Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Stain Upon The Silence: Samuel Beckett’S Deconstructive Inventions, Leigh Howard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In recent years, deconstruction theory has emerged as a key method for exploring public address, organizational culture, and literary discourse. Deconstruction theory encourages tearing apart hierarchy and established order to gain insights about the artifact being studied. Furthermore, the theory questions surface or superficial messages and encourages the reader to explore signals hidden below the surface. Deconstruction discounts context and places faith in experience.

Using the early plays of Samuel Beckett, this research explores deconstruction as a method to create messages. This new perspective transports deconstruction from a set of theoretical concepts into basic assumptions that enhance communication. This study …

Charlotte Mew: An Introduction, Sandra Carol Joiner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) published short stories, essays, and poetry between 1894 and the time of her death. She published a slim volume of poems in 1916, a few of which place her as one of the great English poets. Indeed, both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf thought her one of the greatest living female poets. Mew is particularly interesting as a poet who was born in the Victorian period, published during the “decadent decade” of the nineties, throughout Edward’s reign, and well into the reign of George V. Although few of Mew’s poems are dated, there is a gradual yet …

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 …

Balance, Symmetry, And Order In As You Like It, Lois Stacy Creed

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although many critics have commented on various aspects of balance, symmetry, and order in Shakespeare’s As You like It, others have given the impression that the play uses a carefree series of episodes to give the audience lighthearted entertainment. Few, if any have discussed the extent to which these elements are exemplified through the remarkable skill and craftsmanship of the playwright. The coordination of these elements shows that the work is not, as it frequently has been considered, a simple romance, but is rather a superlative exemplification of Shakespeare’s remarkable artistry. Through the use of various devices, Shakespeare constructs for …

Human Love And Divine Love: The Platonic Matrix In C.S. Lewis, Laura Case

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A comparison of the writings of Plato and C.S. Lewis reveals a common idea that human love is not sufficient for man. An examination of Plato’s Symposium and Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves, in particular, shows that both writers illustrate that man must ascend the ladder of love in order to meet the source of all love: Divine Love. Concerned with man’s innate needs and ethics, both Plato and Lewis argue that there is a universal principle of goodness known to all men of all cultures. Lewis argues, especially in The Abolition of Man, that man …

Isolation In The Dramas Of T.S. Eliot, Jean Conway

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

T.S. Eliot is a monumental figure in literature. He distinguished himself as a poet in his youth, as a critic in his middle age, and as a dramatist in his later years. Because of the vitality of Eliot’s early literary works, his dramas are frequently bypassed by critics when discussing the major themes that interested him as an artist. The purpose this study is to examine thoroughly Eliot’s position on isolation and alienation as revealed in his seven plays: Sweeney Agonistes (1926), The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential …

Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein: Its Art And Thought, Marthalee Atkinson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A review of the genesis of Frankenstein, it’s narrative form, Gothicism, ideas and contributions to literature.