History Commons^™

Oedipus' Wake: The (Neo-)Masculinization Of The Self In Late Twentieth-Century American Women's Memoir, Thomas Johnson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Without pretensions to exhaustiveness, this study briefly examines the mid- to late-twentieth-century flowering of western theory and criticism built around autobiographical writing and follows the feminist branch(es) of that theory and criticism through a reading of the following four memoirs: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, All the Lost Girls by Patricia Foster, Lying by Lauren Slater, and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as they relate to literature, I argue that the selves these four women write in their memoirs are not selves built around the model historically set for women by …

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 …

Samuel Butler’S Way Of All Flesh As A Sociological Novel, David Carter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

To scholars of Victorian literature, Samuel Butler has always been a rebel who strikes out at society with wide-ranging criticism. After years of studying subjects as varied as music, art, biology, literature, and theology, Butler felt (like many Victorian writers) that he could make valuable social comments with his satires, travelogues, biological studies and one novel.

Critical studies of Butler have tended to treat in broad outline all facets of his life and work. This study, however, examines in depth Butler’s novel The Way of All Flesh, as the focal point of his critical analysis of Victorian society. It treats …

Jane Austens' Attitude Toward The Position Of Women, Carol Burford

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Jane Austen's attitude toward the position of middle-class women at the end of the eighteenth century is examined in the context of her life and thought and the women characters in her six novels. Comparisons are made with the position of women today regarding marriage, work, and the goals of the women's liberation movement. Jane Austen shared with feminists a recognition of the need for self-fulfillment. Because she was a realist, she provided fulfillment for her heroines through the only vehicle that was available to most women of her time--marriage. The solution she worked out for satisfying this need in …

Parallelisms In Attitude Of Vietnam Veterans & Veterans Of The Indian Wars As Reflected In Memoirs & Oral Traditions, Charles Martin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Oral narratives of Vietnam War veterans, collected at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, were paralleled to the written narratives of the Indian War soldiers abstracted from existing diaries, journals and autobiographies. A statistical analysis was applied to the Vietnam War texts to discern the attitudes of the informants as a group. Informants' attitudes towards the enemy and the enemy's guerrilla fighting style were shown to be similar to the attitudes of the Indian War soldiers in both areas. Both sets of similar attitudes resulted in high levels of frustration which produced occasional atrocities. By the application of folklore and folklore fieldwork, in …

Some Aspects Of Nineteenth Century American Folk Life As Reflected In The Shaker Journals Of South Union, Kentucky, Jean Thomason

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study will describe many of these practices which have been recorded in the journals of the society at South Union and will identify origins, similarities and differences as they relate to the practices of the people of the surrounding geographic region.

Kentucky Schools In Fiction, Mariema Rowlison

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

There have been many reports made on education in Kentucky since it became a state, but these factual reports are one-dimensional. They present the known, concrete facts, but do not give the true picture any more than flat drawings of a landscape is a true representation of the beauty and feeling of the landscape itself. In this study of the reflection of the schools of Kentucky in the mirror of fiction I have tried to present the scene in perspective, to give it color and to add the fourth dimension of human character.

The Development Of The English Curriculum At Western Kentucky State Teachers College, Dorthie Hall

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study is to trace the development of the English curriculum and its related activities at the Western Kentucky State Teachers College. This development is not the product of the years 1906-1943 exclusively, during which time Western Kentucky State Teachers College has been a chartered stated institution, because the school that became Western Kentucky Normal School in 1906 had been growing for some thirty years.

Stephen Collins Foster & His Folk-Songs, Mary Chisholm

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Every American knows some of Stephen Collins Foster's songs, but not everyone who sings My Old Kentucky Home and Old Folks at Home realizes that it was he who wrote those songs. Of the two hundred songs and compositions which Foster published, at least fifteen are constantly sung. Since these songs voice emotions which are fundamental to mankind, they have become more important than the composer himself. For this reason they may be called folk-songs, and because they voice so truly the spirit of America, America is proud to claim them as her own.

The title of this thesis, Stephen …

Young Ewing Allison, Mary Shutt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Probably no other period in American history has been more productive of romance, strife, bravery, aggressiveness, and conflicting ideas of thought than the period from 1850 to 1865.

One who was fortunate enough to be born in the early years of that period, would have been old enough by 1865 for those various experiences to have branded his future life. Young E. Allison was so fortunate. He was born in Henderson, Kentucky, on December 23, 1853 and was named after his father, who was county judge and county clerk.

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.

Alice Hegan Rice, Lena Collins Ellis

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Biography of Alice Hegan Rice, author from Louisville, Kentucky.

Lucy Furman: Life & Works, Julia Neal

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Four years subsequent to the close of the great conflict between the North and the South there was born in the neutral state of Kentucky, a roman who was destined to serve with great earnestness and to immortalize with great talent the mountain people of her native state. It is through a sympathetic portrayal of the characteristics of the Southern Highlanders that she has achieved an enviable place as a local color writer in American letters.

Nancy Huston Banks: Her Life & Works, Velma Hines

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Several books have been written about the various natural resources of the state of Kentucky. A number of excellent histories of the state have been published with descriptions of the pioneer and outlaw days when the state numbered its inhabitants by the very few thousands. The industrial, economic, and social activities of the Kentucky people have been written about for several years. But Kentucky literature has had practically no recognition. The average person has known very little about Kentucky writers who probably have deserved to be placed among those in the Hall of Fame. From the pen of Kentucky writers …