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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
open access

The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction

Description: This dissertation explores how contemporary, small-press, speculative fiction deviates from other genres in depicting the processes of consciousness in narrative. I study how the confluence of contemporary cognitive theory and experimental, small-press, speculative fiction has produced a new narrative mode, one wherein literature portrays not the product of consciousness but its process instead. Unlike authors who worked previously in the stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue modes, wri… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Bradley, Darin Colbert
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"The Living Skein": A Stylistic Study of Dylan Thomas

Description: This study examines rhythm, syntax, sound, and diction in selected early and late poems from Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems. It demonstrates, on the basis of stylistic evidence, that the later poetry is the greater achievement. The early and later poems are different in the area of rhythm. Early poems are regularly metered with a strong iambic beat, and a majority of lines are end-stopped. Rhythms in the later, finer poems are irregular, and enjambed lines predominate. The later poems show an i… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Franco, June W.
open access

Lollardy and Eschatology: English Literature c. 1380-1430

Description: In this dissertation, I examine the various ways in which medieval authors used the term "lollard" to mean something other than "Wycliffite." In the case of William Langland's Piers Plowman, I trace the usage of the lollard-trope through the C-text and link it to Langland's dependence on the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Regarding Chaucer's Parson's Tale, I establish the orthodoxy of the tale's speaker by comparing his tale to contemporaneous texts of varying orthodoxy, and I link the Par… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Regetz, Timothy
open access

"Looking into the Heart of Light, the Silence": The Rule of Desire in T.S. Eliot's Poetry

Description: The poetry of T. S. Eliot represents intense yet discriminate expressions of desire. His poetry is a poetry of desire that extenuates the long tradition of love poetry in Occidental culture. The unique and paradoxical element of love in Occidental culture is that it is based on an ideal of the unconsummated love relationship between man and woman. The struggle to express desire, yet remain true to ideals that have deep sacred and secular significance is the key animating factor of Eliot's poetr… more
Date: August 1995
Creator: Adams, Stephen D. (Stephen Duane)
open access

Love, Marriage, and Irony in Barbara Pym's Novels

Description: In my study on Barbara Pym's novels, the focus is first on the two basic ironies in love-marriage relations: irony of dilemma in which marriage is seen as the end of romantic love; and irony of situation in which excellent but plain-looking women are deprived of the chance to express their basic need for love. Chapter I of this study introduces the major themes and ironies in Pym's novels and the nature and functions of her irony. The following six chapters examine the two major ironies in six … more
Date: May 1991
Creator: Lee, Sun-Hee
open access

Love Poem with Exiles

Description: Love Poem with Exiles is a collection of poems with a critical preface. The poems are varied in terms of subject matter and form. In the critical preface, I discuss my relationship with poetry as well as the idea that we inherit poems, and that if we are inspired by them, we can transform them into something new.
Date: May 2010
Creator: Quintanilla, Octavio
open access

The Map and the Territory in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens

Description: In this dissertation, Wallace Stevens' imagination-reality problem as depicted in his poetry is discussed in terms of an eco-critical map-territory divide. Stevens's metaphor of "the necessary angel" acts to mediate human necessity, the map, with natural necessity, the territory, in order to retain contact with changing cultural and environmental conditions. At stake in this mediation are individual freedom and the pertinence of the imagination to the experience of reality. In Chapter 2, the at… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Thompson, Erik Robb

Mapping the Feminist Movement in Pakistani Literature: Towards a Feminist Future

Description: In this work, I examine and analyze women representation and themes in Pakistani literature in order to explore the emergence and development of feminist thought as reflected within it, from pre-independence to present day Pakistan. One of my central arguments is that the theorization of a workable feminism in the conflictual Pakistani state depends on understanding and accounting for the socio-political, religious, and economic milieu of the country under which women live. In the following ch… more
This item is restricted from view until January 1, 2025.
Date: December 2022
Creator: Aziz, Anum
open access

Mark Twain: "Cradle Skeptic"

Description: Critics discussing Mark Twain's early skepticism have, to date, confined their explorations to short studies (articles or book chapters), brief references in passing, or buried their insights in discussions on other topics. Other critics ignore Twain's atheistic statements and see his beliefs as theistic or deterministic. Others ascribe his attitudes in the "dark writings" to late life disappointments. This study demonstrates that Twain's later attitudes towards religion, determinism, social re… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Britton, Wesley A. (Wesley Alan)
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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
open access

Marvels of the Invisible

Description: This dissertation is comprised of a collection of poems preceded by a critical preface. The preface considers the consumed animal body as a metaphor in contemporary American poetry, specifically in the works of Galway Kinnell, Li Young Lee, and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The consumption of the mute creature allows the poet to identify the human self in the animal other, and serves as a metaphor for our continuity with the natural world. I revise Owen Barfield’s notion of “original participation,” pos… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Molberg, Jenny, 1985-
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Metaphors, Myths, and Archetypes: Equal Paradigmatic Functions in Human Cognition?

Description: The overview of contributions to metaphor theory in Chapters 1 and 2, examined in reference to recent scholarship, suggests that the current theory of metaphor derives from long-standing traditions that regard metaphor as a crucial process of cognition. This overview calls to attention the necessity of a closer inspection of previous theories of metaphor. Chapter 3 takes initial steps in synthesizing views of domains of inquiry into cognitive processes of the human mind. It draws from cognitive… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Kalpakidis, Charalabos
open access

"Mislike Me not for My Complexion": Shakespearean Intertextuality in the Works of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women

Description: Caliban, the ultimate figure of linguistic and racial indeterminacy in The Tempest, became for African-American writers a symbol of colonial fears of rebellion against oppression and southern fears of black male sexual aggression. My dissertation thus explores what I call the "Calibanic Quadrangle" in essays and novels by Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. The figure of Caliban allows these authors to inflect the sentimental structure of the novel, t… more
Date: August 1996
Creator: Birge, Amy Anastasia
open access

Misrecognized and Misplaced: Race Performed in African American Literature, 1900-2015

Description: In my dissertation, I explore the ways in which racial identity is made complex through various onlookers' misrecognition of race. This issue is particularly important considering the current state of race relations in the United States, as my project offers a literary perspective and account of the way black authors have discussed racial identity formation from the turn of the century through the start of the twenty-first century. I highlight many variations of misrecognition and racial perfor… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Taylor Juko, Tana

"Molt"

Description: Considered privileged by social standards, with two loving parents and a spot in an elite, all-girls private school in New Jersey, Charlie should be happy. But at Oak Crest College Preparatory, if you're not a straight-A student, you're dumb. If you're not a star athlete, you're invisible. And if you don't compete to be the best? Well, you might as well flunk out. Charlie is already failing math, and it's only October. Why not throw school—and maybe her whole life—away? Then, one day, Charlie f… more
This item is restricted from view until September 1, 2027.
Date: August 2022
Creator: Susser, Carly
open access

Momentarium

Description: "Momentarium" is a collection of poems that examines the instability of moments. By engaging with photography, the poems examine the strengths and flaws in representation. Qualified accuracy, in other words representations that exact no absolute authenticity, are paradoxically, most accurate. The original poems attempt to express both empathy an end to empathy, "I mean to give you what you cannot keep: a blue twice as true" and "I mean to give you what I cannot." The competing forces animat… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Zuehlke, Karl
open access

The Monomythic Journey of the Feminine Hero in the Novels of Anita Brookner

Description: Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, establishes a pattern for the hero to answer the call to adventure, ask the question of the goddess and receive her boon, and return to his homeland. Campbell does not, however, make any suggestions about a myth whose protagonist is female. Erich Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness, hints that the woman may, indeed, be her own goddess, that she must give herself the boon she already carries. The novels of Anita Brookner illust… more
Date: December 1996
Creator: Rutledge, Mary E. (Mary Elizabeth)
open access

The Monstrance: A Collection of Poems

Description: These poems deconstruct Mary Shelley's monster from a spiritually Chthonian, critically post-structuralist creative stance. But the process here is not simple disruption of the original discourse; this poetry cycle transforms the monster's traditional body, using what pieces are left from reception/vivisection to reconstruct, through gradual accretion, new authority for each new form, each new appendage.
Date: May 1994
Creator: Dietrich, Bryan D. (Bryan David)
open access

Moral Training for Nature's Egotists: Mentoring Relationships in George Eliot's Fiction

Description: George Eliot's fiction is filled with mentoring relationships which generally consist of a wise male mentor and a foolish, egotistic female mentee. The mentoring narratives relate the conversion of the mentee from narcissism to selfless devotion to the community. By retaining the Christian value of self-abnegation and the Christian tendency to devalue nature, Eliot, nominally a secular humanist who abandoned Christianity, reveals herself still to be a covert Christian. In Chapter 1 I introduce… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Schweers, Ellen H.
open access

Morality in Six Novels of Martin Amis

Description: Six novels of Martin Amis--The Rachel Papers, Dead Babies, Success, Money: A Suicide Note, London Fields, and The Information--are analyzed to determine to what extent they uphold moral standards traditional in Western society, particularly the categories of virtue that have descended from Aristotle and Aquinas. Thus the novels are analyzed in relation to what they show about the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and justi… more
Date: May 1996
Creator: Snyder, Cara L. (Cara Lynn), 1947-
open access

The Museum of Coming Apart

Description: This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses use of second person pronoun in contemporary American poetry; and Part II, The Museum of Coming Apart, which is a collection of poems. As confessional verse became a dominant mode in American poetry in the late 1950s and early 60s, so too did the use of the first-person pronoun. Due in part to the excesses of later confessionalism, however, many contemporary poets hesitate to use first person for fear that their work might be read … more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Lee, Bethany Tyler
open access

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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