Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …

Spirit Of The Mound: An Illustrated Story, Tom Montoya

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

This short story depicts the youthful trials and ambitions of rural dwellers and the daily celebratory aspects of life in northern New Mexico. The illustrations by Francisco LeFebre offer a visual panorama of the Wagon Mound, a unique natural formation, in Mora Country.

Re-Thinking The Weird (In The) West: Multi-Ethnic Literatures And The Southwest, Jana M. Koehler

English Language and Literature ETDs

My dissertation examines the genre of weird fiction, specifically texts that engage the concept of the Weird West. While authors such as Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft are often seen as the founders of this genre, I argue that ethnic and women writers, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ishmael Reed, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucha Corpi, and others, explore the hidden histories of the West and Southwest in ways that incite a rethinking of the weird. Most importantly, I seek to demonstrate how the weird is not only a literary genre but a literary aesthetic and methodology that women and …

Literature Review Of The Literary Term “Interpretation”, Lavonne J. Yazzie

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Chicana Feminist Acts: Re-Staging Chicano/A Theater From The Early Twentieth Century To The Present, Natalie M. Kubasek

English Language and Literature ETDs

Chicana Feminist Acts intervenes in the patriarchal forces that negate the historical presence and social agency of Chicanas on the stage of U.S. literature by recovering the transformative power of Chicana drama to enact feminist change. I position early playwrights Josephina Niggli, Estela Portillo Trambley and Teatro Chicana, alongside contemporary feminist playwright Cherríe Moraga, as part of the rich and varied history of feminist cultural production in the U.S. that challenges the systematic sexist oppression of Chicanas. My thesis is that Chicana theater stages a series of feminist “acts” that continuously re-stage Chicana subjectivity to resist fixed patriarchal and nationalist …

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Apostle To The Disillusioned, Paul Nicholas Pavich

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation deals with the role of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. as a popular literary hero. over the last ten years he has become increasingly significant, especially to the younger, college-age reader. From an unknown writer of short stories for "slick" magazines, he has developed into one of America's most prominent, controversial writers. He has branched out into other fields t notably television, the movies and the theater. This study will consider Vonnegut's total image as revealed in his novels and also in his non­ fiction works.

The introduction discusses the increasing attention which Vonnegut has received from both the popular …

Julian Hawthorne, Novelist Of The Real And The Supernatural: A Study Of Bressant, Archibald Malmaison, And A Fool Of Nature, Martha Mayes Park

English Language and Literature ETDs

Excerpt from introduction:

Hawthorne's attitude toward his own fiction was usually casual and commercial. He wrote rapidly, sometimes produc­ing several books a year. His first two novels, Bressant and Idolatry, show promise that was never achieved. He baffled the contemporary critics, for while his work was artistically superior to that of Edgar Fawcett and E. P. Roe, he used melodrama and supernatural machinery appealing to their followers. And he could not be tagged as a realist, despite his use of realistic and naturalistic elements, be­cause of all the romantic trappings. Nor did he venture often as far as Francis …

A Critical Appraisal Of The Fiction Of Jessamyn West, Ada Rutledge

English Language and Literature ETDs

This study of the fiction of Jessamyn West consists of an examination of a representative number of her published short stories and examines three books, The Friendly Persuasion, A Mirror for the Sky, and The Witch Diggers.

Portown, Mary Montague

English Language and Literature ETDs

It is the aim of this thesis to present the basis for a novel. The place and characters are introduced in Part I; stories about each of the characters are presented in Part II.

Wreath And Crystalis: Twenty-Two Poems And An Experiment, William A. Mcqueen

English Language and Literature ETDs

Original poems and a short story by the author.

Expressions Of Nationalism In The Poetry Of The Texas Republic, Edgar Warren Smith Jr.

English Language and Literature ETDs

It will be the primary purpose of this thesis to prove that the thinking and writing, especially the writing of poetry, during the period of the Texas Republic express a nationalism which stems from the separate, national feeling in which Texans had after they declared their independence from Mexico. In order to carry through this research the writer intends to study the poetry for the period 1836 to 1845 in so far as it is available for the study.

The writer believes that the Republicans felt their independence, their national separateness from any other nation, their position among the nations …

Trends In The Treatment Of Women In Fiction, 1890-1910, Gertrude M. Richards

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis proposes to examine six novels of the period 1890-1910 for evidence of new trends in the treatment of women in fiction and for signs of social criticism. The novels chosen are major works of representative British and American realists and naturalists. The authors to be considered, Thomas Hardy, Stephen Crane, George Moore, George Gissing, Theodore Dreiser, and Arnold Bennett, were writers who, in varying degrees, came under the influence of the Continental writers who were the cause of the aforementioned controversy.

Literary Tendencies In The Short Story, Harper's Magazine, 1850-1870, Marguerite Leahy

English Language and Literature ETDs

The short story is a peculiarly American contribution to the field of literature. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, while at the beginning presenting stories mainly from English authors, did not refuse them from other sources, and French as well as German writers were included among the contributors.

During the first decade covered by this study, the author [of a short story] was rarely mentioned, and a great deal of research was involved to ascertain this information. After 1860 due credit was given the author in every instance. Despite their many imperfections, these early stories did form a bridge from the …

Trends In Form In Recent Women Poets, Carl C. Nelson

English Language and Literature ETDs

The purpose of this study is to determine the tendencies of contemporary women poets as to verse, form, rhythm, and meter. The study was based on the 1936 publication of Henry Harrison's Contemporary American Women Poets. None of these poems had appeared in any other anthology. It was made up from books printed by thirty-nine publishers and two hundred nine periodicals.

Sara Teasdale: Her Life And Work, Virginia Mcknight

English Language and Literature ETDs

This study of Sara Teasdale was made not only in an attempt to learn more about her as a woman and as a poet but try to relate the two, to explain why she wrote the type of poetry which she did, why some of her poems express such a joyous love of life and others such as disillusionment. The latter expression is more understandable when the facts of her life are known. The studies of her imagery and stanzaic forms aid in forming an opinion of her ability as a poet and also tend to characterize her as a …

Character Types Of The Southwest As Delineated In New Mexico Fiction And Presented In Such Order As To Show The Development Of This State, Bonnidell Sisson Roberts

English Language and Literature ETDs

To present to the reader the development of New Mexico as portrayed in its widely varied character types, and to show its Empire Builders through the mirror of fiction is the goal in which this thesis has in view.

A secondary purpose will be accomplished if, by means of the excerpts presented, interest in reading the books in their entirety shall lead to a broader knowledge of the growing bibliography of Southwestern fiction.