critic in Nineteenth-Century America

Description: This dissertation explores Fanny Fern's literary position and her role as a social critic of American lives and attitudes in the nineteenth-century. A reexamination of Fern's literary and non-literary works sheds light on her firm stand for the betterment of all mankind. The diversity and multiplicity of Fern's social criticism and her social reform attitudes, evident in Ruth Hall. Rose Clark, and in voluminous newspaper articles, not only prove her concern for society's well-being, but also re… more
Date: August 1995
Creator: Tongra-ar, Rapin
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Getting It On Home: Ways of Telling the Story

Description: In this collection of poems and essays, the author demonstrates two different methods for examining the same theme: the notion of "home"—how to get there, how to remain there and bear articulate witness to the forces which drive that author to write. The introduction sets forth an explanation for the use of the specific form chosen for expression, with an analysis of the intent behind that form. In these essays and poems, the author accounts for her years on the Texas Panhandle, in Montana, an… more
Date: May 1996
Creator: Vanek, Mary
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A Challenge to Charles Lamb's "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare"

Description: This study challenges Charles Lamb's 1811 essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation," which argues that Shakespeare's plays are better suited for reading than stage production. Each of the four chapters considers a specific argument Lamb raises against the theatre and the particular Shakespearean tragedy used to illustrate his point. The Hamlet chapter examines the supposed concessions involved in the actor/audience relationship.… more
Date: December 1990
Creator: Walworth, Alan M. (Alan Marshall)
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Literature of Conscience: The Novels of John Nichols

Description: This dissertation presents a thematic study of the novels of John Nichols. Intended as an introduction to his major works of fiction, this study discusses the central themes and prominent characteristics of his seven novels and considers the impact of the Southwest on his work. Chapter One presents biographical information about Nichols, focusing on his political awakening and subsequent move to Taos, New Mexico. A visit to Guatemala, after the publication of The Sterile Cuckoo. his first novel… more
Date: May 1990
Creator: Ward, Dorothy Patricia
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Mark Twain, Nevada Frontier Journalism, and the "Territorial Enterprise" : Crisis in Credibility

Description: This dissertation is an attempt to give a picture of the Nevada frontier journalist Samuel L. Clemens and the surroundings in which he worked. It is also an assessment of the extent to which Clemens (and his alter ego Twain) can be considered a serious journalist and the extent to which he violated the very principles he championed.
Date: May 1995
Creator: Wienandt, Christopher
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Friendship, Politics, and the Literary Imagination: the Impact of Franklin Pierce on Hawthorne's Works

Description: This dissertation attempts to demonstrate how Nathaniel Hawthorne's lifelong friendship with Franklin Pierce influenced the author's literary imagination, often prompting him to transform Pierce from his historical personage into a romanticized figure of notably Jacksonian qualities. It is also an assessment of how Hawthorne's friendship with Pierce profoundly influenced a wide range of his work, from his first novel, Fanshawe (1828), to the Life of Franklin Pierce (1852) and such later works a… more
Date: August 1996
Creator: Williamson, Richard Joseph, 1962-
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The Religious Dimensions of William Faulkner: An Inquiry into the Dichotomy of Puritanism

Description: "The Religious Dimensions of William Faulkner: An Inquiry into the Dichotomy of Puritanism" traces a secular mode of thinking of American moral superiority and the gospel of success to its religious origins. The study shows that while the basis for American moral superiority derives from the typological correspondence between sacred history and American experience, the gospel of success results from the Puritan preoccupation with work as a virtue instead of a necessity because labor improves on… more
Date: May 1999
Creator: Wu, John Guo Qiang
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An Investigation of the Semantics of Active and Inverse Systems

Description: This study surveys pronominal reference marking in active and inverse languages. Active and inverse languages have in common that they distinguish two sets of reference marking, which are referred to as Actor and Undergoer. The choice of one series of marking over another is shown to be semantically and pragmatically determined.
Date: May 1992
Creator: Yang, Lixin
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Religion and Politics in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats

Description: Previous critics have paid insufficient attention to the political implications of Yeats's life-long preoccupation with a wide range of Western and Eastern religious traditions. Though he always preserved some skepticism about mysticism's ability to reshape the material world, the early Yeats valued the mystical idea of oneness in part because he hoped (mistakenly, as it turned out) that such oneness would bring Catholic and Protestant Ireland together in a way that might make the goals of Iris… more
Date: August 1997
Creator: Yoo, Baekyun
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Myths, Hierophanies, and Sacraments in William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha Fiction

Description: Critical reactions to the religious experiences contained in William Faulkner's fiction have tended to fall within the context of traditional Christian belief systems. In most instances, the characters' beliefs have been judged by the tenets of belief systems or religions that are not necessarily those on which the characters base their lives. There has been no effort to understand the characters' spirituality as the basis of an independent religious belief system. Mircea Eliade's methods and m… more
Date: May 1995
Creator: Zimmermann, David H. (David Howard)
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