English Language and Literature Commons^™

Coyote Mail, John R. Salter Iii

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of four short stories. They are traditional in the sense that each involves a conflict, and resolution of a conflict. "Coyote Mail," the first story, deals with a grandfather who must face the fact that change is inevitable, and that he cannot interrupt it. "Ambush" involves a young man who, after being pushed to the limit by a bully, decides to take drastic action. The third story, "Every Blue in the Sky" concerns a law enforcement officer who finds himself forced to think about his racial heritage. The fourth story, "Big Rabbit Sets Me Free," concerns a …

The Effects Of War As A Basis To Consider Six Novels By Ernest Hemingway And F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nancy Weston Noel

Theses and Dissertations

Curiously, the issue of war has never been considered a solid basis for examining the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yet one common thread running through the body of their work is war. A study of the authors’ attitudes toward war and their characters’ responses to war in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), The Sun Also Rises (1926), and Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920), The Great Gatsby (1925), and Tender Is the Night (1934), yields several conclusions. Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s works reveal two different types of human responses to …

Lehi's Vision Of The Tree Of Life: An Anagogic Interpretation, Julie Adams Maddox

Theses and Dissertations

The significance of Lehi's life tree is that it gives life. Lehi's tree expresses the nonverbal, renews Lehi, effectually creates a culture, and keys the structure of a literary, viable, and contemporary scripture. My thesis chapters grow out of my reading of myth, tree mythology, and Lehi's dream. I see Lehi 1) traveling a polemic course toward the tree, 2) confronting the tree's death, and 3) by suffering, opening the symbol to his inner vision.
Lehi's first dream images, a dark and dreary wilderness vs. a man in white, suggest the birth of mythic creation. By traveling through and reconciling …

The Ever Present Past: Thoreau's Perception And Use Of History In Walden, Kathleen Tracy Alonzo Fineran

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to explore Thoreau's historical perspective and to examine how his perception of history is reflected in his major work Walden. Regarding the scope of the project, three dimensions of Thoreau's perception and use of history were treated: his belief in a historical continuity of experience; his belief in historical truth as myth; and his quest for the American past. Regarding the limitations of the project, Thoreau's thought and other works were only drawn upon as they served to provide a context for discussion and no effort was made to reconcile any ambiguities in Thoreau's …

Incremental Repetition Within J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth: Shadow, Light, And Silmaril Within Mortal-Immortal Marriages, Nancy Lynn Hayes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the use of incremental repetition to emphasize points of both syntactic and thematic importance within the Middle-earth works of J.R.R. Tolkien. By studying three specific terms: shadow, light, and Silmaril, and how their meaning changes with each occurance, it is possible to see how much Tolkien's mythology owes to his syntactic structure.

Through my research, I have concluded that not only was Tolkien's use of incremental repetition deliberate, but that it was also an essential part of his skill in creating his mythology.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Three Essays On Place And Meaning, Reed Evan Richards

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of three personal essays and a postface, in part experiments in genre, mode, and structure, and in large part explorations of the meanings of specific places in culture and on the self-definition of the observer-writer, the first essay being set in Florida and centered at Disneyworld; the second consisting of fragments of observations along the route from St. Augustine to Washington, D.C., and ending with a brief fiction; the third, a speculative/anti-speculative rumination over many things, including meaning, death, faith, and enshrinement, and set in Illinois, Missouri, and South Africa; and the postface a theoretical/descriptive theoretical defense …

Clinton Larson's "The Witness": The Quest For A Mormon Mythic Consciousness, Dennis R. Perry

Theses and Dissertations

"The Witness" can be viewed as Clinton F. Larson's poetic manifesto that points the direction for much of his subsequent work. Although his poetic "mormonism" has been questioned by several of his critics, this thesis shows that Larson definitely expresses his Mormon faith in "The Witness" as a metaphorical quest for mythic consciousness. While searching in the poem for sacred space and time, Larson seeks to become closer to the divine and powerful center of being, creating at once a metaphor for his quest to understand and assimilate Christ's atonement and a poetic voice from which he can speak for …

"Night Journey To Meridian" And Other Stories, Lillie Marie Francis

Theses and Dissertations

"Night Journey to Meridian" and Other Stories is a group of interrelated short stories dealing with various psychic experiences of one major character, Stella. Each story is an independent unit, but the stories together show psychic development through the life of the character. The stories are arranged chronologically.

"The Bite of the Turtle" deals with a nightmare experience of Stella in which she is in a strange place and gets bitten by a giant turtle. Stella insists on the reality of the experience that night and thereafter. "Aunt Callie's Visit" is an incident in which Stella has a precognitive dream …

The Use Of Interlace In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, Sherry L. Mattison

Theses and Dissertations

J.R.R. Tolkien employs a form of interlace in his work The Lord of the Rings that has roots in medieval French romances, Anglo-Saxon literature of the seventh and eighth centuries, and as far back as Ovid. The technique evolved in the medieval romances as a means of handling multiple action and multiple themes. The technique reappears after long absence in Tolkien's work, with emendations and improvements by Tolkien to fit his modern audience

Tolkien employs the technique in three major areas: the paralleling of story, character, and setting; the forewarning and foreshadowing; and what I have called the time-flash. This …

A Question Of Influence: William Cowper Brann And Henry Louis Mencken, Dale Owen Bishop

Theses and Dissertations

A major critic of H. L. Mencken and a co-worker of his on the Baltimore Sun have both theorized that Mencken was influenced by a little-remembered Texas iconoclast who was assassinated in 1898, William Cowper Brann. Investigation revealed that Brann and Mencken agreed on many topics such as Prohibition, politics and religion among others. Mencken's early style compares well with Brann's, and they shared many techniques and preferences for particular words standard in the debunker's vocabulary. Research revealed that Mencken even published an article in 1900, at the age of twenty, in the magazine that had formerly been published by …

A Survey Of Mormon Literary Criticism, Colin B. Douglas

Theses and Dissertations

Three general questions concerning literature have been addressed by the writers considered in this thesis: What constitutes a work of literary art? What ought to be valued by Latter-day Saints in a literary work? How should criticism be conducted by Latter-day Saints? To the first question, five basic answers have been proposed: significant form, uplifting thought content clothed in decorative form, typological symbol, ikon (as the word is used by C S lewis in An Experiment in Criticism), and capacity for helping the reader achieve a kind of "negative capability." These definitions also tend to be statements of value, …

Tales From The Tracting Book, Donna Christine Allen Ackerson

Theses and Dissertations

My original idea for the book was to do a picturesque-type novel, with chapters that would practically be short stories in themselves. But as I got into the writing of it, I decided to pursue one main theme--Sister Harper's conflicts regarding her missionary calling--working them out to a climax and a resolution. I still intended to give the book a picturesque flavor, however, by embellishing it with digressions, sidelines, and banalities that are always a part of missionary life.

Joseph Smith As A Jacksonian Man Of Letters: His Literary Development As Evidenced In His Newspaper Writings, Walter A. Norton

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the newspaper writings of Joseph Smith Jr., the Mormon Prophet, traces his development as an American writer as evidenced in his newspaper publications, and notes the major concepts contained therein which demonstrate that Smith may deservedly be called a "Jacksonian Man of Letters."

Emerging from his youth lacking even rudimentary writing ability, Smith began his development with the translation of ancient scriptural records. Literary experiences with other scriptures, historical records, and even grammar classes augmented his development. Smith later turned his attention to frontier newspapers and served briefly as an editor. Jail confinement provided further stimulus to …

A Study Of Some Textual Variations In The Book Of Mormon Comparing The Original And The Printer's Manuscripts And The 1830, The 1837, And The 1840 Editions, Stanley R. Larson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of textual variations in the two manuscripts and the first three editions of the Book of Mormon. Successive collations of each of these were made against the text of the first edition. From these collations some 427 specific textual variations were selected for inclusion in the thesis.

The research disclosed that some genuine corrections as well as editorial revisions were made by Joseph Smith in 1837 and 1840. However, it was also concluded that some alterations of the text arose from accidental causes.

The most significant contribution of this study was that both the Original …

Bayard Taylor's The Prophet: Mormonism As Literary Taboo; Calaveras County Comes Of Age; The Erosion Of Belief In The Poetry Of Clinton F. Larson, Thomas D. Schwartz

Theses and Dissertations

The three papers included in this thesis reflect my development as a graduate student during the course of my master's program at Brigham Young Universtiy. I came to Brigham Young University interested in creative writing and developed a love for research and criticism. My work in nineteenth century American literature led to the first two papers. Both deal with literary history, the first narrow in scope, devoted to a study of the significance of a single play, the second broad in scope, devoted to a study of the unifying thread of anti-sentimentalism in the writings of the major American realists. …

Henry Fielding's The Mock Doctor: Or The Dumb Lady Cur'd And The Miser: A Critical Edition, Marti J. Brewerton

Theses and Dissertations

Henry Fielding is more widely known as a novelist than a playwright. Except for Tom Thumb, his dramatic works are largely ignored. And yet many of these plays enjoyed great success in Fielding's time. This edition presents a critical, old-style text of two of Fielding's most popular plays, both of which are adaptations of Molière: The Mock Doctor; or the Dumb Lady Cur'd, taken from Le Médecin Malgré Lui, and The Miser, taken from L'Avare. Each play is presented in the form which represents as nearly as possible Fielding's final intentions, so far as can be …

The Song Of The Righteous: An Historical And Literary Analysis Of The Latter-Day Saint Hymnal, Ruth Alene Thomson Symons

Theses and Dissertations

The hymnal of the Latter-day Saints first proposed only shortly after the organization of the Church and published continually every few years between 1835 and 1871, is a remarkably accurate indicator of the changing fortunes and beliefs of the early Saints. The first hymnal, gathered by Emma Smith, uncompromisingly sets forth the basic Mormon belief in man's free agency, his innate perfectability, and his kinship to his Heavenly Father. Later editions reflect the missionary concerns of the church (1840), the tremendous persecution the saints are subjected to (1841), the Church difficulties after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith (1849), the call …

The Poetry Of Matthew Arnold: A Study In Versification, Douglas A. Mathewson

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the great number of published works that deal with English prosody or the more restricted subject of versification, there is a noticeable scarcity of studies that describe the practices of individual poets. One of the more apparent reasons for the meager number of versification studies is the instability of the basic criteria by which a poem is examined. Prosodists quite simply find it difficult to establish concrete principles of scansion that are acceptable to all other prosodists. Without going into discussion of the various schools of thought on metrical structure, suffice it to say that there are conflicting opinions …

A Study Of The Literary Qualities In The Diary Of Hosea Stout, Richard G. Ellsworth

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to present the diaries of Hosea Stout in the light of literary criticism and analysis. Two questions have been asked: do the diaries contain literary quality by revealing the characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and feelings of Hosea Stout; and, does Hosea Stout's style contain the literary elements necessary to distinquish it from ordinary communication. Passages from the diaries have been quoted and analyzed to answer these questions. Conclusions are made after each analysis, after each chapter, and at the end of the thesis.

This study revealed that, in spite of Hosea Stout's spelling difficulties and …