English Language and Literature Commons^™

Guidelines For Alternative Spring Break, Christopher A. Meyer

Honors Theses

According to the 1997 Statistical Abstract of the United States, some 93 million Americans - 48.8% of the nation's adults - volunteered an average of 4.2 hours a week in 1995, donating time and talents to benefit various worthy causes. These "causes" ranged from churches to museums to schools, from private arrangements to national (even international) organizations. And the work, from building houses to holding hands to cleaning homes to answering tax questions, covered every possible talent and ability that volunteers had to offer.

The Art Of The Novel: How Kundera Helps Us Read The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Matt Plavnick

Honors Theses

In all of Kundera's writing there is the search, the yearning, to understand more of the world around us~specifically around Kundera. His fiction deals both with the lives of people caught up in this world, some happily, some miserably, each undeniably held by human constraints, and also with how these people are affected by their natural constraints. His critical writing offers further examination and theory about these constraints: what they are, specifically, how they work, and how they affect people. With this comes a detailed assessment of our epoch, which he calls "The Modern Era," and the phenomena that characterize …

The Pain Of An Amputated Limb: Subjective Morality And Existentialism In Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, Aaron J. Klamer

Honors Theses

Over the last century, perhaps no genre of literature has so enthralled, interested, and provoked the public's intellect as those pieces which fall under the somewhat ambiguous appellation, "existentialist" literature. Novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus spawned generations of followers, including Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, and Franz Kafka. Today, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and especially the first book Interview With the Vampire, exemplify the characteristics of an existential novel. No doubt much of the reason for the popularity of the existential novel has to do with empathy, we see ourselves reflected in the characters. In order …

Female-Made Order In The Works Of Kaye Gibbons, Lee Ann Dugan

Honors Theses

Kaye Gibbons, a contemporary Southern writer, attracted almost immediate attention with the publication of her first novel Ellen Foster in 1987. Awarded the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, Ellen Foster was warmly received by both the critics and the public. According to Alice Hoffman, readers trust Ellen Foster even though her misfortunes border on the Gothic, and they anxiously follow her adventures because Gibbons "focuses on Ellen's strengths rather than her victimization, presenting a heroine who rescues herself" (13). Telling her story as if she were "her own maker and redeemer," …

Lion Of Judah; Or, Son Of The Morning Nat Turner As Christ Imposter In William Styron's The Confessions Of Nat Turner, Daniel D. Clark

Honors Theses

William Styron's interest in the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion began during Styron's childhood and increased in importance as he Styron recalled reading a brief account of the uprising in a Virginia history textbook while in grammar school. This initial discovery gave birth to Styron's curiosity about Nat Turner. By the late forties Styron had read Thomas Gray's original Confessions of Nat Turner and had begun collecting historical documentation of the Turner revolt.

Bidding For Distinction : John Wade's Gerogia Review, Anne Rittenburg

Honors Theses

Hailed today as one of the leading literary journal quarterlies in the nation, the Georgia Review is venerable on the eve of its golden anniversary. The quarterly's rich beginning bears investigation; so to understand this beginning, I have studied the man, John Donald Wade, who originated the Review and have observed firsthand through his correspondence, his pre-publication publicity, and his editorials the scope and standard he set for the quarterly. I have read of Wade's life and works in dissertations, essays written on him, and a published collection of his writings. Interviewing some of his smviving colleagues, I have gained …

Bidding For Distinction : John Wade's Georgia Review, Anne Rittenburg

Honors Theses

Hailed today as one of the leading literary journal quarterlies in the nation, the Georgia Review is venerable on the eve of its golden anniversary. The quarterly's rich beginning bears investigation; so to understand this beginning, I have studied the man, John Donald Wade, who originated the Review and have observed firsthand through his correspondence, his pre-publication publicity, and his editorials the scope and standard he set for the quarterly. I have read of Wade's life and works in dissertations, essays written on him, and a published collection of his writings. Interviewing some of his smviving colleagues, I have gained …

Lee Smith's Use Of Point Of View In Oral History And Black Mountain Breakdown, Debbie Ames

Honors Theses

As a literary device, choice of point of view is one of the most important technical decisions an author must make when writing a novel because of the effects emerging from this choice. If an author chooses first person point of view over third person point of view, the overall effect of the novel will differ. Lee Smith is keenly aware of the importance of point of view and manipulates it in both Black Mountain Breakdown and Oral History to create the overall effects which she desires for each novel.

A Collection Of Short Stories, Charlotte Miller

Honors Theses

Syncopation; The Color of Massasaguas; Minnows' Inlet; A Seahorse Made of Wire; Cleaning; A Concert in Autumn

The Appalling Stream : The Terror That Adjoins The Humor In The Writings Of Eudora Welty, Winnie Prince Mattheiss

Honors Theses

Two streams flowed into Eudora Welty's life, the one stream bright, the other one dark; and from their confluence came both the humor and the terror in her writings. These flowing streams she describes with charm in her autobiographical essays, One Writer's Beginnings.

Ernest Miller Hemingway : Dimensions Of Death, Bruce R. Mcdonald

Honors Theses

The life and works of Ernest Miller Hemingway resemble the views of the people of Castile, Spain in many ways. From an early age, Hemingway took an "intelligent interest" in the concept of death. It was an interest that was to grow to encompass almost every aspect of his sixty year life and his literary career. For Hemingway, death was an essential component in his existence as well as a necessary consequence of living in our world. Hemingway's exploration of the notion of death gave meaning and security to his being. For Hemingway, death eventually became an all consuming obsession …

Irish-American Fiction And The Ethnic Identity Of Irish-Americans, Mary Carty

Honors Theses

As the largest immigrant group in the history of the United States, the Irish have had a tremendous impact on American society. Politically, the Irish flooded city government offices, eventually working up to the nation's highest office. Economically, they swelled the ranks of the labor market that was so crucial to America's growing industry. Religiously, they took over the leadership and strengthened the establishment of the Roman Catholic church in America, bringing to it their own parochial brand of Irish Catholicism. The Irish also influenced American culture with their successes in literature and the arts, and with their widespread emphasis …

A Study Of The Self In The Red And The Black And The Confessions Of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Roberta Mowery

Honors Theses

Although there are many reasons for reading and writing literature, perhaps the most compelling one is to gain knowledge of and access to the self. One of the most interesting aspects in the literary study of the self involves the individual's perception of his public and private self. This differentiation between the public an dprivate persona is developed in dept in Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Thomas Mann's The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. The protagonists of these two works lead lives of duplicity and hypocrisy, each submerging his private personality in order to get ahead in …

Doubletake : The Obsessions Of Sylvia Plath, Brian Connors

Honors Theses

For twenty five years, analyses of the link between Sylvia Plath's life and writings have too often focused on selected rebellious incidents and a handful of poems written in the last six months of her llfe. These shallow and often sensational literary autopsies reach seemingly pre-determined conclusions about Plath and usually blame Plath's mother, her husband, and male-dominated 1940s and 1950s America for the vitriolic tone of her writings and for her suicide at age thirty. Unfortunately, oversimplification is the rule in Plath studies. Examinations of Plath are particularly hazardous because such an enormous amount of her work was autobiographical …

Zora Neale Hurston And The Emergence Of Self, Cheryl Y. Williams

Honors Theses

Abraham Maslow in his work From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature made the statement:

Every human being has (two) sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging to the past, afraid to grow... afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self (45-6).

What makes …

Lewis Carroll's Dissection And Restructure Of The Social Self, Pamela F. Pecora

Honors Theses

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, should not be categorized as literature primarily for children. These stories are works of art whose complex nature demans intellectual interpretation. Such a study is not meant to take joy away from the innocent and pleasurable surface of Alice's adventures. Instead, the usefulness of probing deeply into this literature is to reveal a fundamental lesson that Carroll imparts to his readers. After studying the feelings prevalent in English Victorian society, Carroll's personal feelings as illustrated through his themes, and his devices and techniqu eof writing, I have …

Radicalism In Literature: Proletarian Fiction Of The 1930s, Susan Maxwell

Honors Theses

In a study of working class literature from the 1930s, I would contend that the most radical work was produced primarily by female writers. For the most part, this radicalism owed to the subordination and the victimization of women in society. Since all of the writers that were studied (Tillie Olsen, Meridel Le Sueur, Fielding Burke, Agnes Smedley, Erskine Caldwell, Michael Gold, Jack Conroy, and Floyd Dell) were at least involved with, if not members of, the Communist Party, this makes a fascinating study into the power of a philosophy of government on the individual. Not only was the individual …

Richard Brautigan : A Man In Search Of America, Elizabeth A. Howell

Honors Theses

Avant-garde writing tends to be an "iffy" thing these days, more a matter of cocktail chatter than execution. The resources for experiments seem used up, or ash John Barth put it, "exhausted" (Pinkser 75). Things and words increase in quantity but diminish in value and meaning, making the contemporary writer more and more unwilling to follow the old ways of arranging them. Though this is not a new predicament for an aspiring writer, it is one that seems threatening in an age of self-conscious art. Writers must look for new grammars and new semantics. Some writers turn this quest for …

Kate Chopin : A Different Look, Kimberly Ann Francis

Honors Theses

Kate Chopin? Who is she? This is a common resonse of many people who are not familiar with this outstanding woman writer of the late 1800's and early 1900's. In fact, this same question would more likely have gone unanswered then than today. For the most part, many of her contemporaries are prominently discussed and read today because they enjoyed popularity while they were alive. They not only established literary voges; in many cases they gave the public what it wanted to read. Such writers include Mark Twain and Stephen Crane as well as Edith Wharton and Ellen Glasgow. Kate …

Alice Walker: An Interpretation Of Her Works, Niamh Walsh

Honors Theses

In summary, I feel as if Alice Walker has used her literature for far more than mere literary entertainment. I believe that she wrote with a very strong message for both blacks and women. To both minorities, of which she herself is proud to belong, she calls for acknowledgmetn of their attirubutes, their worth and their limitations: she calls for reclamation of the many positive attributes that have, for too long, been derided as insignificant: and she calls for a loud, joyous celebration of all the many defining aspects of womanhood and blackness. I see this evident in most, in …

Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Struggle For Poetic Vision, Kathryn M. Fessler

Honors Theses

In this study, I will trace the developmetn and history of Hopkins' struggle to realize and live by a vision of an immanent God, using as the gauge of his progress the poems, which are the celarest expressions of Hopkins' heart. I will illustrate the chronological progression of this vision in the poetry, and discuss specific poems in terms of their places in the history of Hopkins' life as a poet and a priest. I will also pay some degree of attention to linguistic innovations in the poetry, since these are manifestations of Hopkins' liberation from certain formal constraints made …

Toni Morrison's Approach To Understanding, Joyce Dorris

Honors Theses

Toni Morrison tackles the problems for which she does not have resolutions. In order to make an impact on readers and achieve a meaningful understanding, Morrison manipulates readers' emotions. She says, "My writing expects, demands participatory reading. The reader supplies the emotions. Then we (you, the reader, and I, the author) come together to make this book, to feel this experience" (Tate, 125). Morrison carefully positions her readers to see what her characters see and react as they would. Morrison feels if the readers can see the person experiencing the thing, they do not need an explanation. The illustration will …

The Pastoral Tradition In Film, Andrew J. Ford

Honors Theses

The pastoral, whether in painting, music, literature, or film, has always attempted to capture that fleeting moment in history, real or unreal, where man is autonomous. The pastoral life occurs only after man has gained a considerable amount of control over nature and before he has found himself controlled by his fellow man or by those common evils made real and specific by civilization. In other words, the pastoral tries to capture or create that period in history where man has conquered the wilderness in some major way, usually by farming or animal herding, but has not yet become involved …

James Joyce's Use Of Topography In Ulysses, Mary Beth Delea

Honors Theses

James Joyce's Ulysses stands out as the most conscientiously topographical novel ever written, according to the authors of Literary Landscapes of the British Isles. The Dublin which Joyce recreates is the Dublin of physical reality, painstakingly transposed so as to elicit exact details of the city. This detailed locale plays an important role in the novel, revealing many of Joyce's ingenious artistic purposes. The topography of Dublin appears the beginning of Ulysses and is significant until the end of the novel, influencing three major aspects of the work. The aspects referred to include the personality of Dublin as well as …

The Search For Origins: Some Contemporary Views On Poetry And Possibility, David Franke

Honors Theses

Too often it is the habit of critics to create a realm of philosophy that removes itself from the very subject which it aims to clarify or refine. This paper attempts to avoid that mistake by grounding the philosophical ideas explicated in the first section of the paper in practical applications to the poetry of Mark Strand, A.R. Ammons and others. Briefly, the beginning sets up an idealogical framework that focuses on the poet's introspective search for the origins of his art. Drawing heavily on the criticism of Maurice Blanchot, the phenomonological philosophy of Martin Heidegger , and the philosophical …

A Voice From The Shadows: The Novels Of Toni Morrison, Ardith A. Muse

Honors Theses

The three novels of Toni Morrison to date deal with elements of both the feminine and the African consciousness. The dominant characters developed in her novels act within a socially isolated black community, and often in a largely or wholly female household. The values embodied in her novels, as well as the imagery and language, are derived in large part from African culture and archetypes of the feminine unconscious.

A Chapbook Of Poetry And Prose, Robert Post

Honors Theses

No abstract available.

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 …

Psychic Wholeness In Blake And Jung, Walter B. Gallant

Honors Theses

There is no doubt that for most modern readers the work of William Blake is an enigma. I should like to suggest that the work of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung offers one way to bring a sense of order and meaning to Blake's work.