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American Literature Commons

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Eastern Illinois University

1980

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in American Literature

Herman Melville And Paul Tillich: An Ontological Interpretation Of Billy Budd, Michael E. Gress Jan 1980

Herman Melville And Paul Tillich: An Ontological Interpretation Of Billy Budd, Michael E. Gress

Masters Theses

The traditional approaches to Herman Melville's Billy Budd focus upon the question of whether or not the story was Melville's final statement of acceptance or irony. Both arguments are sociological in nature in that the different sides argue that Melville either finally accepts or continues to reject by irony, the forms of society. The acceptance critics contend that Melville ends by seeing value in the forms because of their use for maintaining order in society; the irony critics claim that Melville was taking a final satirical poke at society's limiting forms and authority.

My thesis differs from these traditional arguments …


The Innocent Narrator In Mark Twain's Roughing It, John R. Fisher Jan 1980

The Innocent Narrator In Mark Twain's Roughing It, John R. Fisher

Masters Theses

Mark Twain in his travel narrative Roughing It presents a naive, innocent narrator from the East who ventures forth into the largely uncivilized Western frontier during the exciting silver mining boom of the 1860's. In his sojourn the innocent narrator encounters many people, places, customs, values, and experiences that are unfamiliar to him, and because of his status as a tenderfoot unacquainted with the frontier, he is often made a dupe by the mischievous old-timers in the West.

The innocent narrator must go through numerous initiations before he is accepted as a member of the vernacular community. In these various …