This thesis explores the literary career of Stephen Crane, concentrating on his war works.

This thesis explores the topic of leadership through the war novels of: Styron and Uris, Jones, Mailer and Shaw, Cozzens, Hersey and Heller and finally, Wouk and Michener.

This is not intended to be a definitive study of all the picaresque novels of the last two decades. It is, instead, a representative study which includes those authors who have attained the most prominence and who have contributed most to the delineation and advancement of the picaresque genre.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine in selected tales and romances Hawthorne's intent and the effectiveness of his transmutation of American colonial and Revolutionary War history in his fiction. This study examines the most important of Hawthorne's original sources. While indicating the relationship between fictional and historical accounts as necessary to a study of Hawthorne's romantic transmutation of history, this thesis further investigates Hawthorne's artistic reasons for altering events of the past.

It seems obvious that Shakespeare was interested in Hotspur as something more than a strictly historical character. The firey character found in I Henry IV is no longer recognized as the Ill-fated rebel from Holinshed and Daniel. Holinshed offers only a spark which Shakespeare uses to build a very real flame. The events leading up to the rebellion and the rebellion itself are historical, but the name of Hotspur in Holinshed is no more outstanding than that of Worcester, Glendower, or any of the other rebels. In Shakespeare's drama no other rebel character even approaches the development of Hotspur.

Using spectacle to alienate people from each other and life, President Snow's Panem from Collins' Hunger Games trilogy is Guy Debord's Society of Spectacle. As Debord predicts, the spectacle of the Annual Hunger Games causes a degradation of life for citizens in the Districts and the Capitol, leading to a society where nobody truly lives and citizens accept the narrative that President Snow and his regime promote about the Games. Using Luis Althusser to understand how President Snow links his power to that of the Games, we understand how the dictator brainwashed his citizens into compliance through his narrative, and also, how this narrative is constantly delivered through the various ISAs and SAs in Panem to degrade life into false unity and false consciousness, socially coercing citizens to fall in line with the narrative around spectacle. Katniss Everdeen is unique as she is too authentic to use her celebrity status in promotion of the Games; instead, she accidentally performs Debord's true critiques, sparking a rebellion through love. Katniss' acts of love translate into true critiques of the spectacle that is Panem and the Games, and because Snow has spent decades brainwashing his populace into a blind acceptance of celebrity and …

In the wake of a disturbing decades-long trend in both print and visual media—the appropriation of Black history and culture—another trend is observed in works of African American fiction: the reclamation of the appropriated imagery, in both neo-slave narratives and works of Afrofuturism. The image focused on specifically in this paper is that of the ship, which I argue serves at least two identifiable functions in Black fiction: first, to address the historical treatment of Africans and their American descendants, and secondly, to demonstrate Black progress and potential. Through an exploration of three works of African American fiction, works that take their Black protagonists beyond the ship's dreadful hold, the reader can see the important themes being channeled: Charles Johnson's Middle Passage sets a course on how to arrive at true freedom, enacting a process of Black liberation that begins with learning how to survive "in the wake," a concept derived Christina Sharpe's work In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts demonstrates not only the effects of "the hold," but how the hold itself has evolved from its origins on the slave ship; as new holds are constructed and demanded by society, rebellion is …

This thesis discusses Mark Twain as a political satirist in Nevada and during the Gilded Age. There are also chapters covering Politics and Slavery, Democracy and Monarchy, as well as Imperialism and War.

The novel concerns the massacre of a small village in Viet Nam and its effects upon those involved, attempting to show that selfishness in men overrides any other concern, even during war.

A cursory glance into the background of Sinclair Lewis reveals that he was an ardent nonconformist. In this study, however, it is pertinent to view more closely the conditions that caused his rebellious attitudes, not only those concerning social reform but also those concerning his personal quest for individuality.

In both his fiction and non-fiction, Lewis comments on myth, its characteristics and strengths, and its relation to Christian doctrine. His use of myth to examine and to illustrate Christian ideas is most important in the space trilogy, the Narnia series of children's books, and Till We Have Faces. These books are the primary sources for this thesis, and they will be examined in chronological order.

This study seeks to analyze each of Sillitoe's proletarian novels as a separate artistic endeavor, to study each in terms of its critical reception, plot, theme, characterization, setting, and style.

The different interpretations of the character of Sir John Falstaff have been so controversial that at no time since the presentation of the Henry IV plays have critics been able to agree as to his precise qualities. He has been called the greatest humorous character in all literature by even those critics who have spoken adversely of his other traits. George Bernard Shaw called him "a besotted and disgusting old wretch," an opinion added to those of others who have seen him as a coward, liar, cheat, thief, glutton, and rogue. There is no denying that he is one of the most captivating and controversial of all characters in English literature.

A thorough study of the progressive development of the description of Richard in the sources of Shakespeare's play and a comparison of the results of such a study with Shakespeare's portrait may make possible a deeper and clearer understanding of the character of the man as well as some further insight into the methods of Shakespeare's art.

Don Juan was Byron's effort to come to terms with the reality of his own environment, and he demanded the liberty to try to understand life and to present his conclusions without editorial or social oppression. It is an examination of the problem of appearance and reality; as a satire, the poem attacks appearances maintained by hypocrisy by placing them against the background of reality which is apparent to Byron.

Though it is important to establish the authenticity of Cooper's and Simm's thematic and historical Indians, it is more important to show that the writers were accurate in their delineation of the customs, personalities, and thoughts of the Indian tribes represented in the two books.

The purpose of this thesis is to make an unbiased presentation of the many facets of Byron's religious beliefs.

This thesis looks at two questions regarding the teaching of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's works in high school and junior college: which of Dostoyevsky's works should be used, and what materials in those works selected should one consider most necessary for emphasis in the actual teaching of the works.

The phrase "existential predicament" is a summary of Moravia's preoccupation as a novelist. In his fiction there is constant, unrelenting obsession with the situation of a single, particular character confronting, through his own existence in a physical, historical setting, the forces or powers of negation which threaten him with the frightening personal awareness of the possibility, even inevitability, of his own dissolution into nothingness.

This thesis is a study of religion in the works of Nikos Kazantzakis.

The present study will discuss J. D. Salinger's alienated misfits in direct relation to the psychology of the gifted, creative individual. By analyzing Seymour, Holden and Franny as representatives of a specific intellectual type, this study will provide the reader with a fresh insight into J. D. Salinger's fictional world.

Although Anthony Trollope has traditionally been considered an anti-feminist author, studies within the past decade have shown that Trollope's later novels show support for female power and sympathy for Victorian women who were dissatisfied with their narrow roles in society. A feminist reading of two of his earliest novels, The Warden and Barchester Towers, shows that Trollope's feminism is not limited to his later works. In The Warden, Trollope acclaims female power and "woman's logic" through female characters and the womanly warden, Septimus Harding. In Barchester Towers, Trollope continues to support feminism through his positive portrayals of strong, independent women and the androgynous Harding. In Barchester Towers, the battle of the sexes ends in a balance of power.

This study of the bullfight in Hemingway's life and in his art demonstrates the values by which Hemingway lived and wrote. In Death in the Afternoon he pursues reality with courage and integrity, with grace under pressure. The bullring enhances the light and earth imagery and reinforces the structure and themes of Hemingway's major novels.

Contemporary analysis of Wuthering Heights necessitates a re-appraisal in light of advancements in the study of incest in non-literary fields such as history, anthropology, and especially psychology. A modern reading suggests that an unconscious incest taboo impeded Heathcliff and Cathy's expectation of normal sexual union and led them to seek union after death. John Milton's Paradise Lost provides a paradigm by which to examine the consequences of incest from two perspectives: that of incest as a metaphor for evil, as represented in Heathcliff; that of incest as symbolic of pre-Lapsarian innocence, as represented in Cathy. The tragic consequences of Heathcliff and Cathy's incestuous fixation are resolved by the socially-condoned marriage of Hareton and Catherine, which illuminates Bronte's belief in the Miltonic theme that good inevitably triumphs over evil.