UNT Theses and Dissertations - 23 Matching Results

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Into the Valley: Voices I Heard Along the Way

Description: Into the Valley: Voices I Heard Along the Way contains a preface and a collection of five short stories. The preface discusses the use of voice as a technique to develop characters and create authenticity through elements such as sentence structure, diction, dialogue, and regional, cultural, and/or gender-specific affectations to make the words on the page become audible language in the mind of the reader. Each story is written with a unique voice that presents characters who struggle to come t… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Barth, Amy K.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Search for Cultural Identity: An Exploration of the Works of Toni Morrison

Description: Many of Toni Morrison's African-American characters attempt to change their circumstances either by embracing the white dominant culture that surrounds them or by denying it. In this thesis I explore several ways in which the characters do just that-either embrace or deny the white culture's right to dominion over them. This thesis deals primarily with five of Toni Morrison's novels: The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, Sula, and Tar Baby.
Date: December 2007
Creator: Conway, Jennifer S.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Bridging the Gap: Finding a Valkyrie in a Riddle

Description: While many riddles exist in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book containing female characters, both as actual human females and personified objects and aspects of nature, few scholars have discussed how the anthropomorphized “females” of the riddles challenge and broaden more conventional portrayals of what it meant to be “female” in Anglo-Saxon literature. True understanding of these riddles, however, comes only with this broader view of female, a view including a mixture of ferocity and nobility of pu… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Culver, Jennifer
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Lining Up

Description: A creative, multi-genre collection that includes three personal essays (non-fiction) and two short stories (fiction). The pieces in this collection primarily focus on the themes of loneliness and waiting. It includes pieces dealing with homosexual relationships, friendships and heterosexual relationships. Collection includes the essays "The Line," "Why We Don't Talk about Christmas," and "Boys Who Kiss Back," and includes the short stories "I Am Allowed to Say Faggot" and "Dear Boy."
Date: May 2007
Creator: Davis, Allegra
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Blurring the Lines Between Instructor-Led and Online Learning: an Evaluation of an Online Composition Curriculum on the Bleeding Edge

Description: The contemporary classroom currently faces an evolving world of computer based training, online courses, instructor-led learning and several blended approaches in-between. With the increased presence of computers and communication in every facet of students' lives, students have changed to adapt to the continuous presence of technology in their daily lives. These recent rapid developments have changed the relationship between technology and communication. Indeed, communication and technology ha… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Deranger, Brant
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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We're Out Here: Poetic Transcendence and Charles Wright's "Homage to Paul Cezanne"

Description: The introduction of this thesis is an essay examining the poem Homage to Paul Cezanne by Charles Wright. Claiming that the capacity to serve as intersection of the singular and universal is poetry's means to transcendence, the essay uses the Charles Wright's poem to demonstration this capacity, identifying poetry's ability to access the primitive: its connection to the base of what humanity is and can be, as the means by which that transcendence is possible. Placing the discussion within the co… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Dewett, Shawn
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Distances

Description: I provide in my preface a brief account of my development as a creative writer. Through this development I draw an analogy to the evolution of modern science by stating that my need for personal clarity is analogous to the charge for empirical clarity of modern science. Furthermore, I contrast the objectivism of modern science to the subjectivism of creative writing. The four short stories in my thesis range from a semi-autobiographical story, to two short stories that stem out further and furt… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Esteves, Jason
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Comparison of Morris' News from Nowhere and Life in the Twin Oaks Community

Description: It is the purpose of this paper to explore how Morris' novel relates to life in Twin Oaks, primarily as depicted in two books: Living the Dream (1983) by Ingrid Komar, a long-term visitor to the commune and Kinkade's Is It Utopia Yet? (1996). This comparison will demonstrate that the experiences of contemporary intentional communities such as Twin Oaks provide a meaningful context for reading News from Nowhere because of the similarities in goals and philosophy. It will further demonstrate that… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Garner, Royce Clifton
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Short Stories

Description: This collection of seven representative original short stories will include four short stories relating to a fictional location in Dallas, the Starry Skies gay country-and-western dance hall. Three short stories set in fabulous, sometimes absurd settings, will follow. A preface dealing with the nature of fictional place and non-fictional place in fiction will precede the collection of short stories.
Date: December 2007
Creator: Gay, Wayne Lee
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Detecting Masculinity: The Positive Masculine Qualities of Fictional Detectives.

Description: Detective fiction highlights those qualities of masculinity that are most valuable to a contemporary culture. In mysteries a cultural context is more thoroughly revealed than in any other genre of literature. Through the crimes, an audience can understand not only the fears of a particular society but also the level of calumny that society assigns to a crime. As each generation has needed a particular set of qualities in its defense, so the detective has provided them. Through the detective's r… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Griswold, Amy Herring
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Exploring Fear and Freud's The Uncanny

Description: Fear is one of the oldest and most basic of human emotions. In this thesis, I will explore the topic of fear in relation to literature, both a staple of the horror genre as well as a device in literary works, as well as in my own writings. In addition, I will use Sigmund Freud's theory of the “uncanny” as a possible device to examine the complexities of fear and its effects both on the mind and body through the medium of literature, and, more specifically, where and how these notions are used w… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Grizzle, Eric
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Franz Liszt: (1811-1886): The Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust as a Unified Work

Description: Franz Liszt composed his Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust between 1856 and 1861. The composer intended to portray two emotionally contrasting scenes from Lenau's Faust in a set for orchestra, the first being The Night Procession and the second The Dance in the Village Inn. Liszt created a duet version of the orchestral set, and also a solo piano version of The Dance in the Village Inn, known as the Mephisto Waltz No. 1. The set was not performed together due to the immense popularity of The Danc… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Grobler, Pieter Johannes Christoffel
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Futile Quest for a Sustainable Relationship in Welty's Short Fiction

Description: Eudora Welty is an author concerned with relationships between human beings. Throughout A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, The Wide Net and Other Stories, and The Golden Apples, Welty's characters search for ways in which to establish and sustain viable bonds. Particularly problematic are the relationships between opposite sexes. I argue that Welty uses communication as a tool for sustaining a relationship in her early work. I further argue that when her stories provide mostly negative outco… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Lancaster, Daniel
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Murky Impressions of Postmodernism: Eugene Gant and Shakespearean Intertext in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River

Description: In this study, I analyze the significance of Shakespearean intertextuality in the major works of Thomas Wolfe featuring protagonist Eugene Gant: Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. Specifically, I explore Gant's habits and preferences as a reader by examining the narrative arising from the protagonist's perspectives of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and King Lear. I examine the significance of parallel reading habits of Wolfe the author and Gant the character. I also … more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Miller, Brenda
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Vulgar Moon

Description: The preface to this collection, "Speculation and Silence," argues that confessional poetry remains integral to contemporary poetics, though the implications of the term have changed since its "first-generation." Confessional poetry must not be dependent on simply the transmission of sensational details and the emotional consequences, but on poets' implementation of silence and restraint in both the diffusion of ideas and in the crafting of the piece. Vulgar Moon is a collection of poems in whic… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Miller, Kelley Reno
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Awakening a World With Words: How J.R.R. Tolkien Uses Linguistic Narrative Techniques to Take His Readers to Faery in His Short Story Smith of Wootton Major.

Description: J.R.R. Tolkien uses specific linguistic narrative techniques in Smith of Wootton Major to make the world of Wootton Major and the nearby land of Faery come to life for his readers. In this thesis, I examine how Tolkien accomplishes this feat by presenting a linguistic analysis of some parts of the story. My analysis is also informed by Tolkien's own ideas of fairy-stories, and as such, it uniquely shows the symbiotic relationship between Tolkien's theories and his narrative art.
Date: August 2007
Creator: Pueppke, Michael
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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An analysis of the syntactic and lexical features of an Indian English oral narrative: A Pear Story study.

Description: This pilot study addresses the distribution of nonstandard syntactic and lexical features in Indian English (IE) across a homogeneous group of highly educated IE speakers. It is found that nonstandard syntactic features of article use, number agreement and assignment of verb argument structure do not display uniform intragroup distribution. Instead, a relationship is found between nonstandard syntactic features and the sociolinguistic variables of lower levels of exposure to and use of English … more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Seale, Jennifer Marie
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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AGenesis: A Novel

Description: AGenesis is a novel of "postmortal fiction" set entirely in an afterlife. Nessie, a recently dead woman, accidentally kills an already-dead man, and in the confusion that follows, sets out to discover how he could have died and what after-afterlife he might have gone to. During her travels, she is raped and then help captive by a city of tormented souls; she descends into madness until rescued by children, and she and her newborn but "undead" daughter set out again, this time to find the end … more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Snoek-Brown, Samuel Jeremiah
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A test of the effects of linguistic stereotypes in children's animated film: A language attitude study.

Description: This study examined the claim that animated films influence childrens' opinions of accented-English. Two hundred and eighteen 3rd through 5th graders participated in a web-based survey. They listened to speakers with various accents: Mainstream US English (MUSE), African American Vernacular English (AAVE), French, British, and Arabic. Respondents judged speakers' personality traits (Work Ethic, Wealth, Attitude, Intelligence), assigned jobs/life positions, and provided personal information, mov… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Trowell, Melody
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Human Body is Not Designed for Ambivalence: Odes

Description: The critical analysis section of this dissertation seeks to define the ode using examples in translation from Greek and Latin odes and examples in English written from the 1500s to the 2000s. Although most definitions of the ode contend that this subgenre of the lyric is an occasional poem of praise that includes a meditative or mythological element, the ode is far more complex. An ode is an occasional poem, but it works to privilege rather than strictly praise its subject, allowing for the sp… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Walker, Tammy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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