Digital Commons Network^™

Christian Morality In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, Lari E. Mobley

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

[Abstract not included]

A Journey Inward : Initiation In Katherine Anne Porter's Miranda Stories, Anne Lobdell

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Tracing the initiation motif in Katharine Anne Porter's "Miranda stories" uncovers her maturing protagonist's search for order and personal truth. Miranda's inward journey ultimately leads not to nihilism and despair, as some critics suggest, but to an honest and courageous affirmation of the independent spirit.

Porter's fiction involving Miranda and her family background reveal varying stages of this maturing that, together with parallel theories of initiation, fall into critic Mordecai Marcus' paradigm of initiation types. The "tentative" initiation stories only brush the child Miranda's awareness and deal primarily with the external world. They include "The Circus," marking an "emotional" initiation …

From Falling Beams To Fallen Souls : The Ethical Development Of The Hard-Boiled Detective Novel, Kevin Chaffee

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The hard-boiled detective story ushered in a revolution in the mystery story. The older "formal" mystery story saw society as a benevolent, ordering force which the detective restored by catching the murderer, while the hard-boiled mystery portrayed society as corrupt, wild and flawed, and presented an implicit criticism of it. The three best writers of the hard-boiled school, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald, show an ethical progression, a turning outward, from the personal, inwardly focused ethics of Hammett's characters to the outwardly turned moral understanding of Macdonald's hero.

Dashiell Hammett writes of an ironic, tough world that the …

Long Man, Small Island : The Reluctant Student Missionaries Of Majuro, Lynn Neumann

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The problems and satisfactions a writer finds in narrative writing can best be understood through the production and examination of a sustained narrative. Long Man, Small Island takes non-fictive events and characters and imposes an order upon them to abstract what one of the characters sees as significant in the events, and so makes a statement about the student mission experience and an emerging nation. The preface examines the scholarly aspects of creative writing, the genesis of the story, and the process and difficulties that emerged in the writing of this non-fictional narrative.

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight : Entertainment--The Author's Intention, Gregory Kabanuk

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The subject of this paper is the Gawain poet and his monumental poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The concern will not be with the poet's identity or social rank, but will instead be with his motives. In some places this paper will appear to work backwards, assuming that since a certain effect was achieved, it must have been intended, but that is not an uncommon assumption in literary criticism.

Entertainment value will be stressed not because Sir Gawain is exclusively entertainment, but because the primary purpose of the author was to entertain, as a sermon may be …

A Momentary Stay Against Confusion : Robert Frost's Use Of The Creative Process, Carole Rick

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Robert Frost's fight against depression and insanity has not been widely known or understood. None of the many accounts of Frost's life written before 1966 accurately portray the poet as the complex man he really was. Lawrence Thompson's three-volume biography, however, revealed Frost's life-long struggle against mental imbalance and made this study possible. Thompson's biography was used to develop Frost's psycho-biography, verify his precarious mental balance and establish a history of insanity in his family.

Scholars disagree about the relationship between art and neurosis, but there is adequate evidence to indicate that the exercise of creativity has a therapeutic effect …

The Christian Life : Dorothy L. Sayers' Balanced View, Janice C. Karman

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Dorothy L. Sayers formulates a theory in "The Mind of the Maker" to explain just how man can be said to have been created in the image of God. God, she proposes, is a creative Trinity. The Father carries an idea, complete and whole in His mind; the Son works to reveal that idea; and the Holy Spirit is the power which results from the revelation of the Father's idea. The creation process requires that all three of these parts be present in a balanced unity. In creating man, God placed in him this creative trinity--He gave man the privilege …

Good Phrases Shining, One Wave After Another : A Look At Virginia Woolf's Creative Process And The Waves, John Mc Dowell

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

[Abstract not included]

The purpose of this thesis is first to understand the nature of Virginia Woolf's creative process and second to show that the writing of The Waves is illustrative of the maturity of that process.

A Survey Of Adolescent Reading Habits And Influences : A Study In Selected Parochial Secondary Schools, Sylvia J. Davis

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Adolescent literature, written by authors with a concern for the illiteracy in the United States, and read by students growing in their ability to comprehend life, is a vital link in the personal exploration and adjustment needed by young persons as they proceed into adulthood. Many polls have been conducted by teachers and librarians to learn which authors and topics are meaningful to the young student at the secondary level. It is hoped that this study might assist the teacher in understanding the reading habits of students in a parochial atmosphere by providing a background to evaluate assignments given and …

Creative Imagination In Joyce Cary's Trilogies, E. Christian

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This thesis describes Joyce Cary's theories of creative imagination and how the characters in his two trilogies reflect those theories. To Cary, creative imagination is essential for society's improvement. He believes that everyone--not just artists and writers--can have creative imagination, and in his novels he shows the results of living with and without it.

Joyce Cary was born in 1888, in Ireland. His mother died when he was nine, but his close-knit family gave him the security he needed to develop his creativity. As a boy he voraciously read adventure stories and led a gang. Throughout his life he dealt …

Septimius Felton: Hawthorne's Last Novel, Pam Dietrich

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Septimius Felton is a little-known work by the well known Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book was the third of four attempts Hawthorne made near the end of his life to construct a full-fledged romance. His first two attempts were titled The Ancestral Footstep and Doctor Grimshaw's Secret. The final try was called The Dolliver Romance. Thus, Septimius Felton has been conveniently junked with the other scraps Hawthorne produced in his last few years, but it has been unjustly criticized, I believe, for the little novel not only shows the author's skill and talent but also offers the reader pleasurable reading. …

Sing No Sad Songs For Me : A Study Of The Influence Of The Oxford Movement Upon Christina Rossetti As Evidenced In Her Poetry, Debbie J. Brown

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Christina Rossetti was largely influenced by the religious reformation known as the Oxford Movement; this study attempts to record that influence by discussing the etiology and the doctrines of the Movement in relationship to Christina's life and her poetry. A cursory review of the topics of Miss Rossetti's poetry, based on her work published in The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, is included, in addition to a more in-depth evaluation of selected poems. A partial biographical study is offered, which relies primarily upon William Rossetti's Memoir to the Poetical Works and The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti. The …

William Faulkner: The Search And The Simile, Denise R. Dick

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is well known for his distinctive prose style -- his word choice, his long sentences, and his chains of imagery. In this paper, three novels, Sartoris (1929), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and The Mansion (1955) are studied to see what can be learned about Faulkner's use of the simile.

Many of Faulkner's characters are tortured by a disparity between their peaceful past and their chaotic present. It was found that Faulkner uses the greatest number of similes in the passages of the novels where the characters are searching most intensely to reconcile their past and their present. This …

I Never Saw The Llightning, Martin Luther! A Compositional Model, Donald J. Davenport

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The problems of composition, and specifically the problems of organizing and creating sustained narrative writing, often can be brought to light best through the use of a working model. l Never Saw the Lightning, Martin Luther! discusses the problems associated with prewriting structure, point of view, and thematic considerations-as well as techniques of editing and unifying the continuity of a manuscript. These techniques are written as a preface, a "process paper,'' to the novel length piece of original, religious fiction which follows, serving as a model to exemplify the process of composition. Specific scenes, stylistic features, theme and plot considerations …

Eudora Welty : From "The Wanderers" To The Optimist's Daughter, Juli Ling Miller

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The writings of Eudora A. Welty have been published since 1936. They include four collections of short stories and five novels. Although she is a highly anthologized southern writer and winner of several literary awards, serious criticism of her works has been limited to her early short stories or the regionalism of her novels.

The scope of this thesis includes a traditional analysis of "The Wanderers," a story in The Golden Apples (1949) collection which has received cursory study, as well as an analysis of her latest published novel, The Optimist's Daughter, (1972) which has yet to be studied by …

Escape In Thurber : From Delight To Delirium, Carol Richardson Boyko

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

James Thurber (1894-1961) is the outstanding American literary humorist of the twentieth century, whose writing spans two periods of American humor: pre- and post-World War II. Pre-war humor is characterized by a debunking of traditional values: the sanctity of women and marriage, patriotism, hero worship, and the supremacy of common sense. The hero of this era is the victim, the slightly neurotic man who does not fit into high-pressured city life. Post-war humor moves from playfulness to bitterness, from misogyny to misanthropy, from man's displacement in inhuman society to man's displacement in the world.

The theme of escape in Thurber …

"Art For Truth's Sake" : James A. Herne As Social Critic And Literary Artist, Nancy Hoyt Lecourt

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

James A. Herne, 1839-1901, is generally considered to be the best American dramatist prior to O'Neill. His dramas represent the first American attempts at dramatic realism. His early plays are melodramatic in tendency, but soon he began to eliminate villains, asides, stereotyped characters, and other trappings of that earlier dramatic form. When Hamlin Garland saw Herne's play dealing with the drinking problem, Drifting Apart, he was convinced that Herne could be groomed into a sort of American Ibsen. Garland soon introduced Herne to William Dean Howells, and the two authors encouraged Herne in his quest for realism. The result …

Money In The Fiction Of Willa Cather, Vincent A. Clark

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The subject of money is important in the fiction of Willa Cather. She discusses it frequently and often at great length. In some works it is a major theme.

Despite its importance, a number of Willa Cather's critics have ignored the subject or have given it only cursory mention. Several ·writers, however, have discussed the subject at length. John H. Randall, III, in particular, analyzes it in great detail.· His analysis, however, goes astray at several key points.

This thesis shows that Willa Cather's attitudes toward money were balanced, humane, and consistent. These attitudes can be summarized as follows: (a) …

The Literature Of Verbal Nonsense In Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett And Eugène Ionesco, Madeleine R. Scalliet

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Nonsense literature and nonsense poetry have provided release from the shackles of logic for centuries. But the greatest masters of English nonsense are Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Carroll gives, in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, the principles underlying a carefully-built structure. In Lewis Carroll's nonsense world, the creatures break the determinism of meaning and significance.

Nonsense can be defined by the following characteristics: a strong adherence to the concrete in every way possible in order to allow the intellect to be in complete control of its material and thus prevent reference; the elaboration of a pseudo-logic based …

"Presentational Immediacy" In The Poetry Of James Dickey, Lethiel C. Parson

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The thesis explores the "presentational immediacy" of the poetry of James Dickey. "Presentational immediacy" is a phrase used by the poet, himself, to describe his attempt to provide a verbal equivalent of an intense experience. He also defines the phrase in stating that his aim is to effect spontaneity and reader involvement in the experience of the poems. This is a relatively difficult objective to accomplish. However, as is shown in the study of the poems in Chapter V, Dickey's handling of the general diction and imagery of the poems does fulfill his objective of presenting an experience in a …

A Comparison Of Jane Austen's Early And Late Characterization, Janet R. Moore

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to compare an early well-developed heroine, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, with a late well-developed heroine, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, in Jane Austen's novels to see if there are any changes in characterization and techniques of characterization and to evaluate these techniques.

In Chapter One, I have shown that throughout the nineteenth century from the time of publication, critics commented on Jane Austen's ability to create realistic characters. Not until the twentieth century, however, was Jane Austen's work evaluated critically. Twentieth century critics agree that she was a master at character …

Three Studies In Characterization, Diana A. Kohler

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

THE WOMEN OF BEN JONSON IN EPICOENE AND BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. This paper compares and contrasts the method variations that cause the women of Epicoene to be less interesting and more stereotyped than those of Bartholomew Fair.

Basically, in the women of Epicoene, Jonson used character types exclusively. The women were all "masculine," and remained that type throughout the play. In Bartholomew Fair, Jonson created versatility in the characters by including more information on the women through rhetorical "places," particularly the consilium or reason behind their actions. The multiplied places in the women in Bartholomew Fair, the changes in the …

"Measured Feet And Jingling Lines" : The Poetry And Poetic Attitudes Of Nathaniel Hawthorne, David L. Evans

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

A study of Hawthorne's poetry and poetic attitudes encompasses three separate but integrally related areas. First, few people realize that Hawthorne wrote verse, and no other investigation of the nature and significance of the meager surviving body of this poetry has yet been undertaken. But Hawthorne's failure to create verse of enduring quality is intimately connected with the second part of the study, Hawthorne's own views of 19th century poetry and the motives surrounding his deliberate rejection of poetry as his dominant creative mode. And when his contemporaries glowingly label him as a "poet," despite his strong refusal to write …