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No Greater Love: Recognition, Transformation, And Friendship In The Harry Potter Series, Stephen Parish
No Greater Love: Recognition, Transformation, And Friendship In The Harry Potter Series, Stephen Parish
Masters Theses
Nobody today doubts the momentous influence the Harry Potter series has had on a generation of readers. Many scholars and critics assume Harry's place amongst other great works of children's literature, and indeed the series has brought about a revival in children's literature scholarship. Despite this popularity, many critics question the series' aesthetics, its attention to moral demeanor. Therefore, what element exists in Harry Potter that could enforce its aesthetic quality? Based on a rhetorical reading of the texts, my thesis upholds the aesthetic nature of the books through an analysis of the trio's friendship and and its impact on …
Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley
Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley
Masters Theses
Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained …
Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception Of Place, Kayla Snow
Putting Down Roots: A Tolkienian Conception Of Place, Kayla Snow
Masters Theses
This thesis explores the way in which J.R.R. Tolkien's develops and expresses his nuanced sense of place through his major literary works--namely, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's sense of place, as expressed through his fiction, encompasses both metaphysical and geographical relational structures that are operative at both the local and global levels. As Tolkien develops his sense of place in his fiction, he draws from the Distributist principles--largely informed by Catholic social policy of the late nineteenth century and popularized by G.K. Chesterton--to build the economy in Middle-earth. The resulting economy resists industrialization …
Conforming To Conventions In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Pride And Prejudice, And Emma, Veronica Olson
Conforming To Conventions In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Pride And Prejudice, And Emma, Veronica Olson
Masters Theses
A major part of Jane Austen's novels consists of a critique of the societal conventions that were prevalent in Regency England. Through a study of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, it can be seen that Austen marginalizes those characters who chose conformity to social conventions. Contrariwise, the characters who exhibit a greater degree of autonomy within their patriarchal culture become the focus of the narrative. In looking at societal conventions concerning money, gender roles, and class status in conjunction with Austen's portrayal of various characters in the three novels, Austen's own views about conformity to societal conventions are …
Life Inside The Spectacle: David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, And Storytelling In The Age Of Entertainment, John Hawkins
Life Inside The Spectacle: David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, And Storytelling In The Age Of Entertainment, John Hawkins
Masters Theses
This project explores George Saunders's In Persuasion Nation and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest as interventionary literature. The thesis asserts that the two works confront the problems of isolation and dehumanization created by entertainment-based consumerism; they do so by depicting satirically exaggerated consumer societies and placing well-developed, sympathetic characters in those settings. The thesis includes a consideration of Jameson and deBord's theories of spectacle and Wallace's stated concerns with postmodern irony as an ineffective form of critique.
Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom And Escape Of Women In African American And Indian Literatures, Lovely Koshy
Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom And Escape Of Women In African American And Indian Literatures, Lovely Koshy
Masters Theses
This thesis focuses on women in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Rabindranath Tagore's three short stories. Hansberry writes during a period in America when racism, segregation, and black migration to the North weighed heavy upon the psyche of black women. Tagore writes during a time when British control, sati system, caste system, and dharma leave Indian women voiceless. Both express their disagreement with entrenched norms and institutions that have been in place for hundreds of years, a task that initially may seem to be an impossible undertaking, and unlikely to bring about expected change. This work reveals …
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations: The Failed Redeemers And The Fate Of The Orphan, Rebekah Overbey
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations: The Failed Redeemers And The Fate Of The Orphan, Rebekah Overbey
Masters Theses
The figure of the orphan is scattered throughout the pages of Victorian novels, though few novelists created orphans that were quite as memorable as Charles Dickens. Lonely orphans and abused children appear in nearly all of Dickens' fictional works; in the novels in which the orphan is the main character, this innocent, helpless orphan is often adopted by a wealthy and benevolent benefactor, and the orphan is thus redeemed by a dramatic rescue. In Great Expectations, however, Dickens inverts this redemption by rescue that was so characteristic of his earlier novels. Instead of an innocent, helpless child, Great Expectations has …
Weaver Of Allegory: John Bunyan's Use Of The Medieval Theme Of Vice And Virtue As Devotional Writer And Social Critic In The Holy War, David Madsen
Masters Theses
The literary artistry of Bunyan's The Holy War is overshadowed by the longstanding popularity of his greatest-known work The Pilgrim's Progress. However, The Holy War displays an impressive intricately-woven story with several complex strands of allegorical meaning. One such strand is its emphasis on the theme of virtue and vice in literature of the Middle Ages. In The Holy War, Bunyan applies this thematic thread from the Medieval Psychomachia and morality plays to his allegory in seventeenth-century Restoration England. The present research begins with an exploration of allegory as story with emphasis on Bunyan's role as storyteller in general and …
Don't Take Orpheus Without The Lyre: The Intricacies Of Using Pagan Myths For Christian Purposes In The Divine Comedy And Paradise Lost, Rebekah J. Waltmann
Don't Take Orpheus Without The Lyre: The Intricacies Of Using Pagan Myths For Christian Purposes In The Divine Comedy And Paradise Lost, Rebekah J. Waltmann
Masters Theses
Because of their universal and artistic nature, the classical myths lend themselves well to use in literature, especially poetry. When used properly, as by Dante and Milton, the myths have the ability to enhance the work; when used poorly, they become gaudy ornamentation. It was, and is, this ability to enhance both the artistry and function of literature that pulled so many poets to the myths, despite the difficulties that could arise when the pagan myths did not quite match the Christian setting. My purpose in this thesis is not to explicate every use of myth within The Divine Comedy …
Humor Me To Heaven: Humor's Redemptive Role In The Works Of Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, And Marilynne Robinson, Stephanie Johnson
Humor Me To Heaven: Humor's Redemptive Role In The Works Of Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, And Marilynne Robinson, Stephanie Johnson
Masters Theses
Humor is the topic of many psychological, social, and cultural studies, but this project examines humor under a new lens. Humor's unique qualities explored in this study prove that humor is capable of more than just causing laughter; the nature of humor allows it to unveil truths about humanity, both spiritual and physical, through exposing man's flaws. This quality is especially important to consider when analyzing humor in the context of literature, in which humor also works as an aesthetic element. This study searches several short stories by Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor along with Marilynne Robinson's Gilead to reveal …
The Significance Of Silence: The Muted Voices Of Count Fosco And Laura Fairlie In The Woman In White, Melanie Page
The Significance Of Silence: The Muted Voices Of Count Fosco And Laura Fairlie In The Woman In White, Melanie Page
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the intricacies of voice using narrative theory and reader-response theory with Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Since Collins first wrote this epistolary novel serially, he wrote aware of his audience as he printed segments with different narrators. This novel allowed Collins the opportunity to reveal an internal set of narrators' responses to other characters' voices--responses that sometimes conflict with and modify one another. At the same time, Collins' contemporary audience's responses to the novel reveal the role of characters' voices in shaping reactions of members of the novel's reading public. Two opposing figures--Laura Fairlie and Count …
A Hierarchy Of Love: Myth In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, Joseph Walls
A Hierarchy Of Love: Myth In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, Joseph Walls
Masters Theses
In C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, the transposed creature is drawn up into its "kindly stede" as a sacramental symbol of Christ through that fictional planet's unbroken relationship between meaning and form. Although Perelandra's "wheels-within-wheels" hierarchy may at first seem reminiscent of Catholicism's teachings on symbol, as a Protestant, Lewis believes that human beings cannot be truly sacramental symbols until the return of Christ. Lewis's optimistic depiction of a cosmic hierarchy is one of perfect love: superiors rule their subordinates with agape, and creatures who discover their submissive roles reciprocate with eros or adoring love. Every created being in Perelandra is part …
And Then, He Folds His Patterned Rug: Repressive Reality And The Eternal Soul In Vladimir Nabokov, Elizabeth Cook
And Then, He Folds His Patterned Rug: Repressive Reality And The Eternal Soul In Vladimir Nabokov, Elizabeth Cook
Masters Theses
While Vladimir Nabokov has deservedly earned fame as a stylist of the strange, most critics who study his novels approach his absurd and beautiful characters as little more than fractured victims of a wholly subjective reality. Compounding the misunderstanding is the tired debate over whether or not Lolita is literary, pornographic, or some cruel game of cat-and-mouse in which Nabokov seizes control of his readers' sense of morality. However, critics who read Nabokov as nothing more than a manipulative stylist neglect to realize that his characters suffer such absurd distortions of spirit and mind because their environment--the "average" reality of …
The Power Of Words: The Use Of Language In Ethan Frome, Heather Faye Spear
The Power Of Words: The Use Of Language In Ethan Frome, Heather Faye Spear
Masters Theses
Edith Wharton's novel, Ethan Frome, has been sharply criticized for its tragic ending, yet Wharton's compelling storytelling which depicts universal conditions of mankind accomplishes something powerful through its narrative: it defends language. The complicated relationship between the three main characters, Zeena, Ethan, and Mattie is rooted in their utilization of language. Using a combination of close reading for textual analysis and identifying a communicative style for each character, this thesis asserts that how the characters in this novel utilize language contests the meaninglessness and relativity supported by deconstructionists. Wharton clearly illustrates Zeena's linguistic power over both Ethan and Mattie, and …
The Enduring Austen Heroine: Self-Awareness And Moral Maturity In Jane Austen's Emma And In Modern Austen Fan-Fiction, Brittany A. Meng
The Enduring Austen Heroine: Self-Awareness And Moral Maturity In Jane Austen's Emma And In Modern Austen Fan-Fiction, Brittany A. Meng
Masters Theses
Jane Austen's novels continue to be popular in the twenty-first century because her heroines are both delightful and instructive; they can be viewed as role models of personal growth due to their honest self-examination and commitment to high moral standards. Chapter one establishes the patterns of personal growth that uniquely characterizes Austen's heroines in each of her six novels. Chapter two tests these conclusions by carefully examining the character of Emma Woodhouse. Though Emma is a unique heroine due to her wealth and social privileges, she follows the principles of personal growth possessed by Austen's other heroines. Chapter three further …