English Language and Literature Commons^™

Chinese American Images In Selected Children's Fiction For Kindergarten Through Sixth Grade, Laureen Chew

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate Chinese American images in selected children's fiction to determine whether or not data support the position of the Council on Interracial Books for Children, that the works of fiction studied tend to stereotype Chinese Americans.

After reading the selected fifteen works of fiction, a criterion checklist was devised by the investigator to examine the behavior and lifestyle of Chinese Americans depicted in a variety of circumstances. validity of the criterion checklist was established by a panel of experts in the area of Chinese American studies. Inter-rater reliability was determined by two readers …

Pound's Use Of Merlin As Persona In The 'Rock Drill Cantos', Caryl J. North

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Ezra Pound wrote Cantos 85 to 95, Section: Rock Drill, while imprisoned in St. Elizabeth’s, a mental hospital in Washington, D.C. This section was first published in 1956, to be followed by the final Cantos (95-109) in 1958. The source for the title Rock Drill was an abstract sculpture cast in gunmetal by Sir Jacob Epstein as part of the Vorticist exhibition of 1915. In Pound’s eyes, this sculpture provided “a central metaphor,... [signifying] his own constant effort to drive home the ideas upon which the right kind of society rests.” In fact, Wyndham Lewis wrote a review of Pound’s …

Pincher Martin': Symbolism Serving Fable., Dianne Lucille Braley Runion

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

All three of Golding’s first novels make dark comment on what they show, but of the treem Pincher Martin, ostensibly the darkest, offers the most hope. Although “the protagonist’s particular history of guilt and greed is intended to stand as a fable for contemporary man,” man (and Pincher) could choose not to turn away from God. That choice, however, demands faith or vision. If, as Baker points out, “the final chapters intentionally contradict the reality shown in the narrative - and thus expose the fallibility of the rational point of view,” they also morally direct the reader’s vision, helping him …

The Genesis And Development Of "Parker's Back", Kara Pratt Brewer

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

”Parker’s Back” is the last short story Flannery O'Connor wrote before the ravaging disease Lupus took her life in August of 1964. When Caroline Gordon visited her “in a hospital a few weeks before her death,” she spoke of her concern about finishing it. “She told me that the doctor had forbidden her to do any work. He said that it was all right to write a little friction, though, she added with a grin and drew a notebook from under her pillow. She kept it there she told me and was trying to finish a story which she hoped …

The Composite Art Of Blake's "Laughing Song", William Robert Warner

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

During the past five years, the literary critics have discovered William Blake, helping readers to understand clearly the various stages of development and the final form of the poet's entire mythology. And recent criticism has also clarified and expressed more systematically than earlier criticism certain features of Blake's total thought. Nevertheless, much recent criticism has hindered rather than helped the serious student of Blake's poetry.] Most critics treat Blake's poems as if they were only literary, completely avoiding discussion of their visual components. Yet, Blake clearly envisioned and intended that his reader view the poetry as a new form consisting …

Katherine Anne Porter : A Change In Her Mexican Perspective, Mario Paris-Fernandez

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Katherine Anne Porter regards Mexico as her "familiar country." lndeed, Mexico in the art of this gifted American writer is more important than generally believed for, as William Nance says, "Mexico entered into her earliest work as both motivating force and subject matter."

Miss Porter has traveled extensively in Mexico and lived there on several occasions. Her highly developed artistic sensibility has allowed her to gain more than a mere familiarity with the country, its inhabitants, and its history. Naturally, her deep knowledge of the culture is reflected in her artistic production, part of which is devoted exclusively to Mexico. …

The Wide World Of Jack London, Howard Lawrence Lachtman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The high apostle of the adventure tale in the Strenuous Age, Jack London has never really relinquished the popularity which made him before his death one of the best known and, most widely read writers in the world. It is true that more than one pontiff of literary taste has consigned him to the same, "obsolete" file that contains the remains of Richard Harding Davis, David Graham Phillips, William Sidney Porter, but such reports of London's demise have undoubtedly been premature. Indeed, the contemporary momentum of Jack London studies affords excellent evidence of the critical rediscovery of an American legend. …

The Five Old Testament Plays Of The Chester Cycle: A Paradigm Of Salvation-History, Richard Floyd Norlin

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

During the nineteenth century critics looked upon the English medieval cycle drama, or "Corpus Christi plays" as colorful folk art, having value to antiquarians but not meriting systematic critical attention. Consequently, the plays were treated chiefly from the standpoint of literary history. In more recent decades scholars have been making a fresh effort to understand and judge the Corpus Christi cycles as coherent works of religious dramatic art.

Of the four English cycles extant in manuscript---from Chester, York, Wakefield, and Lincoln·-- the cycle at Chester, though considered by some to be crude and simple, is widely regarded as the most …

Transformational Technique In Gabriel Fielding's "In The Time Of Greenbloom", May Grant Robbie

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Gabriel Fielding's In the Time of Greenbloom is a major twentieth century novel that has received literary critical attention. With its dramatic plot and colorful characters, it has an immediate surface appeal for most readers. The novel requires deeper, symbolical reading in order to reach its central theme, man's potential for transformation.

John Blaydon, the protagonist, is a very different young man at the end of the novel from the child he is at the beginning. His activities, the narrative base of the novel, reveal more than the external events of his life. Fielding uses them as objectification of confrontations …

Conrad's "Nostromo" And The Imagery Of Despair, Terry Lane Kimble

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Conrad ' s significance as a major novelist having been well established by the present time , one may justly turn attention to a consideration of whether Nostromo, his masterpiece, deserves the paradoxical ranking critics generally accord it as a flawed and essentially inexplicable work of genius . Nostromo is the focus of the present study, which establishes by extensive analysis that Conrad employs a complex imagistic technique, manifesting thereby not only thematic content but also compositional method. Basic to this technique is the tend ency to view a subject in terms of polarities , around which to cluster images …

The Indian Captivity Narrative: An American Genre, Richard Van Der Beets

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The vast body of Indian captivity narratives is known mostly to historians, anthropologists, and collectors of Americana. In the rare instances where informed scholarship has turned its attention to the narratives, emphasis has been upon the historical and cultural rather than the literary value of the tales. The Indian captivity narrative has been most commonly viewed as but a thread in the loose fabric of American cultural history, consisting of several "popular," sub-literary genres shaped and differentiated largely by the society for which the narratives were intended. The intention in this study is not so much to overturn that view …

A Study Of Reflectors And Reflections In Four Stories By Flannery O'Connor, William Leo Maffini

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Throughout her fiction, Flannery O' Connor uses character reflections to present mirror analogues. The recurrence of these mirror analogues inspired me to look deeper into her fiction for analogues that might superficially appear to be unrelated and dissimilar. I found that in addition to her more obvious reflections there was another whole set of what I term reflectors that have the same function of pointing up traits or corresponding characteristics between characters by dwelling upon their dissimilarities. For the sake of convenience I have divided the mirror analogues in O'Connor's fiction into two categories: reflectors and reflections.

The Rise And Fall Of Dick Diver : The Intricate Destiny Of A Spoiled Priest, Wendy Martin Seeger

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

In his general plan for Tender Is The Night, Fitzgerald delineates Dick Diver as "a natural idealist, a spoiled priets, givin in for various causes to the idea of the haute bourgeoise [sic] and ih his rise to the top of the social world losing his idealism, his talent and turning to drink and dissipation."¹

The rise and fall of Dick Diver is the central concern of Tender Is The Night, and an analysis of the novel reveals that Fitzgerald meticulously arranged the details of Diver's intricate destiny. Many readers of the novel, however, were unable to understand the …

A Critical Analysis Of The Characters Of Isabel And Madame Merle And Their Conflict In Henry James's The Portrait Of A Lady, Thomas Raymond Alderson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The opening scene of The Portrait of a Lady takes place upon the broad, sunlit lawns of Gardencourt. Yet, even in this expansive setting, the most essential character in the novel, the protagonist, is, curiously, no more than a narrow, shadowy speculation symbolized by a few odd words found in a telegram of dubious value. The only worth of these words comes in the amount of curiosity they can arouse in the other characters and in the reader. For it appears that, with this slow but significantly unusual means of introducing Isabel, the author intends her for more than a …

Sinclair Lewis : Leader Of The Conflict With Conformity In Three Novels (Main Street, Babbitt, And Arrowsmith) 1920-1925, Albert Edwin Davenport

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the conflict with conformity in three novels of Sinclair Lewis from 1920 to 1925. It is also the intention of this paper to identify Sinclair Lewis as the leader of the conflict - with - conformity movement of this period.

A Historical Survey And Evaluation Of The Most Prominent Theories That Shakespeare Did Not Write The Works Attributed To Him, Lola Vida Johnson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The question of the authorship of the plays, poems, and sonnets traditionally attributed to the pen if William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon has now been before the public for over one hundred years. Many of the most noted poets, playwrights, and nobles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been assigned the authorship of these works. The controversy can be compared to the controversy over Homer’s authorship. In 1975, Friederick Augustus Wolf proposed that Homer did not write The Iliad and The Odyssey. By 1900, Wolf had been disproven, but the question was one of great importance when it was first …

A History Of Morocco In Anglo-American Literature 1892-1957, Robert G. Wagner

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Although several studies exist in French on the French and English literature of Morocco up to the twentieth century, nothing of a similar nature is extant for books on the country in English. Moreover, no previous study included twentieth century English and American books. A survey of the serious works on Morocco reveals that that country has been generally neglected by American and English scholars as an area for Investigation.

The Heroes Of Byron: A Study Of Their Origin, Development, And Meaning In The Poetry Of George Gordon, Lord Byron, Robert Lester Thomas

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Lord Byron was very much concerned with the problems of immortality and fame. Perhaps his greatest single theme in poetry is human greatness. An especial aspect of human greatness, namely of heroes in spirit and in action, is, of course, one of the most permanent and best known features of Byron's poetry, the creation of the Byronic hero" being one of the poet's most outstanding contribu- tions to world literature. This study is concerned with all of the heroes Lord Byron created. It is to be a study of their origin, development, and meaning in the poetry of Byron. Lord …

The Relation Between The Poetic Concept And Autobiographical Memory In The Works Of Thomas Wolfe, Douglas Carell Taylor

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Thomas Wolfe's literary output includes four long novels and a vast number of short stories and poems. In addition to this he left a great deal of manuscript which is still in the process of being examined and assorted. His four long novels have drawn the greatest attention, for it is in these that he has done his finest and most provocative work. In each one Wolfe is the central figure, and through his eyes we are allowed to see the world as he saw it. It is because of this that the charges of egotism, paranoia tendencies, genius, immaturity, …

El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote De La Mancha, Dorothy Flammer

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This book is being edited at the suggestion of colleagues who feel a great need for a Spanish reader with the the following qualifications:

1. A good connected story from Spanish Literature
2. Subject matter suitable for adolescents
3. Sufficiently simple for use in Beginning Spanish

This is an edited version of Part One, and consequently is simplified and cut. Many authorities prefer to wait until students get to college so that they may be introduced to the great masterpiece in its original. In as much as the average high school student does not take more than two years of Spanish, this system …

Prototypes Of Meredithian Characters, Esther N. Herseth

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

"If a man's work is to be of value the best of him must be in it," wrote George Meredith to Mrs. J. B. Gilman of Concord, Massachusetts. To this credo he subscribed during this long career as a writer. The rare gifts of a richly endowed nature he brought to his work, for he was a philosopher, a poet, a humorist, and a subtle psychologist. The characters he created in his novels add much to his merit as a writer and it is with the delineation of certain of these characters and their prototypes in actual life, that I …

Modern Youth And Literature (With Emphasis Upon Creative Education), Ralph Westerman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

In writing a thesis dealing with such an amazingly wide subject as modern youth one is staggered by the quantities of material that one must read. It is true that most of the research work concerning the young American is propaganda of one kind of another: someone must prove that youth is degenerate; or someone must prove that youth is god-like. Between these two extremes much has been written in an attempt to prove that youth is simply youth--little or no different from the youth of any other age. It is all very illuminating and it is all a bit …