One rarely sees the names James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway together in the same sentence. Their obvious differences in writing styles, nationalities, and lifestyles prevent any automatic comparison from being made. But when one compares their early short story collections, Dubliners and In Our Time, many surprisingly similarities appear. Both are collections of short stories unified in some way, written by expatriates who knew each other in Paris. A mood of despair and hopelessness pervades the stories as the characters are trapped in the human condition. By examining the commonalities found in their methods of organization, handling of point of view, attitudes toward their subjects, stylistic techniques, and modes of writing, one is continually brought back to the differences between Joyce and Hemingway in each of these areas. For it is their differences that make these artists important; how each author chose to develop his craft gives him a significant place in literature.

This thesis presents four categories of form basic to all of Stephen Crane's poetry: antiphons, apologues, emblems, and testaments. A survey of previous shortcomings in the critical acceptance of Crane as a poet leads into reasons why the categorization of form here helps to alleviate some of those problems. The body of the thesis consists of four chapters, one for each basic form. Each form is defined and explained, exemplary poems in each category are explicated, and specifics are given as to what makes one poem better than the next. The thesis ends with an elevation of Crane's worth as a poet and a confirmation of the merits of this new categorization of form.