English Language and Literature Commons^™

James Branch Cabell : Laughing Existentialist, George R. Hazelton

Master's Theses

In the history of American literature, there have been numerous authors whose popularity and critical acclaim were long in coming often delayed long past their deaths. Melville, for example, comes immediately to mind. Others have enjoyed a brief notoriety and have then slipped into oblivion for years until their "rediscovery."

One of the prime vehicles for renewed interest in ignored American authors has been the critical consideration of American humorous literature that has flowered during the 1940's, 50's and the 60's, This criticism, given impetus by Walter Blair's Native American Humor (1937)has made Seba Smith, Edgar Wilson Nye, and Finley …

The Thematic Relationship Of Laurence Sterne To David Herbert Lawrence, Frederick Thornett Hardy

Master's Theses

Among the pioneer novelists of the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne stands out as an unexplained curiosity. In many ways the most modern of the early novelists, he is regarded as the first stream-of-consciousness author, and thus the forerunner of the most significant school in today's fiction. Sterne constructed his original style from ideas derived from the seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. A less obvious but equally defendable fact is that this philosophical work provided Sterne with a thematic as well as stylistic bridge into the twentieth century. The clearest illustration of this relationship is …

Shakespeare's Treatment Of Kingship In The Lancastrian Tetralogy, June Stemen Allman

Master's Theses

The English history play reached its highest peak of development between 1595 and 1599, for it was during these years that Shakespeare wrote the set of four plays covering the historical period from Richard II to Henry V. Each of the plays is a single entity, but in their entirety, they constitute a unified tetralogy concerning the rise of the house of Lancaster. Through the illegal seizure of the crown by Bolingbroke from Richard II to the glorious reign of Henry V, Shakespeare, as an intensely political writer, examines the facets of kingship and its inherent power and authority.

Ring Lardner As Dadaist, Buford Donald Fisher

Master's Theses

This thesis is not a history of Dada, nor does it attempt to trace any direct influences that Ring Lardner may have on current literature. What it does strive to achieve is proper understanding of one facet of Lardner's work.

During the period that the Dad ists were actively trying to establish a new order by destroying the old (and theoretically, Dada itself), Lardner was creating nonsense playlets . His critics, for the most part, could not comprehend his intentions, so this aspect of his work was relegated to obscurity.

Half a century later, Dada has become more relevant historically; …

An Examination Of The Influence Of August Strindberg Upon Eugene O'Neill, Mary Emily Parsons Edwards

Master's Theses

Eugene O'Neill made no effort to hide the names of those writers and literary works which were important to him, and most of his biographers cite the fact that from the commencement of his playwrighting [sic] career O'Neill was influenced by the Swedish writer August Strindberg. O 'Neill himself was, in fact, one of the first to call attention to the kinship between his work and that of his "Master." In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he indicated that he was delighted to have an opportunity to discuss the debt Ameri­can drama owed to the modern drama of Europe, and, …

The Role Of The Peripheral Narrator In Moby-Dick, Heart Of Darkness And The Great Gatsby, Erana Leiken

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the unique role of the peripheral narrator in Moby-Dick, Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby. Each narrator's point of view is unique in that, though he is a character within the story, his participation in the action is restricted by his peripheral status which allows him to witness and evaluate the other characters, particularly the pro­tagonlst. The distinguishing characteristic of this narrative frame necessitated by the use of such a narrator is that the author surrenders his omniscience regarding his other characters by letting his narrator tell the reader only what …

The Unity Of A Shropshire Lad, Robert B. Brown

Honors Theses

To understate the case, one might point out that there are those readers whose initial reaction to A Shropshire Lad is that it is a disunified bundle of poems. I assert, however, that this judgement should not endure, for when this volume of poetry is viewed in a more critical perspective there arises a deeper understanding and, consequently, a more rewarding appreciation. Moreover, I assert that it is in this final analysis alone that A Shropshire Lad emerges in its proper perspective.

In addition, it is the contention of this thesis that this unity may be viewed through at least …

Robert Penn Warren's Brother To Dragons : A Poem To Fit Its Theme, Marjorie Scott

Honors Theses

Robert Penn Warren is a writer obsessed with ideas, to the extent of spending most of his literary life searching for a form that would enable him to express them. Most of his searching has taken place within the framework of the novel form: in fact, within that form he has tried eight different combinations of characters, plot, and point of view in an effort to find an arrangement that would say what he so urgently wanted to say. Judging from the results, however, it was always what he wanted to say that interested him more than the actual mechanics …

Violence In Elizabethan And Jacobean Drama, Linwood Clay Powers Iii

Master's Theses

Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy contains some of the most violent scenes in the history of English drama. Different playwrights treat their potentially violent themes in different manners; therefore, this paper will examine the types of violence employed by the different dramtists.

A Critical Study Of The Seven Major Victorian Pessimistic Poets, Frank W. Childrey

Master's Theses

The following thesis is a critical study of seven sig­ nificant Victorian pessimistic poets. Having as its basis a seminar paper for Dr. Lewis F. Ball in which four of the Victorian pessimists were discussed, the original study was expanded in order to include the remaining three.

In this critical study, the emphasis has been placed mainly upon the themes characteristic of these pessimistic poets, and the poems that I consider to be the best examples of their various attitudes have been incorporated, either partially or in full, into the text of this thesis. Fur­thermore, though these chapters are not …

The Masque, A Courtly Entertainment, Kenneth Bailey Blanks

Master's Theses

In tho Courts of the Tudors and the Stuarts flourished a form of entertainment known as the masque . This exclusive pastime was characterized by gorgeous costumes, ingenious sets, imaginative scenery, music, dialogue, and dancing. Dancing was the most important element. It is said that "from the beginning to the end of its history, the essence of the masque was the arrival of certain persons visored and disguised to dance a dance or present an offering," often in the form of a compliment to the monarch. Dancing established a close intimacy between the masquers -- the disguised performers in the …

The Mail Of Anguish: The Humor Of Emily Dickinson, Marian Hoffman Myers

Master's Theses

Because Emily Dickinson's intellectual humor gleamed through the more permeating emotional intensity of many of her poems, I undertook to discover the persistence of this facet of her poetic art and its relation to the humorists of her time and place. The research has been rewarding.

French And German Influences On The Horror Novels Of Lewis, Maturin, Le Fanu, And Stoker, Robert Wesley Sanderson

Master's Theses

The Gothic horror novel is a fascinating subject for study. Its development and the influences upon this development provide much opportunity for investigation and research. This thesis will examine the French and German influences on the horror novels of Matthew Lewis, Charles Maturin, Joseph Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker.

The Nineteenth-Century Inversion Of Good And Evil : Its Roots In The Eighteenth Century, And Its Continuation In The Twentieth Century, Frank M. Morgan

Honors Theses

Early in the Nineteenth Century there occurred a change in the literary artist's perception of what conditions and what actions constitute good and evil. This changed perception was a great faction in the development of literature and thinking of that century, and the effects can be traced into our own century. The change accompanied and was an integral part of a general change in the perception of the role of man in the universe. The emphasis on man's role in society was overshadowed by a growing belief in man's value as an individual and a concern wtih individual needs and …

Moral Basis In Fielding's Irony, Roger Paulson Hailes

Master's Theses

There rarely has been publishecl a book in any language which is lighter, brighter or more "mirthfully ironic" than Tom Jones . Yet, the modern emphasis on Fielding's serious concern for moral values tends to obscure the nature of his comedy. This comedy is an agent through which he shows his reader mankind's shortcomings. Specifically through the use of all types or irony, we are made to see the ridiculous nature of many of our actions as well as the necessary methods of correction.

Blood-Knowledge And The Plumed Serpent, Steven Mark Schwartz

Master's Theses

The intent of this paper is to study D. H. Lawrence's theme of blood-knowledge as it is found in a selection of his fictional works. The most outstanding work which concerns itself with this theme is The Plumed Serpent, a novel which centers around the re-birth of the ancient Mexican religion of Quetzalcoatl.

The Significance Of Nicholas Jenkins In Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time, Michael George Gaspeny

Master's Theses

During a time in which scholarly examinations of novels both major and minor abound, it seems remarkable that such an intricate and ambitious series as Anthony Powell' s Dance to the Music of Time has not generated more extensive and thorough critical attention. Resulting in part from the singularity of Powell' s art, this neglect can be attributed primarily to the nature of the series itself. Thus, as Anthony Burgess has pointed out, Powell has undertaken the writing of a roman fleuve. In such a work, of course, the novels are basically uniform in style, structure, and theme, and are …

Evan Harrington : George Meredith's Use Of Comedy As A Corrective To Sentimentality, Joyce Stanley Scott

Master's Theses

Because it leads an individual to increasing loss of perspective, George Meredith considered sentimentality a real tragedy. The deluded sentimentalist convinces himself that all his efforts and attitudes bear him steadily down the road of spiritual progress, when actually he is using his ideals of society as an excuse for willful blindness, a shifting of responsibility, and self-deception. The sentimentalist's primary concern is to cushion himself against hard fact instead of training himself for encountering it, and he accomplishes this by drugging himself against the perception of truth.

Thematic Development In Four Becket Plays, Richard Arnold Bell

Master's Theses

It shall be the purpose of this paper to treat the development of the major historical themes within the Becket plays of Darley, Tennyson, Eliot, and Anouilh.

Ernest Hemingway's Impressionistic Style., Larry Cole Thompson

Master's Theses

This thesis is in one sense an attempt to explain to what extent, if any, the fluctuations in critical and popular evaluation throughout, and even after, Hemingway's lengthy career are due to his impressionistic style. The purpose and method of this thesis is therefore twofold:

1. To arrive at a workable definition of Impressionism, and, using this definition, to delineate those portions of Hemingway's work which are written in this manner.
2. To determine if Impressionism may be used as a critical gauge in assessing Hemingway's fictional works and perhaps explain the aforementioned fluctuations in his work.

Whitman's Concept Of Brotherhood : His Motivation In Advocating Brotherhood And The Prerequisites For Brotherhood, Frank M. Morgan

Honors Theses

There is a cause and effect relationship between brotherhood and almost all other proposals of Whitman. The relation between brotherhood and Whitman's metaphysical beliefs or religion is mroe complicated than a cause and effect one, and deserves more space later. With the understanding that the cause and effect situation works two ways, brotherhood both acting upon and being affected by other elements of Whitman's great plan for mankind, I shall attempt in this paper to explore these relationships from the point of view that chooses for discussion those elements that are necessitites for or impedimetns to the institution of brotherhood.

Milton And Cambridge : A New Look At An Old Attitude, Roy S. Riner

Master's Theses

From the insights cleaned from current research into John Milton's years as an undergraduate and a graduate student at Cambridge University, this writer has found an overwhelming amount of material dedicated to pointing out Milton's total lack of affection for that university. For the most part, those statements bearing on Milton's dislike for Cambridge are unequivocal. For example, one scholar has remarked that John Milton departed from the University in 1632 "weary and disguised" with the medieval, unbearable antiquated methods of the place. That same scholar continues with the statement that Milton's attitude toward Cambridge was "uniformly unfriendly" and that …

Great Day. An Edition Of Great Day : The Autobiography Of Emma Speed Sampson, John Letcher Fugate

Master's Theses

Other than a reference to Emma Speed Sampson in a sentence to the editorial in a recent Saturday Evening Post and two informative articles about her by Gay Friddell in the Commonwealth and Lillian F. Trimmer in the Richmond Times Dispatch virtually no criticism has been done on this outstanding Southern local colorist. Although she wrote books in the "Carter Girs" series, the "Molly Brown" series, and the "Campfire Girls" series, the sequence of books for which Emma Speed Sampson will be best remembered is the "Miss Minerva" series, twelves books whose humorous pages reveal the way of life in …

Chaucer's Ecclesiastics In The Canterbury Tales, Helen Lee Coleman

Master's Theses

It is thought that Chaucer began composing The Canterbury Tales as a dramatic whole around 1387. This is his last and by f ar his best known work. In this final. masterpiece Chaucer undertakes the tremendous task or presenting in poetic form a whole society. However, he does not merely explore society in general; he also develops the theme or the individual's relation to the community and the integral part that each person plays in making up the whole. The Canterbury Tales is, as George Lyman Kittredge so aptly puts it, "a micro cosmography" or a little image of a …

Chaucer's Ecclesiastics In The Canterbury Tales, Helen Lee Coleman

Master's Theses

It is thought that Chaucer began composing The Canterbury Tales as a dramatic whole around 1387. This is his last and by far his best known work. In this final masterpiece Chaucer undertakes the tremendous task of presenting in poetic form a whole society. However, he does not merely explore society in general; he also develops the theme or the individual's relation to the community and the integral part that each person plays in making up the whole. The Canterbury Tales is, as George Lyman Kittredge so aptly puts it, "a micro cosmography" or a little image of a great …

The Image Of The Jew In James Joyce's Ulysses, Phyllis Joyce Cohen Levy

Master's Theses

Since the beginning of English literature, the Jew has been portrayed as a villain. Edgar Rosenberg and Montague Frank Madder most affirmed the conviction in each of their studies of the Jew in English literature. However, the conclusion that the Jew is still portrayed as a villain is invalid because the image has changed. It is my intention to examine this change, focusing particularly on the character of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce 's Ulysses.

In The Mind's Eye : A Study Of Shakespeare's Imaginative Use Of Stage Properties In Six Representative Plays, Margaret Hart Glenn Tinsley

Master's Theses

The unity, or stylistic oneness, that is the most salient characteristic of Shakespeare's style has been achieved with such consummate ease that the underlying pattern of workmanship is imperceptible at a casual reading. Upon analysis, however, the ingenious means which the playwright has employed, perhaps unconsciously, to create this effect of unity easily may be discerned.

This paper is an analysis of the stage properties in six plays and their function in the plays' overall design. In this study it may be seen that within each play each stage property is so imaginatively used that it seems at once both …

The Individual And The Problem Of Self-Definition In Faulkner : Isolation And Gesture In Light In August, The Sound And The Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, And As I Lay Dying, Betty Jean Seymour

Master's Theses

Perhaps the primary task of the writer is the communication of that which is most significant in human experience. This paper has grown out of an interest in contemporary literature as an expression of this function. Literature, like other art forms, can appraise, analyze, reflect, and, sometimes, provide direction for, the plight of modern man.

Characterization Of Stephen Dedalus In James Joyce's Stephen Hero And A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Reuben L. Musgrave

Master's Theses

Our main interest is in showing the new light given Joyce's works by the study of Stephen Hero, the new light in particular on the character of Stephen Dedalus.

Sherwood Anderson, Dramatist, Brenda H. Renalds

Master's Theses

Sherwood Anderson published only a few plays and, beside his lasting contributions to American literature (such as Winesburg, Ohio), these plays are of little literary value. To the student of Anderson, however, they are important not only because they reflect one of the many facts of Anderson's interest in literature but also because, near the end of his life, his dramatic attempts reflect concern for his literary career. Although his interest in the theater began early, he turned to the writing of plays later when suffered through long periods of time in which he could not crate the kind of …