Digital Commons Network^™

Little Epics: More Lively And Choleric, Nancy Conrad Martinez

English Language and Literature ETDs

The number and diversity of works in the mock-heroic mode have long made meaningful discussion difficult. The mode has been and continues to be a glittering, shapeless mass, obscuring all but the brightest or best-known stars in its blur of confused origins, purposes, and relationships. Setting down useful boundaries for one variety of mock­heroic, the little epic, is the purpose of this study. Represented most notably by MacFlecknoe, The Dispensary, The Rape of the Lock, and The Dunciad, the little epic con­stitutes a small but dazzling genre that perfects the mode and epitomizes an age.

The theory of …

Shared Fire: Reciprocity In Contemporary American Indian And Related Literature, Geri Marlane Rhodes

English Language and Literature ETDs

The dissertation examines contemporary American Indian literature to see how emerging writers interpret the traditional Indian tribal value, reciprocity. While focusing on Southwestern Indian literature, the study views reciprocity as a Pan-Indian value. Defined as interdependence, the dynamics of the web of life, the 'law' that describes the interworkings of relationships, reciprocity is apparent in the treatment of food, kinship, point of view, marriage, space, advice, and prayer ( the key word of each chapter).

In American Indian culture, the web of life is not a static metaphor, but an actual description of what goes on between woman and man, …

The Sound And The Fury: An Archetypal Reading, Theresa Lee Pearson

English Language and Literature ETDs

Though The Sound and the Fury has received considerable critical attention since its publication in 1929, certain issues have yet to be resolved. Primary among these are the related issues of the novel's unity and of the possibility of an optimistic theme. The theory of archetypes postulated by C. G. Jung provides a model that helps to solve these problems. Archetypes are patterns of human experience though, as Jung insists, they can never be "reduced to a simple formula." However, one can speak of models that parallel the literary experience. The model that parallels this novel is that of an …

Rebuilt, Jim Sagel

English Language and Literature ETDs

Rebuilt is a collection of free verse, rooted in the cultural traditions of the American Southwest. The sense of magic and the supernatural which runs through the folktales of both the Spanish and Indians of northern New Mexico forms a basis for these poems. This material is not simply lifted from the sources but is altered to shape "rebuilt'' images that attempt to cope with the unreality of the late twentieth century. The thematic concern of these poems centers on frustration, a sense of powerlessness from the most intimate level of personal relationships to a society's guilt over its own …

Twenty-Two Poems, Michael John Penny

English Language and Literature ETDs

The general theme of Twenty-two Poems is man and environment. This theme is divided into several more specific ideas--man's being defeated by the environment, man's sense of himself as defined by the environment (often an environment is the closest possible definition of its inhabitants,) and man's finally understanding the environment. The order of these ideas is the order in which the poems deal with the theme, and the general progression of poems is from despair to optimism. The first poem, "Bear," deals with a character totally defeated by environment, and the last poem, "Heuros," with a character with such complete …