Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

“Touching The Untouchable”: Time As Material And The Fragmented Self In The Maximodern Era Shori V. Sims © 2024 Shori V. Sims All Rights Reserved Shorisims., Shori V. Sims

Masters Theses

In the conventional division of disciplines, film/video/moving images and stationary sculpture are categorized as formal and conceptual opposites. In my work and in this thesis, I am arguing that moving images constitute a form of sculpture in the style of assemblage by the manipulation of time around them. Yes, the image is flat and stationary on its own: but the cut of time which it represents exists multi-dimensionally (spatially and temporally) to be combined in a collage-like manner. In my practice, moving images constitute a form of assemblage that manipulates time and space in ways normally attributed to sculpture.

This …

Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley

Masters Theses

Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained …

Hangin' With Judas: A Narrative Analysis Of Stephen Adly Guirgis's 'The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot', Constance Falconer

Masters Theses

Stephen Adly Guirgis has created an era-melting play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which explores the timeless debate between divine mercy and free will. A systematic application of Walter R. Fisher's narrative analysis, through form identification and a functional analysis, determined how Guirgis accomplishes persuasion. This qualitative study focused on Guirgis's narrative, using Walter R. Fisher's narrative paradigm as a framework to answer the research question(s): (1) If Guirgis's ideology and created world in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot are foreign and imagined, how is narrative probability and narrative fidelity achieved?; and, (2) How does Guirgis persuade his …

Beowulf, Anthony Alvarado

Masters Theses

My composition is a tone poem based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf Specifically, this piece depicts Beowulf s three battles with three diverse monsters. The first Grendel, second Grendel's mother, and last a dragon. In this composition, the music does not follow any specific or traditional forms. Instead, each episode is presented as a picture of each event.

The choice to depict the story of Beowulf was an interesting choice. While historically the story is significant, it is not a very popular one. The poem is the oldest surviving manuscript written in Old English. However, more recent (relatively) …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

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 …

Chekhov, The Doctor As Dramatist: A Study Of The Four Major Plays, Gloria Rhoads

Masters Theses

Studying the relationship of Chekhov's being a doctor to his being a dramatist reveals one reason for the scientific objectivity in his writing. Moreover, extensive reading of his letters and notes as well as careful readings of his plays leaves little doubt that he himself considered that his career as a doctor had a great impact on the plays he created.

Chekhov felt that a writer must not beautify reality or gloss over it but carefully present it as it is. He wrote that the writer must renounce subjectivity and report the grime of life along with the good; he …

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 …

The Rite Of Initiation In Pinter's The Birthday Party, Richard C. Slocum

Masters Theses

The paper is an attempt to give full treatment to elements in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party which suggest the rite of initiation practiced in primitive societies. A few critics have touched upon the subject of initiation in the play, but they fail to discuss it in detail.

Extensive comparisons are made between Charles Eckert's summary of initiation rituals and the actions and characters in the play. The initiate is isolated from society as a preliminary to the rite of initiation; Stanley is isolated in a seaside boarding house. The initiate is secluded in a dark and threatening place; Stanley …

The Role Of Betrayal In Selected Drama Of Tennessee Williams, Craig E. Sanderson

Masters Theses

Much of the critical analysis of Tennessee Williams' drama concerns itself with the inherent conflict between ideals and reality in the universe as perceived by Williams. Such analysis, however, has not considered this conflict as a source of betrayal, or betrayal as a dominant theme in Williams' drama. In at least four of his plays it becomes evident how each of the individual characters in Williams' drama endures the conflict of reality and ideals, and the extent to which their respective approaches to the resolution of this struggle result in betrayal. Four plays--all regarded as among his most successful and …

The Troubled Ecstasy Of Yeats's "Purgatory" And "At The Hawk's Well", Gregory Michael Sadlek

Masters Theses

A great amount of W. B. Yeats's writing attests to his fascination with the preternatural. Indeed, it seems that Yeats felt the sacred experience to be somehow central in the living of a full life. Further, in his essay "The Celtic Element in Literature," he proposed that all great literature arises out of the passion which flows from the sacred experience. Yeats thought that drama as well as poetry, then, must plumb this core of life. And in his essay "The Tragic Theatre" he declared that great tragedy deals with feelings and experiences which are universal and timeless and which …

Illusion Vs. Reality In The Tragedy Of Hamlet, Glendora S. Plath

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Beckett's Manipulation Of Audience Response In Waiting For Godot, Robert Carl Themer

Masters Theses

This thesis examines one of the many paradoxes of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot--that although on the surface Beckett reduces his characters to the barest minimum in human terms, the spectator still finds himself, mysteriously, identifying with those pathetic stage creatures and their plights.

The dual purpose of this paper is to examine the methods Beckett used to foster this sense of spectator-character likeness and to assess its impact upon the spectator. It explores the contrast between the near-caricatures, Pozzo and Lucky, and the more complexly humanized Vladimir and Estragon. It discusses Beckett's universalization of character, time, place, and …

A Criticism Of Elder Olson's Poetic Method, Ernest Edward Force Ii

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Theme Of Othello, James Irving Krumrey

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Treatment Of Platonic Love In Ford's Nondramatic Works And Independent Tragedies, Kathryn M. Jackson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Fool In Lear Exposes A Foolish Lear, Anthony John Cuccio

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Literary Criticism Of Shakespeare's King Lear, Daniel Lee Burcham

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Some Differences In The Comedy Of Manners Plays From The Restoration To Somerset W. Maugham, Tressa C. Bennett

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Elements Which Determine Man's Life As Noted In Greek And Shakespearean Drama, Wilma E. Winters

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Function Of Music In The Elizabethan Drama And Theater, Genevra H. Dvorak

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.