American Literature Commons^™

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Fred Erisman

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

A fluke of geography makes ours a westward-moving culture. Explorers and European settlers, the Atlantic at their backs, necessarily moved westward in their endeavors, and the pattern was begun. Succeeding eras saw new populations, the Gold Rush, and the Homestead Act, steadily pushing the line of settlement westward, until movement to the west became intimately associated in the public mind with the course of “progress” and the advancement of the nation. From this association come two of the most evocative of American cultural myths, those shared stories in a society’s history that provide “a symbolizing function that is central to …

Various Black Virginians As Told To Daryl Cumber Dance, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans, published in 1978, derived from fieldwork done far a doctoral dissertation at Virginia Commonwealth University by Daryl Cumber Dance (the only woman named Daryl I have heard of aside from Daryl Hannah). She gathered stories and verses from black Virginians in colleges, senior citizens' centers, and a penitentiary. Though she doesn't bring to the party an editorial touch as enlivening as Zora Neale Hurston's, she has an ear and-unlike far, far too many assiduous collectors of folktales - knows how to capture vocal rhythms on a page.

Rex Beach, Abe C. Ravitz

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

One apocalyptic adventure marked the productive life and prolific literary career of Rex Ellingwood Beach (1877-1949), novelist, journalist, pioneer screenwriter, and sportsman: at the turn of the century as a spirited twenty-three-year-old spoiling for adventure and seeking quick wealth, he joined the mass of frenzied humanity heading for the gold fields of the Klondike. Though a fortune in nuggets eluded him and though his land speculation never brought the truly big score, Rex Beach discovered something more valuable than “gold in the pan": Alaska.

Caroline Lockhart, Norris Yates

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

When Caroline Lockhart traveled the mere four blocks to her editorial office at the Cody, Wyoming Enterprise, she often rode horseback and wore boots, spurs, and a Stetson. “Clumping and jingling” (Boyett 21 Aug. 1989: A-10), she played in person the two roles she consistently projected in her fiction: exemplar of how a woman with courage, will power, and initiative could attain goals traditionally reserved for men, and preserver of what she considered the most admirable and picturesque elements of Old West culture. During her long and eventful life, she pioneered as a woman reporter, crusaded as an editor, …

One Against All: The New England Past And Present Responsibilities In The Devil And Daniel Webster, Robert Singer

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Concept Of The Local In Williams' Developing Poetics: The Poet's Perception And Representation Of The Poor, Jon Montgomery

Masters Theses

The present study serves as a thematic, critical perspective on William Carlos Williams' poetry on the poor; specifically, I address his representation of the poor in his poetry and his attitude towards them. From 1914-38, his attitude towards the poor goes through three significant stages of change. Roughly, the stage boundaries can be marked by decade: the 1910s, the 1920s and the 1930s.

In the first stage, Williams recognizes his empathetic and aesthetic distance from the poor, since his aesthetics rest primarily on his youthful fascination with Keats. The poet desires to reflect properly the lives of the poor. The …

Robert Frost And Maya Angelou: Poet-As-Rhetor In The Presidential Inauguration: Textual Symbols And The Symbol Of Enactment, Donna M. Witmer

Masters Theses

This criticism uses an organic approach to examine the rhetorical properties of Frost's and Angelou's inaugural poems and their individual enactments respective of the constraints and exigencies in the Presidential inaugurations of Kennedy and Clinton. Apparently responding to the constraints of television's sound bite as well as to exigencies of the traditional inauguration and the need to serve a new generation and a culturally diverse population, the Clinton Administration combined the poetic form, used to heighten an emotional response, with an enactment as a synecdochic symbol, used to assert sociopolitical ideology.

Steinbeck Newsletter Winter 1994, San Jose State University

Center for Steinbeck Studies Newsletter

Winter 1994. Includes: Steinbeck's other family: New light on East of Eden / Robert DeMott; Steinbeck on Politics, Part2 / Murray J. Smith

An Afternoon With Maya Angelou, Maya Angelou

James R. Thompson Leadership Lectures

Maya Angelou, a nationally renowned poet, educator, historian and author, is one of the great voices of contemporary literature. In addition, she is an accomplished actress, playwright, producer, and director. Dr. Angelou received an emmy nomination for best supporting actress in the television series Roots and received the coveted Golden Eagle Award for the PBS documentary "Afro-American in the Arts." However, she is perhaps best known for the public for her autobiographies and books of poetry.

Maya Angelou has authored more than 10 best selling books and numerous articles in publications such as Life, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar and The New …

Community Pride Reporter, 12/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

Community Pride Reporter, 11/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

San José Studies, Fall 1993, San José State University Foundation

San José Studies, 1990s

Volume 19, Issue 3

Community Pride Reporter, 10/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

Vol. 13, No. 4 (1993), Lawrence Wells, William Boozer, Nancy Hall, Connie Erickson

Faulkner Newsletter and Yoknapatawpha Review

No abstract provided.

American Christianity And Its Role In The Denigration Of The African-American Identity As Found In African-American Literature, Zelda Lockhart

English Theses & Dissertations

The positive effects of American Christianity on the African-American from slavery to present day are often analyzed in African-American literature, which depicts black characters who are grateful to God, mostly for giving them the strength to endure the many social and psychological abuses inflicted by American institutions. African-American literature, however, also depicts characters whose relationship with Christianity subordinates them in American society.

The following chapters will explore the downfalls and ironies of an African-American/Christian dichotomy, and show how the historical events of America have influenced African-American Christianity.

Chapter One gives a historical account of America's involvement in the Transatlantic slave …

Community Pride Reporter, 09/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

Community Pride Reporter, 08/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

Marsha Norman's Ghosts: The Embodiment Of The Past On The Stage, Jennifer Anne Workman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the role of the ghost figure in Marsha Norman's drama. In order to understand how this ghost figure is unique to her drama, but at the same time has roots in the American theater, I first examine her relationship to her American predecessors and their portrayal of the past in order to later show how the ghost figure is Norman's "device" that she uses to explore the past on the stage. I then attempt to determine her relationship to the current movements with which she is most often associated: new realism and feminism. Because new realism …

Community Pride Reporter, 07/1993, Community Pride Reporter

Community Pride Reporter (1993-1999)

No abstract provided.

Vol. 13, No. 3 (1993), Jane Hill, Peter Stoicheff, Bruce A. Jacobs, Theresa Towner, M. Thomas Inge

Faulkner Newsletter and Yoknapatawpha Review

No abstract provided.

Steinbeck Newsletter Summer 1993, San Jose State University

Center for Steinbeck Studies Newsletter

Summer 1993. Includes: A juvenile classic follows the Grapes of Wrath / Anne Loftis; Pu-raise Gawd fur Vittory, Granma as Prophet / John Ditsky

Whirling Darkness: Witchery's Ascent In The Writings Of Leslie Marmon Silko, Kristin Monahan

Theses & Dissertations

Apocalyptic imagery spirals throughout Leslie Marmon Silko's works. The destruction of individuals, cultures, and eventually the Earth are purported by the grand plan of witchery. Evil has existed among Native American's in the form of witchery since time began. Its forces reside within all things. Yet with the tools provided by the spirits, namely the oral tradition and ceremonies, witchery can be controlled: the stories explain its origin and its power, showing how witchery has been overcome in the past, while the ceremonies provide a means of healing those who have been afflicted. By maintaining connections to the universe, past, …

Paintings And Drawings In Willa Cather's Prose: A Catalogue Raisonné, Polly P. Duryea

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Paintings and Drawings in Willa Cather's Prose: A Catalogue Raisonné considers the specific artists and their visual art that greatly influenced Willa Cather's textual compositions. The Catalogue draws upon the author's research of Cather-related art from both American and European libraries and art museums. This art includes painting, drawing, illustration, and tapestry. A detailed and alphabetized list of selected artists and paintings that Cather preferred is provided. The artists are cross-referenced with Cather's own statements about their work or style. Included is biographical data for each artist, the named work of art, and often the date executed, the location then …

Vol. 13, No. 2 (1993), Gene Roper Jr.

Faulkner Newsletter and Yoknapatawpha Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard & Pulp Studies

Articles:

From Cross Plains to the Stars: Robert E. Howard’s Science Fiction, by Fred Blosser

Cosmic Filth: Howard’s View of Evil, by Charles Hoffman

Robert E. Howard Winner of Essay Medal While in High School (1936), by uncredited

“What the Nation Owes to the South” (variant of What the Nation Owes to the South 1923) [as by Robert Howard], by Robert E. Howard

The Active Voice: Robert E. Howard’s Personae, by Rusty Burke

Reviews (The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies, April 1993), by Bill Cavalier, Vernon M. Clark, & S.T. Joshi

Reviews of three issues of …

Gearing Up: Compositional Order In Vandover And The Brute, Ethan Lewis

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

Friendship And Idolatry In Esther Edwards’ Burr’S Letters, William J. Scheick

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

Remembering And Dis(Re)Membering: Memory, Community And The Individual In Beloved, Elizabeth Cooley

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

The Body Eclectic: Sources Of Ray Bradbury’S Martian Chronicles, Jonathan Eller

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

Teaching Dickinson As A Gen(I)Us: Emily Among The Women, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this article, Walker argues that those who teach the poetry of Emily Dickinson should not only compare her to other recognized and lauded American poets, such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore. This method offers no cultural context to provide ligature. It views high art as to be only about language and, on the score of tropological discourse, any two poets could be connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance. While it's useful for students to see how elements of her work connect her not only …