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Marriage in the Fiction of Willa Cather

Description: The marriages depicted in Willa Cather's fiction are a crucial element of her works. Although she does not describe in detail the marital relationships between her characters, Cather does depict these marriages realistically, and they are also interrelated with the major themes of her fiction. The marriages in Cather's works are divided into three general classifications: the successful, the borderline, and the failure. The successful marriage is characterized by affection and friendship. In th… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Dickson, Margaret P.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Remembering: A Play in Three Acts

Description: The Remembering, an original drama set in rural Georgia in 1864, is about three ex-slaves, two men and an old woman, all runaways, whose fictional encounter in a deserted church sets off a series of conflicts and, significantly, incidents of remembering past conflicts which lead them to an understanding of the war, slavery, freedom, and individual responsibility. Many of the events which the slaves, naive witnesses to a great moment in history when mobilized modern warfare was being born, and … more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Ford, Merle D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Theories of Stress Assignment in Spanish Phonology

Description: This thesis examines existing theories of Spanish stress assignment in generative phonology and proposes an alternative theory that is more effective in predicting the surface representations of Spanish stress. Stress is characterized according to traditional textbook standards and examples are given (Chapter I). The current theoretical setting, especially the theories of James W. Harris, is then described (Chapter II). This writer's own theory, based upon an underlying distinction between tens… more
Date: May 1977
Creator: Garner, Kathryn C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Common-Man Theme in the Plays of Miller and Wilder

Description: This study emphasizes the private and public struggles of the common man as portrayed in two representative plays by Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman and The Price, and two by Thornton Wilder, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. These plays demonstrate man's struggle because of failures in responsibility toward self and family and because of his inability to fully appreciate life. Miller concentrates on the pathetic part of Man's nature, caused by a breakdown in human communication. Wilder, h… more
Date: May 1977
Creator: Hastings, Robert M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Short Story in American Women's Magazines: An Analysis

Description: This paper documents the decrease of short stories in three women's magazines from 1940 to 1970 and concludes that the decline results from readers turning to other sources for escape from housework. Chapter II describes patterns in plots, themes, characters, settings, and other elements of these stories. Chapter III shows the lack of influence which changes in writers, editors, and social and political developments in America have had on these short stories. The conclusion is reached that the … more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Holbrook, Virgie Cooper
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Influence of the Emblem on Spenser's Presentation of Allegorical Figures in The Faerie Queene

Description: Critics frequently, sometimes irresponsibly, label Spenser's poetry "emblematic" because of the appearance of either striking allegorical figures or moral assertions. This thesis establishes a standard for the application of the term "emblematic": first, by defining those elements which characterize emblems; second, by examining the emblem's cultural milieu; and third, by analyzing the "emblem patterns" that appear in The Faerie Queene. The study concludes that these "emblem patterns" transfor… more
Date: December 1977
Creator: Howard, Patricia W.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Two Stories

Description: The protagonist of each of these stories has the same problem. Without really willing it, he finds himself involved with people whom he really does not like. These people have little regard for his individuality or for his welfare because they are so immersed in their own worlds that they cannot imagine anyone existing outside them. In both stories the protagonist realizes finally that he is being dragged into these worlds against his will. More importantly, both characters realize that passive… more
Date: May 1977
Creator: Howard, William L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Existentialism and Darwinism in The French Lieutenant's Woman

Description: Existentialism and Darwinism provide a means of viewing the development of personal freedom in a young English gentleman, Charles Smithson. Guided by Sarah Woodruff, a social outcast, Charles approaches freedom through the existential conditions of terror, anguish, and despair; he encounters alienation, human finitude, and the loss of a relationship with God on the way. The realization of his trapped state is aided by the Darwinian analogy present in the novel: the monied leisure class to which… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Lee, Cynthia Bullock
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Secular Protagonists in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction

Description: Although Flannery O'Connor's fiction reflects her religious point of view, most of her protagonists are secular, either materialists, who value possessions, or rationalists, who value the intellect. During the period 1949 to 1964, when O'Connor was writing, the South was rapidly changing, and those changes are reflected in the shift in emphasis from the materialists in O'Connor's early fiction to the rationalists in the late stories. This study of O'Connor's protagonists follows the chronologi… more
Date: December 1977
Creator: Norman, Linda C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Development of the Dominant Female in Selected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Description: This study of thirty representative short stories from 1912-1941 demonstrates the stages of growth in Fitzgerald's writing which emerged from his own mental development, focusing upon his changing attitudes toward women as he reflects these attitudes in his depictions of the dominant female figures in the stories. The above chronology is then divided into four major blocks; in each block the dominant female illustrates Fitzgerald's concept of women at that particular stage of his life, The stor… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Rose, Elizabeth D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Will Made Word and Other Conceptions

Description: This thesis consists of a series of nine poems which deal with the theme of finding a balance between energy and form in life and in poetry. Fourteen miscellaneous poems are also included. In addition, an introduction by the author explains the purpose of the thesis as a whole and explicates the poems in terms of this purpose. The introduction discusses the meaning of each poem and the techniques used to convey its message. Each poem in the series of nine poems is also related to the. overall t… more
Date: December 1977
Creator: Small, Margaret G.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Historical Study of the Vocabulary of the Finnsburg Fragment

Description: This study demonstrates, through the detailed examination of a specific example of written Old English, that a very large proportion of the general vocabulary of Old English survives in some form in Late Modern English. The "Finnsburg Fragment" is parsed and translated and its lexicon glossed. After a brief discussion of several special semantic categories and the traditional categories of semantic change, the study enlarges upon the historical setting which influenced the loss, retention, shif… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Staples, Martha Jane
Partner: UNT Libraries
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God's Estranged Child: Self-Deprecating Images in Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations

Description: Throughout his Preparatory Meditations, Edward Taylor used many images to deprecate himself. These images reflected his Puritan religious beliefs rather than an extremely low self-image. The themes of his poetry were taken from the Bible, but they reflected the many duties which befell him in conjunction with his ministry at Westfield. By using images which were most familiar to him and the rhetorical devices of the seventeenth century, Taylor sought to seek God's forgiveness by doing His will-… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Therber, Nancy Eileen
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Edwin Shrake: An Introduction and an Interpretation

Description: The purpose of this investigation is to provide a preliminary critical study of a contemporary Texas novelist. Edwin Shrake. No critical studies on his works have been published; therefore, the sources of data for the paper are limited to the novels and reviews of the books. One chapter is devoted to each of Shrake's major works-- But. Not for Love, Blessed McGill, and Strange Peaches. The plot, characterization, themes, regionalism, and artistic techniques of each novel are studied, and the st… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Van Rheenen, Mary Beth.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"Grandpa" and Other Stories

Description: These sketches and stories are the result of moods, daydreams, and experiences. The collection progresses from those intimate stories controlled by personal experience to the last two works which try to crystallize a mood or experience in a medium without the device of first person. "Grandpa," "Great-Grandpa," and "Weedgod" are sketches which describe the boundary between what things are and what things seem to be. "Aunt Mary," "Hospital," and "Eggy Cooter" are short stories presenting situatio… more
Date: May 1977
Creator: Winterbauer, Arthur E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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