Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sympathy For The Devil, Elizabeth Wickham Stephens

Theses & Honors Papers

When one first mentions John Milton's Paradise Lost, one is reminded of the fall of Adam and Eve. Yet for the reader who encounters this epic poem for the first time, a surprise is waiting. Milton centers his poem around Satan, the fallen leader of the band of angels who rebel from heaven. Through his verse, Milton explores the thoughts and motives of Satan, leaving the reader with an astonishing reaction: Satan is a pitiable character. From the war in heaven, to the regions of hell, to the Garden of Eden, Milton closely follows this downfallen character. He first emphasizes …

The Effectiveness Of Fiction Versus Nonfiction In Teaching Reading To Esl Students, Becky Kay Appley

Dissertations and Theses

In recent years with the growing emphasis upon communicative activities in the classroom, controversy has risen as to which type of reading material is best for teaching reading in the ESL classroom, fiction or nonfiction.

A study was conducted with 31 students of which 15 were taught with non-fiction and 16 were taught with fiction. Both groups were taught the same reading skills. Each group was given three pre-tests and three post-tests in which improvement in overall language proficiency and reading comprehension in the areas of main idea, direct statements and inferences was measured. Also, each group was observed for …

"Wretched, Bloody, And Usurping Boar"? An Evaluation Of The Historicity Of Shakespeare's Richard Iii, Kathryn Kiff

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Shakespeare's portrait of Richard III as a diabolical monster was based on the hostile accounts fashioned about him during the Tudor regime. Sir Thomas More's Richard III established the definitive image of Richard as the deformed tyrant who usurped the throne and murdered his nephews. This was the portrait that Shakespeare inherited from the sixteenth-century writers who incorporated More's account into their chronicles. This thesis examines Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard and the chronicle sources upon which he drew in order to show how Shakespeare's portrait of Richard developed. Although Richard was not the evil character presented in Shakespeare's play, it …

Cheever's Signs : A Semiotic Approach To Thirteen Stories By John Cheever, Laurent Ditmann

Dissertations and Theses

Literary criticism dealing with John Cheever focuses on the social implications of Cheever's description of suburban America. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a new approach to Cheever's short stories, and to apply the concepts developed by French literary critics Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes to thirteen short stories by Cheever.

The Effects Of Oral Conferencing And Written Comments On The Writing And Revisions Of Esl Students, Ann Louise Kirk

Dissertations and Theses

This study looked at the effect of written and oral comments on students' writing. The research hypotheses were that the use of oral comments would improve the overall quality of the students papers, increase the length more, and cause more changes in content than the use of written comments. On the other hand, the use of written comments would cause a greater decrease in grammatical errors in the students' papers than oral comments. The tests used to evaluate these hypotheses were the holistic writing scale used by the Test of Written English (TWE), a word count, a content percentage scale …

Analysis Of Error Type, Source, And Gravity In The Writing Of Arabic Esl Students In U.S.A. Colleges, Fadel Mohammed Na'im Bader

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the type, possible source and gravity of errors found in the Test of Written English and Placement Tests compositions written by native speakers of Arabic at college level. The first part of the study is an error analysis designed to reveal the types of errors that are most frequently made by Arab students at college level. The sources of these errors are explained according to Richards' classification of errors as inter- and intralingual (1971). Seven types of errors are identified under interlingual category: articles, prepositions, the copula, embedded questions, pronoun retention, semantic …

Irish-American Fiction And The Ethnic Identity Of Irish-Americans, Mary Carty

Honors Theses

As the largest immigrant group in the history of the United States, the Irish have had a tremendous impact on American society. Politically, the Irish flooded city government offices, eventually working up to the nation's highest office. Economically, they swelled the ranks of the labor market that was so crucial to America's growing industry. Religiously, they took over the leadership and strengthened the establishment of the Roman Catholic church in America, bringing to it their own parochial brand of Irish Catholicism. The Irish also influenced American culture with their successes in literature and the arts, and with their widespread emphasis …

Woman's Exponent: Cradle Of Literary Culture Among Early Mormon Women, Alfene Page

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this paper was to define and discuss the early Mormon women's newspaper, Woman's Exponent, and its editors in developing a literary culture among Mormon women. Woman's Exponent served as the primary source of research to show through its literature that the women of Utah were encouraged to express themselves freely, and present their way of life to a world that held a grossly distorted view of them. The Exponent provided the forum for skilled writers to polish their craft, and new writers to develop their talents. The literary influence of the Exponent encouraged the women writers …

Coyote Mail, John R. Salter Iii

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of four short stories. They are traditional in the sense that each involves a conflict, and resolution of a conflict. "Coyote Mail," the first story, deals with a grandfather who must face the fact that change is inevitable, and that he cannot interrupt it. "Ambush" involves a young man who, after being pushed to the limit by a bully, decides to take drastic action. The third story, "Every Blue in the Sky" concerns a law enforcement officer who finds himself forced to think about his racial heritage. The fourth story, "Big Rabbit Sets Me Free," concerns a …

A Study Of The Self In The Red And The Black And The Confessions Of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Roberta Mowery

Honors Theses

Although there are many reasons for reading and writing literature, perhaps the most compelling one is to gain knowledge of and access to the self. One of the most interesting aspects in the literary study of the self involves the individual's perception of his public and private self. This differentiation between the public an dprivate persona is developed in dept in Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Thomas Mann's The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. The protagonists of these two works lead lives of duplicity and hypocrisy, each submerging his private personality in order to get ahead in …

Augustine And America: Five Contemporary Autobiographical Works, Dennis Gillespie

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Gendered Reading Communities: The Feminization Of Reader Response Criticism And A Dialogics Of Reading, Patricia Lorimer Lundberg

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Samuel Johnson's Sermons: Consolations For The Vacuity Of Life, Thomas George Kass

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Oedipus Fallen: Irony In The Fiction Of Milan Kundera, Douglas Lauen

Honors Papers

The dialogue Kundera depicts between himself and his characters is central to his work because this interplay mirrors that between the author and the reader. In that Kundera is sometimes a character in his fictions (not just a narrator), we must consider his role in his fiction as one of personas; some stronger, some thicker than others. Kundera, as the self conscious, autobiography-writing narrator of his stories, uses irony to mediate between his and our perspective on the, subject matter. Considering that his narrative tone has remained remarkably similar throughout his novels, and that his subject matter has closely followed …

The Test Of Written English : A Statistical Analysis Of Validity And Reliability, Christina E. English

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the use of the Test of Written English (TWE), the essay portion of the TOEFL, as an indicator of academic readiness at Portland State University.

A Contextualized Grammar Proficiency Test Using Informal Spoken English, Sally Wellenbrock Hinrich

Dissertations and Theses

Intensive college-level ESL programs typically focus on building students' academic skills in English. Yet many ESL students leave the intensive programs only to find that they cannot sufficiently comprehend conversations with native English-speaking classmates or understand freshman-level lectures. While the students frequently perceive the problem as relating to the rapid speech tempo used by native speakers, an integral part of the comprehension problem is the pervasive use of modified forms of English, commonly called reductions, contractions, and assimilations.

The present research investigates whether comprehension of certain modified forms of spoken informal English can be used to measure students' level of …

Viewpoint And Vision In George Eliot: The Novelist And Her Major Fiction, Patricia Ward Svec

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

From Campus To Campus: The Relationship Of The University World To The Literary Pastoral Worlds Of Edmund Spenser, Phineas Fletcher, And John Milton, Gary Michael Bouchard

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Victorian Arabian Nights Adventure: A Study In Intertextuality, Nancy Victoria Workman

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

"Words Moving Secretly Toward Some Goal Of Their Own": The Rhetorical Use Of The "As If" In The Fiction Of Flannery O’Connor, Kellie Renee Rayburn

Theses Digitization Project

In an effort to reach readers who do not share her strict Roman Catholic beliefs, Flannery O'Connor employs a number of persuasive devices. Prominent among those devices is her rhetorical use of the "as if" construction. As a theoretical joining of the "reality" of this world with the "unknown" of the supernatural, the "as if" introduces "mystery," a vital part of the reader's experience with any of O'Connor's fictional works. By closely examining O'Connor's various uses of the construction in her short stories, the "as if's" differing effects on the reader become apparent. These effects are further demonstrated by a …

Cromwell And Augustus: Non-Partisan Historical Comparisons In Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode", Steven Elworthy Vanderplas

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Invisible Presences: Virginia Woolf And Biography, Stephanie Kirkwood Walker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The principal concerns of this thesis are the connections that Virginia Woolf made between writing, revelation, women and biography, set in the historical and literary contexts of her life in England from the late nineteenth century to her death in 1941. Her vision of biographical form, language and the biographical self is assessed within the environment established by her father, her Victorian childhood and education, Bloomsbury attitudes and a spirituality shaped by her Anglican heritage and her experiences of gender. My contention is that her novelist’s sense of the relationship between fact and fiction, her critical analysis of the significance …

The Myth Of The Questing Hero In Two Travel Books By Graham Greene And Robert Byron, Ashley Elizabeth King

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Time's Ungentle Tide: Disillusion, Isolation And Self-Mastery In Byron And Hemingway, John C. Dashiell

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Doubletake : The Obsessions Of Sylvia Plath, Brian Connors

Honors Theses

For twenty five years, analyses of the link between Sylvia Plath's life and writings have too often focused on selected rebellious incidents and a handful of poems written in the last six months of her llfe. These shallow and often sensational literary autopsies reach seemingly pre-determined conclusions about Plath and usually blame Plath's mother, her husband, and male-dominated 1940s and 1950s America for the vitriolic tone of her writings and for her suicide at age thirty. Unfortunately, oversimplification is the rule in Plath studies. Examinations of Plath are particularly hazardous because such an enormous amount of her work was autobiographical …

An Insight Into The Poetry Of A C Swinburne: Art And The Image Of The Poisonous Flower, Jeanette Carol Ishee

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"Come Now Ye Golden Times": Celestial Imagery In Wordsworth's "Prelude", Sheila Mcgrory

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Significance Of The Lot-Pellinore Feud In Malory's "Le Morte D'Arthur", Sheila Anne Core

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Ezra Pound's Condensation Of The Henry James Novel, Delores Lamb Belew

Legacy ETDs

No abstract provided.

Preservation Of The Family Unit In Adolescent Novels, Mary M. Hutchings

Masters Theses

This thesis discusses the development of the family story from the late nineteenth century to the present, beginning with What Katy Did as an example of the earlier moral story from which this genre grows. It then focuses on Little Women as the beginning of the modern family story and uses Jo from Little Women as the starting point to discuss the development of the female adolescent protagonist in these stories. And lastly, comparing Little Women to modern family life stories which began to appear about 1940, the thesis discusses changes in didacticism which have occurred since the late nineteenth …