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Don Juan in Hell: a Key to Reading Shaw
Since George Bernard Shaw claims that the third act of Man and Superman is a complete commentary on his philosophy, this thesis is a revealing of the philosophy demonstrated in the Dream Scene, and it is an intensive study of the third act based upon a reading of the play.
Dostoevsky and the Irresistible Idea
The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of a dream, a desire, or an idea transpiring in the thoughts of an individual, growing in importance to the individual, and finally becoming an idée fixe, or irresistible idea, which cannot be suppressed by the individual. The investigation will be concerned with the two of Dostoevsky's heroes who best exemplify the phenomenon.
Dostoevsky's Conception of Love
This thesis looks at Dostoevsky's conception of love as demonstrated in his novels.
Dostoyevsky: a Resource for Modern Youth
This thesis looks at two questions regarding the teaching of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's works in high school and junior college: which of Dostoyevsky's works should be used, and what materials in those works selected should one consider most necessary for emphasis in the actual teaching of the works.
Dostoyevsky and the Slavophiles
Just to what degree Dostoyevsky's thoughts paralleled those of the Slavophiles will be outlined in subsequent chapters in three major areas--Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. Uvarov's old 1828 formula provides a simple outline in which to describe and compare the more complicated core of Dostoyevskyan and Slavophile philosophy.
Dostoyevsky's American Reputation to 1930
Undoubtedly, Dostoyevsky's influence upon the novel is great, but, even yet, few concrete studies have been made and no full-length study has been published. It is hoped that this account of Dostoyevsky's reputation in America during the 1920's will be of assistance in the greater task of tracing Dostoyevsky's influence.
Dostoyevsky's View of the Role of Suffering in Human Existence
In order to establish the views on suffering held by the nineteenth-century (1821-1881) Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, it is first necessary to determine the viewpoint of his age. In general, it was an age of humanitarianism-- the age of "compassion for the suffering of human beings," the age of optimism, of faith in a morality established by science and reason." Humanitarianism itself was an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century intellectual movement which emphasized reason. This age of reason reflected the progress in science, which had weakened the hold of the Church and of faith on men's minds. Dostoyevsky's rejection of socialism made it necessary for him to reject the corollary of socialism: the elimination of human suffering. Thus he was forced to evolve a personal interpretation for the suffering that he would not let be abolished. Critics generally consider Siberia to be the turning point in Dostoyevsky's life, both from a personal and a literary standpoint. Before his imprisonment, Dostoyevskyts values were too immature for him to develop a significant theory illuminating the problem of suffering. It took Siberia to teach Dostoyevsky the meaning of metaphysical suffering-- the search for the meaning of God and reality. This meaning can be traced in the majority of his post-Siberian works in the form of the theory that happiness and ultimate salvation are made available to man through the purifying effects of his metaphysical sufferings.
Down and Out: a Novel
A creative dissertation consisting of two parts: a novel and a critical preface. The critical preface, titled “Novel without Falsehood” deals directly with David Shields’s Reality Hunger, touching on issues of reality as it pertains to truth, writing, fiction, and contemporary culture. The novel is entitled Down and Out and follows the fortunes of a small town in Arkansas before, during, and after its sole source of employment ceases to exist.
The Drama of George Farquhar.
This thesis explores the characters, themes, and comic devices used in the drama of George Farquhar.
Dramatic Experiment in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill
This survey of Eugene O'Neill's works attempts to establish that fact that he used a number of dramatic experiments in his plays and that he used them successfully.
"Driving Lessons" and Other Stories
A study through short stories of the emotional effects on close family relationships before and after a traumatic death.
A Drop of Oil
Many Christian writers point to God through their fiction without openly evangelizing. The images their words evoke lift their secular and religious readers' heads, for God is reflected in their use of language, the emotions they describe, and the actions of their characters. The preface and short stories in this collection aim to show that God's presence can be felt even when people are suffering due to human decisions and mistakes. He is with His creations in the midst of their pain to impart hope when they need it most.
The Early Criticisms of Shelley in England and America
It is the principal purpose of this study of the early criticisms of Shelley to contrast the opinions of him in England and America and to find reasons for the widely divergent attitudes of the reviewers in the two countries.
East, West, Somewhere in the Middle
A work of creative fiction in novella form, this dissertation follows the first-person travails of Mitch Zeller, a 26-year-old gay man who is faced with an unexpected choice. The dissertation opens with a preface which examines the form of the novella and the content of this particular work.
Eaten: A Novel
This novel operates on two levels. First, it is a story concerning the fate of a young woman named Raven Adams, who is prompted into journeying westward after witnessing what she believes to be an omen. On another level, however, the novel is intended to be a philosophical questioning of western modes of “science-based” singular conceptualizations of reality, which argue that there is only one “real world” and anyone who deviates from this is “crazy,” “stupid,” or “wrong.” Raven as a character sees the world in terms of what might be called “magical thinking” in modern psychology; her closest relationship is with a living embodiment of a story, the ancient philosopher Diogenes, which she believes is capable of possessing others and directing her journey. As the story continues the reader comes to understand Raven’s perceptions of her reality, leading to a conceptualization of reality as being “multi-layered.” Eventually these layers are collapsed and unified in the final chapters. The novel makes use of many reference points including philosophy, classical mythology, folklore, religion, and internet social media in order to guide the reader along Raven’s story.
The Eccentrics of Tobias Smollett's Novels
Tobias Smollet's purpose in writing was twofold: to entertain the reader and to satirize man and his society. To accomplish his aim, the author created eccentric personalities in the old Elizabethan humour convention. This thesis looks at Smollet's characterizations, especially of the eccentrics, in his novels.
Edgar Allan Poe in Relation to his Times
This study is based upon the prose works of Poe and covers the topis of politics and social reforms, contemporary attitudes toward death, customs, science and pseudo-science, and contemporary literature. The thesis attempts to prove that Poe's works show manifest evidences of his being a product of his times.
Edwin Shrake: An Introduction and an Interpretation
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 strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed in order to determine its literary merit. The study concludes that Shrake is a regional novelist whose use of a limited setting does not limit the impact of his books. Through his universal themes, Shrake creates novels that are international in scope.
The Effect of Journalism on Modern American Writing
This paper is an analysis of the relationship between journalism and formal literary usage in America. It is the purpose of this study to define and illustrate characteristics of modern journalese and to make a comparison of standards of correct usage advocated by recent textbooks in English composition and journalism. Particular attention will be given to diction, structure and length of sentences, capitalization, abbreviation, and punctuation. The conclusion will be a brief evaluation of modern journalism, a succinct resume of its impact on modern language and literature, and a simple prediction of future tendencies in journalistic and literary language. And to give a better perspective to the analysis of journalism and American English, the paper begins with a description of the American linguistic heritage.
Eight Original Short Stories : "A Rotten Way of Life" and Others
This thesis is a creative one, comprised of eight short stories which deal with a variety of subjects. All of the material is concerned with personal or vicarious experience.
Elements of Old English Prosody in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
This thesis attempts to explain the Anglo-Saxon influence on Hopkins's poetry by providing a biographical study of his life to determine when he acquired knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon.
Elements of the Byronic Hero in Captain Ahab
This study of the elements of the Byronic hero in Herman Melville's Captain Ahab includes a look at the Byronic hero and Byron himself, the Byronic hero and the Gothic tradition, the Byronic hero and his "humanities," and the Byronic hero and Prometheus-Lucifer.
Eleven: A Novel
Trauma novel refers to a work of fiction that discloses serious loss or intense fear on individuals and groups. The traumatic experience is repetitious, timeless, and unspeakable. Gayl Jones, Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison are only a few authors who have written this type of novel. The traumatic events that occur in the books are rape, miscarriage of justice, and slavery, to name a few. The experienced trauma manifest as fragmented memory, silence, commitment phobia, intimate distance, and feelings of abandonment. In her book, Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison, J. Brooks Bouson argues that the traumatic experience of slavery and "white racist practices" throughout history produced a "collective African-American experience" which appears in fiction and in the fabric of American culture (4) as intergenerational trauma. African American authors are reimaging history told primarily in first and third person limited, and even if the novel has an omniscient point of view, it can change to third person limited. They use point of view to adeptly navigate the effects of trauma on the psyche interweaving closeness and distance to manipulate the emotional, intellectual, and moral responses the author desires. In this essay, I argue that because of intergenerational trauma, African American novels tell a "collective or communal" story that has a profound effect on point of view and narrative or psychic distance.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Quest for the Father
This dissertation explores Elizabeth Barrett's dependency on the archetypal Victorian patriarch. Chapter I focuses on the psychological effects of this father-daughter relationship on Elizabeth Barrett. Chapter II addresses Barrett's acceptance of the conventional female role, which is suggested by the nature and the situation of the women she chooses to depict. These women are placed in situations where they can reveal their devotion to family, their capacity for passive endurance, and their wish to resist. Almost always, they choose death as an alternative to life where a powerful father figure is present. Chapter III concentrates on the highly sentimental images of women and children whom Barrett places in a divine order, where they exist untouched by the concerns of the social order of which they are a part. Chapter IV shows that the conventional ideologies of the time, society's commitment to the "angel in the house," and the small number of female role models before her increase her difficulty to find herself a place within this order. Chapter V discusses Aurora Leigh's mission to find herself an identity and to maintain the connection with her father or father substitute. Despite Elizabeth Barrett's desire to break away from her paternal ties and to establish herself as an independent woman and poet, her unconditional loyalty and love towards her father and her tremendous need for his affection, and the security he provides restrain her resistance and surface the child in her.
Elizabeth Bishop in Brasil: An Ongoing Acculturation
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), one of the foremost modern American poets, lived in Brasil during seventeen-odd years beginning in 1951. During this time she composed the poetry collection Questions of Travel, stand-alone poems, and fragments as well as prose pieces and translations. This study builds on the work of critics such as Brett Millier and Lorrie Goldensohn who have covered Bishop’s poetry during her Brasil years. However, most American critics have lacked expertise in both Brasilian culture and the Portuguese language that influenced Bishop’s poetry. Since 2000, in contrast, Brasilian critic Paulo Henriques Britto has explored issues of translating Bishop’s poetry into Portuguese, while Maria Lúcia Martins and Regina Przybycien have examined Bishop’s Brasil poems from a Brasilian perspective. However, American and Brasilian scholars have yet to recognize Bishop’s journey of acculturation as displayed through her poetry chronologically or the importance of her belated reception by Brasilian literary and popular culture. This study argues that Bishop’s Brasil poetry reveals her gradual transformation from a tourist outsider to a cultural insider through her encounters with Brasilian history, culture, language, and politics. It encompasses Bishop’s published and unpublished Brasil poetry, including drafts from the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at Vassar College. On a secondary level, this study examines a reverse acculturation in how Brasilian popular and literary communities have increasingly focused on Bishop since her death, culminating in the 2013 film, Flores Raras (Reaching for the Moon in English). Understanding this extremely rare and sustained intercultural junction of Bishop in Brasil, a junction that no American poet has made since, adds a crucial angle to twentieth-first century transnational literary perspectives.
Ellen Glasgow, Virginia Rebel
This study shows that her fiction was an influence in pointing the way to American Naturalism as a literary school and that, by her devotion to a single idea over a long span of years, she endows all womankind with stature.
The Emergence of Arab Nation-State Nationalism as an Alternative to the Supranational Concept of Ummah
In this dissertation, I examine the political shift or reorientation of Arabs and Muslims from the supranational Ummah to the Western form of nation-state by attending to modern Arabic novel in the period between World War I and World War II. I explore the emergence of secularism in Arab national formation. One of my central arguments is that Arab nationalism is indeed a misleading phrase as it gives the impression of unity and coherence to a complex phenomenon that materialize in a number of trends as a form of struggle. In the first chapter, I defined the scope of my argument and the underlying structure and function of nationalism as a form of representation masked by nationalist ideologies. To investigate the reorientation of Arabs and Muslims from Ummah to adopting nation-state, I utilize Spivak's criticism of the system of representation along with Foucault's theorization of discourse. I argued along Edward Said that although the Western national discourse might have influenced the Arab nationalists, I do not believe they prevented them from consciously appropriating nationalism in a free creative way. I also explained that the Arab adoption of a secularist separatist nationalism was more an outcome than an effect in the dissolution of the supranational Ummah, since according to Hourani that "explicit Arab nationalism" did not emerge until the end of the nineteenth century. I wrote this dissertation with the hope that I could, to use Masood Raja's literary concepts, inundate the modern Arabic novel with "silenced knowledge" to not only prevent the untrained Western readers from reducing these works to a set of assumptions, prejudices, or preferences but also to shift the texts from being a point of arrival to a being a point departure.
Emersonian Ideas in Whitman's Early Writings
This thesis will be an attempt to gather together the important ideas set forth in Whitman's early writing which are to be found also in Emerson's lectures, essays, and poems written before 1855. It will attempt to show what Whitman might have gained from Emerson if he had had no other source, and if a creative intellect had not the power of originating its own ideas.
Emerson's Ideal of Education
This paper discusses what Ralph Waldo Emerson believes to be the aim of education and how he thinks the aim is to be reached.
Emerson's Representative Men: a Study of Emerson's Six Representative Types
The purpose of this thesis is to relate the six personalities dealt with by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Representative Men to such proportions of the essayist's ideas as may be applied to these six representative types, to the end of arriving at an understanding of Emerson's aim in writing about these six men and about great men in general.
Emily Dickinson and Nature
The purpose of this thesis is to show upon what aspects of nature Emily Dickinson's poems touch, to what extent and in what manner she uses nature terms in expressing her philosophy of life, what ideas she expresses through these terms, and finally what her own philosophy of nature is.
The Ends of Smaller Worlds
The Ends of Smaller Worlds is a collection of short stories set in Indiana. The preface is about the representation of the information age using elements of dirty realism and Gothic fiction.
Engine Running: Essays
Engine Running: Essays is a collection of creative nonfiction that explores, in parts, a persona's distancing from home and self against the backdrop of an increasingly fractured family doing the same. Through a variety of forms, the essays seek to balance themes like loss, self-discovery, and manhood in reflections on the role of childhood memory, the early revelations and experimentation of sexuality, and the carving-out of personal identity in West Texas.
English Adverbials of Degree and Extent
This thesis presents detailed descriptions of the English adverbial of degree (e.g., very, quite,rather,extremely) and the adverbial of extent (e.g., much, some, at all, excessively).
English Pastoral Drama, 1580-1642
It will be the purpose of the remaining chapters of this thesis to trace the characteristics and conventions of the pastoral as they can be observed in specific bucolic works from various writers of various nationalities and ultimately examine specific examples of English pastoral drama in light of these conventions and characteristics.
English Renaissance Epithalamia
The classical genre of marriage poems called epithalamia appeared in England in the late sixteenth century. The English epithalamia of the Renaissance form a closely related body of literature. This work will be a close analysis of this small body of English Renaissance poetry.
English Utopias
This thesis discusses Utopian thought and compares the Utopias of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Sir Francis Bacon, and Jonathan Swift in the areas of government, education, and social problems.
The Epic Element in Hiawatha
By tracing the development of the epic, oral and written, as in Chapter III, the qualities that are characteristic of the epic and the devices associated with the epic through continued usage were found to be the constant factors upon which the definition of the epic is formulated. The application to Hiawatha of the epic definition in terms of form, theme, subject matter, characters, tone, the use of the supernatural, and the use of characteristic devices, strengthens the thesis that Longfellow has written an epic.
Epic Qualities in Moby-Dick
Many critics not satisfied with explaining Moby-Dick in terms of the novel, have sough analogies in other literary genres. Most often parallels have been drawn from epic and dramatic literature. Critics have called Moby-Dick either an epic or a tragedy. After examining the evidence presented by both schools of thought, after establishing a workable definition of the epic and listing the most common epic devices, and after examining Moby-Dick in terms of this definition and discovering many of the epic devices in it, I propose the thesis that Melville has written an epic, not unlike the great epics of the past.
The Epic Strain in Joseph Conrad
This thesis will attempt to show that the three major works of Conrad's middle period -- Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes -- are essentially literary epics.
Epoch Stages of Consciousness in The Rainbow
In The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence departs from traditional literary techniques, going below the level of ego consciousness within his characters to focus on the elemental dynamic forces of their unconscious minds. Using three generations of the Brangwen family, Lawrence traces the rise of consciousness from the primal unity of the uroboros through the matriarchal epoch and finally to full consciousness, the realization of the self, in Ursula Brangwen. By correlating the archetypal symbols characteristic of three stages of consciousness outlined in Erich Neumann's Origins and History of Consciousness and The Great Mother with the three sections of the novel, it is possible to show that Lawrence utilizes the symbols most appropriate to each stage.
Equus: a Psychological Interpretation Based on Myth
The following study is divided into five parts, The first part examines the use of myth in Eguus, Various interpretations of myth are presented and their relationship to Equus is explored. Chapter II covers the relevance of psychology to the play. R, Do Laing's comments on normalcy as the goal of society and Carl Jung's theories on the subconscious are both important to a study of Equus. The philosophy of Nietzsche helps explain some of the ideas in Equus, and Chapter III summarizes his contributions to the study. Chapter IV is a close look at the symbolism of the horse, and Chapter V deals with the yearning for transcendence as discussed by early German Romanticists, Equus is a romantic statement incorporating the fields of myth and psychology.
Equus: A Study in Contrasts
The play Eguus presents a series of dialectics, opposing forces in dramatic tension. The multi-leveled subjects with which Shaffer works confront each other as thesis and antithesis working towards a tentative synthesis. The contrasts include the conflict of art and science, the Apollonian and Dionysian polarity, and the confrontation of Christianity and paganism. Modern man faces these conflicts and attempts to come to terms with them. These opposites are really paradoxes. They seem to contradict each other, but, in fact, they are not mutually exclusive. Rather than contradicting each other, each aspect of a dialectic influences its counterpoint; both are necessary to make a whole person.
Establishing an Integrated Language Arts Program in the Primary Grades
This thesis had its inception in the mind of the writer when, disturbed by third grade children's lack of interest and low level of linguistic achievement, she endeavored to find both a more effective means of encouraging children to acquire the tools of language and a more effective method of teaching children the fundamentals of language arts. The writer determined, therefore, to investigate an integrated language arts program in the hope that it would prove to be a more effective method of teaching.
Estrangement
This thesis describes the "shifting center-of-consciousness" literary technique and then presents a fictional work written by the author using that technique.
Ethics in Technical Communication: Historical Context for the Human Radiation Experiments
To illustrate the intersection of ethical language and ethical frameworks within technical communication, this dissertation analyzes the history and documentation of the human radiation experiments of the 1940s through the 1970s. Research propositions included clarifying the link between medical documentation and technical communication by reviewing the literature that links the two disciplines from the ancient period to the present; establishing an appropriate historiography for the human radiation experiments by providing a context of the military, political, medical, and rhetorical milieu of the 1940s to the 1970s; closely examining and analyzing actual human radiation experiment documentation, including proposals, letters, memos, and consent forms, looking for established rhetorical constructions that indicate a document adheres to or diverts from specific ethical frameworks; and suggesting the importance of the human radiation documents for studying ethics in technical communication. Close rhetorical analysis of the documents included with this project reveals consistent patterns of metadiscourse, passive and nominal writing styles, and other rhetorical constructions, including negative language, redundancies, hedges, and intensifiers, that could lead a reader to misunderstand the writer's original ethical purpose. Ultimately this project finds that technical communicators cannot classify language itself as ethical or unethical; the language is simply the framework with which the experimenters construct their arguments and communicate their work. Technical communicators can, however, consider the ethical nature of behavior according to specific ethical frameworks and determine whether language contributes to the behavior.
An Etymological Examination of Aelfric's "Passion of Saint Sebastian, Martyr"
This study looks at Aelfric's "Passion of Saint Sebastian, Martyr" from an etymological perspective.
Eugene O'Neill's Theory and Practice of Tragedy
This thesis discusses six plays by the playwright Eugene O'Neill considered as tragedies.
An Evaluation of the Literary Sources of Gulliver's Travels
This study examines and also evaluates the literary sources of Gulliver's Travels.
Eve, the Apple, and Eugene O'Neill: the Development of O'Neill's Concept of Women
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.
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