Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Ua12/2/1 Hillside, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

Special magazine edition of the College Heights Herald:

• Anna, Cara. Keeping the Balance – Ralph Willard, Kevin Willard, Basketball
• Armes, Anya. Giving the Gift to Others – Jim Wayne Miller

The Right Hand Of Light: Dark And Light Imagery In The Science Fiction Of Ursula K. Le Guin, Patricia Lynn Keister

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Ursula K. Le Guin uses dark and light imagery to emphasize her theme of dynamic equilibrium. This theme can be found throughout her work; the novels discussed are The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, and The Beginning Place. In each novel, Le Guin focuses on a different aspect of dynamic equilibrium. The themes are respectively, gender identity, chaos and order, and the individual versus the community. The final novel, The Beginning Place, unites and sums up all three themes. In each novel, one or more main characters suffers from imbalance …

Ua51/1/4 Soky Book Fair Scrapbook, Wku University Libraries

WKU Archives Records

Scrapbook of clippings and photographs documenting the 1993 SOKY Book Fair.

The Southern Misfit And The Dream Of Escape In The Fiction Of Carson Mccullers And Flannery O’Connor, Tammy Oberhausen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The misfit and the dream of escape are popular motifs in American literature, particularly in the literature of the South. Critical studies of works employing these themes have largely ignored the connection between the two. The Southern misfit – the Southerner who fails to or refuses to conform to his society’s strict standards – often dreams of escaping the restrictions of the South for some Northern “promised land.” In the works of two Georgia writers, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, the related themes receive different treatments. Carson McCullers’s misfits in the novels The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The …

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 …

O. Henry’S Use Of Stereotypes In His New York City Stories: An Example Of The Utilization Of Folklore In Literature, Martin Ostrofsky

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Stereotyping is a folkloristic process which permits people to reduce the complexities of the real world into simplified, abstract terms. O. Henry one of America’s most popular short story writers, made generous use of stereotypes in his stories. By examining O. Henry’s use of stereotypes, insight may be gained into the essential role which folklore often plays in creative literature. Stereotypes greatly influence the composition, function and reception of O. Henry’s work. O. Henry’s personal habits and circumstances demanded that he produce a prolific stream of short stories which would have the greatest popular appeal. Clever manipulation of stereotypes permitted …

Caroline Gordon: A Sense Of Place, Frances Perdue

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Place, as it transcends the immediate setting of a work, is an essential element of Caroline Gordon’s early novels. She looks to the past and to the region of her birth to focus on the traditional South. She shows her characters’ changing attitudes toward the Cavalier Myth, a view that promotes the value of the land, the patriarchal family, and an anachronistic code of honor. To them, the South is unique, and they resist all efforts to change this “given social order.” However, Gordon begins to recognize that change is inevitable. Thus, she reveals her characters’ succumbing to the rising …

The Three Bartlebys Of Melville’S Tale, Gail M. Kienitz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A study of any one of Herman Melville’s works is bound to be a fascinating and informative venture. Within the products of his prolific writing career are keen, precise, enlightening observations about nineteenth-century America. Religion, politics, business, literature, and philosophy are all within the realm of Melville’s careful consideration. Melville was a man who reacted to his world with intense curiosity and passion. Melville was also extremely introspective – searching, questioning, and examining himself with equal intensity.

“Bartleby the Scrivener” offers an interesting synthesis of Melville’s double vision. Within the confines of this tale are Melville’s reaction to his world …

Ua12/2/1 L'Esprit, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

A special edition of the College Heights Herald featuring student and faculty poets:

• Halicks, Richard. The Thunder Stick
• Surface, David. Witness
• Pierson, Don. Nostalgic Impressions Dig Nasty Holes
• Shanklin, Tip. Flood Stage
• Stephens, A.T. (For Bill Stafford)
• Miller, Jim. Skydivers
• Norris, Randy. Birdbrains
• Puter, A. Com. Thrilled Me Quoth the Raven . . . Nevermore
• Halicks, Richard. I, Robot
• Miller, Jim. Diver
• Norris, Randy. Reflections on a Kite
• Vessels, Shriley. Marigolds
• Newbolt, Denise. Dolphins
• Halicks, Richard. Mr. Infinity, the Tomorrow Master
• Moffeit, Tony. Queen of Spades
• Halicks, Richard. Dismantling the Trojan Horse

An Analysis Of The Themes Of Guilt And Atonement In The Writings Of Tennessee Williams, James Curry

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The themes of guilt and atonement have been analyzed in selected writings of Tennessee Williams. Research concerning these two themes has been developed simultaneously with Williams’s concept of the universe and man. Many of Williams’s characters seek a form of atonement or purification for their guilt which has arisen due to their “incompleteness and unnatural desires.” Williams’s basic concept concerning the universe is that it is fragmented, a universe not completed by its Creator. Consequently, Williams envisions man and his nature to be likewise incomplete. It is this incompletion in man which causes him to have “unnatural desires,” labeled as …

Work And The Family: Themes In The Plays Of Arthur Miller, Sue Parsons

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The study is divided into four parts, the first three having to do with the family and the last with work. The first section outlines the relationships of family members, including their attitudes toward themselves, toward each other, and toward society. The next two have to do with “Responsibility” as viewed by the family, and the need for “Stability” within the home and outside it. The final section examines the jobs held by Miller’s characters, their attitudes toward those jobs, and the extent to which an occupation helps to influence the characters and their familial relationships. A close discussion of …

A Great Debate In Poetic Theory: Brooks, Wheelwright, Crane & Olson, Janice Carrell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Elder Olson has said that at the Biblical Tower of Babel the people did not begin to talk nonsense but only what seemed like nonsense. This paper concerns an intellectual tower where important debates are held, but unfortunately the language is not a universal one; therefor, because all too often terms have evolved without adequate definition, disagreement occurs where reconciliation appears impossible.

The very title of this thesis could be misleading to the reader if he considers debate in its formal sense. What is here intended is the controversy in the efforts of respected scholars to understand and establish the …

A Comparative Study Of Existential Attitudes In John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers And Norman Mailer’S The Naked And The Dead, Vernon Knuckles Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis is devoted primarily to examining existential factors present in Three Soldiers and The Naked and the Dead, but it is evident that naturalism and Marxism make their presence known in both novels. Three Soldiers and The Naked and the Dead suggest through their existential overtones that indeed existentialism is a vital force which is clearly exerting itself in twentieth-century literature.

This study supports the viewpoint of a growing number of modern authors’ works which have concentrated on the individual’s struggle to find meaning and fulfillment in a complex world – a world of nuclear devices, campus unrest, …

Folk Elements In The Fiction Of James Still, Edith Walker

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study attempts to complement earlier studies of Still’s literary art such as that of Dean Cadle and Katherine Craf by pointing out the integral use of folk elements in his fiction. The methodology combined field studies with investigation of the works of folklorists and historians and novelists whose writings center around the same general region as do those of Still

For the purposes of this study “folk elements” will denote the orally transmitted traditions of the common people of a particular region. In this case, the “folk” are a rural people who have remained relatively stable for several generations …

Moral And Spiritual Values In A High School Anthology Of Literature, Terrence Eugene Kelsay

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

For some years now the need for the emphasis of moral and spiritual values in our public schools has been recognized by the Kentucky Department of Education. The department has given encouragement to numerous research projects and summer workshops held for the purpose of finding an answer to the problem of emphasizing moral and spiritual values in public education. The concern for this need has informally become known as the “Kentucky Movement.”

This study was not undertaken with the thought of introducing new programs in our high schools. The teaching of moral and spiritual values should be done through the …

The Kentucky Novels Of James Lane Allen, Hessie Brister Ivey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Kentucky, following in the footsteps of her parent state, Virginia, has given to America some of her most distinguished statesmen. She gave to the Confederacy its only president, Jefferson Davis, and to the Federal Union its war president, Abraham Lincoln. Housed in a noble pile of imperishable granite, on its exact original site, near Hodgenville, the humble log cabin in which Lincoln was born is now preserved as a national shrine. At Fairview a towering obelisk marks the birthplace of Jefferson Davis.

These two statesmen were born, one year between them, of the same pioneering stock. One moved north of …

Edward Eggletson: Sources And Backgrounds Of His Novels, Anne Barnes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Since Edward Eggleston’s materials for his Hoosier novels are based upon his own experiences and observations, it is necessary to know something of him in his actual environment. To understand how the events and conditions equipped him to be the fictional historian of this part of the Middle West, a rapid survey of his biography is essential.