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The Representation of Religion in the Fiction of Ernest Hemingway
This study examines the representation of religion in Ernest Hemingway's fiction. In most of his stories, references to the church are adversely critical. No protagonist finds solace in conventional religious faith.
Date:
May 1971
Creator:
Hamric, Karen Magee
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Joyce's Dubliners and Hemingway's In Our Time: A Correlation
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.
Date:
December 1986
Creator:
Mayo, Kim Martin
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Generosity and Gentillesse: Economic Exchange in Medieval English Romance
This study explores how three English romances of the late fourteenth century-Geoffrey Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal, and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight-employ economic exchange as a tool to illustrate community ideals. Although gift-giving and commerce are common motifs in medieval romance, these three romances depict acts of generosity and exchange that demonstrate fundamental principles of proper behavior by uniting characters in the poems in spite of social divisions such as gender or social class. Economic imagery in fourteenth-century romances merits particular consideration because of Richard II's prolific expenditure, which created such turbulence that the peasants revolted in 1381. The court's openhanded spending led to social unrest, but in romances a character's largesse strengthens community bonds by showing that all members of a group participate in an idealized gift economy. Positioned within the context of economic tensions, exchange in romances can lead readers to reexamine notions of group identity. Chestre's Sir Launfal unites its community under secular principles of economic exchange and evaluation. Using similar motifs of exchange, the Gawain-poet makes Christian and chivalric ideals apparent through Gawain's service and generosity to all those who follow the Christian faith. Further, Chaucer's Franklin's Tale portrays hospitality …
Date:
May 2011
Creator:
Stewart, James T.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Edmund Spenser as Protestant Thinker and Poet : A Study of Protestantism and Culture in The Faerie Queene
The study inquires into the dynamic relationship between Protestantism and culture in The Faerie Oueene. The American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr makes penetrating analyses of the relationship between man's cultural potentials and the insights of Protestant Christianity which greatly illuminate how Spenser searches for a comprehensive religious, ethical, political, and social vision for the Christian community of Protestant England. But Spenser maintains the tension between culture and Christianity to the end, refusing to offer a merely coherent system of principles based on the doctrine of Christianity.
Date:
August 1993
Creator:
Kim, Hoyoung
System:
The UNT Digital Library
A Comparison of Morris' News from Nowhere and Life in the Twin Oaks Community
It is the purpose of this paper to explore how Morris' novel relates to life in Twin Oaks, primarily as depicted in two books: Living the Dream (1983) by Ingrid Komar, a long-term visitor to the commune and Kinkade's Is It Utopia Yet? (1996). This comparison will demonstrate that the experiences of contemporary intentional communities such as Twin Oaks provide a meaningful context for reading News from Nowhere because of the similarities in goals and philosophy. It will further demonstrate that though Twin Oaks was originally inspired by a utopian novel much more in the tradition of Bellamy's work than Morris', the community's subsequent evolution has brought it much closer in philosophy to News from Nowhere than Looking Backward.
Date:
December 2007
Creator:
Garner, Royce Clifton
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Death in the Works of Mark Twain
An examination of the persistent death motif in Twain's literature reveals a strong fusion of his art, personal experience and philosophical conclusions. Death imagery dramatizes Twain's pessimistic view of an estranged humanity existing without purpose or direction in an incomprehensible universe. Twain shows in his works that religious and social beliefs only obscure the fact that the meaning of death is beyond man's intellectual and perceptual powers. In Twain's view the only certainty about death is that it is a release from the preordained tragedies of existence. Illusions, primordial terrors, and mystifying dreams shape man's disordered reality, Twain concludes, and therefore death is as meaningless as life.
Date:
August 1976
Creator:
Kirsten, Gladys L.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
An Interpretation of the Theme of Snopesism in the Work of William Faulkner
Ever since the publication of the novel Sartoria, members of a strange new breed of people by the name of Snopes have appeared in every Faulkner novel and short story which constitutes a part of what is called the Yoknapatawpha chronicle. Heretofore, it has been popular to support the thesis that the Snopeses represented the embodiment of crass commercialism, the inevitable replacement for the dying cotton aristocracy, and the direct retribution for the sins that had caused the downfall of these degenerate Southern gentry. This thesis will attempt to show, not that such a contention is wholly wrong, but that the real meaning of Snopesism lies much deeper than this, far beyond such a simple interpretation.
Date:
August 1964
Creator:
Moore, Jeanette Fenley
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Significant Parallels in the Heroes of John Dryden and Lord Byron
This thesis includes a study of common historical and biographical elements in the lives of Dryden and Byron, a comparison of the literary principles and achievements of Dryden and Byron, a study of the concept of the hero, and a comparison of the heroes of Dryden and Byron.
Date:
May 1969
Creator:
Kennelly, Laura B.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
"Have You Ever Had a Broken Heart?"
Have You Ever Had Broken Heart? is a collection of essays that interrogate memory, loss, and grief through the intersection of personal narrative, films, the actress Frances Farmer, and woman saints and mystics from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries who were punished for daring to speak to G-d. The essays engage with autotheory and include a myriad of forms, such as segmented, one sentence, and hybrid works. The films discussed range from the philosophical, such as Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1963), to Graeme Clifford's biopic, Frances (1982), to catechize the grief of the persona losing her mother and sister to a hit and run car wreck in June 2022. The persona traverses the realm of the mystics and saints, including Marguerite Porete, Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz, and Joan of Arc, examining their respective quests to experience the unseen and often silent divine, while questioning her longing for G-d, and simultaneously believing G-d cannot exist. Yet, within this confusion, she finds herself immersed in memories which carry the presence of her mother's love.
Date:
December 2023
Creator:
Moore, Katherine
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Lyric Folkore of American Youth Culture of the Sixties
The purpose of this study is to survey the song lore of the American youth culture, beginning with the rock Int roll era of the fifties, treating the topical-folksong movement of the early sixties, and finally focusing upon the folk-rock genre that resulted from an amalgamation of the two forms of expression. In addition to the art of folk rock and the cultural values reflected in the lyrics, attention will be given to the folk aspects of the performance, the life-style of the performer, and the participation of the youth as a cultural group.
Date:
August 1969
Creator:
Hickman, Jerry F.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Reaction of Jonathan Swift to Viscount Bolingbroke's Ethical Views
The problem investigated in this paper is the unlikely friendship of Swift and Bolingbroke. The purpose is to assess the reaction of Swift to the ethics of Bolingbroke. Under examination are the conflicting opinions of these men in regard to morals, money, and ethics. Chapter I contains immoral actions of Bolingbroke. Chapter II shows Swift's manner of life and his reaction to Bolingbroke's immorality. Chapter III gives Swift's attitude to money, Bolingbroke's attitude, and Swift's reaction to Bolingbroke's opinion. Chapter IV contains Bolingbroke's ethical philosophy. And Chapter V reveals Swift's religious views and his reaction to Bolingbroke's ethics. The conclusion is that Swift disapproved of Bolingbroke's ethics, but did not break with him on account of them.
Date:
August 1974
Creator:
Camp, Paul W., 1908-
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Sacred and the Profane: Nin, Barnes, and the Aesthetics of Amorality
Barnes's Vagaries Malicieux, and Nin's Delta of Venus, are examples the developing vision of female sex, and both authors use their literary techniques to accomplish their aesthetic vision of amorality. Nin's visions are based on her and her friends' extreme experiences. Her primary concern was expressing her erotic and amorally aesthetic gaze, and the results of her efforts are found in her aesthetic vision of Paris and the amoral lifestyle. Barnes uses metaphor and linguistics to fashion her aesthetic vision. Her technique in "Run, Girls, Run!" both subverts any sense of morality, and offers an interesting and challenging read for its audience. In "Vagaries Malicieux" Barnes's Paris is dark while bright, and creates a sense of nothingness, indicated only by Barnes's aesthetic appreciation.
Date:
August 2009
Creator:
Dunbar, Erin
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Social and Political Conservatism in Joseph Conrad's Fiction
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the evidences of Conrad's conservative tastes and beliefs as indicated by his way of life and his associations, and to show, further, that this conservatism is revealed directly and indirectly in his stories and novels.
Date:
1951
Creator:
Taylor, Ouita Winona
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Road Debris
This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses the growing trend in project books in contemporary poetry, and Part II, a collection of poems titled, Road Debris. There is an increasing trend in the number of project books, which are collections of poetry unified in both thematic and formal ways. the individual poems in a project book share overt connections which allow the book to work on many different levels, blending elements of fiction and non-fiction or sharing a specific theme or speaker. While these books have the advantage of being easily memorable, which might gain poets an edge in book contests, there are also many risks involved. the main issue surrounding project books is if the individual poems can justify the book, or do they seem too repetitive or forced. As more poets, especially newer ones, try to use the project book as a shortcut to publication, it can result in poorly written poems forced to fit into a particular concept. By examining three successful cotemporary project books—The Quick of It, by Eamon Grennan; Incident Light, by H. L. Hix; and Romey’s Order by Astory Riley—this essay discusses how these books work in order to understand the potential …
Date:
May 2012
Creator:
Dewoody, Dale W.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
"Weaving a new wreath of immortal leaves": Bildung, Awakening, and Self-Redefinition in the Fiction of Elizabeth Stoddard
Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902) has been overlooked by most modern literary critics and scholars. She needs to be incorporated into the canon of the American novel in order to establish a deserved critical visibility and to retain it for many years to come. Her groundbreaking fiction, unconventional by any nineteenth-century standard, especially as evidenced by The Morsesons and by some of her short stories, is characterized by penetrating psychology, individuality, and enduring literary qualities.
Date:
August 1995
Creator:
Quawas, Rula B. (Rula Butros Audeh)
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Incest Taboo in Wuthering Heights : A Modern Appraisal
A modern interpretation of Wuthering Heights suggests that an unconscious incest taboo impeded Catherine and her foster brother, Heathcliff, from achieving normal sexual union and led them to seek union after death. Insights from anthropology, psychology, and sociology provide a key to many of the subtleties of the novel by broadening our perspectives on the causes of incest, its manifestations, and its consequences. Anthropology links the incest taboo to primitive systems of totemism and rules of exogamy, under which the two lovers' marriage would have been disallowed because they are members of the same clan. Psychological studies provide insight into Heathcliff and Catherine's abnormal relationship—emotionally passionate but sexually dispassionate—and their even more bizarre behavior—sadistic, necrophilic, and vampiristic—all of which can be linked to incest. The psychological manifestations merge with the moral consequences in Bronte's inverted image of paradise; as in Milton's Paradise, incest is both a metaphor for evil and a symbol of pre-Lapsarian innocence. The psychological and moral consequences of incest in the first generation carry over into the second generation, resulting in a complex doubling of characters, names, situations, narration, and time sequences that is characteristic of the self-enclosed, circular nature of incest. An examination of Emily Bronte's …
Date:
August 1992
Creator:
McGuire, Kathryn B. (Kathryn Bezard)
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) the Man and His Work
The purpose of this thesis is to "delve into the life and poetry of A. E. Housman to try to discover, not what made Housman the man he was, but why his poetry has appeal." p. 3
Date:
August 1962
Creator:
Smith, Mary M.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Women Becoming: a Feminist Critical Analysis of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Kitchen God's Wife"
This analysis of Tan's first two novels reveals that her female characters suffer from the strains critics like Amy Ling say result from the double paradox of filling the roles of mother or daughter as minority women in a white, male society. Recognizing this double paradox offers Tan's characters, and her readers, the opportunity to resolve the conflicts between mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. Using the theories of psychologist Kathie Carlson helps readers understand how the protagonist of The Kitchen God's Wife resolves similar conflicts with her daughter and her own mother by seeking support from a mythic mother-figure, a Goddess of her own making.
Date:
December 1993
Creator:
Curton, Carman C.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Poor Things: Objects, Ownership, and the Underclasses in American Literature, 1868-1935
This dissertation explores both the production of underclass literature and the vibrancy of material between 1868-1935. During an era of rampant materialism, consumer capitalism, unchecked industrialism, and economic inequality in the United States, poor, working class Americans confronted their socioeconomic status by abandoning the linear framework of capitalism that draws only a straight line between market and consumer, and engaging in a more intimate relationship with local, material things – found, won, or inherited – that offered a sense of autonomy, belonging, and success. The physical seizure of property/power facilitated both men and women with the ability to recognize their own empowerment (both as individuals and as a community) and ultimately resist their marginalization by leveling access to opportunity and acquiring or creating personal assets that could be generationally transferred as affirmation of their family's power and control over circumstance. Reading into these personal possessions helps us understand the physical and psychological conflicts present amongst the underclasses as represented in American literature, and these conflicts give rise to new dynamics of belonging as invested in the transformative experience of ownership and exchange. If we can understand these discarded, poor, and foreign things and people as possessing dynamic and vibrant agency, …
Date:
May 2019
Creator:
Johnson, Meghan Taylor
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Periodic Interpretations of Milton's Paradise Lost
The object of this study will be to call attention to the gradually developing interest in the poem and the varying interpretations of it.
Date:
1944
Creator:
McCall, Lloyd J.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Differences in Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov as Short Story Writers
The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of Katherine Mansfield's literary indebtedness to Anton Chekhov. Throughout the critical writing about Mansfield there are many suggestions that her work is similar to that of Chekhov, but, these allusions are, for the most part, vague in pointing out specific likenesses.
Date:
January 1961
Creator:
Rowland, John N.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Evolution of Survival as Theme in Contemporary Native American Literature: from Alienation to Laughter
With the publication of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn. N. Scott Momaday ended a three-decade hiatus in the production of works written by Native American writers, and contributed to the renaissance of a rich literature. The critical acclaim that the novel received helped to establish Native American literature as a legitimate addition to American literature at large and inspired other Native Americans to write. Contemporary Native American literature from 1969 to 1974 focuses on the themes of the alienated mixed-blood protagonist and his struggle to survive, and the progressive return to a forgotten or rejected Indian identity. For example, works such as Leslie Silko's Ceremony and James Welch's Winter in the Blood illustrate this dual focal point. As a result, scholarly attention on these works has focused on the theme of struggle to the extent that Native American literature can be perceived as necessarily presenting victimized characters. Yet, Native American literature is essentially a literature of survival and continuance, and not a literature of defeat. New writers such as Louise Erdrich, Hanay Geiogamah, and Simon Ortiz write to celebrate their Indian heritage and the survival of their people, even though they still use the themes of …
Date:
December 1994
Creator:
Schein, Marie-Madeleine
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Robert Southey as a Narrative Poet : A Study of His Five Long Poems
This study of Southey as a narrative poet will be based on an analysis of the five long poems, sometimes called epics, on which the poet laid his claim to fame in the field of narration.
Date:
1942
Creator:
Monk, Julia
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Laureates’ Lens: Exposing the Development of Literary History and Literary Criticism From Beneath the Dunce Cap
In this project, I examine the impact of early literary criticism, early literary history, and the history of knowledge on the perception of the laureateship as it was formulated at specific moments in the eighteenth century. Instead of accepting the assessments of Pope and Johnson, I reconstruct the contemporary impact of laureate writings and the writing that fashioned the view of the laureates we have inherited. I use an array of primary documents (from letters and journal entries to poems and non-fiction prose) to analyze the way the laureateship as a literary identity was constructed in several key moments: the debate over hack literature in the pamphlet wars surrounding Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), the defense of Colley Cibber and his subsequent attempt to use his expertise of theater in An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740), the consolidation of hack literature and state-sponsored poetry with the crowning of Colley Cibber as the King of the Dunces in Pope’s The Dunciad in Four Books (1742), the fashioning of Thomas Gray and William Mason as laureate rejecters in Mason’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Whitehead (1788), Southey’s progressive work to abolish laureate task writing …
Date:
December 2015
Creator:
Moore, Lindsay Emory
System:
The UNT Digital Library