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open access

Act I, Scene 2 of Hamlet: a Comparison of Laurence Olivier's and Tony Richardson's Films with Shakespeare's Play

Description: In act I, scene 2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, one of the key themes presented is the theme of order versus disorder. Gertrude's hasty marriage to Claudius and their lack of grief over the recent death of King Hamlet violate Hamlet's sense of order and are the cause of Hamlet's anger and despair in 1.2. Rather than contrast Hamlet with his uncle and mother, Olivier constructs an Oedipal relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude--unsupported by the text--that undermine's the characterization of Hamle… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Baskin, Richard Lee
open access

The Agolmirth Conspiracy

Description: Written in the tradition of the classic spy novels of Ian Fleming and the detective novels of Raymond Chandler, The Agolmirth Conspiracy represents the return to the thriller of its traditional elements of romanticism, humanism, fast-moving action, and taut suspense, and a move away from its cynicism and dehumanization as currently practiced by authors such as John Le Carre' and Tom Clancy. Stanford Torrance, an ex-cop raised on "old-fashioned" notions of uncompromising good and naked evil and … more
Date: December 1996
Creator: Elston, James C. (James Cary)
open access

The American Eve: Gender, Tragedy, and the American Dream

Description: America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Mob… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Long, Kim Martin
open access

American Sandwich: West Coast, East Coast, in Between

Description: The thesis begins with an introduction, followed by six short stories. The stories that follow span three or four regions of the American landscape and three or four decades of the twentieth century. What drives each story is the isolation of both narrator and main character (when these are not the same) from the world of the story. In each story, there is either a sense of wanting to belong or an urge to escape, or both. The paradox--also the writer's paradox--is that if one belongs, one has n… more
Date: August 1994
Creator: Clark, Emily A. (Emily Alcorn)
open access

The American Southern Demogogue and His Effect on Personal Associates

Description: The nature of the American Southern demagogue, best exemplified by Huey Pierce Long, is examined. Four novels which are based on Long's life: Sun in Capricorn by Hamilton Basso, Number One by John Dos Passos, A Lion Is in the Streets by Adria Locke Langley and All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, are used to exemplify literary representations of Long. First the individual personalities of the four demagogue characters are described. Next, the relationships of female associates to the dema… more
Date: May 1976
Creator: Allen, Charline
open access

An Analysis of Angus Wilson's "No Laughing Matter"

Description: This thesis examines Angus Wilson's novels with particular attention to No Laughing Matter, 1967. The introductory overview of Wilson's first five novels and the examination of No Laughing Matter show that all Wilson's novels are concerned with his protagonists' capacity for self-deception and the ways deception limits freedom of choice. In No Laughing Matter six protagonists try to balance self-deception and freedom both in their lives and in the art forms which interest them. The thesis trac… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Arnold, Gloria Cockerell
open access

An Analysis of the Major Characteristics of American Black Humor Novels

Description: This thesis serves to classify Black Humor as a philosophy, which holds that the world is meaningless and absurd, and as a literary technique. Historical origins are discussed and the idea is related to a reflection of the middle-class syndrome of twentieth century man. Close philosophical and literary relatives are presented and a pure work isn't defined. Black Humor literary characteristics are described in terms of style, theme, plot, setting, chronology, and characteristic ending. Black Hum… more
Date: May 1974
Creator: Tyler, Alice Carol
open access

The Angry Charmer

Description: This screenplay, dealing with the theme of anger, is divided into three acts: setup, confrontation and resolution, respectively. Beginning in medias res, flashbacks are employed for expositions of the two main characters, Connor Tracy, alias the Angry Charmer, and Howard Goldberg. Act I opens with Connor at the wheel of a van, driving wildly, Howard accompanying. The setup is established. Act IlI returns to the careening van and then flashbacks to the college meeting of Connor and Howard. By t… more
Date: May 1988
Creator: Wall, Jeffrey R. (Jeffrey Robert)
open access

Ann Radcliffe: A Study in Popular Literary Taste

Description: The purpose of this paper is to determine why Mrs. Radcliffe's gothic novels were popular with contemporary readers. Sources include reviews from eighteenth century periodicals, essays of early nineteenth century critics such as William Hazlitt and studies of her work by twentieth century critics. The thesis is organized in four chapters each of which discusses one aspect of her work which particularly pleased her contemporary reviewers and critics: her invention, her attitude toward superstiti… more
Date: December 1976
Creator: Freeman, Laurie
open access

Anne Tyler's Treatment of Managing Women

Description: Among the most important characters in contemporary writer Anne Tyler's nine novels of modern American life are her skillfully-drawn managing women who choose the family circle as the arena in which to use their skills and exert their influence. Strong, competent, independent, capable of caring for themselves, their husbands, their children, and others, too, as well as holding outside jobs, these women are the linchpins of their families. Among their most outstanding qualities are their abiliti… more
Date: August 1985
Creator: Brock, Dorothy Faye Sala
open access

Anti-Christian Elements in Thomas Hardy's Novels

Description: A commonplace among Hardy critics is that as a young man Hardy lost his Christian faith and entered a serious religious disillusionment. The mainstream of Hardy criticism has followed the general consensus that Hardy suffered keenly as a result of this experience and looked back on Christianity with poignant nostalgia. If his view is not purely nostalgic, traditional criticism has insisted, then it seems at worst only ambivalent. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that Hardy's attitud… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Alexander, B. J.
open access

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

Description: 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.
open access

The Apocalyptic Marriage: Eros and Agape in Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes

Description: This analysis of Keats's poem proffers evidence and arguments to support the contention that The Eve of St. Agnes presents allegorically the poet's speculations regarding the relationship between eros and agape, speculations which include a sharp criticism of Christianity and a model for a new, more "humanistic" system of salvation. The union of Madeline and Porphyro symbolizes the reconciliation of the two opposing types of love in an apocalyptic marriage styled on the Biblical union of Christ… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Gilbreath, Marcia L. (Marcia Lynn)
open access

The Apostasy (and Return) of Lenny Gorsuch

Description: This comic romantic novel engages the question of how the Christianity of the southern, fundamentalist world of the Texas bible belt, finding its primary cultural assumptions about human existence challenged by the more confusing elements of a modern sensibility, a sensibility over-laden with strange-attractors, mechanistic psychologies, relativistic physics and ethics, evolutionary premises, newly proclaimed rights and freedoms, a deterioration in cultural political naivete, and the advent of … more
Date: August 1998
Creator: Guidici, Guy R.
open access

Appropriating Language on the Usenet

Description: The Usenet is a global computer conferencing system on which users can affix textual messages under 4500 different categories. It currently has approximately 4,165,000 readers, and these .readers have appropriated language by adapting it to the Usenet's culture and medium. This thesis conceptualizes the Usenet community's appropriation of language, provides insights into how media and media restrictions cause their users to appropriate language, and discusses how future media may further cause … more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Spinuzzi, Clay I. (Clay Ian)
open access

"Be" in Dallas Black English

Description: This dissertation purposes to answer the question of whether or not the verb system of Black English in Dallas has the same features as those that characterize Black English in other sections of the country. Specifically, it describes in detail the use of the verb "be" within the speech of blacks in the Dallas metropolitan area and accounts for these usages formally within the framework of a transformational-generative grammar of the type proposed by Noam Chomsky.
Date: August 1972
Creator: Jones, Nancy (Nancy N.)
open access

A Beholding and Jubilant Soul: Spiritual Awakening in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson

Description: This study explores continuities in thought between Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson by comparing their respective views on spiritual awakening. Their parallel ideas are discussed as results of similar perceptual dispositions which lead both to view awakening as an inner metamorphosis that leaves man less self-centered and more capable of a universal perception and appreciation of spiritual unity and beauty. Emphasized are parallels in Edwards's and Emerson's concepts of God, their view… more
Date: December 1980
Creator: Martin, Valerie Lynn
open access

The Bei Construction: A Focus Device in Chinese

Description: The bei construction has often been identified as a passive construction. This thesis uses Davis's (1983) semantic framework and Hsueh's (1989) descriptive corollaries to account for the various characteristics of the bei construction and proposes that the bei construction is not a passive construction but a more general Focus device.
Date: August 1992
Creator: Fu, Minyue
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)
open access

"Beowulf": Myth as a Structural and Thematic Key

Description: Very little of the huge corpus of Beowulf criticism has been directed at discovering the function and meaning of myth in the poem. Scholars have noted many mythological elements, but there has never been a satisfactory explanation of the poet's use of this material. A close analysis of Beowulf reveals that myth does, in fact, inform its structure, plot, characters and even imagery. More significant than the poet's use of myth, however, is the way he interlaces the historical and Christian eleme… more
Date: May 1990
Creator: Aitches, Marian A. (Marian Annette)
open access

The Blurred Boundaries between Film and Fiction in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, and Other Selected Works

Description: This dissertation explores the porous boundaries between Salman Rushdie's fiction and the various manifestations of the filmic vision, especially in Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, and other selected Rushdie texts. My focus includes a chapter on Midnight's Children, in which I analyze the cinematic qualities of the novel's form, content, and structure. In this chapter I formulate a theory of the post-colonial novel which notes the hybridization of Rushdie's fiction, which process refle… more
Date: August 1999
Creator: Quazi, Moumin Manzoor
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