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open access

Eve, the Apple, and Eugene O'Neill: the Development of O'Neill's Concept of Women

Description: It is the purpose of this paper to outline the development of O'Neill's characterization of women from the loving, submissive Mother in the early plays to the Mother turned Destroyer in the later plays. This is accomplished through a chronological examination of the women characters in eight of O'Neill's major plays--Beyond the Horizon, The Staw, Anna Christie, Welded, Desire Under the Elms, The Great God Brown, Strange Interlude, and Mourning Becomes Electra.
Date: June 1963
Creator: Mazaher, Kay H.
open access

The Evolution of AIDS as Subject Matter in Select American Dramas

Description: Dramatic works from America with AIDS as subject matter have evolved over the past twenty years. In the early 1980s, dramas like Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, William Hoffman's As Is, and Robert Chesley's Night Sweat educated primarily homosexual men about AIDS, its causes, and its effects on the gay community while combating the dominant discourse promoted by the media, government, and medical establishments that AIDS was either unimportant because it affected primarily the homosexual popul… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Sorrells, David J.
open access

The Evolution of Dexter and Me

Description: The Evolution of Dexter and Me is a collection of one vignette and four short stories. All of the stories deal with young men figuring out and coping with their daily life and environment. The "Dexter stories" deal with a character I developed and evolved, Dexter, a sane young man trying to find the best way to cope in an insane system.
Date: May 1996
Creator: Bond, Ray (Edgar Ray)
open access

The Evolution of Survival as Theme in Contemporary Native American Literature: from Alienation to Laughter

Description: With the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn. N. Scott Momaday ended a three-decade hiatus in the production of works written by Native American writers, and contributed to the renaissance of a rich literature. The critical acclaim that the novel received helped to establish Native American literature as a legitimate addition to American literature at large and inspired other Native Americans to write. Contemporary Native American literature from 1969 to 1974 foc… more
Date: December 1994
Creator: Schein, Marie-Madeleine
open access

The Existential Concepts of Time, Death and Choice in the Poetry of Philip Larkin

Description: This thesis examines time, death, and choice in Philip Larkin's poetry, arguing that his approach to these themes is not deterministic, but existential. The argument is based on the similarity between Larkin's views and those of three existential philosophers. Larkin's view of time, like Heidegger's, is that men live not in long stretches of time, but in processions of unconnected yet similar moments. A constant underlying sadness, like Kierkegaard's despair, makes each moment reminiscent of de… more
Date: December 1982
Creator: Paule, Elizabeth Emily
open access

The Existential Predicament as Theme in the Novels of Alberto Moravia

Description: The phrase "existential predicament" is a summary of Moravia's preoccupation as a novelist. In his fiction there is constant, unrelenting obsession with the situation of a single, particular character confronting, through his own existence in a physical, historical setting, the forces or powers of negation which threaten him with the frightening personal awareness of the possibility, even inevitability, of his own dissolution into nothingness.
Date: August 1965
Creator: Young, Gene Herman
open access

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

Exploitation, Justification and Overcoming through Voice: Exploring American Slavery and the Slave Narrative in "The Handmaid's Tale"

Description: To what extent does Margaret Atwood draw from American slavery to write The Handmaid's Tale? How does Offred's narrative compare with traditional slave narratives, and to what effect? This thesis explores intersectionality (or lack thereof) in The Handmaid's Tale and compares Offred's narrative to traditional slave narratives to find answers to why Atwood chose to draw from American slavery to write her novel in the first place. Offred's narrative is compared to three traditional slave narrativ… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Brown, Kaitlyn
open access

Fabled Shores

Description: This paper is a collection of three short stories. A short preface discussing the origin of the tales precedes the stories. Fractions and Equations is the story of a love triangle. In this tale, the development of love between two people is told. There is no resolution in the tale. The second story, The Sailing of the Fantasy Cafe, tells of the operation of a book shop at Christmas time. The main characters in the story are described and several important incidents are also related. The tale en… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Bowman, Kent A. (Kent Adam), 1947-
open access

Fact, Interpretation, and Theme in the Historical Novels of A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

Description: One can compare Guthrie's fiction with a sampling of the primary source material, to determine in general his degree of historical accuracy. Then one can compare Guthrie's interpretation with the interpretations of some widely read historiographers, to determine points of agreement or divergence. Finally, Guthrie's interpretation of history can be studied in relation to the themes he develops in his fiction.
Date: May 1968
Creator: Stephan, Peter M.
open access

Fade Away: A Novel

Description: The struggle for survival of an American family revolves around Mitch Wilcox, a relief pitcher for a fictional major league baseball team. Nearing the end of his long career, he must decide whether to retire or to sign a new contract. His dilemma centers on his wife, Nicole, who argues for his retirement; and his only child, Twylight, who has run away from home. The novel traces the final two weeks of a season, during which Mitch's team battles for a pennant and he delays his decision because o… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Wilson, Steven L. (Steven Lawrence)
open access

Failure of the Warrior-Hero in Shakespeare's Political Plays

Description: The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of the warrior-hero ideal as it evolves in Shakespeare's English and Roman plays, and its ultimate failure as a standard for exemplary conduct. What this study demonstrates is that the ideal of kingship that is developed in the English histories, especially in the Second Tetralogy, and which reaches its zenith in Henry V, is quite literally overturned in three Roman plays--Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. The met… more
Date: December 1976
Creator: Ferguson, Susan French
open access

Fairy Tale Elements in Margaret Atwood's Novels: Breaking the Magic Spell

Description: This thesis traces Margaret Atwood's uses of three major elements of fairy tales in her novels. Atwood creates a passive, fairy-tale-like heroine, but not for the purpose of showing how passivity wins the prince as in the traditional tale. Atwood also uses the binary system, which provides a moralistic structure in the fairy tale, to show the necessity of moving beyond its rigidity. In addition, Atwood's novels focus on transformation as the breaking of a spell. However, the spell to be broken … more
Date: August 1985
Creator: Peterson, Nancy J. (Nancy Jean)
open access

The Faithful Wife Motif in Elizabethan Drama

Description: The major purpose of this thesis is to present a discussion of the motif of the faithful wife as it appears in the domestic drama of the Elizabethan Age; in addition, an account of the literary history of the theme will be given, in order that the use made of the story in Elizabethan drama may be correctly evaluated.
Date: August 1953
Creator: Sayles, Elizabeth Miller
open access

Falsity in Man: Tennessee Williams' Vision of Tragedy

Description: It is the purpose of this paper to examine the major plays of Tennessee Williams in an effort to formulate the key concepts which appear in the work of a modern successful dramatist who is sensitive to the tragedy of man and to discover Williams' beliefs in regard to man, his need, and the tragedy that results if he does not find the fulfillment of his nature.
Date: 1956
Creator: Kindle, Betty Brewer
open access

Fanny Fern: A Social Critic in Nineteenth-Century America

Description: This dissertation explores Fanny Fern's literary position and her role as a social critic of American lives and attitudes in the nineteenth-century. A reexamination of Fern's literary and non-literary works sheds light on her firm stand for the betterment of all mankind. The diversity and multiplicity of Fern's social criticism and her social reform attitudes, evident in Ruth Hall. Rose Clark, and in voluminous newspaper articles, not only prove her concern for society's well-being, but also re… more
Date: August 1995
Creator: Tongra-ar, Rapin
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Fashioning the Domestic Ideology: Women and the Language of Fashion in the Works of Elizabeth Stoddard, Louisa May Alcott, and Elizabeth Keckley

Description: Women authors in mid to late nineteenth century American society were unafraid to shed the old domestic ideology and set new examples for women outside of racial and gender spheres. This essay focuses on the ways in which Elizabeth Stoddard's The Morgesons, Louisa May Alcott's Behind a Mask, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House represent the function of fashion and attire in literature. Each author encourages readers to examine d… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Villafranca, Brooke
open access

Female Inheritors of Hawthorne's New England Literary Tradition

Description: Nineteenth-century women were a mainstay in the New England literary tradition, both as readers and authors. Indeed, women were a large part of a growing reading public, a public that distanced itself from Puritanism and developed an appetite for novels and magazine short stories. It was a culture that survived in spite of patriarchal domination of the female in social and literary status. This dissertation is a study of selected works from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wi… more
Date: August 1994
Creator: Adams, Dana W. (Dana Wills)
open access

The Feminine Ancestral Footsteps: Symbolic Language Between Women in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables

Description: This study examines Hawthorne's use of symbols, particularly flowers, in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Romantic ideals stressed the full development of the self¬reliant individual, and romantic writers such as Hawthorne believed the individual would fully develop not only spiritually, but also intellectually by taking instruction from the natural world. Hawthorne's heroines reach their full potential as independent women in two steps: they first work together to defeat p… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Serrano, Gabriela
open access

The Feminist Trollope: Hero(in)es in The Warden and Barchester Towers

Description: Although Anthony Trollope has traditionally been considered an anti-feminist author, studies within the past decade have shown that Trollope's later novels show support for female power and sympathy for Victorian women who were dissatisfied with their narrow roles in society. A feminist reading of two of his earliest novels, The Warden and Barchester Towers, shows that Trollope's feminism is not limited to his later works. In The Warden, Trollope acclaims female power and "woman's logic" throug… more
Date: August 1992
Creator: Kohn, Denise Marie
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