Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Occult Tradition, Blake, & The Kabbalah: A Preliminary Study, Laura Miller

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study represents an attempt to explore the occult tradition, in particular the Kabbalah, in an effort to establish a relationship between this tradition and the prophetic poems of William Blake. The Kabbalah is examined to reveal similarities between the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon and Blake's sleeping giant Albion. In addition, a comparison is made of the sexual dichotomies in both sources. Once Blake is viewed as a part of the occult tradition and the kabbalistic similarities are explored, an important aspect of Blake's poetry is clarified, by considering the essential design of kabbalistic thought as it stands in close relation …

Conscience & Determinism: Mark Twain's Attempt To Resolve The Problem Of Man's Sense Of Moral Responsibility In A Deterministic World, R. Kathleen Raisor

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Beneath the placid surface of books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are the seeds of a darker, yet more profound Twain than a cursory reading yields. From a point beginning about 1876 until his death in 1910, there is in Twain's major works a progressively darker, more intensely pessimistic view of the human condition, for Twain increasingly saw man as circumscribed and imprisoned by mechanistic determinism. This study provides a chronological examination of Twain's attempt to resolve the problem of man's sense of moral responsibility in a deterministic world. The development …

Fandom Is A Way Of Life: A Folkloristic Ethnography Of Science Fiction Fandom, David Axler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A science fiction (“sf”) fan is an individual whose interest in this literary genre has extended past reading into involvement in such things as local science fiction clubs, fan magazines (“fanzines”), and sf conventions (“cons”). Science fiction fandom is the loosely-structured, geographically-dispersed organization of these fans. Drawing on both written sources and field interviews with eight informants, the history, composition and structure of sf fandom is examined from a folkloristic viewpoint. The forms of folklore which serve to bind the individual fan to the larger social entity of fandom are detailed.

Despite its literary orientation, fandom is primarily a social …