Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Wendell Berry’S Cyclic Vision: Traditional Farming As Metaphor, Morris Allen Grubbs

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although Wendell Berry’s first book, a novel, appeared in 1960, he did not gain significant national attention until the publication of his nonfiction manifesto, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, in 1977. Since its publication, Berry has moved increasingly toward the prose of persuasion as he continues to sharpen his argument in support of a practical, continuous harmony between the human economy and Nature. His canon as a whole – the poems, essays, and novels – is an ongoing and thorough exploration of man’s use of and relationship to the land.

Arguing that the health of a culture …

The Short Fiction Of Bobbie Ann Mason: Exposing The Problems In American Society & Searching For Some Solutions, Melanie Allen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bobbie Ann Mason uses her fiction to portray the problems in American society. She devotes most of her time to average persons who are suffering from the rapid changes that society is going through. These characters at times seem lost and helpless, but ultimately they do not give up hope for a brighter future. Through social problems such as divorce, lack of communication, loss of identity and place, obsession with the past, submersion in rock music and TV, loss of ritual, proliferation of objects, lack of education, and the need to face mortality, these characters still seem to have hope …