English Language and Literature Commons^™

Charles R. Mcdowell, Jr. : One Man's View Of The National Folklore, Sandra Leigh Spratley

Master's Theses

A journalist's range of interests may be as varied and complex as the range of interests of the audience to whom he is appealing. Whereas Samuel Feinberg in Women's Wear Daily writes mainly for persons interested in business, a perusal through decades of Time shows its writers trying to reach a larger audience and thus writing on scores of different topics. The longevity of an author's work correlates to the success with which he captures his audience's characteristics and oral traditions. We find that such writers as E. B. White, Finley Peter Dunne, and Mark Twain have succeeded in almost …

Influence Of The "International Theme" In The Novels Of Sinclair Lewis., David Charles Thaw

Master's Theses

The "International Theme" in literature arose as a result of real-life confrontations between Americans and Europeans. Conflict was inevitable as the feudal tradition of England with its emphasis on social caste met head-on with the democratic traditions of a ew nation. By definition the "international theme" focused on the conflict of manners between two citizens of different nations who disagree on the correct way of behaving in a given situation. For example, the titled nobility of Europe feel that some deference should be shown to them due to their rank and not because they have accomplished something of merit. Particularly, …

"Aunt Sue's Stories": The Use Of Folklore In The Teaching Of Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This poem by Langston Hughes, one of America's most prolific poets, suggests the appeal of folklore to the young. Aunt Sue's stories inspire the response that every teacher of literature aspires to elicit from his students. I would like to suggest that the most natural thing in the world for the teacher is to capitalize on this appeal of folklore to help develop an interest in and an appreciation for recorded literature. Folklore can do much to help the student bridge the gap between his own world and what seems to many to be the alien world of Shakespeare. Our …

Following In Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks: Autobiographical Notes By The Author Of Shuckin' And Jivin', Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

As I began to peruse collections and studies of black folklore, I found that although considerable work had been done from which I was l earning a great deal, there were some aspects of black folklore with which I was personally familiar (from my childhood in Charles City, Virginia, my college days in Petersburg, and my adult life in Richmond) that I had observed as influence in numerous literary works, particularly on temporary works, that were not included in the material was finding, or were not presented in anything even vaguely resembling the versions I knew and saw represented in …

Black Eve Or Madonna? A Study Of The Antithetical Views Of The Mother In Black American Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Within these two extreme views of woman - the mother who brings death and destruction versus the mother who brings life and salvation - where does the Black American mother stand? It seems to me that it would not be inappropriate to look at the literature, not as mere fiction, but rather as an interpretation and compilation of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and a host of other areas. Thus the true literary artist reveals life more accurately and with more insight than any historical facts and statistical details, because he deals with the truth of the human heart, with the …

Meaning And Method : A Comparative Study Of Edmund Husserl And Ezra Pound, Jesse N. Mayo Jr

Master's Theses

In his essay entitled "Phenomenology of Heading" Georges Poulet explains how a "reading" is possible"

The universe of fiction is infinitely more elastic than the world of objective reality. It lends itself to any use; it yields with little resistance to the importunities of the mind. Moreover - and of all the benefits I find this the most appealing - this interior universe constituted by language does not seem radically opposed to the me who thinks it.... In short, since everything has become part of my mind, thanks to the intervention of language, the opposition between the subject and its …

The Females Within The Design/Debris Motif In Three Novels By John Hawkes, Evelyn Carol Sweet

Master's Theses

John Hawkes, according to Tony Tanner, is perhaps the most "disturbing" contemporary American writer. Many people would agree with this commentary on Hawkes, a man whose work has moved from the surreal in The Cannibal (1949) toward the more realistic, a movement predicted by Albert Guerard in his introduction to The Cannibal. As this movement away from the surreal has occurred, then why does Tanner find Hawkes' "disturbing" in a review of his most recent novel, Travesty? Perhaps because this movement was not from the surreal to the realistic as we generally use the term, but rather a movement from …

Benjamin Compson : Consciousness, Rhetoric, And The 'Fictive Art', Ann Brooke Lewis

Master's Theses

A study of consciousness in the first section of The Sound and the Fury clarifies both the novel's technique and its rendering of human truth. My reading of this monologue is based on the premise that the way Benjamin Compson views the world and the way in which his mind arranges those views enhances our understanding of the novel's other brother-narrators, Quentin and Jason. As limited and distorted as Benjy's perceptions may be, they provide a model by which the perceptions of Quentin and Jason gain clarity and meaning. Benjy's monologue begins the novel and provides the reader's entrance into …

[Introduction To] Shuckin' And Jivin': Folklore From Contemporary Black Americans, Daryl Cumber Dance

Bookshelf

An exciting new collection of Black American folklore, running the gamut from anecdotes concerning life among the slaves to obviously contemporary jokes. In their frank expression of racial attitudes and unexpurgated wit, these tales represent a radical departure from earlier collections.

James Baldwin, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

James Baldwin is one of America's best known and most controversial writers. If there is some figurative truth in his declarations "Nobody Knows My Name" and "No Name in the Street," on a realistic level practically everyone knows his name, from people on the street to scholars in the most prestigious universities-and they all respond to him. Those responses are as diverse and as antithetical as the respondents. Indeed, there is little unanimity in the criticism of James Baldwin: some view him as a prophet preaching love and salvation, others as a soothsayer forecasting death and destruction; some see him …

Tuning In The Boiler Room And The Cotton Patch: New Directions In The Study Of Afro-American Folklore, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

One of the first problems in the study of folklore is, of course, the collection of materials. In almost every area of Black folklore, the collecting was initiated by whites. As I have noted elsewhere, "Black folk forms seem to thrive quietly and abashedly in the Black community as items of private enjoyment and public shame until they are ' discovered ' by whites who legitimize them for the American public-Black and white. Such has been the case with the general folk tales (the animal tales, the etiological myths, the Slave John tales, etc.), the spirituals, and the blues. The …

Wit And Humor In The Slave Narratives, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This passage suggests something of the nature of Black humor and the function it has served, not only in the slave narratives, but in the folk tales and throughout the history of recorded literature from William Wells Brown to Amiri Baraka. The life revealed in all of these sources is shown to often be alternately degrading and courageous, tragic and absurdly comic, hopeless and yet enduring; indeed that life could hardly ever be termed merely amusing. And the Black character, though he may be seen to laugh, can hardly be deemed carefree, unbothered, satisfied, even truly happy. Indeed the paradox …

Antithesis And Reconciliation In W. B. Yeats' "Under Ben Bulben", Cary Albert Mcbean

Master's Theses

An investigation of the life and writings of William Butler Yeats reveals a man extremely sensitive to antithesis in human experience. This sensitivity, it is seen, greatly influenced the course of his life, inciting him to seek harmony or reconciliation of the perceived antithesis. As one would expect, Yeats' writings reflect this life struggle. Much of his prose is colored by expressions such as "contraries," "antinomies," or "consciousness is conflict," while the poetry often deals with the course between "extremities" or "eternities." A study of his works is, to an extent, necessarily a study of opposition and reconciliation.

In The Beginning: A New View Of Black American Etiological Tales, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

A substantial number of Black folktales may be designated as etiological "myths" in that they tend to focus on the world as it evolved and to frequently portray the role of God in explaining why the Negro is, to quote from one tale, "so messed up," why he is black, why he has big, ugly feet and hands, why his hair is kinky, and why he must remain a poor laborer in a rich society. The causes of all of these "inferior" traits of the Negro appear to be certain alleged defects in his character-his tardiness, his ignorance, his disobedience …

Anais Nin's Under A Glass Bell : From Interior Fatality To Psychological Motion, John Harty

Master's Theses

Most of the critic ism on Anais Nin has been an overview of her entire work. Under A Glass Bell is included but, to my knowledge, no one has explored each individual story deeply enough since Nin herself recommends Under A Glass Bell as the book to begin with when reading or studying her works. Ibelieve that her recommendation is correct because Under A Glass Bell contains the nucleus of themes which she conc entrates on in all of her works, including the Diaries.

Through Love To Death : The Structure Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House Of Life, Michael Dennis Hughs

Master's Theses

This study offers an explanation of the structure of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House of Life. It does not attempt to elevate Rossetti to a new position of pre-eminence among the Victorians or to make extravagant claims for h1s genius. What it tries to provide is a descriptive analysis or the poems taken together as a unit of meaning. No effort has been made to deal adequately with Rossetti's biography nor his output in the realm of painting. While these matters certainly have an important place in Rossetti studies, there is also a place for an intensive study of the …

Daddy May Bring Home Some Bread, But He Don't Cut No Ice: The Economic Plight Of The Father Figure In Black American Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This tale is a forceful and eloquent commentary on the American economic system which conspires to make it impossible for the Black man to acquire anything more than a mere biscuit, no matter how he plays the economic game. If he plays according to the rules, the rules are changed rather than reward him with his just due. If he fails to play according to the rules, others are rewarded for their efforts and he is punished for his failure. He's damned if he does, and he's damned if he doesn't. Everyone knows enough about the history of this country …

An Analysis Of Form And Vision In Chekhov's Major Plays, Mary Moylan Oppenheimer

Master's Theses

In his art Chekhov confronted and gave expression to the major questions of man's existence. It is the thesis of this paper that Chekhov saw the central fact and problem of life as that of displacement: that in life man frequently finds himself "out of place" either psychologically or physically (sometimes both) and that inevitably he is completely displaced by death.

A Certain Solid Ground : The Mary-Martha Motif In The Fiction Of Katherine Anne Porter, Rosemary Mulvaney Dietrick

Master's Theses

She had spent years of strategic warfare trying to beat those people out of her life; then more years trying to ignore them; to forget them; to hate them; and in the end she loved them as she knew well she was meant in simple nature to do, and acknowledged it; it brought her no peace, and yet it put a certain solid ground under her feet.

The preceding passage from Katherine Anne Porter 's Ship of Fools reveals the rebellious thoughts of a young American artist named Jenny, an almost autobiographical heroine, who inveighs against the pragmatic women in …

Images Of Despair And Hope In Three Plays By Jean-Paul Sartre, Philip Lewis Preston

Master's Theses

Jean-Paul Sartre has altered his outlook on life and his intellectual involvement in society several times during the last forty-five years, and further changes are certainly possible. Nevertheless, through his pro-communist stance during the years of French Occupation, his denouncement of the Communists after the 1956 Hungarian revolt, and his more recent position of anti-intellectualism, Sartre has endeavored to define how a man can achieve freedom and hope.

You Can't Go Home Again: James Baldwin And The South, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

James Baldwin, like innumerable other Black artists, has found that in his efforts to express the plight of the Black man in America, he has been forced to deal over and over again with that inescapable dilemma of the Black American - the lack of a sense of a positive self-identity. Time after time in his writings he has shown an awareness of the fact that identity contains, as Erik Erikson so accurately indicates, "a complementarity of past and future both in the individual and in society." Baldwin wrote in "Many Thousands Gone," "We cannot escape our origins, however hard …

Contemporary Militant Black Humor, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Witnessing the continued plight of their black brothers in America, noting the continued strength of racism in this country, and discouraged by the slowness and ineffectiveness of integration, they have become frustrated and completely disillusioned with the promise of American democracy. If Paul Laurence Dunbar might be said to reflect in some of his works the accommodationist views of the leading black spokesman of his times, Booker T. Washington; and if Langston Hughes might generally be viewed as advocating the thoughtful, rational methods of Martin Luther King and the N.A.A.C.P. with their disciplined social protest and their optimistic faith in …

The Moral Of Ulysses, Charles Carlyle Cosby

Master's Theses

Many critics are confused about the total meaning of James Joyce's Ulysses. David Daiches in The Novel and the Modern World states that "critics can acclaim the style, the organisation, the complexity, the insight, the ingenuity, and many other separate aspects of the work, but what are they to say of the whole?" Daiches is obviously among those critics who pass Ulysses off as art for art 's sake. On the other hand, William M. Schutte points out that critics who have a good deal to say about Ulysses as a whole are unfortunately saying the wrong things. These critics …

Shakespeare's Treatment Of Love : The Mature Tragedies, Albert E. Clark

Master's Theses

The machinery of criticism has been extensively applied to those plays in the Shakespeare canon often referred to as the mature tragediess Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra, One seeking enlightenment in veritably any area of interest will find the means in the varied approaches which have proliferated through four hundred years of Shakespeare criticism. New and valid interpretations testify to a continuing need for insight into Shakespeare's arts nevertheless,. the word "supererogatory" must surely have occurred to even the moat resilient seeker after Shakespearean truth. A spate of learned articles and scholarly tomes inundate, and the burden is …

Reality And Illusion In Miguel De Cervantes' Don Quixote And John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor, Vicki Redmond

Honors Theses

Illusion is an integral part of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote and John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor. It plays an important part in both the characters of the protagonists, Don Quixote and Ebenezer Cooke, respectively, and in the lives and actions of several of the secondary characters. Furthermore, the reader of these works himself is influenced by the aura of illusion and fantasy which surrounds all the actions in these novels. The idea of illusion and fantasy that is so prevalent colors the way in which the reader identifies with these characters and their deeds. In both of these …

A Comparison Of Stock Love Situations In The Works Of Petrarch, Donne, And Cervantes, John W. Metzger

Honors Theses

The works of Petrarch, Donne, and Cervantes have in common a considerable emphasis on stock love situations. These stock situations include such occurrences as the meeting of lovers, the reaction of the lover to the disdain of his lady, the burning desire of the lover to be physically present with his lady, and the parting of lovers. A certain twist in a situation, originally used by Petrarch, in the poetry of Donne or prose of Cervantes, can provide an excellent insight into the ideas concerning love of all three authors. Petrarch espoused a rather narrow love philosophy. In the great …

Goe, And Finde A Mistris : The Concepts Of Woman In The Poetry Of John Donne: The Elegies, The Anniversaires, The Songs And Sonets, Leanne Wade Beorn

Master's Theses

This study of the concepts of woman in the poems, combined with an analysis of the poems' internal structure and content in relation to the literary background, seems to me to be a most profitable approach to the whole of Donne's love poetry. By focusing on the concepts of woman I shall provide a common basis for comparison, since woman figures in all of the poems but one. By summarizing the characteristics of the major literary traditions about love operative in Donne's time, I shall provide information which is essential to understanding the diversity of attitudes in the poems. And …

Reconstructing Shabazz : Images Of The Black Man In Four Black Plays, Joyce Wise

Master's Theses

It has been conjectured that, if art follows life, the black theatre is a case in point. Critic-playwright Lindsay Patterson has stated that all of black literature is more or less consciously preoccupied with precisely pinpointing and defining the specific moment when a black man discovers he is a "nigger" and begins the "long, uphill climb to bring psychological order out of chaos."

"It is an elusive, complex moment, with complex reactions, and can occur at four or forty, and its pursuit, I believe, will continue to occupy serious black writers for decades to come."

Thus, dramatizing the black experience …

The Destructive Messiah : A Study Of Henrik Ibsen's Search For Truth As Portrayed By Rebel Heroes In Brand, An Enemy Of The People, And The Wild Duck, Susan Taylor Soyars

Master's Theses

Having read Henrik Ibsen's major plays, I became interested in his treatment of truth. Brand, Doctor Stockman, and Gregers Werle all represented varied degrees of the truth, each embodying Ibsen's own ideas. It is specifically Gregers Werle' s treatment of the truth that resulted in the conclusions found in this paper.

As Ibsen explored his personal convictions about the truth, a new type of rebel hero began to emerge, a destructive savior. Through this messiah, a Christ-like figure, Ibsen allows the truth to be exploited, which brings about complete destruction to communities,families, and friends.

Biographical material has been deleted. By …

Milton's Eve : A Comparison With Eve In The Major Analogues Preceding Paradise Lost, Charlene Dellinger Wheeler

Master's Theses

Milton's character of Eve in Paradise Lost has been interpreted by critics as both the vehicle for Milton's abuse of women, and the example of Milton's favoritism towards them. The great variety of interpretations of the same character seems to be the result of not considering Milton's Eve as a combination of qualities gathered from both the Biblical and literary traditions and influenced by Milton's theological beliefs and his intentions for Paradise Lost. By comparing Milton's Eve with her major predecessors, this thesis will interpret Milton's characterization according to the literary history of the character, and show how Milton's particular …