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Affirmation And Futility: A Study Of Jack London's Vision Of Struggle In Selected Klondike Works, William D. Baines

Student Work

The period initiated by the Civil War and terminated by the turn of the century was a time of marked growth and change in the United States. Industrialism, a relatively significant factor in the national makeup prior to the war, was greatly stimulated by the event and was by 1900 a dominant force in the country, making its affect felt in all phases of the American experience. During this period of shifting national emphasis, the United States came to know the poverty of the industrial masses and the blight and overcrowding of urban centers sired by the necessity of industry. …

Anne Bronte And The Religious Novel In The Early Nineteenth Century, Sharon Anderson

Student Work

To the introspective, sensitive, religious individual, the opening years of the 19th century must have indeed appeared to be a “Fire-Whirlwind” in which destruction in creation were simultaneous and immediate. It was an era of religious transition and uncertainty. The traditional religious beliefs and values were rapidly crumbling, in new currents of thought proliferated. Writing in 1884, J. A. Froude recalled that the first half of the century had been “an era of new ideas, of swift if silent spiritual revolution…. All were agreed to have done with compromise and conventionalities…. The present generation which has grown up in an …

The Interwar And Post-War Humor Of James Thurber, Kenneth Covey Flint

Student Work

Formally speaking, comedy dates back as far as tragedy, to the beginning of drama in late sixth and early fifth century B. C. Athens. There, comedy's early development paralleled that of tragedy, which in later years would receive considerable critical attention. Comedy began in a far from quiet way with “the vestiges of a broken-down ritual plot, with parabasis (or village processional song), agon (or dispute), iambic lampoon, actors, animal costumes, and scenes of Megoric Dorian farce”—all the makings of the more contemporary circus. In a quite well-ordered way it preceded through what critics have called “Old Comedy,” “Middle Comedy,” …

The American Success Myth: A Study Of The American Dream In Five Plays, Yoshiko Tanaka

Student Work

Thus, long ago a Norse mother sang to her son. In every land, in every age, success has been man's common goal. But “success,” so universally soft, has not always had the same meaning for everyone: to some it meant a religious or spiritual achievement; to some it meant an intellectual achievement; to some, physical powers or military victory; still to others success was a social or political goal. Each of these views of success has been strongly affected by the cultural background of the individual who sought to succeed in the society of which he was a part.

The Elizabethan Lady: A Dichotomy Between Courtesy Book And Drama, Irene Cannon Smith

Student Work

The word “woman” is not an easy one to define, for no possible combination of words can capture the essence of sprit of a real woman; nor is woman herself easy to understand. She has been known both as man’s curse and his beloved blessing since time began.

Exploratory Archeology At Holmes' Fort, The Blockhouse, And Jail Redoubt At Ninety Six, Stanley South

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Innovative Instructional Materials For Eighth Grade English, Mary Lou Clerf

All Master's Theses

This study was undertaken for the purpose of reviewing current literature and developing new instructional materials suitable for classroom use by teachers of eighth grade English.

The Earth Image Of Thomas Hardy, Linda Lewis

Student Work

In the world of Thomas Hardy the individual who finds himself caring greatly for life is the same individual who must suffer the delusion of having his pilgrimage fail. In the conclusion of the short poem “For Life I Had Never Cared Greatly” the poet-novelist implies that, in spite of his better judgment in knowing that he is destined for misfortune, he cannot help becoming involved in living. Even though men are usually doomed to suffering, it is the ignoble life that does not make the effort to live; it is the heroic life that attempts in vain a worthwhile …

Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" : A Study Of Three Lyrical Figures., Jean Shannon Boatright

Student Work

Introduction: “Narrative as a disguised lyric, the novel as a borrowed label for the experimentations of poetic spirits to express their feeling of self and world; this was a specifically German and romantic matter, here I felt immediately a common heritage and guilt,”1 In this way Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse characterized his own novels at the midpoint of his career. And though The Glass Bead Game, published over twenty years later, when compared with Hesse’s other work appears perhaps farthest from such a description, “narrative as a disguised lyric” still serves as a useful key for examining Hesse's last and …

In The Beanstalk Country: A Study Of Ritualistic Violence In Three Plays Of Tennessee Williams, Peter J. Vaccaro

Student Work

As Jack approached the beanstalk he left behind the world of the common and the real. His ascent to hell was the quest to expel the ogre that governed the land of the lost and the mad, of the violent in the damned. The fall of the ogre, achieved in an act of consumate violence, was necessary for Jack's return to the world of the real, and for liberation of the mankind which the ogre threatened. Violence was necessary for expiation, atonement and freedom, and it is in the scene that Jack's action is judged heroic.

An Analysis Of Love Themes In The Orlando Furioso, Dolph Duane Johnson

Student Work

The reader of literary criticism soon discovers that there exists a multiplicity of critical terms. While some terminology the critics employ entertain vague meanings at best or have different applications by various writers, and systematic analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of a poem requires a critical structure specifically devised for that purpose in which the critical terms are defined precisely and in which the critical assumptions used for analysis, evaluation, and interpretation are stated clearly.

Excavating The Fortified Area Of The 1670 Site Of Charles Towne, South Carolina, Stanley South

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Romeo And Juliet As A Dramatized Sonnet, Maxine Elizabeth Crain

Student Work

In An Apology for Poetry, Sidney repeats the ancient dictum that poesy in an “art of imitation.” He continues by explaining that poesy is essentially “a speaking picture” with an end to teach and delight. This conception of literature was not confined to the study of poetry. The writers of emblem books, common from the medieval allegory writers to the metaphysical, suggest that painting is even dumb poetry. This is not necessarily a confusion of genres, but it says something about the basic premise of this paper. The sonnet tradition and what Shakespeare wrote in his sonnet sequence, particularly Sonnets …

Renaissance Kings-Mirror Literature: The Dual Vision, Andrea Doerr

Student Work

Since man has lived in some semblance of organized society, whether banding together out of need for protection or for fellowship, he has felt a need for some form of government. Who rules? How is he selected? What powers does he have? What are his obligations to his subjects? In many primitive societies, such decisions were made on the basis of strength and brutality, which the victor becoming the ruler until someone stronger could grasp authority for himself, only to struggle consistently to remain in power. In many cases the oldest person ruled, judged to be the wisest by virtue …

Prophets Of Doom: The Views Of Jonathan Swift And George Orwell, Mardelle J. Susman

Student Work

Although some two hundred years remove them from one another, English satirist Johnathan Swift and Eric Hugh Blair (George Orwell) share a close literary kinship. Swift, the eighteenth-century author of the world classic Gulliver’s Travels, is generally recognized as the superior of the two, since he possesses the distinguished reputation of the Enlightenment man who rubbed elbows with other recognized greats, such as Alexander Pope, John Gray, Addison and Steele. Orwell, a twentieth-century man, and the son of an English soldier perhaps has not yet arrived at the same height of greatness. The author of seven novels and an essayist …

A Look At The Neb-Ot, Alfred Von Rohr Sauer, Frederick W. Danker

Concordia Theological Monthly

A reviewer of the New English Bible (NEB) is inclined to compare this text with that of the 18-year-old Revised Version (RSV) and the new Jerusalem Bible. Before he compares these three versions, he needs to note the difference in backgrounds in each case. The RSV is, of course, not a new translation, but as the name indicates, it is a revision of the old King James Version. Its purpose is to bring the Authorized Version up-to-date, modernizing words and phrases that might not be intelligible to the reader of the 20th century.

A Study Of Zillah High School's Individualized English Program For The School Year 1969-1979, Seth T. Tweedy

All Master's Theses

This thesis suggests curriculum and structural changes in the high school English classes at Zillah High School, Yakima, WA based on current research in education.

Webster's Dark Vision, Dianne Fox

Student Work

In a recent article in The Saturday Review. Edward Albee said, “Art is not escape; it is engagement.” Although he was speaking about modern theatre, it applies to the drama of all times. It is difficult to divorce a play from its environment and still expect to receive the total impact it once produced. On the other hand, it is not enough for a play to have relevance to its own time; if our age is not read, it must also speak to our sensibilities.

Eros And Miss Austen: A Selective Mythologycal Explication Of Jane Austen's Major Novels, Robert L. Corey

Student Work

A few words about method are in order before approaching Jane Austen’s six major novels with a critical method which, although frequently misunderstood or too hastily dismissed as just another tangential pseudo-science, proffers rather to the discriminating reader a critical tool of immense value moving centripetally toward deeper levels of meaning and archaic significance not only in the creative and individual powers of the artist but with the central collective myth-making and ritual of the human community as well.

The Utopian Tradition: A Comparison Of "The Republic" And "Utopia" With James Hilton's 'Lost Horizon", Laurence J. Sokol

Student Work

Utopia -- the concept more than the word -- has captured the imagination and fostered the hopes of men through thousands of years of recorded history. Behind the concept, one which various ages have redefined for their own particular situations, lies the nascent belief that humankind, working in harmony and unison, can create a better world and achieve maximum progress towards happiness.

God And Death In Selected Works Of James Agee, John William Jobst

Student Work

James Agee died in 1955; he was forty-five years old. While riding in a New York taxi cab, the author was stricken with a fatal heart attack which was not completely unexpected. Agee, a tall, gangling individual, had little regard for physical fitness and he often subsisted on heavy smoking, drinking, and all-night bull sessions. His personal appearance was his least worry as a close friend relates: his clothes were dark and shiny. I can't imagine him in a new suit. Black shoes scuffed Gray, wrinkled collar, a button off his shirt and a ravelled tie -- He wore clothes …

The Psychological And Spiritual Quest For Personal Identity In The Poetry Of Theodore Roethke, Patrick J. Stricklett

Student Work

In a panel discussion on “Identity” at Northwestern University in February of 1963, Theodore Roethke listed the major themes of his poetry; (1) the multiplicity, the chaos of modern life; (2) the way, the means of establishing a personal identity, a self, in the face of that chaos; (3) the nature of creation, that faculty for producing order out of disorder in the arts, particularly in poetry; and (4) the nature of God himself. The two major experimental sequences of poetry in Roethke’s career, included in The Lost Some and Other Poems (1948) and Praise to the End! (1951) are …

Social Criticism In The Works Of Dylan Thomas, John K. Quammen

Student Work

The genesis of this thesis is the belief that an artist's primary purpose is to communicate some aspect of human existence to his fellow man. Regardless of how the creative art is rendered, whether through the arrangement of color and texture on a canvas, or sounds in or out of harmonica chord, or shapes carved out of blocks of stone, or sounds articulated in the spoken word, the realization of the artistic process is meaningful only in the final communication of the imaginative urge which motivates an artist. Therefore, art exists for both the creation of it and the reception …

A Checklist Of Luther's Writings In English, Part Ii, George S. Robbert

Concordia Theological Monthly

A Checklist of Luther's Writings in English

Fresh Threads Of Connection: The Role Of Imagery In George Eliot's "Middlemarch", Phyllis C. Ralph

Student Work

Although the novels of George Elliott enjoyed great contemporary success, both with the reading public and the critics, by the end of the nineteenth-century they had fallen into disfavor with both. Here they remained for many years, largely due to what was regarded as heavy-handed didacticism. They were criticized for the large amount of commentary by the author, which was felt to be overly moral an often unnecessary. George Eliot herself was held in high regard as a philosopher and moralist, but was not felt to be much of a literary artist. She wrote to preach and did not worry …

A Structural And Thematic Analysis Of The Early Picaresque Novel, Marion Grandone

Student Work

In form the picaresque novel is episodic; the hero travels from place to place meeting various people and undergoing various adventures. Since the characters of one episode seldom reappear, the incidents of one episode often have no connection with any other, the major unity is achieved only because the novel is written as the first person memoirs of a hero who appears in most of the adventures.

An Application Of A Revised Morrissett's Curriculum Analysis System To A High School English Program, Eldon Richard Loewe

All Master's Theses

The problem presented in this thesis is threefold. Taken together, these items present the bulk of work for any person attempting curriculum evaluation at the local level:

1. Meaningful evaluative information must be obtained. Instead of glib and generalized assumptions about what ought to be, one should achieve specific information relevant to the researcher as well as his departmental colleagues.

2. The information must relate to other studies so that a larger curriculum analysis will result. If the soundest method of national evaluation is to create concrete building blocks locally, these individual studies must mesh to provide something larger and …

The Code Heroine In Katherine Anne Porter's Short Stories, Phebe Jamison Rosch

Student Work

The year 1922 marked the beginning of the fiction-writing career of one of the twentieth century’s finest short story writers, Katherine Anne Porter. In a review of The Leaning Tower and Other Short Stories in 1944, Edmund Wilson says, “she is absolutely a first-rate artist, and what she wants other people to know she imparts to them by creating an object, the self-developing organism of a work of prose.”

Confrontation And Conflict In The Poetry Of John Donne, Roger M. Peirce

Student Work

In tracing the heritage of the concern over the relative values of the material and the immaterial, one can see that the problem was considerably significant in Medieval thought as a great deal of the philosophical writings of the Age were dedicated to the problem of the universals. The question of whether reality existed in the form or the particular, however, was not a speculation peculiar to the Middle Ages. The academic controversy, as far as one can determine, found its germination in the Hellenic tradition of Plato and Aristotle; a brief recall of its ancient history, then, would seem …

Literary Patronage In Renaissance England, Marilyn G. Selwold

Student Work

The artists’ position in society changed dramatically during the Renaissance. From being a Craftsman like any other, the artist became a creator of the Fine Arts. From functioning in political or religious ways, he began to express more and more his own or his patron’s ideas. “The Renaissance thus became the first great modern age of the individual patron. Merchant prince and despot competed for the services of the greatest architects, sculptors, painters, and scholars.” This aspect, however, is neglected in most studies of English literature. Whereas the Medici are almost synonymous with the Florentine renaissance, it is almost forgotten …