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Charles Simic: Trends Toward An International Poetry, Denise Clark

Masters Theses

In his article "Wrong Turning in American Poetry," Robert Bly believes that American poetry has been lead astray by the likes of Eliot, Pound, Moore, and Williams. He feels that the main failing of American poetry is its lack of inward, spiritual life. It is the Spanish speaking poets that Bly looks to as the true path-finders of spiritual poetry. If Bly believes that poets like Eliot and Williams were responsible for steering American poetry down the wrong path, it is a foreigner, Charles Simic, who will give American poetry the right turn it needs.

What Simic has been able …

A Room Of One's Own: The Women's Room, Lou Ellen Crawford

Masters Theses

The recent resurgence of feminism has been accompanied by the development of feminist fiction. Identifying those characteristics by which feminist fiction adds to the American novel a new and valid perspective, feminist criticism has also flourished. Feminist critics agree that fiction with a new perspective demands critical evaluation from that same perspective; and Cheri Register provides a concise, thorough list of five elements which comprise effective feminist fiction. Of Register's five criteria, Carol Heilbrun stresses the equalizing, conciliatory influence of androgyny. Recent feminist authors have written many novels which perform one or more of the functions prescribed by Register. Three …

Virginia Woolf: A Study In Style, Gregory Lee Manifold

Masters Theses

Virginia Woolf is one of the eminent stylists of the twentieth century. This paper, "Virginia Woolf: A Study in Style", is an exploration of the use of stylistic technique in Mrs. Woolf's two most outstanding novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The basic assumption of the paper is that the meaning of a work, especially the works of Mrs. Woolf, is as accessible through the study of style as it is through the more traditional study of content. Taking its cue from the works of Norman Holland and his "reader-response" criticism, the paper details four techniques of style …

The Treatment Of Women In The History Of Rasselas, Prince Of Abyssinia, Cindy Fritz

Masters Theses

Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the most prolific and profound contributers to the English language, is, unfortunately, better known for his life and his anti-feminist point of view. James Boswell, in his book The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., provides many pieces of Johnson's conversations which attempt to illustrate the doctor's belief that women were unable to understand the complexities of anything beyond their domestic duties, a belief widely supported among the classes throughout the seventeenth century until the middle eighteenth century. However, this paper, using historical and biographical evidence, demonstrates that Johnson's attitude towards women, specifically in his …

The Pessimistic Themes Of The Mysterious Stranger As Reflected In Mark Twain's Previous Novels, Judy Dale Hill Walker

Masters Theses

The purpose of the thesis is to demonstrate that the pessimism exhibited in the themes of The Mysterious Stranger is evident in the themes of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1874-1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1877-1882), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876-1885), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1888-1889), and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1891-1894). The thesis also demonstrates that the pessimism becomes more dominate as the novels progress chronologically through the repetition of the themes and the increasing number of themes being treated.

The introduction briefly discusses the arguments over the origins of Twain's pessimism as set forth by …

The Family In Modern Northern Irish Drama, Ray Wallace

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to show the plight of the family in Northern Ireland. The four plays which are the subject of this study--Within Two Shadows by Wilson John Haire, The Flats By John Boyd, Nightfall to Belfast by Patrick Galvin, and The Death of Humpty Dumpty by J. Graham Reid--deal with this innocent faction and highlight three principal effects of the troubles on their family lives. First, the families suffer internal division. They are alienated by religious/political differences which are as inseparable in these dramas as they are in Northern Irish life. Socialist doctrine opposes Christian …

Infinite Intellectual Leap-Frog: Tracing Three Character Voices Through Four Of Tom Stoppard's Works--Lord Malquist And Mr. Moon, Albert's Bridge, Jumpers, And Dirty Linen, Judy Laurene Donaldson

Masters Theses

Tom Stoppard (1937- ), British playwright, creates in his Absurd novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon (1966) three character voices that begin a debate on man's reason for existence. Instead of resolving the debate at the end of his novel, Stoppard, using the same character voices in various combinations, continues the debate in three of his later works: the plays Albert's Bridge (1968), Jumpers (1972), and Dirty Linen (1976). The three character voices include the realist's, who ties to make some sense out of the disorder of the world and to find his place in it; the manipulator's, who ignores …

There's No Place Like Home: The Haunted House As Literary Motif, Mary Catherine Mcdaniel

Masters Theses

This thesis traces the development of the haunted house in British and American literature and covers a time span of roughly two hundred years. Its approach is chronological: beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, it examines the use of the Bad Place as a literary motif, emphasizing the consistencies in its development while noting the inconsistencies as well. From Walpole to Stephen King, we see that the haunted house has continuously represented two things. On one hand, it may serve as a repository for unexpiated sin. The traditional haunted house, in fact, is nothing more than the …