UNT Libraries - 5 Matching Results
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- “That One Congenial Friend:” Hawthorne’s Search for a Careful Reader
- Paper discusses the prefaces to the novels and short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and argues that the author uses this space to describe political views that are clear to only a select audience.
- Shutters Shut and Open: Photographic Theory in Gertrude Stein’s Literary Portraits
- Paper investigates how Gertrude Stein uses photographic theory in the formal construction of her literary portraits in order to create an autonomous work of art and an authentic resemblance to her human subjects.
- Fitzgerald’s Women: Motherhood and Masculinity in the Flapper Era
- Paper discusses how changing gender roles in the 1920s, particularly for mothers, are depicted in the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and how mother figures influence the development of his leading male characters.
- Infinite Hallways: “Parabola Heretica” and Other Journeys
- This creative thesis collects five fictional stories, as well as a critical preface entitled “Fractals and the Gestalt: the Hybridization of Genre.” The critical preface discusses genre as a literary element and explores techniques for effective genre hybridization. The stories range from psychological fiction to science fiction and fantasy fiction. Each story also employs elements from other genres as well. These stories collectively explore the concept of the other and themes of connection and ostracization.
- After the Planes
- The dissertation consists of a critical preface and a novel. The preface analyzes what it terms “polyvocal” novels, or novels employing multiple points of view, as well as “layered storytelling,” or layers of textuality within novels, such as stories within stories. Specifically, the first part of the preface discusses polyvocality in twenty-first century American novels, while the second part explores layered storytelling in novels responding to World War II or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The preface analyzes the advantages and difficulties connected to these techniques, as well as their aptitude for reflecting the fractured, disconnected, and subjective nature of the narratives we construct to interpret traumatic experiences. It also acknowledges the necessity—despite its inherent limitations—of using language to engage with this fragmentation and cope with its challenges. The preface uses numerous novels as examples and case studies, and it also explores these concepts and techniques in relation to the process of writing the novel After the Planes. After the Planes depicts multiple generations of a family who utilize storytelling as a means to work through grief, hurt, misunderstanding, and loss—whether from interpersonal conflicts or from war. Against her father’s wishes, a young woman moves in with her nearly-unknown grandfather, struggling to understand the rifts in her family and how they have shaped her own identity. She reads a book sent to her by her father, which turns out to be his story of growing up in the years following World War II. The book was intercepted and emended by her grandfather, who inserts his own commentary throughout, complicating her father’s hopes of reconciliation. The novel moves between two main narratives, one set primarily in 1951 and the other in the days and weeks immediately prior to September 11, 2001.