Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Re-Examining Vonnegut: Existential And Naturalistic Influences On The Author's Work, Marybeth Davis

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis looks at several Vonnegut novels through both the lenses of existentialism and naturalism, claiming that each is just as important and present in his work as the other. It examines his life, as well, and how his experiences and observations on life tie into his writing.

Re-Inventing Sicily In Italian-American Writing And Film, Fred L. Gardaphé

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Painting, Photography And Fidelity In The Tragic Muse, Adam Sonstegard

English Faculty Publications

Photographs can approach the elegance of paintings, but reproductions can show the distortion of photographs - so The Tragic Muse (1890) suggests, complicating critical understandings of James and visual art. Dramatizing artists' fidelity, James resists assuming that families, races, and genders provide similar options. Fidelity in art can mean 'infidelity' in life, lead to 'adulterated' reproductions, and impugn understandings of inherited and performed identities - concerns which resurface in The American Scene (1907) when James contemplates immigrant populations and in A Small Boy and Others (1913) when a family daguerreotype becomes evidence of his own fidelity.

Pynchon's Age Of Reason: Mason & Dixon And America's Rise Of Rational Discourse, Jason Mcentee

English Faculty Publications

By drawing upon astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon for the unlikely protagonists of Mason & Dixon (1997), Thomas Pynchon develops a revisionist history of these two Englishmen as they come to terms with America in the so-called Age of Reason, which was informed by a European philosophical movement with its roots in rational discourse aimed at cultural and political intellect that eventually served as the foundation for American independence and democracy. But as Thomas Paine suggests, time wields a stronger power than does reason, and what history calls the Age of Reason may remind one of an ideal …

Pivotal Transformations: The Changing Voice In Anne Sexton's Poetry, Lara L. Plate

Theses & Honors Papers

Critics such as Ralph Mills, Suzanne Juhasz, and Jane McCabe have generally focused on the confessional or feminist aspects of Anne Sexton's poetry, most especially in To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), All My Pretty Ones (1962), Live or Die (1966), and Love Poems (1969). Those who have examined Transformations (1971)-and its fairy-tale world-have also paid particular attention either to its feminist approach or its confessional connections. These critics suggest that Sexton exists in her poetry as a confessional poet striving to move beyond parental restrictions and childhood experiences or they reveal Sexton as either "Madonna or Witch." These …

Restoring The Past: The Knitting Mills Of Logan, Utah Circa 1904, Marchet Clark

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Logan, Utah. 1904. I was not there. Nor could I have been.

A trim, clean-shaven businessman crosses dirt-packet Main Street in the cold sunlight of early morning. It's Monday, a new day, a new week for his knitting mill. He is tall and angular, wearing a brown suit and a round bowler hat. There's a look of determination in his eyes, a fixed state at unseen hurdles ahead. He must be to work early. The girls will be arriving soon. He must check the knitting machines, run over the inventory, count out cash for the register, and prepare for another …

Concepts Of Despair In Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, James Alan Finney

Honors Theses

This paper explores the concept of despair in Walker Percy's 1962 National Book Award winning novel The Moviegoer. It explores the philosophy of Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death as an important antecedent of the novel's portrayal of Binx Bolling's existential crisis. Additionally, the paper discusses Walker Percy's own thought about the devaluation of subjective experience in a modem scienctific world. Using these concepts as a vocabulary, the paper performs a reading of the text of the novel. The text asserts that the reader's own valuation of God and objectivity determine the possiblity or nonpossibility of Binx 's salvation by faith.

Richard Wright’S Native Son: An Examination Of Double-Consciousness And The African-American Quest For Identity., Linda Ann Ivory Johnson

Dissertations (Pre-2016)

None

Contents, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Nature And The Metropolis: Naturalism In Stephen Crane's City And Jack London's Wilderness, James Wade

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Tom Mack, Ph.D.

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Integration Of American History And American Literature, Diane Main

All Graduate Projects

The development of an integrated curriculum for American History and American Literature is presented. The purpose of this project is to integrate concepts from American History with the concepts typically taught in an American Literature course. This project is intended for use at the secondary level, specifically for use at Eisenhower High School, Yakima, Washington. Many feel that it is important for students to have the ability to transfer information from one area to another. It has also been deemed important that students are capable of critical thinking. The project that has been developed will help students do both.

Tests Of Poetry, Alan Filreis

Alan Filreis

Contribution to a forum convened by Robert von Hallberg to consider literary history as a method applied to poetry & poetics.

The Pilgrim And The Riddle: Father-Daughter Kinship In Anne Carson's "The Anthropology Of Water", Tanis Macdonald

Tanis MacDonald

Scholarly article discussing pilgrimage and mourning in Carson's "The Anthropology of Water."

[Introduction To] Growing Up In The South: An Anthology Of Modern Southern Literature, Suzanne W. Jones

Bookshelf

Something about the South has inspired the imaginations of an extraordinary number of America’s best storytellers—and greatest writers. That quality may be a rich, unequivocal sense of place, a living connection with the past, or the contradictions and passions that endow this region with awesome beauty and equally awesome tragedy. The stories in this superb collection of modern Southern writing are about childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood—in other words, about growing up in the South. Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” set in a South that remains segregated even after segregation is declared illegal, is the story of a …

Stephen King, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Stephen King, popularly known as “The King of Horror,” is one of the more prolific and successful writers of the twentieth century. Despite a reputation for writing only horror and gore, however, King has written works that do not qualify as either horror or supernatural but rather are thoughtful, intricate slices of human experience that often cause us to reflect on our own childhoods, not always with fond nostalgia. He encourages his readers to get in touch with their own memories of what being a child really means, and innocence has little to do with King's version of childhood. Believing …

Front Matter, Tom Mack,

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Unsinkable Edna: Critical Evolution And Cultural Revolution, Kristin Rabun

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 5 Fall 2003

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Stories Of Canada: National Identity In Late-Nineteenth-Century English-Canadian Fiction, Elizabeth Hedler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The search for a national identity has been a central concern of English-Canadian culture since the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. In the late nineteenth century, English-Canadian concerns about Canadian identity and the need for distinctively Canadian stories resulted in the creation of a body of fiction that attempted to define Canadian nationhood and identity by depicting Canadian scenes, people, and situations. In the late nineteenth century, writers of fiction focused on defining the impact of Canada's unique land and heritage upon Canadian identity. Based on an extensive reading of these novels, this dissertation explores the way …

Grace After Battle: World War One And The Poetry Of John Crowe Ransom, David A. Davis

The Kentucky Review

No abstract provided.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 8, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

Love, Violence, And Creation: Modernist Mediums Of Transcendence In Sylvia Plath's Poetry And Prose, Autumn Williams

Masters Theses

Many critics who study Sylvia Plath's works discuss the autobiographical significance of her poetry and prose, labeling her art as primarily confessional. My research shows that Sylvia Plath's awareness of and sensitivity to contemporary and historical cultural events, along with her acute sense of literary tradition, shape her art and widen the scope of critical interpretation. My study, although conceding that aspects of her writing are autobiographical, focuses on the modernist elements in her poetry and prose. By identifying her writing through the lens of modernism, I view her art in terms of its cultural, historical, political, and aesthetic qualities. …

Lacunae: Narrative "Lacks, Holes Or Gaps" In Faulkner's And Morrison's Novels, Phyllis Ann Karpus

Masters Theses

The moment a reader opens a book, turns to the opening lines and begins to read, a circular relationship immediately develops with the author and the text. An implied alliance is formed wherein the author, most often through a narrator, omniscient or otherwise, proposes to the reader that he/she accept a degree of responsibility for understanding the plot, theme, and the underlying meaning in the work.

Retrospectively the theory sounds simple and, with many authors, it is effective. William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, however, not only command but also demand, the reader's absolute attention in, and responsibility to, many of …

The Role Of Place In Malcolm Cowley's Blue Juniata And Exile's Return, Robert Pratte

Masters Theses

This study examines the various ways in which Malcolm Cowley develops and uses sense of place in his works Blue Juniata: Collected Poems and Exile's Return. Through examination of the literature, I identify four phases of place sense. Starting with childhood in the Identification phase, I illustrate the development of Cowley's place perspective through his poems and writings. As he moves through Adventure and Exile phases, I discuss their relation to the Identification phase and to each other. Likewise, I consider the role of the Nostalgia phase as a bridge from literary to experiential perception. Through close examination of his …

The Soldier's Strife: An Introspective View Through The Work Of Tim O'Brien, Mandy Solomon

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

"Aunt Em: Hate You! Hate Kansas! Taking The Dog. Dorothy": Conscious And Unconscious Desire In The Wizard Of Oz, Todd S. Gilman

Todd Gilman

Walt Whitman And New Biographical Criticism, Randall Knoper

Randall Knoper

No abstract provided.