English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Grim Word: 'Home' In Fiction By Graham Greene, Geoff Cowgill

Masters Theses

Graham Greene's treatment of the subject of home in his writings is remarkably negative. Focusing on nine of his major novels (England Made Me, A Gun for Sale, Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, and The Human Factor), this study explicates the ways in which home fails his characters. In this thesis, 'home' has been split into three facets: family, domicile and homeland. Each facet seems to promise benefits for the characters that don't materialize. The way in which Greene's writing promotes a betrayal of home reflects …

A Song And A Slogan: Regional Influences On Carl Sandburg And Edgar Lee Masters, Amanda Dunlavey

Masters Theses

The works of Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters have been largely overlooked by critics in spite of their initial popular success .• However, these authors dt serve further study, especially· in light of the growing popularity of regional writing. When studied in a biographical context, the works of Sandburg and Masters illustrate that thJ. most profound influence on their lives and works was that of their early lives in entral Illinois. It was there that they found their most fertile subject matter, developed their political beliefs, and established their connection to nature. Studying the 4 in tandem can form …

Warriors, Lovers, Mothers: Women's Physical Powers In The Irish Sagas, Jessica L. Powell-Pickering

Masters Theses

This thesis is an examination of four primary female characters from the 8t-century Irish sagas and the powers that they exhibit through their physical actions. By placing primary emphasis on body language rather than, or in conjunction with, the words spoken by each character, a reader may gain a more comprehensive sense of the true nature of that character. These women are not simply standing in the background; they are performing actions imperative to their individual narratives that aid in story development and larger contextual plots found in the sagas as a whole. Each of these women-Grainne, Deirdre, Medb, and …

Textual Selves, Tasha Dunaway

Masters Theses

Through an examination of the texts of William Byrd II and Thomas Jefferson, I consider appetite as an instrument of self-construction in relation to two poles of male identity: the patriarch and the libertine. Byrd and Jefferson's public images as patriarchs are complicated by an examination of their private texts which reveal a decidedly libertine tendency. These two men compose texts (and personae) relative to socially accepted notions of appetite.

Chapter One discusses the composition of works written for introspective purposes, arguably private works--commonplace books, scrapbooks, diaries, and letters-in an effort to distinguish the ways in which appetite operates in …

Hannah Dustan: A Seventeenth-Century Text Still In Progress, Janice Derr

Masters Theses

This thesis traces the path of Hannah Dustan's story of captivity from its first appearance in the seventeenth century through today and explores the cultural history and significance behind her story. Dustan's story of her capture and bloody escape from the Abenaki tribe was first told by Puritan minister Cotton Mather, in his 1697 sermon Humiliations Follow 'd with Deliverance. Incorporating captivity narratives into sermons was not atypical, but it may surprise modem readers to find a story with a protagonist who commits murder in a sermon about humiliation. By examining primary documents and exploring the history of the captivity …

What Comes Next, Mario Podeschi

Masters Theses

A narrator named Mario Podeschi watches a character named Mario Podeschi be sent back in time from graduate school to his freshman year of high school. A twenty-four year old in a fifteen year-old body, the Mario character retains aH of his old memories leading up to Spring of2008 and tries to use them to his own benefit at his small town Illinois high school. Fifteen year-old Mario readdicts himself to cigarettes, chases high school crushes, and distances himself from his old friends. Not that his second chance at high school is a complete failure~he finds his soulmate in Saturday …

Cutting Back The Mask: Character And Coiffure In Fiction By F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, And Robert Penn Warren, Lisa Anne Powell

Masters Theses

Realistic fiction has recorded changing fashions of architecture and landscape, clothing and coiffure. For at least three centuries, writers of narrative have described the clothing and the hairstyles of their fictional women both to set them within a specific time ar place and to offer a key to their character. Hair as natural endowment and artificial adornment has served as an essential component to the character costume. Novelists have understood that women send messages, albeit sometimes unconscious ones, about themselves, their lives, and their feelings through the style, color and length of their hair. Writers have sometimes described women's hair …

Expanding Composition's Scope: Community-Based Literacy And Second-Language Writing, Carolina Pelaez-Morales

Masters Theses

There is little research from either Composition Studies or Second-Language Studies on the development of writing competence among English language learners, paiiicularly adult learners outside academia. In response to this need, I conducted a case study of a small group of Spanish-native speakers as they learned English through a volunteer-based community program in a small Midwestern town. This project establishes the role writing plays in a community of second-language learners-primarily motivated by economic factors to learn English-and it shows ways in which the development of writing competence can enhance overall language proficiency. Also, this study calls for further research in …

Passage Through The Ocean: The Female Heroic Journey In The Novels Of Anita Desai, Jaime Pedigo Hendrix

Masters Theses

This study examines the female heroic journey in relation to the protagonists in three of Anita Desai's novels: Maya in Cry, the Peacock, Sita in Where Shall We Go This Summer, and Bim in Clear Light of Day. The elements of the heroic journey as described by Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces illuminate the journeys of Desai's characters, as certain of these elements appear in all three of the characters' journeys toward adulthood. The work of C. G. Jung is also central to this study, as his theories on psychological development are utilized to show the growth, …

Driven To Distraction, Carissa Renee Hayden

Masters Theses

This compilation of personal essays is centered on the topic of driving. Many of my stories do not take place in ordinary tourist locations. However, my emphasis in each essay is to highlight details of the traveling experience, regardless of the destination. I chose to structure my thesis as a series of essays because each story has its own particular focus. Together, the subjects of each story interlock as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle to form a unified and overarching theme of appearance vs. reality. Often the appearance, or how we envision the trip, is romanticized, whereas the reality is …

The Beauty Of Her Survival: Being Black And Female In Meridian, The Salt Eaters, Kindred, And The Bluest Eye, Loretta N. Ullrich-Ferguson

Masters Theses

Individuals have been responsible for advocating equality for marginalized American groups since colonial times. From the nation's second First Lady Abigail Adams through former slaves such as Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to the activists in the social movements of the 20th century, many have fought hard to try to make the wealthy white-male power structure aware of and sympathetic to the rights of all citizens. Throughout these struggles, racist and sexist ideology dictated who the public leaders of these movements would be. The abolitionist movement's prominent leaders were males, most often white. The suffragist movement was led by, and …

Punk'd Lives: Or, The Effects Of White Folks, Black Folks, And Breeders On Punks, Maurice L. Tracy

Masters Theses

Punk'd Lives: Or the Effects of White Folks, Black Folks, and Breeders on Punks is a collection of short stories in the vein of Langston Hughes' The Ways of White Folks; each story looks at contemporary American, mainly middle class, society and exposes some particular, and not always pleasant, truth about those represented within its few pages. As a collective whole and at its core, Punk'd Lives examines what it means to be a young homosexual African-American male living inside of the larger (mainstream) American culture that is often White and always heterosexual.

Black, White, And Gray: The Veiled Politics Of Race And Slavery In Antebellum Literature, Emily Ramage

Masters Theses

The American slavery crisis reached a pinnacle during the time from postrevolution to the mid-nineteenth century, resulting in the most devastating loss of American life to date - the Civil War. Emotions about race and slavery ran high during this antebellum period, and many extremists on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line used the power of written language for their cause; many Americans, conversely, appeared indifferent to a race of people who neither directly affected them nor engaged their interest. That indifference itself played a role in the debate of race and slavery, which progressively reached a vast audience in …

The Interdialect Approach To Second Dialect Acquisition: Theory, Process, And Results, Shauna K. Cromwell

Masters Theses

This project outlines the theory, process, and results behind an original approach to second dialect acquisition termed the "Interdialect Approach." To begin, the historical origins and development of the non-standard dialect African-American English (AAE) are outlined, focusing particularly on the evolution of the dialect and the importance of its historical examination in relation to current studies, research, and emerging nontraditional teaching methods for second dialect acquisition. This multi-faceted approach is clearly defined and offered as an effective method for teaching non-standard English speakers, particularly AAE speakers as is noted in the discussion of two dialect studies in which the "Interdialect …

The Philosophical Quest Of Tom Joad In The Grapes Of Wrath, Eun-Young Lim

Masters Theses

When the merciless Dust Bowl sweeps through Oklahoma in The Grapes of Wrath, the major questions of what can be achieved by thinking and how can ordinary men overcome these critical circumstances pervade the entire novel. This thesis focuses on how Tom Joad, the protagonist in this novel, grows in his philosophical quest, based mainly on Steinbeck's assertion that "Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action."

Although Tom Joad is portrayed as a cynical, convicted killer who responds to stimuli or from impulse at first, he undergoes his journey both literally and metaphorically from Oklahoma to the promised …

The Myth, Paul Meske

Masters Theses

The Myth chronicles a few days in the life of a young man in search of his place in the world. Through flashbacks and discussions concerning choice and purpose, Adam tries to carve out a life for himself after everyone he knows melts away. Adam discovers many things about himself and how the people around him come to embrace their choices. In the end, Adam attempts to make his own choice and to land somewhere nice and peaceful.

Home Invasions: Victorian Domestic Space And The Figure Of The Outsider, Kathleen Rodems

Masters Theses

Victorian fiction often represents a domestic space that is designed both architecturally and psychologically to protect its residents from the external harsh and hostile world. Novelists ofthe period perceived a weakness in the domestic fortress and incorporated characters that could enter these homes in various ways, whether invited or not, and threatened to expose the families to the world they represented. This thesis investigates characters able to disrupt this domestic idea ofprivacy including the orphaned outsider Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), the impostor Lucy Graham in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley 's Secret (1862), and the detective Sergeant …

The Medieval Influences Of Shakespeare’S Richard Iii: Morality Plays, Miracle Plays, And The Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Shelley

Masters Theses

There are many striking similarities between Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Richard III and several types of medieval works. The morality play genre is most distinctly represented by Richard’s representation as the Vice, a popular figure first characterized as the devil’s helper who eventually eclipsed the devil and became the sole figure of evil. Riehard also shares characteristics with the miracle or mystery play figures of Cain and Herod, figures who commit evil deeds and are rightly punished by God. Shakespeare was also strongly influenced by the chronicle accounts of Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall, who base their accounts of …

In The Middle Of Somewhere, Lisa Anne Walker

Masters Theses

I have written a creative non fiction piece concerning my experiences living amongst the Tarahumara people of Mexico. The piece utilizes the combination of standard prose with a letter format. The letters are addressed to my sister Alex, but none were actual letters in the form they appear in the thesis. The letter format was chosen because it allowed me to share events without the need to explain in great detail either the events or my feelings concerning the events. The prose format then allowed me to contemplate the events directly and indirectly that are brought up in the letters. …

The Search For Authentic Identity In Three Novels By West Indian Author Earl Lovelace, Todd A. Cornwell

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I examine the evolving concept of authentic identity, individual, cultural, and national in the post-colonial Caribbean context embodied in West Indian author Earl Lovelace's The Schoolmaster, The Dragon Can't Dance, and Salt. These three novels when analyzed together demonstrate Lovelace's emerging vision of a future for the Caribbean rooted in indigenous values, self-possession, historical reclamation, and, ultimately, true independence.

Additionally, this thesis explores Lovelace's paradox of the mask, in its many different physical and psychological forms, that simultaneously liberates and imprisons, and the consequences of masking on West Indian identity. In Lovelace's own words, these three novels …

Rocking The Kenyan Cradle: Colonial Conditioning In Ngugi Wa Thiongo's Njamba Nene Stories, Jonathan Moore

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes Ngugi wa Thiongo's critique of the colonial influences on the Church, the British educational system and the Kenyan middle class in and around the time of Kenya's State of Emergency of the 1950s. Specifically, I examine these colonial legacies through his two children's books Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus and Njamba Nene's Pistol. More than simply exploit the poor, all three condition the people into a state of submissive acceptance of British superiority. The middle class, a self-replicating product of the first two, is of particular concern to Ngugi because, in this case, Kenyans exploit Kenyans …

To The Beat Of A Different Drum: Inside The Mind Of An "Aspie", Kristopher Allyn Jones

Masters Theses

This thesis is a collection of the author's memoirs regarding his struggles and achievements of living with the condition of Asperger's Syndrome. The purpose of this thesis is for the material to serve as a gateway for those individuals living and coping with the condition, and, likewise, to serve as a pedantic tool for those who don't understand its esoteric aspects. By writing these memoirs, the author wishes to prevent unnecessary persecution toward those living with Asperger's Syndrome, and he wishes to emphasize to those living with the condition that it is alright to be different. This thesis serves as …

Comfort Food, Anita Zimmerman

Masters Theses

Comfort Food is a work of culinary-themed creative nonfiction based on my personal and professional cooking experiences. My purposes in writing these memoirs, to preserve my family's gastronomic history and intimate my cooking experiences, are ultimately infused with a single desire: to encourage others to view food in terms of nourishment, of comfort, and not simply sustenance.

The work is divided into eight chapters; the first two focus on my family's history and my childhood on a farm in Wisconsin. The third through seventh chapters are a chronologically-organized account of each of the places I've worked: a bakery, café, supper …

Holding Her Hand, Chris Ellen Lamb

Masters Theses

The history of GLBTQ YA (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning Young Adult) literature has seen the introduction of very small amounts of fiction over the years. Publication of the first YA gay novel in 1969 opened the doors for many writers interested in pursuing the genre. However, even since this year (the year of the semi-liberation of gays during Stonewall) we have only seen a small amount of titles provided to young readers. In the past decade, interest has begun to turn to a more accepting, emotional and physical based portrayal of GLBTQ teens in their literature.

Since the onset …

Color-Blind Or Seeing White: A Pedagogical Approach To Critical Whiteness Studies, Rebekah K. Volk

Masters Theses

Critical whiteness studies is a primary component of multicultural education that is frequently absent from curricula at all educational levels. This deficiency in the core philosophy of education produces white and non-white students who lack an analytical understanding of the true impact of whiteness on American society, culture, and media. Through lessons infused and influenced by a whiteness perspective, educators may begin the process of creating anti-racist white allies who will continue to change society with a positive impact. Additionally, teachers should help students view their world through the lens of critical whiteness studies in order to promote a more …

Brasil With An S: A Memoir, Lee Isaacson Roll

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of six essays written in the genre of creative nonfiction. The focus of the work is my experience of living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and teaching at the American School from 1969-1971 when I was in my early twenties. The essays are sourced in 104 letters I sent to my family; entries in two daybooks; photos; and my roommate's diary. The events suggested by these primary sources have been enriched by information acquired through academic research and by details provided by conversations and correspondence with the people who shared the experiences with me. The essays shift …

American Books Of The Dead: Mourning And Denial In The Fiction Of Don Delillo And Cormac Mccarthy, Allan E. Crandell

Masters Theses

The novels of Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy are heavily pervaded by themes of mortality and its denial. DeLillo's White Noise (1985), with its emblematic centerpiece of an "Airborne Toxic Event," was succeeded by the slim depiction of mourning deferred, The Body Artist (2001). Likewise, Cormac McCarthy's epic Appalachian novel, Suttree (1979), is ridden with images of death and strangled mourning, a work followed by Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), a historiographic depiction of unrelenting, culturally repressed bloodshed. This thesis maintains that DeLillo and McCarthy warn us in these novels about the American way of …

Treading Lightly, Megan Rankin

Masters Theses

A creative thesis of poetry in four chapters that illustrates the inspiration of Taoist texts, Chinese poets such as Li Bai and Wang Wei, Japanese haiku by Issa, Basho, and Chiyo-ni, and American poets such as Lorine Niedecker, Denise Levertov. W.S. Merwin, and Louise Gluck. The fourth chapter focuses more on myself as poet and on my pregnancy at the time of writing with all chapters looking at the intricacies of nature and human interaction therein.

Boundary-Crossers: Observation, Chance, And Change In The Fiction Of Thomas Hardy, D. Levi Woolen-Danner

Masters Theses

Thomas Hardy creates in his fiction a world that demands love lead to failure. His hero and heroine are tragic nearly without exception, as if desire were not just a burden, but a catalyst for disaster. Perhaps this is due to the period in which Hardy was living, and his need to reconcile his memories of an idyllic past with the dramatic social and econonomic changes contemporary to his period of novel-writing. Perhaps he is trying to discover a new model of living-one that will not be trapped by human desires. He has created a figure, one I refer to …

The Semantics Of Color In Anna Akhmatova's Early Poetry, Alsu Shakirova

Masters Theses

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), a Russian post-Symbolist poet, published a variety of poems in the Russian language, which were later translated into English. Her works include the collections Evening (1912), Rosary (1914), White Flock (1917), Plantain (1921), Anno Domini (1922), From Six Books (1940), Seventh Book (1936- 1964), Poems (1958), Requiem (1963), and Poem Without a Hero (1940-1966). This work focuses on her early poetry collections Evening, Rosary, White Flock, and Anno Domini and analyzes the semantic relationship between color and concrete objects in order to discover how Akhmatova conveys the image, mood, and state of the persona's transforming self through …