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Images Of Voice In "Paradise Lost", Elizabeth M. Sauer
Images Of Voice In "Paradise Lost", Elizabeth M. Sauer
Digitized Theses
This thesis examines the relative status and authority of the poetic voices of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained within a literary and socio-political context. The case against the monological function of the primary narrator has most recently been made by critics including Donald Bouchard and Jonathan Goldberg who discuss the dialogical nature of this speaker, and by Kathleen Swaim and Barbara Lewalski who examine the exchanges among the different narrators. Another scholar, Gordon Teskey, observes that before PL "few characters in non-dramatic literature appear as free as Milton's to choose their own story" (11). Milton's interpretive model of historical intervention …
Authority And Interpretation In Chaucer's "Tale Of Melibee", Dominick M. Grace
Authority And Interpretation In Chaucer's "Tale Of Melibee", Dominick M. Grace
Digitized Theses
Although Chaucer's concern with problems of authority is widely recognized by scholars, the Tale of Melibee, which he assigned to his persona in the Canterbury Tales, is equally widely regarded as an unambiguous assertion of moral authority. The allegory is transparent, its moral clear, and the tale a slavishly literal translation of Renaud de Louens' Livre de Mellibee et Prudence, critics argue. Though its placement in the Canterbury context raises questions of interpretation--Chaucer prefaces the tale with overt stress on the matter of the tale's sentence, and the tale is followed by Harry's misreading of it--most critics accept the view …
Metaphysical Concepts In West African Prose: Spiritual Significance And Aesthetic Implications, Kathleen A. Morrison
Metaphysical Concepts In West African Prose: Spiritual Significance And Aesthetic Implications, Kathleen A. Morrison
Digitized Theses
This dissertation examines how West African prose in English is informed and shaped by the underlying African world-view and its expression in the beliefs and practices of the ethnic group from which each writer originates. The world-view is of a cosmos controlled by multiple deities and spirits, a world in which the gods exist for man and in which power is not dichotomized as spiritual and physical, nor as good and evil. The study includes one autobiography and sixteen novels by eight writers from five ethnic backgrounds: Chinua Achebe (Igbo), Elechi Amadi (Ikwerre), Ayi Kwei Armah (Akan), Kofi Awoonor (Ewe), …
Les Romans De Louis Guilloux Entre 1927 Et 1942: Aux Frontieres Du Populisme (French Text), Monica Lebron
Les Romans De Louis Guilloux Entre 1927 Et 1942: Aux Frontieres Du Populisme (French Text), Monica Lebron
Digitized Theses
In 1942, Louis Guilloux was awarded the Prix Populiste for Le Pain des reves, a novel which, along with the six which preceded it, is generally considered to be representative of the populist literary trend. Guilloux's novels are profoundly significant representations of historical events which took place during the first half of the 20th Century. The effect of periods of political turmoil upon society and the injustice brought down upon the working class figure prominently in Guilloux's novels.;Following two lines of development, the thesis studies the novels both in their generic relationships with populist literature and from the point of …
The 'Bildungsgedicht' As Garden In Nineteenth- And Twentieth Century Canadian Long Poems, Wanda Ruth Campbell
The 'Bildungsgedicht' As Garden In Nineteenth- And Twentieth Century Canadian Long Poems, Wanda Ruth Campbell
Digitized Theses
Much of the recent interest in the Canadian long poem has centered on poems that have been written in the last two decades. This thesis links the contemporary Canadian long poem with earlier developments by examining one kind of long poem that appears throughout Canada's literary history: the Bildungsgedicht or "formation poem" in which the creation of community parallels the creation of character. Like the Bildungsroman, these poems deal with "the formative years or spiritual education" (OED) of characters, but within the context of the growth and development of communities, often using the topos of the garden with its varied …
"India, The New Myth--A Collective Fiction": The Construction Of History In British And Indian Fiction About India's Independence Movement, Teresa Dawn Hubel
"India, The New Myth--A Collective Fiction": The Construction Of History In British And Indian Fiction About India's Independence Movement, Teresa Dawn Hubel
Digitized Theses
This dissertation is a study of imperialist and nationalist constructions of modern Indian history, encompassing Indo-Anglian and Anglo-Indian fiction written between 1880 and the year of India's political independence, 1947. Its theoretical approach is feminist and new historicist, and consequently it engages not only the fiction that sought to define the nationalist/imperialist moment in India but other public documents that contributed to this definition, such texts as British accounts of India's social life and moral problems, speeches, articles, and books by Indian nationalists, and analyses of the political situation written by British and Indian historians. This thesis is committed to …
The Fiction Of Fishing: Richard Brautigan's Metafictional Romance, Brian T. Way
The Fiction Of Fishing: Richard Brautigan's Metafictional Romance, Brian T. Way
Digitized Theses
The writings of Richard Brautigan achieved considerable popular and critical praise in the 1960s but were generally ignored or denounced thereafter. This dissertation offers a reassessment of Brautigan's oeuvre by advancing a contemporary reading of his works within the critical and cultural environment of his times. After a preliminary examination of So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away to illustrate the artful complexity of Brautigan's final work, the dissertation examines the critical and literary framework that surrounded Brautigan's earliest writings, submitting that his works are best understood in a postmodern critical context. Trout Fishing in America, A Confederate General …
Adam Naming And Aesop Fabling: Artist-Figures In The Prose Works Of Dylan Thomas, Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Adam Naming And Aesop Fabling: Artist-Figures In The Prose Works Of Dylan Thomas, Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Digitized Theses
The initial impetus for this study was two-fold: to explore the rich but relatively neglected prose works of Dylan Thomas, and to examine the numerous self-referential and metafictional instances within them. Many of the prose works contain representational forms such as dreams, fantasies, maps, books, and stories. Also predominant are a variety of artist figures, through whom Thomas explores the nature of creation and the medium with which he creates, through self-conscious acts of writing and telling. Thomas's life-long concern with the primacy of words, and his self-conscious role as an artist, have been surprisingly overlooked in his work.;Many of …
Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies For Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry, Marion M. Parsons
Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies For Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry, Marion M. Parsons
Digitized Theses
Literary nonsense is often relegated to the nursery. I suggest that much can be gained from considering the genre of nonsense (called "Nonsense" herein) and linguistic "nonsense" as challenges to sense which do not result in a continual deferral of stable meaning. Such a view of Nonsense facilitates the reading of avant-garde and experimental poetry.;Chapter one provides a taxonomy of Nonsense criticism, and attempts to sort out the various, often conflicting, critical "definitions" of literary nonsense. Chapter two adapts and extends Julia Kristeva's theory of poetic language to make possible a substantially different reading of nonsense language, and provides sample …
Symbol And Sacrament: The Incarnational Aesthetic Of Christina Rossetti, Mary Arseneau
Symbol And Sacrament: The Incarnational Aesthetic Of Christina Rossetti, Mary Arseneau
Digitized Theses
This thesis attempts to establish that Christina Rossetti's particular religious milieu (of which the Oxford Movement was a prominent feature) was a formative influence not only on her religious poetry, but also on the pervasive aesthetic and symbolic practice that unifies the general and devotional sections of her volumes of poetry. Underlying the Oxford Movement (and its emphasis on the Incarnation, its revival of ceremonial in Anglo-Catholic worship, the renewed emphasis on sacrament that it engendered, and the sacramental aesthetic characteristic of Tractarian poetics) is a belief that material creation is able to contain and communicate moral and spiritual meaning. …
Carlyle And The Economics Of Terror: A Study Of Revisionary Gothicism In "The French Revolution", Mary Desaulniers
Carlyle And The Economics Of Terror: A Study Of Revisionary Gothicism In "The French Revolution", Mary Desaulniers
Digitized Theses
Carlyle's The French Revolution occupies a distinctive place in literary history; its obscure and resistant style, its unrelenting use of Gothic overtones and its deliberate cultivation of equivocalness are part of a linguistic economy that challenges the currency of the sign. Reduced in function to an exchange value, the current sign participates in an arbitrary discourse which Carlyle overcomes with the motivating dynamics of German Transcendental Philosophy. To this end, paper money is exposed as an act of misrepresentation; its validity substantiated by arbitrary and conventional agreement, paper money remains a "wagered" word, a "contractual "sign or general equivalent. In …
"Operating From Bastard Territory": Attitudes Toward The Motherland And The Colonial Self In Four Australian And Canadian Novelists, Elisabeth J. Koster
"Operating From Bastard Territory": Attitudes Toward The Motherland And The Colonial Self In Four Australian And Canadian Novelists, Elisabeth J. Koster
Digitized Theses
This thesis explores the question, inherent to the fiction of both Canada and Australia as settler colonies, of what images are used to depict the motherland, and how this depiction affects the new colony's ability to create its sense of distinctiveness.;Examining critical studies of these national fictions in conjunction with those novels by four prominent Australian and Canadian authors which most closely examine the relationship between colony and Britain, this study uncovers four recurrent themes related to establishing a distinctive sense of self: the conception of opposing images of Britain and the new home; the experience of exile as a …
The Mystical/Political Poetry Of Denise Levertov, Dorothy Nielsen
The Mystical/Political Poetry Of Denise Levertov, Dorothy Nielsen
Digitized Theses
I examine the complex and untheorized relationship between mysticism and politics in Denise Levertov's poetry and poetics. Levertov's reputation began to suffer during the sixties when she wrote about the Vietnam War, partly because of the idea--a vestige of the New Criticism--that poetry should transcend its political and social contexts. In the case of Levertov criticism, the preference for a timeless "poetic" plane has been reinforced by the prevalent assumption that her pre-war poetics was grounded in a celebratory mysticism that precluded political commentary. In reality, Levertov's mystical poetics--which shows traces of diverse influences, including Hasidism, the Romantic lyric, objectivism …
A World Remade: Graham Greene's Thrillers And The Nineteen-Thirties, Brian Diemert
A World Remade: Graham Greene's Thrillers And The Nineteen-Thirties, Brian Diemert
Digitized Theses
Within Graham Greene's large body of work stand several texts which, for reasons explored in this thesis, he originally called "entertainments". Because this label seems to suggest that these texts are not as important as his other novels, they have received relatively little critical attention. This thesis helps to redress this imbalance.;Beginning with a brief consideration of generic distinction, I argue that Greene's use of the "entertainment" label is tied to the specific historical, political, and literary context of the nineteen-thirties in Britain. At this time, Greene and other writers reacted to the literary and critical practices of the high …