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Theses/Dissertations

2009

English Language and Literature

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Fealty And Free Will: Catholicism And The Master/Servant Relationship In The Lord Of The Rings, Emily Bytheway Dec 2009

Fealty And Free Will: Catholicism And The Master/Servant Relationship In The Lord Of The Rings, Emily Bytheway

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis asserts that one aspect of The Lord of the Rings which has been previously overlooked is the hierarchical nature of the master/servant relationship, which mirrors in many ways the hierarchical nature of the Catholic church. Through the various master/servant relationships that Tolkien portrays, he reflects not only the ideal of master and servant working together for good, but also the ways in which this intimate relationship can go horribly wrong. Aragorn represents an ideal master, one who is wise and good, and his servants are either rewarded or punished according to their loyalty to him. In the stories …

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Lake Salt: A Creative Thesis, Erica Lindsay Plummer Dec 2009

Lake Salt: A Creative Thesis, Erica Lindsay Plummer

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short stories explores the different ways in which women experience suffering. The narrative focuses on the daily lives of women who have undergone some type of heartbreak. While the stories occasionally include the incident which leads to despair, the collection is more concerned with the way women function after a personal tragedy. The stories show the grace of people who continue to move forward when their lives are filled with suffering. Sexuality enters the stories and exposes both the triumph and destructive nature of sexuality. A critical introduction which explains how complication and beauty amplify story proceeds …

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Feathers: A Creative Thesis, M. Shayne Clarke Dec 2009

Feathers: A Creative Thesis, M. Shayne Clarke

Theses and Dissertations

Feathers is a young adult novel about two knucklehead boys and a summer of mischief they share. Boots and Gopher, the two principal characters in Feathers, are twelve-year old boys who are fascinated by a loft of racing pigeons kept by a peculiar man living on the edge of their small town. The fascination leads them to steal a few pairs of pigeons in hopes of generating their own loft. Their plan is to release the adult pigeons back to the man's loft while Boots and Gopher keep the babies. In stealing the pigeons, they discover the man also houses …

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The Life And Origins Of Paul Bunyan: Part One, Michael Ryan Croker Dec 2009

The Life And Origins Of Paul Bunyan: Part One, Michael Ryan Croker

Theses and Dissertations

Master of Fine Arts This novel is a chronicle of the early days of Paul Bunyan, an important figure in American folk culture. While Paul Bunyan is a central figure in the tale, the story itself is told through the eyes of Clay Filinger, a young man from the backwoods of Kentucky who leaves his home on a journey of American exploration. Clay reaches Boston, where he hires on to work for John Patrick, a wealthy merchant headed to Maine in search of pirate treasure. John is travelling with his nephew, Randolph Bunyan. Along with them are two more hired …

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Static, Yet Fluctuating: The Evolution Of Batman And His Audiences, Perry Dupre Dantzler Dec 2009

Static, Yet Fluctuating: The Evolution Of Batman And His Audiences, Perry Dupre Dantzler

English Theses

The Batman media franchise (comics, movies, novels, television, and cartoons) is unique because no other form of written or visual texts has as many artists, audiences, and forms of expression. Understanding the various artists and audiences and what Batman means to them is to understand changing trends and thinking in American culture. The character of Batman has developed into a symbol with relevant characteristics that develop and evolve with each new story and new author. The Batman canon has become so large and contains so many different audiences that it has become a franchise that can morph to fit any …

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Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel And The Dilemma Of Exile, David S. Morgan Dec 2009

Critical Distance: The Postcolonial Novel And The Dilemma Of Exile, David S. Morgan

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that Edward Said‘s theory of exile offers a stronger version of human agency than do other postcolonial theories of identity which rely on poststructural theory, and therefore, his theory of exile provides a useful model for postcolonial criticism. His theory of exile animates almost all of his work from his earliest literary criticism to his later theoretical texts. By ―exile,‖ Said refers to the experience of peoples displaced from their homes for political reasons and to the experience of intellectual homelessness that a critic must have in order to be free of the constraints of …

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Everything Is Permitted: Three Essays In The Spirit Of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Underground, Gina Nichole Caprari Dec 2009

Everything Is Permitted: Three Essays In The Spirit Of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Underground, Gina Nichole Caprari

English

No abstract provided.

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Heroes With A Hundred Names: Mythology And Folklore In Robert Penn Warren's Early Fiction, Leverett Belton Butts, Iv Dec 2009

Heroes With A Hundred Names: Mythology And Folklore In Robert Penn Warren's Early Fiction, Leverett Belton Butts, Iv

English Theses

This dissertation examines Robert Penn Warren‘s use of Arthurian legend, Judeo-Christian folklore, Norse mythology, and ancient vegetation rituals in his first four novels. It also illustrates how the use of these myths helps define Warren‘s Agrarian ideals while underscoring his subtle references to these ideals in his early fiction.

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Literature As Prophecy: Toni Morrison As Prophetic Writer, Khalilah Tyri Watson Dec 2009

Literature As Prophecy: Toni Morrison As Prophetic Writer, Khalilah Tyri Watson

English Dissertations

From fourteenth century medieval literature to contemporary American and African American literature, researchers have singled out and analyzed writing from every genre that is prophetic in nature, predicting or warning about events, both revolutionary and dire, to come. One twentieth-century American whose work embodies the essence of warning and foretelling through history-laden literature is Toni Morrison. This modern-day literary prophet reinterprets eras gone by through what she calls “re-memory” in order to guide her readers, and her society, to a greater understanding of the consequences of slavery and racism in America and to prompt both races to escape the pernicious …

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Somehow A Word Must Be Found: William Carlos Williams, The Legacies Of Duchamp, And The Troping Of The Found, Brian L. Gempp Dec 2009

Somehow A Word Must Be Found: William Carlos Williams, The Legacies Of Duchamp, And The Troping Of The Found, Brian L. Gempp

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the publication of J. Hillis Miller’s seminal chapter on William Carlos Williams in Poets of Reality (1965), there has been a uniform trend among critics to read the poet’s early experiments in relation to Marcel Duchamp. Miller situates Williams’s poetics within a range of avant-garde neologisms thought to challenge the autonomy of the bourgeois art object. Williams’s poetry rethinks the function and form of language and it is this self-reflexivity, and Miller’s deferral to the ready-made, that provides the foundation for this study. Inspired by a Dadaist-revival that reached its peak in the years leading up to the poet’s …

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A Drama Of Discourse: Competing Narratives In The Book Of Job, Hannah Louise Coffey Dec 2009

A Drama Of Discourse: Competing Narratives In The Book Of Job, Hannah Louise Coffey

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study engages the biblical Book of Job, subsequent medieval commentaries, and literary sources from the 15 through 20 centuries that use the language and motifs canonized in the Book of Job. This thesis is primarily concerned with the multiple stylistic elements used in the work and how they constitute a discourse of their own, or as has been sometimes asserted by critics, “competing narratives.” This discourse then finds voice in the usage of the Joban motif by other authors in works of ambiguous genre, lending credence to the complicated and multifaceted nature of the Book of Job’s genre and …

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Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford Dec 2009

Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford

English Dissertations

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of …

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The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli Dec 2009

The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines Virginia Woolf's writing and her anger in historical contexts, revealing that circumstances dictated that she deflect this volatile emotion. Focuses on the ways in which this deflection of anger illuminates the fictional dynamics of Woolf's autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse and analyzes the concept of the Angel in the House, posited to be at the root of Woolf's anger. Argues that anger exists on three levels in the novel and that the main character, Mrs. Ramsay, is a victim of the Angel in the House ideology.

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Adoption And Integration Of Best Practice Methods In Secondary English Teaching, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil Dec 2009

Adoption And Integration Of Best Practice Methods In Secondary English Teaching, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil

Dissertations

Commencing with a critical examination of the history and rhetorical force of the term "best practice," this dissertation undertakes a qualitative study of three secondary English teachers, considering their adoption and integration of best practice methods. The subjects, represented by urban, suburban and rural secondary schools, were National Writing Project participants identified as "exemplary teachers" by a NWP site director. "Best practice" methods analyzed included the process model for the teaching of writing and literature, student decision-making, and a low-risk writing environment. Factors that were found to influence the adoption of best practice methods included undergraduate and preservice experiences, intern …

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The Breath We Walk On, Sean Matthew Tribe Dec 2009

The Breath We Walk On, Sean Matthew Tribe

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

"The Breath We Walk On" is a collection of poems written during my time at UNLV, instructed by the poetic works of George Oppen, DH Lawrence, William Blake, Alice Notley, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and John Donne, as well as, The Greek Anthology, The Bible, and The Gnostic Gospels. The major ideas forming this collection detail issues of self in relation to the world. The poems that were most instructive from these books explore this idea in the best of their works. Other questions addressed are how can human beings live in a way that inflicts minimal harm to the …

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"Like An Old Song They Carried In Their Memory": Eudora Welty's Transformation Of Folklore In The Wide Net And Other Stories, Leigh Anna Pendergrass Dec 2009

"Like An Old Song They Carried In Their Memory": Eudora Welty's Transformation Of Folklore In The Wide Net And Other Stories, Leigh Anna Pendergrass

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract

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Sex At The Park: Stories From My Days With Ninfa, Dalel Serda Dec 2009

Sex At The Park: Stories From My Days With Ninfa, Dalel Serda

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This creative nonfiction manuscript chronicles the burgeoning relationship between the narrator and her subject, Ninfa—the folkloric, enduring and elusive Harlingen, Texas prostitute. This project aims to document the process of demystification the narrator undergoes as the women get to know each other. Furthermore, in the process of gathering the materials that will tell her subject’s story, the narrator attempts to tell the story about getting the story, about what led to this story and of what resulted. In sum, this work explores the often-blurry boundaries and complexities of what is inevitably a friendship.

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Finding Hart: The Lost Text And Biography Of Hart Stilwell, Brandon D. Shuler Dec 2009

Finding Hart: The Lost Text And Biography Of Hart Stilwell, Brandon D. Shuler

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Hart Stilwell was a noted newspaperman, journalist, outdoor writer, and political activist. He is most noted for the books Border City (1945), Uncovered Wagon (1947), and Campus Town (1950), which were, as confessed to J. Frank Dobie, Stilwell’s life story. Finding Hart: The Lost Text and Biography of Hart Stilwell pieces together the most inclusive biographical sketch of this enigmatic man of Texas letters to date through his correspondences and autobiographical novels. The author has also included an edited and footnoted version of a previously unpublished Stilwell manuscript, Glory of the Silver King, a history of Texas and northeast Mexico …

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The Attic And The Wheelchair V.C. Andrews's Accident And The Dollanganger Series, Angela H. Rice Dec 2009

The Attic And The Wheelchair V.C. Andrews's Accident And The Dollanganger Series, Angela H. Rice

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Author V.C. Andrews became known in 1979 with her first novel Flowers in the Attic and continued the series with Petals on the Wind, If There be Thorns, and Seeds of Yesterday. Problematic themes such as sudden accidents, romantic rape, incest, and mother daughter rivalry emerge continuously in each novel. In her interview with Douglas E. Winter, Andrews explains that since her debilitating fall down the stairs at the age of fifteen she lived with and depended on her mother. Unable to fulfill the goals of her childhood, Andrews read fairy tales, and romance novels and wrote her fantasies in …

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Toward A Rhetoric Of Scholar-Fandom, Tanya R. Cochran Dec 2009

Toward A Rhetoric Of Scholar-Fandom, Tanya R. Cochran

English Dissertations

Individuals who consider themselves both scholars and fans represent not only a subculture of fandom but also a subculture of academia. These liminal figures seem suspicious to many of their colleagues, yet they are particularly positioned not only to be conduits to engaged learning for students but also to transform the academy by chipping away at the stereotypes that support the symbolic walls of the Ivory Tower. Because they are growing in number and gaining influence in academia, the scholar-fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) and other texts by creator Joss Whedon are one focus of …

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Exploring The Factory: Analyzing The Film Adaptations Of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Richard B. Davis Dec 2009

Exploring The Factory: Analyzing The Film Adaptations Of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Richard B. Davis

English Theses

Film adaptations are becoming more popular and past critics and scholars have discussed films based on dramas and novels. However, few have explored the children’s literature genre. In discussing such a topic, it takes more than just debating whether the novel or book is better. A discussion on what elements have been maintained, removed, or added in such an adaptation has to be made along with its success or failure. With this in mind, Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its two film adaptations will be explored along with an analysis of film adaptation theory to …

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The Covenant: How The Tension And Interpretation Within Puritan Covenant Doctrine Pushes Toward More Equality In English Marriage, Maren H. Miyasaki Nov 2009

The Covenant: How The Tension And Interpretation Within Puritan Covenant Doctrine Pushes Toward More Equality In English Marriage, Maren H. Miyasaki

Theses and Dissertations

The Puritans constituted a very vocal influential minority during the time of Shakespeare. One of their more interesting ideas was the doctrine of the covenant, which explained why a transcendent God would care for fallen human beings. God, for Puritans, voluntarily bound himself in a covenant to man. The interrelations of elements of grace and works make it difficult to interpret what a covenant should be like: more like a modern contract or more like a feudalistic promise system? Unlike a contract, God never ends the covenant even when humans disregard their commitment, but instead helps humans fulfill their obligations …

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Ancient Superstitions Steeped In The Human Heart: Rumors Of The Supernatural As Resistance Narrative In The House Of The Seven Gables, Marie E. Horne Nov 2009

Ancient Superstitions Steeped In The Human Heart: Rumors Of The Supernatural As Resistance Narrative In The House Of The Seven Gables, Marie E. Horne

Theses and Dissertations

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables continuously plays with the idea of narrative authority to explore concepts of class and power within the novel. Since these concepts of class and power are also a central focus of Subaltern Studies, applying some of this body of scholarship to the novel brings into focus these concepts and sheds light on the motivations and types of resistance in the novel. The upper class characters, including the Pyncheons, construct and maintain a narrative based on the declarations of professionals and officials of the state and church. It discusses only the most noble …

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Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West Nov 2009

Strangers And Intimates: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kathy Marie West

Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis includes five short stories that explore paradoxical ways in which people can feel alone, even if they are together. Although a combination of isolation and intimacy can occur in any human relationship, the stories in this collection spend much of their time with family circles in particular, considering the way that our closest, most permanent relationships can simultaneously prove the most intimate and the most isolating. The critical introduction that precedes the collection examines each story individually, discussing strategies and subject matter in terms of the collection's guiding concept. The introduction discusses the binary of intimacy and …

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Modernist Aesthetics Of "Home" In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway And Rebecca West's The Return Of The Soldier, James Harper Strom Nov 2009

Modernist Aesthetics Of "Home" In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway And Rebecca West's The Return Of The Soldier, James Harper Strom

English Theses

The First World War wrought untold destruction on the physical and psychological landscape of Europe. For Britain, the immediate post-war period represented no less than a national “nostos,” or homecoming, and few social institutions were so fragmented by the conflict as the home. This thesis will explore the various conceptions of “home,” from the nation and the domestic sphere to post-war consciousness, through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s "Mrs. Dalloway" and Rebecca West’s "The Return of the Soldier." Though unique in style and scope, Woolf and West interrogate and revise pre-war notions of “home” and suggest a Modernist aesthetic of …

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Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding Nov 2009

Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding

Theses and Dissertations

While McCarthy studies have emphasized elements of the sacred in his writing, this thesis adds a new historical perspective and synthesis to reading paradigms of Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing combines the patterns of the ancient pre-Hebraic genre of the desert sublime with the basic formula of the American Western genre to interrogate McCarthy's question of whether in the postmodern moment one can still divest oneself in the desert and find access to the sublime. In an era of an invisible or absent God where post-humanist thought erases the anthropocentric supremacy of human over animal and the earth itself, the one …

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Negotiating Identity: Culturally Situated Epideictic In The Victorian Travel Narratives Of Isabella Bird, Katherine Reilly Robinson Nov 2009

Negotiating Identity: Culturally Situated Epideictic In The Victorian Travel Narratives Of Isabella Bird, Katherine Reilly Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Epideictic rhetoric, one of the classical modes of persuasion described by Aristotle, has faced some criticism concerning its value in the realm of rhetoric. Though attitudes have been shifting over the last several decades, there is still a tendency to undervalue epideictic, falling back on the Aristotelian system of ceremonial oratory. However, its “praise and blame” style of persuasion employs of the type of rhetor / audience identification described by Kenneth Burke. Epideictic rhetoric is a major component of virtually any communication, as the speaker or writer seeks to create a bond with that audience so as to persuade them …

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Uncertain Identity: Medical Practitioners In Doctor Thorne And Middlemarch, Denis Illige-Saucier Nov 2009

Uncertain Identity: Medical Practitioners In Doctor Thorne And Middlemarch, Denis Illige-Saucier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The medical practitioners who play leading roles in the novels Middlemarch by George Eliot and Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope are examples of a new breed of professional medical men that emerged during the middle of the nineteenth century in England. The new class of general practitioners held licenses from the old hierarchical system of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, but they were the driving force in favor of reform and professionalization in medicine. The 1858 Medical Act was an important step on the path toward a new conception of the medical practitioner, and the development of that new medical identity …

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Replacing The Priest: Tradition, Politics, And Religion In Early Modern Irish Drama., Leslie Ann Valley Aug 2009

Replacing The Priest: Tradition, Politics, And Religion In Early Modern Irish Drama., Leslie Ann Valley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ireland's identity was continually pulled between its loyalties to Catholicism and British imperialism. In response to this conflict of identity, W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory argued the need for an Irish theatre that was demonstrative of the Irish people, returning to the literary traditions to the Celtic heritage. What resulted was a questioning of religion and politics in Ireland, specifically the Catholic Church and its priests. Yeat's own drama removed the priests from the stage and replaced them with characters demonstrative of those literary traditions, establishing what he called a "new …

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Protestants Reading Catholicism: Crashaw's Reformed Readership, Andrew Dean Davis Aug 2009

Protestants Reading Catholicism: Crashaw's Reformed Readership, Andrew Dean Davis

English Theses

This thesis seeks to realign Richard Crashaw’s aesthetic orientation with a broadly conceptualized genre of seventeenth-century devotional, or meditative, poetry. This realignment clarifies Crashaw’s worth as a poet within the Renaissance canon and helps to dismantle historicist and New Historicist readings that characterize him as a literary anomaly. The methodology consists of an expanded definition of meditative poetry, based primarily on Louis Martz’s original interpretation, followed by a series of close readings executed to show continuity between Crashaw and his contemporaries, not discordance. The thesis concludes by expanding the genre of seventeenth-century devotional poetry to include Edward Taylor, who despite …

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