This study arranges symptoms of polarity into a causal sequence# beginning with the origin of contrarieties and ending with the ultimate effect. The origin is considered as the fall of man, denoting both a mythic concept and a specific act of betrayal. This study argues that a sense of separateness precedes the fall or act of separation; the act of separation produces various kinds of fragmentation; and the fragments are reunited through paradox. Therefore, a causal relationship exists between the "fall" motif and the concept of paradox.

Shelby Hearon's eight novels--Armadillo in the Grass, The Second Dune, Hannah's House, Now and Another Time, A Prince of a Fellow, Painted Dresses, Afternoon of a Faun, and Group Therapy- -are unified by the theme of the fairy-tale princess and her quest to assert her autonomy and gain self-fulfillment while struggling with marriage, family, and the mother-daughter relationship. This study traces the development of Hearon' s feminist convictions in each of her novels by focusing on the changing quests of her heroines. This analysis of Hearon's novels attests to their lasting literary significance.

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.

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 contains four stories of fantasy and science fiction. Four story lengths are represented: the short short ("Dragon Lovers"), the shorter short story ("Homecoming"), the longer short story ("Shadow Mistress"), and the novel ("Sword of Albruch," excerpted here).

Many Twain scholars believe that his skepticism was based on personal tragedies of later years. Others find skepticism in Twain's work as early as The Innocents Abroad. This study determines that Twain's atheism is evident in his earliest writings. Chapter One examines what critics have determined Twain's religious sense to be. These contentions are discussed in light of recent publications and older, often ignored, evidence of Twain' s atheism. Chapter Two is a biographical look at Twain's literary, family, and community influences, and at events in Twain's life to show that his religious antipathy began when he was quite young. Chapter Three examines Twain's early sketches and journalistic squibs to prove that his voice, storytelling techniques, subject matter, and antipathy towards the church and other institutions are clearly manifested in his early writings.

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.

This study discusses the evolution of the English country-house poem from its inception by Ben Jonson in "To Penshurst" to the present. It shows that in addition to stylistic and thematic borrowings primarily from Horace and Martial, traditional English values associated with the great hall and comitatus ideal helped define features of the English country-house poem, to which Jonson added the metonymical use of architecture. In the Jonsonian country-house poem, the country estate, exemplified by Penshurst, is a microcosm of the ideal English social organization characterized by interdependence, simplicity, service, hospitality, and balance between the active and contemplative life. Those poems which depart from the Jonsonian ideal are characterized by disequilibrium between the active and contemplative life, resulting in the predominance of artifice, subordination of nature, and isolation of art from the community, as exemplified by Thomas Carew's "To Saxham" and Richard Lovelace's "Amyntor's Grove." Architectural features of the English country house are examined to explain the absence of the Jonsonian country-house poem in the eighteenth century. The building tradition praised by Jonson gradually gave way to aesthetic considerations fostered by the professional architect and Palladian architecture, architectural patronage by the middle class, and change in identity of the country …

The style and themes central to Bukowski's prose have roots in the literary tradition of the grotesque. Bukowski uses grotesque imagery in his writings as a creative device, explaining the negative characteristics of modern life. His permanent mood of angry disgust at the world around him is similar to that of the eighteenth-century satirists, particularly Jonathan Swift. Bukowski confronts the reader with the uglier side of America--its grime, its corruption, the constricted lives of its lower class--all with a simplicity and directness of style impeccably and clearly distilled. Bukowski's style is ebullient, with grotesquely evocative descriptions, scatological detail, and dark humor.

For the purpose of this study, metaphor is defined as a comparison which is not literally true. Such a comparison may be explicitly stated, as in a simile, or it may merely be implied, as in synecdoche, metonymy, hyperbole, or personification. In each case the primary or tenor image, a person, place, object, or idea in the novel, is compared to a secondary or vehicle image, a person, place, object, or idea not literally the same as the tenor image. The body of data on which this investigation is based consists of over fourteen thousand metaphors taken from Melville's nine novels. Each of these metaphors has been classified on the basis of its vehicle image. There are eight general categories, and tables are provided which show the number of metaphors in each category in each novel and the frequency with which the metaphors in each category occur in each novel. Overall, his metaphors suggest that Melville's vision of life was more often pessimistic than optimistic. They also reveal his growth as a writer. In the later novels, metaphors generally are more original than those in the early novels and are more skillfully related to his major themes.

The central figure in The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, is shown in this thesis to pursue a narcissistic flight from existential reality. Following a review of contemporary criticism, Edna Pontellier's narcissism is discussed in connection with her sexuality and suicide. Sources cited range from biographies of Kate Chopin to scholarly articles to the works of modern psychologists. The emphasis throughout the thesis is on the wealth of interpretations that currently exist on The Awakening as well as the potential for further -study and interpretation in the future. Rather than viewing The Awakening as a purely feministic novel, it is stressed that The Awakening can transcend such categorization and be appreciated on many levels.

This work re-assesses the heroic character of Huckleberry Finn in light of the inherent problems of discourse. Walter Ong's insights into the differences between oral and literate consciousnesses, and Stanley Fish's concept of "interpretive communities" are applied to Huck's interactions with the other characters, revealing the underlying dynamic of his character, the need for a viable discourse community. Further established, by enlisting the ideas of Ernest Becker, is that this need for community finds its source in the most fundamental human problem, the consciousness of death. The study concludes that the problematic ending of Twain's novel is consistent with the theme of community and is neither the artistic failure, nor the cynical pronouncement on the human race that so many critics have seen it to be.

Through narrations presenting juxtaposition of conditions and ambivalence of conclusions, writers in the Hawthornian tradition compel the reader to interpret for himself the destiny of the creative protagonist. In these works the creative self is often threatened with psychical annihilation by its internal conflicts between pragmatic needs and aesthetic goals, social responsibility and professional dedication, idealistic pursuits and materialistic desires. Works in this tradition show creativity evolving from conflicting forces within the creative self. Female characters in the novels function as the creative imagination, leading the self towards creative consummation, sometimes bearing the creation itself, and always suggesting mythical figures associated with creativity. Male characters represent either the withdrawn, sensitive, idealistic ego, or the active, materialistic will. Confrontation between these internal forces produces the apocalyptic revelation enabling the self to transcend its condition by renewing contact with the creative source, the unconscious psyche. For these writers the unconscious has roots in myth, legend, dreams, and memory and is opposed to sterile conditions producing fragmentation of the creative self. In the Hawthornian tradition, the American Revolution separated the self from existence in the timeless universal givens and propelled it into assuming the determination of history. Bereft of traditional guidance and belief …

The four works in this collection are related by their central character, Tribulat Bonhomet. In "The Swan-Killer," the first, Bonhomet the music lover carries out his carefully planned excursion to kill swans to hear their last songs. "The Eventualists' Banquet," the second work, reports an after-dinner speech in which Bonhomet proposes a method for ridding France of revolutionaries. And the "Motion of Dr. Tribulat Bonhomet" sets forth a plan whereby earthquakes are harnessed to rid the world of poets and artists. The last and longest piece, "Claire Lenoir," a novella, recounts Dr. Bonhomet's visit to the Lenoir home. A highly philosophical work, "Claire Lenoir" explores questions of reality, revenge, and survival beyond death, ending with a bizarre murder and a grotesque climax.

In traditional romance, the hero takes a mythical journey into the underworld where he meets and overcomes evil antagonists. Hawthorne has transferred much of that hero's role to a pivotal character whose paradoxical function is to cause the central conflict in the tale or novel while remaining almost entirely passive himself. The movement of the tale or novel depends on the pivot's humanization, that is, his return to and integration within society. Works treated are "Alice Doane's Appeal," "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure," "Roger Malvin's Burial," "Rappaccini' s Daughter," "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Antique Ring," "The Gentle Boy," Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.

Walker Percy differs from other American novelists in that he started writing fiction relatively late in life, after being trained as a physician and after considerable reading and writing in philosophy. Although critics have appreciated Percy's skills as a writer, they have seen Percy above all as a novelist of ideas, and, accordingly, the majority of critical articles and books about Percy has dealt with his themes, especially his philosophical themes, as well as with his philosophical sources. This study explores, therefore, the critical response to philosophical ideas in Percy's five novels to date, as evidenced first by reviews, then by the later articles and books. The critical response developed gradually as critics became aware of Percy's aims and pointed out his use of Christian existentialism and his attacks upon Cartesianism, Stoicism, and modern secular gnosticism. These critical evaluations of Percy's philosophical concerns have sometimes overshadowed interest in his more purely artistic concerns. However, the more a reader understands the underlying philosophical concepts that inform Percy's novels, the more he may understand what Percy is trying to say and the more he may appreciate Percy's accomplishment in expressing his philosophical ideas so skillfully in fictional form. Critics and readers may …

An understanding of the influence of Shakespeare on the structure and language of Moby-Dick is important because the plays of Shakespeare gave Melville a sudden insight into the significance of form and because his absorption of Shakespearean rhetoric enabled him to solve a serious artistic problem. In Moby-Dick Melville wished to write a work of symbolic fiction which would have both epic scope and tragic depth, but his difficulty lay in finding a structural and stylistic method which would provide the amplitude necessary to epic and at the same time could achieve the compression and verbal economy necessary to tragedy. He solved this problem by learning from Shakespeare to create a multi-layered dramatic structure and to use a dramatic language which becomes one layer of that structure. In Shakespeare's greatest plays there is a virtual fusion of form and meaning, and it is this fusion which, in its greatest moments, the language of Moby-Dick achieves.

Among the most important characters in contemporary writer Anne Tyler's nine novels of modern American life are her skillfully-drawn managing women who choose the family circle as the arena in which to use their skills and exert their influence. Strong, competent, independent, capable of caring for themselves, their husbands, their children, and others, too, as well as holding outside jobs, these women are the linchpins of their families. Among their most outstanding qualities are their abilities to endure hardships with heads high and skills unhampered. Within this broad category of managing women, Tyler clearly delineates two types of managers: the regenerative managing woman and the rigid managing woman. A major character in every novel, the regenerative managing woman not only endures, she also adapts. The key to her development and her strength is her capacity for trying again, renewing herself, and her family relationships. The evolution of a vital regenerative woman from a lonely childhood through the beginning of her vibrant womanhood is a key element in every Tyler novel. This development always includes an escape from her original family? an attempt to establish her own family; at least one major hardship that often sends her reeling home; and finally, …

Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom is a narrative by the author about his two years as a teacher in the People's Republic of China. Organized chronologically, the account begins in August, 1985, and ends in June, 1987. The narrator describes meeting students at Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, designing English classes for English majors, daily episodes in the classroom, and interaction with Chinese colleagues. The narrative alternates between life on a university campus and extensive trips the narrator made to various cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Guilin, Harbin, Hohot, and Guangzhou. Also recounted are the narrator's reactions to the student demonstrations of December, 1986, and the resulting anti-bourgeois liberation campaign of January-April, 1987.