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Wood, Irene Hansel (Fa 364), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 364. Paper: "The Theme of the Cruel Brother" [in the Child Ballads] written by Irene Hansel Wood for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Only In Story A World : Atheistic Metanarrative In Leguin, Pullman And Wolfe, Samuel N. Keyes

Honors Theses

Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip Pullman, and Gene Wolfe, despite their apparent ideological as well as stylistic differences, all profoundly question the way modernity has divided knowledge, posing serious challenges to contemporary distinctions between religion, science and magic. Moreover, they share a common concern for the power of narrative to accomplish this critique.

In each of their multivolume fantasies, the differences between the categories of science and religion become meaningless. After such a deconstruction, the possibility of nihilism looms unless a new system of meaning surfaces. The move away from discrete areas of science and religion, therefore, in these works …

"We Were There": Anatomy Of A Successful Series Of Historical Novels For Young People, Deanna Lee Gasteiger Schwartz

Theses & Honors Papers

The study of history has always been an important part of learning. Young people might ask, "Why do I need to learn about something I cannot change?" When asked "Why Study History?" William H. McNeill states in Historical Literacy : The Case For History in American Education that the "value of historical knowledge obviously justifies teaching and learning about what happened in recent times, for the way things are descends from the way they were yesterday and the day before that" (104). Between the years 1955 to 1963 Grossett and Dunlap Publishers introduce a concept that brings personal involvement into …

"A Plea For Color:" The Construction Of A Feminine Identity In African American Women's Novels., Kirsten A. Moffler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writers of slave narratives i n the nineteenth-century manipulated the western sentimental literary tradition to appeal t o a white, predominantly female readership during a time of national ideological division. These writers had their own agendas which often m e t (or were forced to meet ) those of white-run abolitionist movements t o achieve the ultimate goal of abolishing slavery. Northern white-run abolitionist movements were kept warm by the moral fires of mid-nineteenth-century Protestant Christianity; Christian ideals flooded their meetings and publications. Therefore, it is no wonder that the writers of slave narratives are so overt i n discussing …

Victorian Ideology And The Discourse Of Gender In Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders And The Return Of The Native, Juliana Payne

Theses : Honours

This analysis will focus on the perceived harmony or disjunction between Hardy's representation of women in his fiction, and the middle class ideologies of gender difference and sexuality during what is referred to as the Victorian period, roughly the 1840s to the 1880s. The parameters of the dominant middle class ideology are established, as certain ideas will be held to be predominant or widely accepted at a given time. The aim of this thesis is to ascertain to what extent Hardy subverts the dominant ideology, and how he is involved in contesting the conventional contemporary representations of women. Part of …

Doubling, Splitting And Fragmentation In Bleak House, Mary Cleopatra Lloyd Da Silva

Theses : Honours

This thesis draws mainly on psychoanalytic theories, and explicates the doubling leitmotiv in Bleak House (1971), which portrays Victorian personality as split and its society as fragmented. This is seen as a suggestion of Dickens' conception of human identity as fragile and vulnerable. Each autonomous character represents a single aspect of personality, so that conflict, when it occurs, is in fact intra-psychic, rather than inter-psychic. The study investigates the problem of the dual or split personality via the quest for identity, and addresses Dickens' perceived need to reward self-effacing characters and punish the assertive. It explores the psychological ramifications of …

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: It's Roots And It's Impact On Her Novels, Nancy Topping Bazin, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) War InspIred Horror In Virginia Woolf. Her antipathy toward those who cause wars is evident in her two essays, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. The impact of war on her fiction expands from a portrayal of individuals as victims of war to a vision of war that encompasses the possible annihilation of civilization. Between the Acts, Woolf's final novel, is obviously an artistic response to the threat posed by World War II. However, a close examination of her works reveals, to a surprising degree, her early and persistent preoccupation with the consequences of war, …

The Pastoral Tradition In Film, Andrew J. Ford

Honors Theses

The pastoral, whether in painting, music, literature, or film, has always attempted to capture that fleeting moment in history, real or unreal, where man is autonomous. The pastoral life occurs only after man has gained a considerable amount of control over nature and before he has found himself controlled by his fellow man or by those common evils made real and specific by civilization. In other words, the pastoral tries to capture or create that period in history where man has conquered the wilderness in some major way, usually by farming or animal herding, but has not yet become involved …

Peredur To Percival: The Rise And Fall Of The Original Grail Knight, Sandra Eddins Gee

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

The Masque, A Courtly Entertainment, Kenneth Bailey Blanks

Master's Theses

In tho Courts of the Tudors and the Stuarts flourished a form of entertainment known as the masque . This exclusive pastime was characterized by gorgeous costumes, ingenious sets, imaginative scenery, music, dialogue, and dancing. Dancing was the most important element. It is said that "from the beginning to the end of its history, the essence of the masque was the arrival of certain persons visored and disguised to dance a dance or present an offering," often in the form of a compliment to the monarch. Dancing established a close intimacy between the masquers -- the disguised performers in the …

A Critical Study Of The Seven Major Victorian Pessimistic Poets, Frank W. Childrey

Master's Theses

The following thesis is a critical study of seven sig­ nificant Victorian pessimistic poets. Having as its basis a seminar paper for Dr. Lewis F. Ball in which four of the Victorian pessimists were discussed, the original study was expanded in order to include the remaining three.

In this critical study, the emphasis has been placed mainly upon the themes characteristic of these pessimistic poets, and the poems that I consider to be the best examples of their various attitudes have been incorporated, either partially or in full, into the text of this thesis. Fur­thermore, though these chapters are not …

The New British Drama 1956-1966 : A Critical Study Of Four Dramatists: John Osborne, Brendan Behan, Arnold Wesker, And John Arden, Jeanne Fenrick Bedell

Master's Theses

In the history of England, as well as in the history of the English stage, 1956 was a momentous year. It was the year of the Suez, the year that saw the destruction of the myth of the British empire. And it was the year of the Hungarian Revolution, which crushed liberal illusions about Soviet Russia. In 1956 the old idols were crumbling fast, and defense of tradition was fast becoming not only impossible but ludicrous. The bankruptcy of the older generation was apparent; it was time for the new to speak out.

The Depression Years As Depicted By The American Theatre In The 1930'S, Lois Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to show how various plays written in the 1930's reflected economic, political, religious, social, psychological, moral and ethical attitudes of the depression years. To achieve this and, the writer gathered material from the ten Pulitzer Prize winning plays of the 1930's, as well as other significant works of the decade as mentioned in secondary sources. No effort has been made to fit these plays into the time in which they were written. Instead, the writer has attempted to show the times as they were presented by the dramatists of the thirties.

The Symbolism Of The Holy Grail : A Comparative Analysis Of The Grail In Perceval Ou Le Conte Del Graal By Chretien De Troyes And Parzival By Wolfram Von Eschenbach, Karin Elizabeth Nordenhaug

Honors Theses

Both works, Chretien's and Wolfram’s, are literary masterpieces of the Middle Ages. The story of the Grail can be placed along side of Dante's Commedia in symbolical content. Like most medieval writings the Grail romances are full of allegory, remote allusions to symbolic relationships, and striking analogies, all of which leave us with a sense of wonder and amazement. First of all we wonder whether or not a connection, which we might find symbolical was put there accidentally or not; we wonder whether we are seeing too much or too little symbolic value. It is characteristic of the authors never …

The Contemporary American Short Story (A Study Of The Best American Short Stories, 1950-1959), Gertrude Carrick Curtler

Master's Theses

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and review the contemporary short story by means of an intensive study of The Best American Short Stories of the past ten years. The obvious weakness of the project is that all these two hundred and forty-five short stories were selected as the best of each year by one person, Martha Foley. While she is generally respected as a critic, still her opinions are based on her own taste and judgement alone. It is possible that she leans too much toward avant­-garde stories, or even that she may prefer stories of one …

The Short Ghost Story : A Critical And Historical Survey, Cameron Dunlop Hall

Master's Theses

This thesis is an attempt to evaluate the work of the outstanding British and American short story writers from the early 1800's to the present. No attempt has been made to make a precise historical survey of the development of the ghost story. This paper is limited to the short ghost story in fiction; all fairytales, folk-lore, supposedly authentic anecdotes, plays, novels, and poems of the supernatural are omitted. All pseudoscience stories, horror stories, and weird fantasy are also omitted.

In the introductory part of this paper an attempt has been made to ascertain some of the factors which determine …

Serious Domestic Drama As Tragedy : A Study Of The Protagonist, Charles Turney

Master's Theses

Domestic drama is the most popular genre employed by the modern dramatist. The question may arise as to whether or not tragedy is any longer desired by the playgoer. In these representative plays, taken from many countries and written on a variety of themes all centered around domestic life, as judged by the criteria established in the first chapter, few of these dramas succeed as tragedies. This is not to be interpreted to mean that the so-called "tragic impulse" is dead. Those plays which are classed as tragedy are pure tragedy-- dramas at the peak of intensity demanded by the …

Study In The Development Of English Satire In The Sixteenth Century, Vashti Boddie

Senior Scholar Papers

In the literary tradition of sixteenth-century England, a new mode of expression arose with the development of formal satire. The pattern branded off into two directions: that which followed the Piers Plowman tradition in the mid 1500's and that which followed the classical models of Horace and Juvenal in the last decade of the century. The latter phase led so inevitably to repercussions among literary and political circles that public authorities had to intervene to stop the flow of libelous satiric literature. Due to the controversial nature of the classical phase, it is this tradition which I shall concentrate on. …

A Study Of The Moral Tone Of Restoration Comedy, Herbert Robinson Blackwell

Master's Theses

The so called "Restoration period" in English literature stands as an age of comic production that ranks as one of the most brilliant in the history of the English stage, second perhaps only to the preceding Elizabethan period. Restoration comedy has been famed for its indecency and immorality, and critical Judgment has always been influenced by concern over the "excesses" which the playwrights introduced into their works.

Morality is a relative term. What is sinful in one age is commonly accepted in another. Semantic differences may cause different moral connotations to be placed on certain words. Thus, in considering whether …

A Study Of The Cluster Novel As A Development In Contemporary Fiction, Mary Salber

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

By 1929 and 1930 the popularity and the increasing use of the cluster form caught the attention of most careful readers of fiction. Its original adaptations, its unique technique, its clever appropriation of the best in the novel and in the short story forms, its use by leading novelists, its suggested similarity to age-old literary methods, and it's very apparent possibilities - all these make it a subject worthy of some detailed study.

It shall be the aim in this discussion to search out the very early traces of fictional forms similar to the cluster type, to attempt to account …