Digital Commons Network^™

A New Sense Of Time In Female Development: Linearity And Cyclicity In Atwood's Surfacing And Cat's Eye, Diana L. Unes

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Personal Pronouns In Middle English Literary Texts, Melissa Jill Bennett

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of personal pronouns from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, with a particular focus upon the southern literary dialects of that era. The baseline text for this analysis is the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, although Bright's paradigm of Anglo-Saxon pronouns is also employed. The Owl and the Nightingale (circa 1200), The Fox and the Wolf (circa 1275), Piers Plowman (circa 1375), and Parliament of Fowls (circa 1375) are used to illustrate the changes in the forms of the pronouns over four centuries, Chaucer's Parliament serving to represent the emerging London standard. …

A Genetic Model Of Duality In Latin American Magical Realism, Keith Spear

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Whale, Michael J. Brown

Masters Theses

This thesis is composed of two parts. The first is a critical introduction which explores the influences on the author. The author is interested in the idea of style as a character in such works by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Albert French. This discussion of these authors leads into ideas of space, both physical and metaphysical, in much of twentieth century literature. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an example. The exploration of space in literature is important for the determination of identity, which is one of the important themes of literature in this century. The author connects Sherwood Anderson's …

Gratification Changes Among Country Music Radio Listeners, Larry E. Oathout

Masters Theses

Several past studies explore the gratifications received by mass media users. However, no former research focuses on radio as a single medium and investigates how gratifications change over a person's lifespan. This study utilized an altered version of Elliott and Quattlebaum's (1979) ten media gratification list and questioned a 14 to 60 year old sample group about the gratifications they receive from country music radio. The researcher selected country music because it is the most popular radio format today and because it provided the wide age parameters needed for the study. Two hundred and thirty-nine users of an Internet country …

Pynchon, Dionysus And America: In Search Of The Pig That Got Away, Andreas Gerling

Masters Theses

This work seeks to analyze Western thought as a system. As a case study representative of this system, I have chosen the United States of America, as it started as a strange experiment in purely Apollonian thought, which has largely remained a closed system and has become the primary engine of cultural change in the twentieth century. As the tools for my analysis, I have chosen the dialectic represented in the mythical opposites Dionysus and Apollo and the counter cultural reaction by a number of post World War II authors, most notably Thomas Pynchon, to the "American Dream."

America began …

And The Youth Shall See Visions: The Jewish Experience In Champaign-Urbana And The Founding Of Hillel, Susan J. Roth

Masters Theses

Throughout American history, America's Jews lived in a mixed environment, one that both offered them the possibility of acceptance and demanded a certain level of conformity as its price. While antisemitism in America neither reached the level of virulence nor enjoyed the official sanction that it did in other parts of the world, it nonetheless has almost always been a part of the American Jewish experience, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. Much of American antisemitism was expressed through various forms of social discrimination (that was not always strictly social), justified by the image of "Jewish undesirability," …

Computer Assisted Instruction And The Basic Writer, Kathy Ford

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Religiosity, Fears Of Personal Death, And The Acceptability Of Suicide Within Reformed, Conservative, And Orthodox Jews, Lawrence B. Stein

Masters Theses

One hundred and fifty adults completed the Gladding, Lewis, and Adkins Scale of Religiosity (GLASR), Fears of Personal Death Scale (FPDS), and the Suicide Acceptability Scale (SAS) to investigate the relationships between religiosity, fears of personal death, and suicide acceptability within the Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox Jewish denominations. Differences between the Jewish denominations were detected such that Orthodox Jews were less fearful of transpersonal death than Conservative individuals. However, no differences existed between Jewish denominations for interpersonal or intrapersonal fears of death. Results also indicate that Reformed Jews were less religious and more accepting of suicide than Orthodox individuals with …

"Exciting The Rabble To Riots And Mobbing": Community, Public Rituals, And Popular Disturbances In Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Kristan J. Crawford

Masters Theses

Throughout the eighteenth century, Virginia's populace acted in ways which reinforced the communal will. A deep rationality underlay popular action. While eighteenth-century contemporaries did not view it this way, historians must not view the mob as unruly. This thesis delineates the social laws displayed in the communal actions of pre-revolutionary Virginia, whether labeled by the elite as orderly or disorderly.

The Virginia Gazette and other sources during the quarter century before the Stamp Act show a society actively and publicly displaying communal and hierarchical values. Fairs reinforced the hierarchy through festive social interaction. Royal celebrations allowed the elite and populace …