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open access

Orality, Literacy, and Heroism in Huckleberry Finn

Description: This work re-assesses the heroic character of Huckleberry Finn in light of the inherent problems of discourse. Walter Ong's insights into the differences between oral and literate consciousnesses, and Stanley Fish's concept of "interpretive communities" are applied to Huck's interactions with the other characters, revealing the underlying dynamic of his character, the need for a viable discourse community. Further established, by enlisting the ideas of Ernest Becker, is that this need for commu… more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Barrow, William David, 1955-
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Atheism of Mark Twain: The Early Years

Description: Many Twain scholars believe that his skepticism was based on personal tragedies of later years. Others find skepticism in Twain's work as early as The Innocents Abroad. This study determines that Twain's atheism is evident in his earliest writings. Chapter One examines what critics have determined Twain's religious sense to be. These contentions are discussed in light of recent publications and older, often ignored, evidence of Twain' s atheism. Chapter Two is a biographical look at Twain's lit… more
Date: April 1986
Creator: Britton, Wesley A. (Wesley Alan)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Creating Eternity: The Coesistence of Time in One Hundred Years of Solitude

Description: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the coexistence of time in Gabriel Garcfa Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude as a cause of the supernatural events, the hereditary memory, and the solitude and to examine the effects of this mythical time frame on character development, plot, narrative structure, and theme. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces the parchments as creators of mythical time. The second, third, and fourth chapters investigate the effect… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Cook, Kelli Cargile
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Original Short Stories

Description: This thesis consists of three original short stories: "August Morning," "Weekend Idyll," and "Free Ride." In addition, an appendix has been added which contains "Hamilton House Roundabout," the original version of "Weekend Idyll." It is included to illustrate the dramatic changes that can occur in the writing process. "August Morning" focuses on a young man's struggle to gain his freedom from his family, particularly his overbearing father. Whether or not he succeeds is ultimately up to the rea… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Horany, Sarah B. (Sarah Beth)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Motif of the Fairy-Tale Princess in the Novels of Shelby Hearon

Description: Shelby Hearon's eight novels--Armadillo in the Grass, The Second Dune, Hannah's House, Now and Another Time, A Prince of a Fellow, Painted Dresses, Afternoon of a Faun, and Group Therapy- -are unified by the theme of the fairy-tale princess and her quest to assert her autonomy and gain self-fulfillment while struggling with marriage, family, and the mother-daughter relationship. This study traces the development of Hearon' s feminist convictions in each of her novels by focusing on the changing… more
Date: May 1986
Creator: Keith, Anne Slay
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Emperor of Ice Cream Visits Eudora Welty: The Uses of the Creative Imagination

Description: Eudora Welty and Wallace Stevens share important aesthetic beliefs, especially regarding uses of the creative imagination by artists in acts of creation and characters in acts of living. A close reading of seventeen of Welty's stories, accompanied by references to related ideas in many of Stevens' poems, reveals how the imagination functions as epistemology and eucharist, while governing the shape of individual human views of the quotidian. The more abstract patterns of thought in their later w… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Kobler, Sheila F. (Sheila Frazier)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Joyce's Dubliners and Hemingway's In Our Time: A Correlation

Description: One rarely sees the names James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway together in the same sentence. Their obvious differences in writing styles, nationalities, and lifestyles prevent any automatic comparison from being made. But when one compares their early short story collections, Dubliners and In Our Time, many surprisingly similarities appear. Both are collections of short stories unified in some way, written by expatriates who knew each other in Paris. A mood of despair and hopelessness pervades the… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Mayo, Kim Martin
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ceridwen and Christ: An Arthurian Holy War

Description: Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel The Mists of Avalon is different from the usual episodic versions of the Arthurian legend in that it has the structural unity that the label "novel" implies. The narrative is set in fifth-century Britain, a time of religious conflict between Christianity and the native religions of Britain, especially the Mother Goddess cult. Bradley pulls elements from the Arthurian legend and fits them into this context of religious struggle for influence. She draws interesting f… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Peters, Patricia Fulkes
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Semantic Field Approach to Passive Vocabulary Acquisition for Advanced Second Language Learners

Description: Current ESL instructors and theorists agree that university students of ESL have a need for a large passive vocabulary. This research was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of a semantic field approach to passive vocabulary acquisition in comparison to a traditional approach. A quantitative analysis of the short-term and long-range results of each approach is presented. Future research and teaching implications are discussed. The outcome of the experimentation lends tentative support to … more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Quigley, June R. (June Richfield)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Benjamin Capps and the Sacajawea Plagiarism Case

Description: The investigation concerns a 1982 suit brought by Texas novelist Benjamin Capps and his publishers against the author and publisher of an historical novel, Sacajawea, alleging that the book contained approximately 145 instances of copyright infringement. Parallel-column exhibits of passages from the novel by Anna Lee Waldo and from Capps's writings illustrate the evidence submitted in court. The publishing history of the novel, brought out by Avon Books, is related, as well as the story of read… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Simpson, Mary (Mary Charlotte)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Study of "The Rhyming Poem": Text, Interpretation, and Christian Context

Description: The purpose of the research presented here is to discover the central concept of "The Rhyming Poem," an Old English Christian work known only from a 10th-century manuscript, and to establish the poem's natural place in the body of Old English poetry. Existing critical literature shows little agreement about the poem's origin, vocabulary, plot, or first-person narrator, and no single translation has satisfactorily captured a sense of the poem's unity or of the purposeful vision behind it. The ex… more
Date: May 1986
Creator: Turner, Kandy M. (Kandy Morrow)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Categorization of Form for Stephen Crane's Poetry

Description: This thesis presents four categories of form basic to all of Stephen Crane's poetry: antiphons, apologues, emblems, and testaments. A survey of previous shortcomings in the critical acceptance of Crane as a poet leads into reasons why the categorization of form here helps to alleviate some of those problems. The body of the thesis consists of four chapters, one for each basic form. Each form is defined and explained, exemplary poems in each category are explicated, and specifics are given as to… more
Date: August 1986
Creator: Weber, Joseph John
Partner: UNT Libraries
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