English Language and Literature Commons^™

Down In Old Mexico: Five Stories, Lewis Moyse

Masters Theses

This is a collection of short stories unified by the themes of love or revenge, sometimes the one, sometimes the one and the other. It is preceded by a personal essay that outlines in broad strokes some of the poets, philosophers and novelists who have influenced how I write and what I write about.

Plagiarism And Voice In The Age Of Information, Brian Thomas

Masters Theses

The purpose of this work is to explore the issue of plagiarism in various contexts relevant to the teaching of English composition. Since definitions of plagiarism vary by culture and by history, an account of its expression at various points in Western history has been offered. Preliminary findings linked the use of technology for the expression of ideas to cultural and legal definitions of plagiarism. In addition, our own time further complicates any desire to arrive at definitive notions of intellectual property because of information technology facilitating cross-cultural exchange of ideas. In this “Information Age,” as it has been called, …

Transcending Gender And Class: A Study Of Elizabeth Gaskell's Novels, Kimberly A. Burnett

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Love, Violence, And Creation: Modernist Mediums Of Transcendence In Sylvia Plath's Poetry And Prose, Autumn Williams

Masters Theses

Many critics who study Sylvia Plath's works discuss the autobiographical significance of her poetry and prose, labeling her art as primarily confessional. My research shows that Sylvia Plath's awareness of and sensitivity to contemporary and historical cultural events, along with her acute sense of literary tradition, shape her art and widen the scope of critical interpretation. My study, although conceding that aspects of her writing are autobiographical, focuses on the modernist elements in her poetry and prose. By identifying her writing through the lens of modernism, I view her art in terms of its cultural, historical, political, and aesthetic qualities. …

The Mermaid's Dress: Marriage And Empire In The Voyage Out And Mrs Dalloway, Melissa Wharton-Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how socio-historical influences shape the protagonists of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925)-- Rachel Vinrace and Clarissa Dalloway. During the writing of these two novels, attitudes about roles for women before and after World War I shifted as pre-war domestic strife was replaced by a post-war push to return to normalcy. Throughout the period, imperialist ideology demanded that women conform to traditional gender roles by marrying and reproducing. Woolf depicts this pressure as it affects her two protagonists.

In The Voyage Out, the British Empire's imposing presence is exhibited through the setting of …

Lacunae: Narrative "Lacks, Holes Or Gaps" In Faulkner's And Morrison's Novels, Phyllis Ann Karpus

Masters Theses

The moment a reader opens a book, turns to the opening lines and begins to read, a circular relationship immediately develops with the author and the text. An implied alliance is formed wherein the author, most often through a narrator, omniscient or otherwise, proposes to the reader that he/she accept a degree of responsibility for understanding the plot, theme, and the underlying meaning in the work.

Retrospectively the theory sounds simple and, with many authors, it is effective. William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, however, not only command but also demand, the reader's absolute attention in, and responsibility to, many of …

The Soldier's Strife: An Introspective View Through The Work Of Tim O'Brien, Mandy Solomon

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Place In Malcolm Cowley's Blue Juniata And Exile's Return, Robert Pratte

Masters Theses

This study examines the various ways in which Malcolm Cowley develops and uses sense of place in his works Blue Juniata: Collected Poems and Exile's Return. Through examination of the literature, I identify four phases of place sense. Starting with childhood in the Identification phase, I illustrate the development of Cowley's place perspective through his poems and writings. As he moves through Adventure and Exile phases, I discuss their relation to the Identification phase and to each other. Likewise, I consider the role of the Nostalgia phase as a bridge from literary to experiential perception. Through close examination of his …

Facade Of A Romantic: Benjamin Disraeli And Coningsby Or The New Generation, Sybil Or The Two Nations, And Tancred Or The New Crusade, Peggy Pope

Masters Theses

Dismissed by contemporary critics as a second-rate writer, Benjamin Disraeli has been undervalued for over a hundred and fifty years. Writing in 1979, D.R. Schwarz rued that no recent full-length study of his novels had been undertaken, while other, even more minor novelists have been regularly exhumed. A substantial reassessment may be underway, as Paul Smith notes, particularly in the area of Disraeli's Jewishness. Bernard Glassman's volume, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (2003), and Disraeli's Jewishness (2002), by Todd Endelman and Tony Kushner, attest to this new interest. A recent general study, Disraeli (2000), by Edgar …

Kerouac's Instrumental Use Of Jazz, Dawn Nehrkorn

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Motherlands Of The Mind: A Study Of The Women Characters Of Attia Hosain's Sunlight On A Broken Column And Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Umme Sadat Nazmun Nahar Al-Wazedi

Masters Theses

In my thesis I examine the portrayal of women characters by two post-colonial Indian writers, Attia Hosain and Salman Rushdie, respectively in Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) and Midnight's Children (1980). I show how Hosain's and Rushdie's ideas of identity, nation and nationality influence their depiction of these women characters.

In the section analyzing Sunlight on a Broken Column, I argue that there is a spatial veil separating the feudal world of "Ashiana" from the outside world with its political disturbances, the life of a woman as an individual from the life of a woman as a part …