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American Literary Pragmatism : Lighting Out for the Territory

This thesis discusses pragmatist philosophy in the nineteenth century and its effect on American literature of the time.

Date: August 1998

Creator: England, Peter S. (Peter Shands)

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Working Whiteness: Performing And Transgressing Cultural Identity Through Work

Early in Richard Wright's Native Son, we see Bigger and his friend Gus “playing white.” Taking on the role of “J. P. Morgan,” the two young black men give orders and act powerful, thus performing their perceived role of whiteness. This scene is more than an ironic comment on the characters' distance from the lifestyle of the J. P. Morgans of the world; their acts of whiteness are a representation of how whiteness is constructed. Such an analysis is similar to my own foc… more

Date: May 2002

Creator: Polizzi, Allessandria

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Relationship

Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway met in Key West in 1937, married in 1941, and divorced in 1945. Gellhorn's work exhibits a strong influence from Hemingway's work, including collaboration on her work during their marriage. I will discuss three of her six novels: WMP (1934), Liana (1944), and Point of No Return (1948). The areas of influence that I will rely on in many ways follow the stages Harold Bloom outlines in Anxiety of Influence. Gellhorn's work exposes a stage of influence that Bloo… more

Date: May 2003

Creator: Salmon, H. L.

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Dark Houses: Navigating Space and Negotiating Silence in the Novels of Faulkner, Warren and Morrison

Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," as early as 1839, reveals an uneasiness about the space of the house. Most literary scholars accept that this anxiety exists and causes some tension, since it seems antithetical to another dominant motif, that of the power of place and the home as sanctuary. My critical persona, like Poe's narrator in "The House of Usher," looks into a dark, silent tarn and shudders to see in it not only the reflection of the House of Usher, but perhaps the whole of what … more

Date: December 2000

Creator: Berger, Aimee E.

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

Animals-as-Trope in the Selected Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison

In this dissertation, I show how 20th century African-American women writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison utilize animals-as-trope in order to illustrate the writers' humanity and literary vision. In the texts that I have selected, I have found that animals-as-trope functions in two important ways: the first function of animal as trope is a pragmatic one, which serves to express the humanity of African Americans; and the second function of animal tropes in African… more

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Date: August 1999

Creator: Erickson, Stacy M.

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

open access

The Religious Dimensions of William Faulkner: An Inquiry into the Dichotomy of Puritanism

"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

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Happiness Is a By-Product of Function: William Burroughs and the American Pragmatist Tradition

This dissertation examines the techniques and themes of William Burroughs by placing him in the American Pragmatist tradition. Chapter One presents a pragmatic critical approach to literature based on Richard Rorty and John Dewey, focusing on the primacy of narration over argumentation, redescription and dialectic, the importance of texts as experiences, the end-products of textual experiences, and the role of critic as guide to experience rather than judge. Chapter Two uses this pragmatic crit… more

Date: December 2000

Creator: Goeman, James Robert

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

open access

"Stately Temples": Consubstantiality and Consciousness in Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy; or Shadows Uplifted

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine Frances Harper's narrative strategy and moral didacticism in Iola Leroy: or Shadows Uplifted (1892) as she strives to achieve consubstantiality and a "heightened consciousness" within her characters and her audience while adhering to the literary and feminist paradigms of the late nineteenth century. Harper identifies with her African-American male audience's dilemma of "double-consciousness" and their veil of androcentrism. She also identifies … more

Date: August 1996

Creator: Louis-Ray, Deborah

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Hell: the Rhetoric of Universality in Bessie Head

This dissertation approaches the work of South African/Botswanan novelist Bessie Head, especially the novel A Question of Power, as positioned within the critical framework of the postcolonial paradigm, the genius of which accommodates both African and African American literature without recourse to racial essentialism. A central problematic of postcolonial literary criticism is the ideological stance postcolonial authors adopt with respect to the ideology of the metropolis, whether on the one … more

Date: May 1998

Creator: Edwards, George, Jr.

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Distorted Traditions: the Use of the Grotesque in the Short Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson Mccullers, Flannery O'connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason.

This dissertation argues that the four writers named above use the grotesque to illustrate the increasingly peculiar consequences of the assault of modernity on traditional Southern culture. The basic conflict between the views of Bakhtin and Kayser provides the foundation for defining the grotesque herein, and Geoffrey Harpham's concept of "margins" helps to define interior and exterior areas for the discussion. Chapter 1 lays a foundation for why the South is different from other regions of A… more

Date: August 2004

Creator: Marion, Carol A.v

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty

"The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty" examines certain prototypical natures of isolation as recurrent and underlying themes in selected short fiction of Chopin, Porter, and Welty. Despite the differing backgrounds of the three Southern women writers, and despite the variety of issues they treat, the theme of isolation permeates most of their short fiction. I categorize and analyze their short stories by the nature and the trea… more

Date: August 1998

Creator: Arima, Hiroko, 1959-

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Radius

This paper includes a 62-page book of original poems, 19 pages of which are visual poetry, and a 29-page preface which discusses visual poetry.

Date: May 2003

Creator: Roelke, Jean Marie

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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Overcoming the Regional Burden: History, Tradition, and Myth in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy

In Overcoming the Regional Burden: History, Tradition, and Myth in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy, I contend that McCarthy's literary aesthetic develops and changes as he moves from Tennessee to Texas. McCarthy's conspicuous Southern and Southwestern regional affiliations have led critics to expect his works to recapitulate native history, traditions, and myths. Yet, McCarthy transcends provincial regionalism by challenging the creation of the regional and national myths we confuse with our actu… more

Date: August 1997

Creator: Wegner, John M. (John Michael)

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries

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"Nobody knows, so still it flows"—The Discourse of Water in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson's use of water as a dominant poetic trope differs from typical religious archetypal associations with baptism, cleansing, and rebirth. Dickinson transforms rather than recapitulates established theological concepts, borrowing and adapting Biblical themes to suit her artistic purposes. Dickinson's water poems are the poet's means of initiating a discourse with God. Dickinson's poems, however, portray the poet's seeking communion and finding only a silent response to her attempts … more

Date: May 1996

Creator: Price, Kenneth Robert, 1962-

Item Type: Thesis or Dissertation

Partner: UNT Libraries