Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Chaucer's Use Of The Absalom Archetype In The Knight's Tale And In The Miller's Tale, Sharon Hardin

Masters Theses

Although Chaucer did not write The Canterbury Tales until after the death of Edward III, Chaucer's youth was spent in the company (albeit on the fringes) of the war-like king and his war-like sons. Surely, as the young Chaucer performed his duties and perhaps read stories or listened to the gossip spread by servants and courtiers, such as the account of Edward's having ravished a defenseless woman, impressions formed in Chaucer's mind. Perhaps such rumors as that Edward's son Lancaster had designs on his father's throne added to and solidified those impressions into opinion, and a character type was born, …

A Woman Alone And Writing: Anti-Ideology And Artistic Irony In Writings Of Mary Shelley, Delores Archaimbault

Masters Theses

This study focuses upon the letters, journals and selected fiction of Mary Shelley and reveals that Shelley engages in the processes of anti-ideology and artistic irony to help her explore gender identity. To show her consistent use of these processes, I juxtapose excerpts from her letters and journals with excerpts from her fiction. The fiction selections are narrowed to three: Frankenstein, Mathilda and The Last Man. In addition, I examine her writing and her use of anti-ideology and artistic irony relative to the influences of her significant others: her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, her father William Godwin and her …

An Analysis Of Personal Pronouns In Middle English Literary Texts, Melissa Jill Bennett

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of personal pronouns from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, with a particular focus upon the southern literary dialects of that era. The baseline text for this analysis is the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood, although Bright's paradigm of Anglo-Saxon pronouns is also employed. The Owl and the Nightingale (circa 1200), The Fox and the Wolf (circa 1275), Piers Plowman (circa 1375), and Parliament of Fowls (circa 1375) are used to illustrate the changes in the forms of the pronouns over four centuries, Chaucer's Parliament serving to represent the emerging London standard. …

The Transformation Of Immanence: From The Augustinian Faith Of Henry Vaughan To The Rationalist Faith Of S.T. Coleridge, Tristum M. Ryan

Masters Theses

The present study focuses on the conception of immanence and the manner in which it evolved from the seventeenth century, as represented in Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans, to the nineteenth century, as represented in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's nature poetry and his collection of letters, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Vaughan's conception of a basic immanence of reflected divinity in nature evolved, over the course of two hundred years, into Coleridge's version of an immanence based on reason. These two different conceptions of immanence in part formed the basis of the respective faiths of Vaughan and Coleridge. Vaughan's traditional Augustinian faith …

From Innocence To Experience In William Blake's The Book Of Thel And The Visions Of The Daughters Of Albion, Ann B. Moutray

Masters Theses

My thesis focuses on William Blake's challenge of the conventional Christianity of his time and his questioning of what he perceived as the hypocritical moral codes of the Church of England. Blake blames these codes for dominating and imprisoning humanity by preventing individuals from acting through their use of the imagination. For Blake, the imagination does not simply imply a creation of the imaginative faculty; instead, it refers to an imagination that is transforming and that becomes a measure of salvation and deliverance from the man-made codes that imprison humanity. These codes, while originating from and propagated by the Church …

The Feminine Other: A Study Of The Women In Shakespeare's Major Tragedies, Kurt E. Wilamowski

Masters Theses

The central examination of this thesis concentrates on the essential contributions of the female characters in Shakespeare's major tragedies--Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Without the women's conflict with the patriarchal order, the males would be unable to recognize and combat the corrupt elements in their society. The awareness of the female characters allows them to perceive the tainted patriarchal atmosphere they dwell in and operate within it as best as they can.

In short, each woman's individual field of awareness allows her to act as the executor of the dénoucement in the tragedy. Even …

The Allegorical And Symbolic Modes Of Representation In W. Wordsworth's Poems Of The Fancy And Poems Of The Imagination, Irena Nikolova Nikolova

Masters Theses

The present study focuses on the controversial issue concerning the differentiation of Fancy and Imagination in the context of S. T. Coleridge's and W. Wordsworth's Romantic aesthetics. Wordsworth's theoretical and poetic discourses lead to an indeterminacy in the attempts to distinguish between the "lower" poetic faculty of Fancy and the "higher" poetic faculty of the Imagination. The present investigation proceeds from the assumption that the two poetic modes can only be defined accurately as complementary rather than distinct. They engender an unstable perspective upon the external world which allows for transmutations of the visible into the visionary, of the act …

Imagination And Intuition In The Narrative Of Charlotte Brontë, Norma Henning

Masters Theses

In this paper, I will examine the four novels of Charlotte Brontë: The Professor, Jane Eyre Shirley and Villette. I will examine the reason/passion conflict within the characters of William Crimsworth, Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone and Lucy Snowe. I will show that there exists a basic duality within each of these characters: the pull of duty and the desire to escape into passion and the imagination. Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe resolve the conflict by recognizing the divided nature of their souls and emerge as complete and whole individuals. William Crimsworth and Caroline Helstone refuse to acknowledge the …

Expectations As Character Development In Chaucer's Clerk's Tale, Kevin Gorham

Masters Theses

The Clerk of Oxenford in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is often maligned for lacking development as a literary character. Frequently, the Clerk has been dismissed as a stereotype or an ideal rather than a multi-dimensional character. The Clerk's character, much like the meaning of his tale, is concealed from the reader and veiled behind expectations.

Chaucer manipulates readers by exploiting expectations associated with fourteenth century clerks. These expectations derive from historical and literary stereotypes which constitute the General Prologue portrait of the Clerk. Because Chaucer's description of the Clerk is populated with stereotypes, the reader expects the Clerk to tell a …

Chaucer's "Nether Ye": A Study Of Chaucer's Use Of Scatology In The Canterbury Tales, Brook Wilson

Masters Theses

Chaucer's use of scatology throughout the Canterbury Tales offers a new frontier for Chaucerian research. To this date, no book-length work dealing exclusively with the scatological elements found in his works exists. Too often, the serious and artistic effects of scatology become lost in the great comedy the device generates. Furthermore, many readers and scholars seem to find themselves somewhat "squaymous" when confronted with the "nether ye" of Chaucer. While Chaucer employs scatology perhaps less frequently than Swift or Rabelais, his mastery of this device remains unquestionable.

Recognizing that the uses for scatology extend far beyond creating humor, Chaucer instead …

Tolkien's Unnamed Deity Orchestrating The Lord Of The Rings, Lisa Hillis

Masters Theses

The epic world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is one in which secular and religious elements are intertwined and the relationship between the two is intentionally kept vague. Within this created world, known as Middle Earth, good and evil are apparent, but the standard by which they are determined remains undefined. The free creatures living in Tolkien's world appear to have an intuitive ability to discern between good and evil, and each being generally exercises its free will in pursuit of one or the other though some personalities do combine the qualities. This innate …

Rhetoric In Fiction: A Fantasy-Theme Analysis Of Conrad’S Heart Of Darkness, Thomas S. Caldwell

Masters Theses

This study meets three primary objectives.

First, it demonstrates how rhetorical theory and Iiterary criticism are compatible fields of study and explains how Ernest Bormann's rhetorical theory based on "fantasy-theme analysis" can be used as an appropriate method for the analysis of literary works.

Secondly, this study identifies a trend in late Nineteenth Century "adventure stories" in which travel to foreign lands and European influence on the cultures of those lands is portrayed as "good" and "philanthropic."

Finally, this study concludes with a fantasy-theme analysis of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which reveals that Conrad's adventure fiction breaks away from …

An "Avowed Contradiction": Gender And Historical Instability In Clarissa, Jennifer C. Berkshire

Masters Theses

As one of the first novels written, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa serves as an important social text with which to examine the eighteenth century. Most theoretical studies of the emergence of novelistic discourse have interpreted the rise of the new genre as a reflection of other broader socio-economic changes. This study focuses on the role of the novel in bringing about such changes--in articulating particular attitudes, beliefs, and opinions that have come to be associated with the middle class. The study involves an examination of Clarissa, Lovelace, and the Harlowe family as representatives of particular ideologies, or understandings of history, with …

David Copperfield And Great Expectations: A Comparison Of Dickens' Bildungsromane, Donald R. Price

Masters Theses

Charles Dickens wrote two autobiographical novels which are developed in the Bildungsroman genre. Although the self-formation of the two young heroes, David in David Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations, are very similar, reflecting the struggles in Dickens' own development, there is an important and interesting difference in the forces that influence each young hero. This difference evolves from Dickens' responses to forces affecting his life at the time he wrote David Copperfield in 1849-50 and Great Expectations in 1860.

This thesis addresses the internal forces influencing David's development, contrasting them with the external forces to which Pip must …

"For Though It Swam In France, It Might Have Sunk In England": A Comparison Of John Vanbrugh’S The Confederacy With Its French Source, Les Bourgeoises À La Mode, Diane T. Harris

Masters Theses

In the summer of 1705, as Sir John Vanbrugh was casting about for dramatic source material which might play successfully at the new Haymarket theatre, he rediscovered Florent Dancourt's Les Bourgeoises à la Mode and, in the manner of Restoration theatre playwrights, created an adapted version in many respects quite different from the original. This adaptation, known as The Confederacy, is considered by many Vanbrugh scholars to be one of the English author's best works.

This paper is essentially a comparative study of the two plays. It begins with a plot summary of the play Vanbrugh used as the …

Chaucer's Troilus And Shakespeare's Troilus: A Comparison Of Their Declines, Laura Devon Flesor

Masters Theses

Only in the last ten years have critics worked to establish a more than superficial link between Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Part of the problem in this area of study was that scholars had ignored textual evidence proving that Shakespeare’s main source was Chaucer’s great poem. Current source-studies, outlined in the opening pages of this thesis, validate comparative treatments of the two texts.

This thesis steps beyond the issue of indebtedness into the realm of characterization, particularly the elements of Chaucer’s characterization of Troilus that Shakespeare chose to present to his Elizabethan audience and …

“What Thyng It Is That Wommen Moost Desiren”: Image And Self-Realization In The Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale, Thomas W. Köhn

Masters Theses

The Wife of Bath is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating of the Canterbury pilgrims. At the same time she is one of those literary figures whose complex character constantly seems to elude the reader's judgement. Alisoun presents herself as a feminist advocating male subjection and female sovereignty in marriage, but her self-assertive behaviour cannot conceal an equally powerful longing for love and acceptance. Some critics therefore praise the psychological depth of the Wife's portrayal while others label her a stock character and join in the derisive laughter they believe her fellow pilgrims to bestow on her.

This thesis explores …

The Technical Achievement Of C. Rossetti In Goblin Market And Other Poems, Jay D. Fisk

Masters Theses

During Christina Rossetti's lifetime (1830-1894), and for some fifty years after her death, critical attention focused on her life, more specifically on how that life affected her poetry. Critics tried to show how her Italian ancestors, artistic brothers, spiritual mother and sister, and her many illnesses influenced her works. Other than these basic facts, little else was known.

Later, psychological critics found much sexual symbolism in the "repressed" poet's works. "Goblin Market," with its tale of strange little goblin men seducing innocent maids with their fruits seemed particularly well-suited to a Freudian approach. This poem received so much attention that …

Instruction And Entertainment: Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, Marco L. Bergandi

Masters Theses

The "Nun's Priest's Tale" is one of the most entertaining stories in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales--it is captivating, witty, and amusing--but it is also one of the most instructive in the entire collection. In fact, the Nun's Priest himself emphasizes the instructional purpose of his tale by telling his listeners "Taketh the moralite, goode men" (NPT 3440), advising them to look for the points he makes in his narration.

Although the Nun's Priest never explicitly states the "moralite" of his tale, many scholars have taken his advice seriously and searched for its instruction on their own. Approaching it from a …

The Battle Of The Wills In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Ruth M. Cook

Masters Theses

Throughout the 400 pages of the first installment of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, the heroine vies with at least three important people for the right to govern herself. Her brother, James Harlowe, Jr., is leader of the large extended family unit and is aiming at family aggrandisement by forcing Clarissa to marry a wealthy but odious man, Roger Solmes. Clarissa's mother, Mrs. Harlowe, aims at family peace, hoping to coax Clarissa into the same sort of obedience to patriarchal authority that she has adopted as her lifestyle. Robert Lovelace, a debonair young rake, aims at gaining total control of Clarissa, …

Wordsworth's The Prelude: Critical Tradition And Beyond, Manuela Mourao

Masters Theses

The argument presented in this thesis explores the traditional readings of The Prelude as an autobiography, as an epic, and as a poetics, and proposes that they be considered the starting point to a whole new reading of the poem in the light of Gerard Genette's theory of textuality.

To provide the basis for the proposed new reading I discuss (in Part I, II, and III) the traditional readings of the poem and provide textual evidence of their legitimacy.

I then introduce Roland Barthes' notion of "poietics" and demonstrate how The Prelude fits it, since it is a text that …

The Perception Of Coincidence: Artistic Symmetry In The "Wandering Rocks" Episode Of James Joyce's Ulysses, James A. Scruton

Masters Theses

James Joyce's Ulysses, the most influential novel of the twentieth century, has often been criticized for its fragmentation and complexity. Impenetrable to some readers, misunderstood by others, Ulysses bears within its eighteen episodes a symmetry of subject and form that at once clarifies and multiplies the meanings to be found there. Richard Ellmann calls Joyce's theory of art "the perception of coincidence," a theory best exemplified by "Wandering Rocks," the central episode of Ulysses. The use of "symmetrical coincidence" in ''Wandering Rocks" can be seen in two ways: 1)the internal structure of the episode, and 2)its location among …

The Family In Modern Northern Irish Drama, Ray Wallace

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to show the plight of the family in Northern Ireland. The four plays which are the subject of this study--Within Two Shadows by Wilson John Haire, The Flats By John Boyd, Nightfall to Belfast by Patrick Galvin, and The Death of Humpty Dumpty by J. Graham Reid--deal with this innocent faction and highlight three principal effects of the troubles on their family lives. First, the families suffer internal division. They are alienated by religious/political differences which are as inseparable in these dramas as they are in Northern Irish life. Socialist doctrine opposes Christian …

The Treatment Of Women In The History Of Rasselas, Prince Of Abyssinia, Cindy Fritz

Masters Theses

Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the most prolific and profound contributers to the English language, is, unfortunately, better known for his life and his anti-feminist point of view. James Boswell, in his book The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., provides many pieces of Johnson's conversations which attempt to illustrate the doctor's belief that women were unable to understand the complexities of anything beyond their domestic duties, a belief widely supported among the classes throughout the seventeenth century until the middle eighteenth century. However, this paper, using historical and biographical evidence, demonstrates that Johnson's attitude towards women, specifically in his …

There's No Place Like Home: The Haunted House As Literary Motif, Mary Catherine Mcdaniel

Masters Theses

This thesis traces the development of the haunted house in British and American literature and covers a time span of roughly two hundred years. Its approach is chronological: beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, it examines the use of the Bad Place as a literary motif, emphasizing the consistencies in its development while noting the inconsistencies as well. From Walpole to Stephen King, we see that the haunted house has continuously represented two things. On one hand, it may serve as a repository for unexpiated sin. The traditional haunted house, in fact, is nothing more than the …

Virginia Woolf: A Study In Style, Gregory Lee Manifold

Masters Theses

Virginia Woolf is one of the eminent stylists of the twentieth century. This paper, "Virginia Woolf: A Study in Style", is an exploration of the use of stylistic technique in Mrs. Woolf's two most outstanding novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The basic assumption of the paper is that the meaning of a work, especially the works of Mrs. Woolf, is as accessible through the study of style as it is through the more traditional study of content. Taking its cue from the works of Norman Holland and his "reader-response" criticism, the paper details four techniques of style …

Infinite Intellectual Leap-Frog: Tracing Three Character Voices Through Four Of Tom Stoppard's Works--Lord Malquist And Mr. Moon, Albert's Bridge, Jumpers, And Dirty Linen, Judy Laurene Donaldson

Masters Theses

Tom Stoppard (1937- ), British playwright, creates in his Absurd novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon (1966) three character voices that begin a debate on man's reason for existence. Instead of resolving the debate at the end of his novel, Stoppard, using the same character voices in various combinations, continues the debate in three of his later works: the plays Albert's Bridge (1968), Jumpers (1972), and Dirty Linen (1976). The three character voices include the realist's, who ties to make some sense out of the disorder of the world and to find his place in it; the manipulator's, who ignores …

Character Motivation And Definition Through Dialog In The Memory Plays Of Harold Pinter, Douglas E. Grohne

Masters Theses

Several critics have suggested that the plays of Harold Pinter are incomprehensible because the characters do not explicitly explain their actions and motivations. These comments come because the critics and audiences are conditioned to expect a playwright to in some way explain the motivations and personalities of his characters with a standard explanation given through explicit dialog, copious stage directions, or other means. But Pinter believes that it is dangerous for a playwright to design a play with one overall purpose in mind because the chances are that the purpose will be mistaken.

Pinter prefers to write in a realistic …

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus Finds Reality: In The Comic Mask, Eva Marie Enis

Masters Theses

Scholars have considered the protagonist of Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus from nearly every perspective, but, at the same time, they have been hesitant to recognize the humorous incidents, particularly the so-called clownish scenes, as having a legitimate place even though much comic incident appears in Marlowe's source. Though scholars have acknowledged Marlowe's play to be a morality, they have not viewed Faustus as a morality character whose comic mask is his reality.

An examination of the morality tradition, with Marlowe's debt to the morality in mind, justifies the inclusion of much …

From Ritual To Resurrection: The Exploratory Poetic Of Seamus Heaney, Susan L. Morris

Masters Theses

Heaney's poetry has grown and changed since the publication of his first collection of poetry, Death of a Naturalist. This paper is an attempt to present the development of Heaney's exploratory poetic which was created through his use of language and image, allowing him metaphorical vehicles for the examination of oppositions.

Heaney began his poetic exploration, or "dig," with the collections Death of a Naturalist and Door Into the Dark. The poetry presents nature images which represent Heaney's search into the unknown, the dark places. These images symbolize a searching for the imagination and for the purpose of …