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Social Reform in William Godwin's Novels
This thesis discusses the social and economic conditions which influenced the novels of William Godwin, and looks at his works and their criticisms of the conditions of the age.
Date:
August 1967
Creator:
Smith, Jane Gentry
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Woman, the Root of Man's Self-Destruction in four Shakespearean Plays
This thesis examines four plays by Shakespeare to illustrate the theme of men's downfall as caused by the women they love. One play from each type of relationship was chosen: Coriolanus for mothers who exert disastrous influence on their sons; King Lear for daughters responsible for their fathers' downfall; Cymbeline for the injurious effect of a wife on her husband, and is significant because the moral dissolution comes through her great virtue rather than through her character faults; and Troilus and Cressida for lovers who are not bound either by blood or legal ties.
Date:
January 1967
Creator:
Brown, Barbara Love
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Diane Di Prima: The Muffled Voice of the Beat Generation
The Beat rejection of conventional values meant a rejection of marriage, family, and a nine-to-five job, and few women were prepared to make that kind of radical shift in a society that condemned women for behaving the way the Beats behaved. Though she has faced difficulty in getting published, Beat writer Diane Di Prima has been publishing steadily for the past forty years. Di Prima has also lived the life of a Beat, wandering the country, avoiding nine-to-five work and supporting herself with grants, teaching and poetry readings. In spite of her success and adherence to the Beat lifestyle, Di Prima has given birth to five children, all of whom she took with her in her travels. Diane Di Prima has always faced the particular challenge of gaining the acceptance of her male peers amid indifference and hatred toward her sex while not allowing these men to go unanswered.
Date:
August 1997
Creator:
Goggans, Heather
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Working Whiteness: Performing And Transgressing Cultural Identity Through Work
Early in Richard Wright's Native Son, we see Bigger and his friend Gus “playing white.” Taking on the role of “J. P. Morgan,” the two young black men give orders and act powerful, thus performing their perceived role of whiteness. This scene is more than an ironic comment on the characters' distance from the lifestyle of the J. P. Morgans of the world; their acts of whiteness are a representation of how whiteness is constructed. Such an analysis is similar to my own focus in this dissertation. I argue that whiteness is a culturally constructed identity and that work serves as a performative space for defining and transgressing whiteness. To this end, I examine work and its influence on the performance of middle class and working class whiteness, as well as how those outside the definitions of whiteness attempt to “play white,” as Bigger does. Work enables me to explore the codes of whiteness and how they are performed, understood, and transgressed by providing a locus of cultural performance. Furthermore, by looking at novels written in the early twentieth century, I am able to analyze characters at a historical moment in which work was of great import. With the labor …
Date:
May 2002
Creator:
Polizzi, Allessandria
System:
The UNT Digital Library
"Grandpa" and Other Stories
These sketches and stories are the result of moods, daydreams, and experiences. The collection progresses from those intimate stories controlled by personal experience to the last two works which try to crystallize a mood or experience in a medium without the device of first person. "Grandpa," "Great-Grandpa," and "Weedgod" are sketches which describe the boundary between what things are and what things seem to be. "Aunt Mary," "Hospital," and "Eggy Cooter" are short stories presenting situations in which the reader can determine this boundary line himself.
Date:
May 1977
Creator:
Winterbauer, Arthur E.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Lord Byron's Interest in British Politics
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the politics of Byron as they are related to his age. Necessarily, a part of this work will deal with ideas that are somewhat conjectural, largely because of the limitations of time and space as well as the lack of accurate information--particularly that which concerns Byron and the Whig circle.
Date:
August 1963
Creator:
Krukowski, John D.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Quest for the Father
This dissertation explores Elizabeth Barrett's dependency on the archetypal Victorian patriarch. Chapter I focuses on the psychological effects of this father-daughter relationship on Elizabeth Barrett. Chapter II addresses Barrett's acceptance of the conventional female role, which is suggested by the nature and the situation of the women she chooses to depict. These women are placed in situations where they can reveal their devotion to family, their capacity for passive endurance, and their wish to resist. Almost always, they choose death as an alternative to life where a powerful father figure is present. Chapter III concentrates on the highly sentimental images of women and children whom Barrett places in a divine order, where they exist untouched by the concerns of the social order of which they are a part. Chapter IV shows that the conventional ideologies of the time, society's commitment to the "angel in the house," and the small number of female role models before her increase her difficulty to find herself a place within this order. Chapter V discusses Aurora Leigh's mission to find herself an identity and to maintain the connection with her father or father substitute. Despite Elizabeth Barrett's desire to break away from her paternal ties …
Date:
December 1996
Creator:
Yegenoglu, Dilara
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Religion and Politics in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats
Previous critics have paid insufficient attention to the political implications of Yeats's life-long preoccupation with a wide range of Western and Eastern religious traditions. Though he always preserved some skepticism about mysticism's ability to reshape the material world, the early Yeats valued the mystical idea of oneness in part because he hoped (mistakenly, as it turned out) that such oneness would bring Catholic and Protestant Ireland together in a way that might make the goals of Irish nationalism easier to accomplish. Yeats's celebration of mystical oneness does not reflect a pseudo-fascistic commitment to a static, oppressive unity. Like most mystics—and most modernists—Yeats conceived of both religious and political oneness not as a final end but rather as an ongoing process, a "way of happening" (as Auden put it).
Date:
August 1997
Creator:
Yoo, Baekyun
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Iconoclast in the mirror.
Access:
Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
This work explores identity positions of speakers in modern and contemporary poetry with respect to themes of subjectivity, self-awareness, lyricism, heteroglossia, and social contextualization, from perspectives including Bakhtinian, queer, feminist and postructuralist theories, and Peircian semiotics. Tony Hoagland, W.H. Auden, Adrienne Rich, and the poetic prose of Hélène Cixous provide textual examples of an evolving aesthetic in which the poet's self and world comprise multiple dynamic, open relationships supplanting one in which simple correspondences between signifiers and signifieds define selves isolated from the world. Hypertext and polyamory serve as useful analogies to the semantic eros characteristic of such poetry, including the collection of original poems that the critical portion of this thesis introduces.
Date:
August 2005
Creator:
Alexander, Lydia L.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Constructing Taiwan: Taiwanese Literature and National Identity
In this work, I trace and reconstruct Taiwan's nation-formation as it is reflected in literary texts produced primarily during the country's two periods of colonial rule, Japanese (1895-1945) and Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (1945-1987). One of my central arguments is that the idea of a Taiwanese nation has historically emerged from the interstices of several official and formal nationalisms: Japanese, Chinese, and later Taiwanese. In the following chapters, I argue that the concepts of Taiwan and Taiwanese have been formed and enriched over time in response to the pressures exerted by the state's, colonial or otherwise, pedagogical nation-building discourses. It is through an engagement with these various discourses that the idea of a Taiwanese nation has come to be gradually defined, negotiated, and reinvented by Taiwanese intellectuals of various ethnic backgrounds. I, therefore, focus on authors whose works actively respond to and engage with the state's official nationalism. Following Homi Bhabha's explication in his famous essay "DissemiNation," the basic premise of this dissertation is that the nation, as a narrated space, is not simply shaped by the homogenizing and historicist discourse of nationalism but is realized through people's diverse lived experience. Thus, in reading Taiwanese literature, it is …
Date:
August 2018
Creator:
Lu, Tsung Che
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Superior Mirth: National Humor and the Victorian Ego
This project traces the wide and varied uses of patriotic (and, at times, jingoistic and xenophobic) humor within the Victorian novel. a culture’s humor, perhaps more than any other cultural markers (food, dress, etc.), provides invaluable insight into that nation’s values and perceptions—not only how they view others, but also how they view themselves. in fact, humor provides such a unique cultural thumbprint as to make most jokes notoriously untranslatable. Victorian humor is certainly not a new topic of critical discussion; neither is English ethno-cultural identity during this era lacking scholarly attention. However, the intersection of these concerns has been seemingly ignored; thus, my research investigates the enmeshed relationship between these two areas of study. Not only do patriotic sentiment and humor frequently overlap, they often form a causational relationship wherein a writer’s rhetorical invocation of shared cultural experiences creates humorous self-awareness while “inside” jokes which reference unique Anglo-specific behaviors or collective memories promote a positive identity with the culture in question. Drawing on and extending the work of James Kincaid’s Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter, Harold Nicolson’s “The English Sense of Humor,” and Bergson’s and Freud’s theories of humor as a social construct, I question how this reciprocated …
Date:
May 2012
Creator:
Stober, Katharyn L.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Hybrid Hero in Early Modern English Literature: A Synthesis of Classical and Contemplative Heroism
In his Book of the Courtier, Castiglione appeals to the Renaissance notion of self-fashioning, the idea that individuals could shape their identity rather than relying solely on the influence of external factors such as birth, social class, or fate. While other early modern authors explore the practice of self-fashioning—Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, surveys numerous princes identifying ways they have molded themselves—Castiglione emphasizes the necessity of modeling one's-self after a variety of sources, "[taking] various qualities now from one man and now from another." In this way, Castiglione advocates for a self-fashioning grounded in a discriminating kind of synthesis, the generation of a new ideal form through the selective combination of various source materials. While Castiglione focuses on the moves necessary for an individual to fashion himself through this act of discriminatory mimesis, his views can explain the ways authors of the period use source material in the process of textual production. As poets and playwrights fashioned their texts, they did so by consciously combining various source materials in order to create not individuals, as Castiglione suggests, but characters to represent new cultural ideals and values. Early moderns viewed the process of textual, as well as cultural production, as a kind …
Date:
December 2017
Creator:
Ponce, Timothy Matthew
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Social Problems in American Drama from 1930 to 1940
My purpose in this work is to examine the major social problems with which the playwrights of the decade between 1930 and 1940 have dealt.
Date:
1948
Creator:
Willingham, John R.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Death and the Concept of Woman's Value in the Novels of Jane Austen
Jane Austen sprinkles deaths throughout her novels as plot devices and character indicators, but she does not tackle death directly. Yet death pervades her novels, in a subtle yet brutal way, in the lives of her female characters. Austen reveals that death was the definition and the destiny of women; it was the driving force behind the social and economic constructs that ruled the eighteenth-century woman's life, manifested in language, literature, religion, art, and even in a woman's doubts about herself. In Northanger Abbey Catherine Morland discovers that women, like female characters in gothic texts, are written and rewritten by the men whose language dominates them. Catherine herself becomes an example of real gothic when she is silenced and her spirit murdered by Henry Tilney. Marianne Dashwood barely escapes the powerful male constructs of language and literature in Sense and Sensibility. Marianne finds that the literal, maternal, wordless language of women counts for nothing in the social world, where patriarchal,figurative language rules, and in her attempt to channel her literal language into the social language of sensibility, she is placed in a position of more deadly nothingness, cast by society as a scorned woman and expected to die. Fanny Price …
Date:
December 1996
Creator:
Moring, Meg Montgomery, 1961-
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Wagnerian Elements in the Fiction of Thomas Mann
This study will examine the phenomenon of the elevation of Wagner from relative obscurity under Bismarck to the symbol of German Nationalism under the Third Reich, and will attempt to ascertain the reasons for Mann's continuing dedication to Wagner despite his growing apprehension about Germany's destiny under Hitler.
Date:
August 1966
Creator:
Wright, Sandra Mason
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Current Trends in the Interpretation of Othello
This thesis will be mostly concerned with the twentieth-century criticism of Othello; some attention will be given to earlier criticism to determine to what extent twentieth-century criticism fits into patterns of thinking before the twentieth century. Some consideration will be given to the background of Othello before taking up the various aspects and periods of criticism.
Date:
January 1962
Creator:
Uselton, Bethel May
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Major Themes in the Poetry of James Dickey
The themes of sensual experience, nature, and mysticism in James Dickey's poetry are examined. Dickey's "Poems 1957- 1967" and "The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy" are the primary sources for the poems. Selections from a decade of Dickey criticism are also represented. Dickey presents a wide spectrum of attitudes toward acceptance of the physical body, communion with nature, and transcendence of the human condition, but the poems exhibit sufficient uniformity to allow thematic generalizations to be made.
Date:
August 1975
Creator:
Tucker, Charles C.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Role of Modern Love in the Alexandria Quartet
This thesis examines the idea of modern love as expressed in the four novels of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.
Date:
August 1965
Creator:
Krause, Leslie A.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Stretched Out on Her Grave: Pathological Attitudes Toward Death in British Fiction 1788-1909
Access:
Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Nineteenth-century British fiction is often dismissed as necrophillic or obsessed with death. While the label of necrophilia is an apt description of the fetishistic representations of dead women prevalent at the end of the century, it is too narrow to fit literature produced earlier in the century. This is not to say that abnormal attitudes toward death are only a feature of the late nineteenth century. In fact, pathological attitudes toward death abound in the literature, but the relationship between the deceased and the survivor is not always sexual in nature. Rather, there is a clear shift in attitudes, from the chaste death fantasy, or attraction to the idea of death, prevalent in Gothic works, to the destructive, stagnant mourning visible in mid-century texts, and culminating in the perverse sexualization of dead women at the turn of the century. This literary shift is most likely attributable to the concurrent changes in attitudes toward sex and death. As sex became more acceptable, more public, via the channels of scientific discourse, death became a less acceptable idea. This “denial of death” is a direct reaction to the religious uncertainties brought about by industrialization. As scientists and industrialists uncovered increasing evidence against a …
Date:
August 2003
Creator:
Angel-Cann, Lauryn
System:
The UNT Digital Library
A Study of Mechanics: Prescription and Use
This thesis studies historical punctuation its uses and standards developed.
Date:
August 1952
Creator:
Le Beau, Maurine Schott
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Grotesque Tradition in the Short Stories of Charles Bukowski
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.
Date:
May 1988
Creator:
Cooke, James M. (James Michael)
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Posthumous Narrative Poems of C. S. Lewis
The purpose of this study is to introduce the three posthumous narrative poems of C. S. Lewis. Chapter One is an introduction to Lewis's life and scholarship. The second chapter is concerned with "Launcelot," in which the central theme of the story explores the effect of the Quest for the Holy Grail on King Arthur's kingdom. Chapter Three studies "The Nameless Isle," in which Celtic and Greek mythic elements strongly influence both characterization and plot. The fourth chapter is an analysis of The Queen of Drum and its triangular plot structure in which the motivating impetus of the characters is the result of dreams. Chapter Five recapitulates Lewis's perspectives of life and reviews the impact of his Christianity on the poems. The study also shows how each poem illustrates a separate aspect of the cosmic quest.
Date:
December 1976
Creator:
Geer, Caroline L.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Literary Criticism of H. L. Mencken
The thesis of this paper is that Mencken was a better critic than he is credited with being, that he was unusually discerning in his judgment of the fiction of his time, and that his criteria are clearly stated in various of his writings. It is conceded, however, that his taste in poetry was limited and that his contribution to dramatic criticism was not? greatly significant.
Date:
December 1970
Creator:
Sellers, Stephen W.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Understanding the Owner’s Manual: the United States Constitution Examined Through the Lens of Technical Communication
This dissertation explores the collaborative process and use of language that went into the creating the United States Constitution in 1787. From a technical communication perspective, the collaborative process explored did not develop any new theories on collaboration, but instead, allows scholars to track the emergence of a well-documented America collaborative process from the early period of the developing American nation on a document that has remained in use for over 235 years. in addition to examining this collaborative process, the author also discusses the use of passive voice and negative language in the first article of the Constitution.
Date:
May 2012
Creator:
Elerson, Crystal
System:
The UNT Digital Library