Literature in English, North America Commons^™

Wendell Berry’S Cyclic Vision: Traditional Farming As Metaphor, Morris Allen Grubbs

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Although Wendell Berry’s first book, a novel, appeared in 1960, he did not gain significant national attention until the publication of his nonfiction manifesto, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, in 1977. Since its publication, Berry has moved increasingly toward the prose of persuasion as he continues to sharpen his argument in support of a practical, continuous harmony between the human economy and Nature. His canon as a whole – the poems, essays, and novels – is an ongoing and thorough exploration of man’s use of and relationship to the land.

Arguing that the health of a culture …

The Short Fiction Of Bobbie Ann Mason: Exposing The Problems In American Society & Searching For Some Solutions, Melanie Allen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bobbie Ann Mason uses her fiction to portray the problems in American society. She devotes most of her time to average persons who are suffering from the rapid changes that society is going through. These characters at times seem lost and helpless, but ultimately they do not give up hope for a brighter future. Through social problems such as divorce, lack of communication, loss of identity and place, obsession with the past, submersion in rock music and TV, loss of ritual, proliferation of objects, lack of education, and the need to face mortality, these characters still seem to have hope …

River People, Ruth Madden

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the introduction to The World of the Short Story, Kay Boyle challenges the short story writer "to invest a brief sequence of events with reverberating human significance by means of style, selection and ordering of detail, and -- most important -- to present the whole action in such a way that it is at once a parable and a slice of life, at once symbolic and real, both a valid picture of some phase of experience, and a sudden illumination of one of the perennial moral and psychological paradoxes which lie at the heart of la condition humaine." …

Desire: An Essential Element In Wallace Stevens' Poetry, Barry Gary

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Man naturally pursues that which brings pleasure, and Wallace Stevens recognizes this inescapable desire, exploring it fully in his poetry, prose, and letters and depending upon it to build the foundation for many, if not most, of his major themes. For Stevens, one's world evolves through the use of poetry, and this world, complete with jubilations of fulfilled desire and frequent despair as illusions of fulfillment are destroyed, chronicles the life of every man. As a result, different kinds of desire and different attempts at satisfying these desires emerge as one reads Stevens--three of which will be advanced in this …

Waste Land Or Promised Land: T.S. Eliot's The Idea Of A Christian Society, Amy Wallace

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In T. S. Eliot's The Idea of a Christian Society, the poet questions the nature of our society's foundations; he believes that Western culture is moving dangerously closer to the liberal and secular and that this shift could be disastrous. Instead, Eliot suggests that we return to what is at the very roots of Western tradition: Christianity. To facilitate this change in direction, Eliot stresses the importance of an educational system which takes a Christian perspective. Also important in his thinking is a Community of Christians, who would act as leaders, and the Christian community (encompassing most of the …

J.D. Salinger's Code Hero: The Moral Character In An Immoral World, Rebecca Hendrick

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

J.D. Salinger's fiction can be approached by looking at the various elements of fiction, but his largest statement rests in the ways that his characters interac within his world. This interaction leads to a code of behavior that the heroes follow, and can be used to determine the heroic character within a particular piece of fiction, much as the Hemingway code developed by Carlos Baker identified the characteristics of the Hemingway hero, Salinger's heroes are all aware of the phony which is in the world around them. They see this phoniness as something undesirable within the world, yet they must …

Superior Instants: Religious Concerns In The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson, Elisabeth Buckner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

When I decided to write a thesis on Emily Dickinson's poetry, my intention was to show that she did, indeed, implement a concrete philosophy into her poetry. However, after several months of research, I realized that this poet's philosophy was ongoing and sometimes inconsistent. Emily Dickinson never discovered the answers to all of her religious and spiritual questions although she devoted her entire life to that pursuit. What Dickinson did discover was that orthodox religion had no place in her heart or mind and she must make her own choices where God was concerned. Immortality was an intense fascination to …

The Masculine Mind In The Portrait Of A Lady, Nora Neagle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The strongest and best-developed supporting characters in The Portrait of a Lady are the men in Isabel Archer's life: Ralph Touchett, Caspar Goodwood, Lord Warburton, and Gilbert Osmond. Because it is largely through the eyes of these men that the reader sees Isabel, a thorough understanding of their personalities is essential for a clear interpretation of Isabel.

James shows the four men in vivid detail--their physical appearance, cultural background, intellect, moral convictions, sense of humor--everything from a habit of keeping hallas in pockets to having a wardrobe which seems to have come from a single bolt of cloth. This study …

Auden's Poetic Theory & The Child-Like Voice, Diana Graham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

W. H. Auden shares with most of his contemporaries, including Yeats and Eliot, the goal of lighting modern man's way back to a sense of harmony with his universe--the certainty of identity which his ancestors enjoyed. In New Year Letter, Auden announces that the problem lies within man himself because each of us is possessed of a "double" nature, thus rendering us our own schismatics.

Auden finds that only with the help of divinity, specifically Christian, can the destructive element be overcome. To illustrate this solution in his poems then becomes Auden's great challenge. Employing a child-like voice or tone …

Stephen Crane & Ernest Hemingway: A Study In Affinities, Clara Metzmeier

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The affinities which appear in writing styles of Stephen Crane and manifest themselves in their works. raised in religious homes, rebelled the life styles and Ernest Hemingway Both writers were against their religious backgrounds, began newspaper careers as teenagers, traveled and reported war for their respective newspapers, believed that life was filled with violence, confirmed that belief through their experiences and observations, and developed corresponding literary credos. Both Crane and Hemingway believed the writer should experience present manner. the story Both men and observe what he wrote and should in a simple, direct, and truthful used short sentences, irony, dialogue, …

O. Henry’S Use Of Stereotypes In His New York City Stories: An Example Of The Utilization Of Folklore In Literature, Martin Ostrofsky

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Stereotyping is a folkloristic process which permits people to reduce the complexities of the real world into simplified, abstract terms. O. Henry one of America’s most popular short story writers, made generous use of stereotypes in his stories. By examining O. Henry’s use of stereotypes, insight may be gained into the essential role which folklore often plays in creative literature. Stereotypes greatly influence the composition, function and reception of O. Henry’s work. O. Henry’s personal habits and circumstances demanded that he produce a prolific stream of short stories which would have the greatest popular appeal. Clever manipulation of stereotypes permitted …

Caroline Gordon: A Sense Of Place, Frances Perdue

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Place, as it transcends the immediate setting of a work, is an essential element of Caroline Gordon’s early novels. She looks to the past and to the region of her birth to focus on the traditional South. She shows her characters’ changing attitudes toward the Cavalier Myth, a view that promotes the value of the land, the patriarchal family, and an anachronistic code of honor. To them, the South is unique, and they resist all efforts to change this “given social order.” However, Gordon begins to recognize that change is inevitable. Thus, she reveals her characters’ succumbing to the rising …

Abused Children In Two Faulkner Novels, Teresa Moore

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

To William Faulkner, art must bolster man; it must somehow remind man of those truths toward which his race has struggled and must continue to struggle if life is to have meaning and significance. Faulkner's works meet this aim by dramatizing the conflict individuals face if they seek to wrench from life a morality that allows them placement within the larder human community.

Both The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! require a re-examination in light of Faulkner's artistic aim. For at the center of both novels are children inescapably threatened by a corrupted moral tradition--a decayed antebellum southern …

The Three Bartlebys Of Melville’S Tale, Gail M. Kienitz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A study of any one of Herman Melville’s works is bound to be a fascinating and informative venture. Within the products of his prolific writing career are keen, precise, enlightening observations about nineteenth-century America. Religion, politics, business, literature, and philosophy are all within the realm of Melville’s careful consideration. Melville was a man who reacted to his world with intense curiosity and passion. Melville was also extremely introspective – searching, questioning, and examining himself with equal intensity.

“Bartleby the Scrivener” offers an interesting synthesis of Melville’s double vision. Within the confines of this tale are Melville’s reaction to his world …

Personality & Characterization In Cantos I-Xvii Of The Cantos Of Ezra Pound, Gary Hottinger

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Examining the modes of characterization and the types of personalities evident in the first seventeen cantos of The Cantos of Ezra Pound, one can perceive that Ezra Pound felt he was composing an epic which was to revitalize for the present the best minds of the past. Pound's method of revitalization has a close affinity Co the doctrine of effluences in Longinus on the Sublime, a classical work of literary criticism. The personalities Pound employs in The Cantos fall into three broad categories: gods (deific), legends (archetypal), and men (historical). By applying Pound's neo-Platonism to their organization, one …

Narrator Reliability In The Creative Autobiography: An Approach For The Solo Interpreter, Diane Schwalm

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study develops an approach to narrator reliability in the creative autobiography for the solo interpreter. The relationships between narrator reliability and firstperson point of view are given, and the need for an understanding of reliability to develop a performance stance is also stated. The defining characteristics of the creative autobiography are also included.

The analytical approach to narrator reliability is three-fold. The reliability of the narrator is examined in terms of mental locus, spatial locus, and temporal locus. The mental locus of the narrator is determined through his relationships with himself, the characters, the action, and the reader. The …

Three Of Faulkner's Aberrant Women, Ginny Powell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Because human nature is so often irrational and passional, William Faulkner many times offers portraits of people who are the antithesis of rationality and morality. Thus, it is not surprising to observe Faulkner's extensive use of aberrant, or deviant, characters, especially aberrant women, since the author generally associates this group with the volatile, passional elements in life. These disturbingly abnormal women possess as a group certain characteristics that become a remarkably consistent pattern in the Faulknerian canon.

Faulkner's aberrant women invariably have at least one trait in common: they become destructive forces that bring about the ruin of others and …

Conscience & Determinism: Mark Twain's Attempt To Resolve The Problem Of Man's Sense Of Moral Responsibility In A Deterministic World, R. Kathleen Raisor

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Beneath the placid surface of books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there are the seeds of a darker, yet more profound Twain than a cursory reading yields. From a point beginning about 1876 until his death in 1910, there is in Twain's major works a progressively darker, more intensely pessimistic view of the human condition, for Twain increasingly saw man as circumscribed and imprisoned by mechanistic determinism. This study provides a chronological examination of Twain's attempt to resolve the problem of man's sense of moral responsibility in a deterministic world. The development …

Ua12/2/1 L'Esprit, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

A special edition of the College Heights Herald featuring student and faculty poets:

• Halicks, Richard. The Thunder Stick
• Surface, David. Witness
• Pierson, Don. Nostalgic Impressions Dig Nasty Holes
• Shanklin, Tip. Flood Stage
• Stephens, A.T. (For Bill Stafford)
• Miller, Jim. Skydivers
• Norris, Randy. Birdbrains
• Puter, A. Com. Thrilled Me Quoth the Raven . . . Nevermore
• Halicks, Richard. I, Robot
• Miller, Jim. Diver
• Norris, Randy. Reflections on a Kite
• Vessels, Shriley. Marigolds
• Newbolt, Denise. Dolphins
• Halicks, Richard. Mr. Infinity, the Tomorrow Master
• Moffeit, Tony. Queen of Spades
• Halicks, Richard. Dismantling the Trojan Horse

Hawthorne's Hester & Zenobia: Possible Reflections Of Nineteenth Century Feminism & The Writings Of Margaret Fuller, Carolyn Raiser

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The thesis focuses upon the possible influences of Margaret Fuller upon Nathaniel Hawthorne's creation of Hester in The Scarlet Letter and Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance. It suggests that Hester and Zenobia are feminists who may owe much of their characterization as developed through their feminist arguments to Margaret Fuller, a nineteenth century feminist and acquaintance of Hawthorne's. Hawthorne and Fuller are placed in historical context within the feminist movement of the nineteenth century by examining some of the leading feminists and their concerns regarding women's rights. Margaret Fuller's writings and ideas are examined, along with her relationship to Hawthorne. …

An Analysis Of The Themes Of Guilt And Atonement In The Writings Of Tennessee Williams, James Curry

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The themes of guilt and atonement have been analyzed in selected writings of Tennessee Williams. Research concerning these two themes has been developed simultaneously with Williams’s concept of the universe and man. Many of Williams’s characters seek a form of atonement or purification for their guilt which has arisen due to their “incompleteness and unnatural desires.” Williams’s basic concept concerning the universe is that it is fragmented, a universe not completed by its Creator. Consequently, Williams envisions man and his nature to be likewise incomplete. It is this incompletion in man which causes him to have “unnatural desires,” labeled as …

Individuality & Art: The Search For Fulfillment In Willa Cather's Heroines, Nancy Moore

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Willa Cather believed very firmly in two things: individuality and art. The purpose of this study is to show Cather's intense dedication to the pursuit of individual artistic achievement as depicted by the heroines of seven Cather novels: O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Antonia (1918), A Lost Lady (1923), My Mortal Enemy (1926), Lucy Gayheart (1935), and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940). Cather was concerned about whether or not woman as artist could succeed or be forever bound by sexual limitation. She devoted her life to the worship of art and the belief that …

Work And The Family: Themes In The Plays Of Arthur Miller, Sue Parsons

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The study is divided into four parts, the first three having to do with the family and the last with work. The first section outlines the relationships of family members, including their attitudes toward themselves, toward each other, and toward society. The next two have to do with “Responsibility” as viewed by the family, and the need for “Stability” within the home and outside it. The final section examines the jobs held by Miller’s characters, their attitudes toward those jobs, and the extent to which an occupation helps to influence the characters and their familial relationships. A close discussion of …

Doubt And Faith In Tennyson's Poetry, Martha Wright

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Alfred Tennyson, the nineteenth century poetic giant of Victorian England, who served as poet laureate for forty-two years, is best known for his elegy, In Memoriam, The Idylls of the King, and such short poems as "Ulysses," "The Lotos Eaters," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," and "Crossing the Bar." But few readers of his poetry are aware of the frequent use of the words "doubt" and "faith" in these poems, as well as in a number of his other poems. A realization of the extensive use of these words presented the challenge for a study to determine how frequently these …

A Great Debate In Poetic Theory: Brooks, Wheelwright, Crane & Olson, Janice Carrell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Elder Olson has said that at the Biblical Tower of Babel the people did not begin to talk nonsense but only what seemed like nonsense. This paper concerns an intellectual tower where important debates are held, but unfortunately the language is not a universal one; therefor, because all too often terms have evolved without adequate definition, disagreement occurs where reconciliation appears impossible.

The very title of this thesis could be misleading to the reader if he considers debate in its formal sense. What is here intended is the controversy in the efforts of respected scholars to understand and establish the …

The Existential Elements In The Poetry Of Wallace Stevens, Patsy Satterly

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study will deal with such existential elements in Stevens' poetry. The poetry will be treated in three main divisions: the early period of Harmonium (1923); the middle period of The Man With the Blue Guitar (1936), Ideas of Order (1937), and Parts of a World (1942); and the late period of Transport to Summer (1947) and Auroras of Autumn (1950). Two introductory chapters will precede the actual study of the poetry; one is a chapter on existentialism as it is expounded by Sartre and Camus, and the other is a description of the existential bias in Stevens' mind, in …

William Faulkner As Sociologist: An Adventure In The Sociology Of Literature, Katherine Stuart

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

My basic problem will be not to prove that Faulkner is, was, a sociologist or to suggest that his works be required reading in courses in sociological theory, but rather, to show in what sense and what areas his and the role of sociologist overlap. A. thorough reading of the major Faulkner novels, a sorting-out and. probing of his passages relevant to the field of sociology seems the most productive way to begin tackling the problem. First the effort will be made to grasp his ideas in context, then to extricate and analyze them out of context. The relationship of …

The Implications Of The Holy Trinity & Its Antithesis In Billy Budd, Nancy Locke

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

There have been a number of books and articles written about the theological underpinnings of the novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville and about the symbolic characters which he created. Several critics have brought some of this material together, but no one has really attempted to correlate the basic studies. This thesis will not only endeavor to do this, but it will add, as well, a personal interpretation of the theological content of the work.

Some Paradoxical Elements In The Fiction Of Carson Mccullers, Rona Bozarth

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Since the death of Carson McCullers in 1967, there has been no revival of interest in her work, and there has been little critical study done in regard to it. All of McCullers' stories have Southern settings, and most are set in her native Georgia. She uses folk materials (as do Faulkner, Welty and Warren), but the limitations which these impose are transcended, and the fiction becomes an "examination of universal moral circumstances."¹ McCullers does not exploit local color, which, as Robert Penn Warren has noted, is often "incomplete and unphilosophical."² Rather than treating locale for its own …

The Poetry Of Thomas Merton, Nancy Nelson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

There is a need, then, for a study of Merton's poetry as a whole--a study based not on the poetry as a result of his poetic theory but on the poetry primarily as poetry, and which would include his last three volumes. This paper, therefore, will be a survey of representative samplings from each volume of Merton's poetry, and will take into account the differences and similarities between his early and later periods. It will attempt to discover and illustrate the most significant aspects of the development of Merton's philosophy and poetics, as revealed by the poetry itself and by …