It is the purpose of this thesis to describe various small-group activities which could be used in classes of secondary English to help to "teach-Johnny-to-write." These activities are divided into four areas of study--developing and practicing specific skills related to writing, developing a topic, planning a theme, and evaluating student writing.

This thesis is a collection of poetry written between 1970 and 1975. The quality of the poems is admittedly uneven, but the inclusion of earlier, weaker poems may indicate a progression in the areas of flexibility, control of material, and strength of poetic voice. The poems are arranged into five sections, entitled "Love," "Rabbits," Poetry about Poetry," "Religion and Ancestors," and "Henry. Poems collected here are intended to demonstrate that experimentation with various forms contributes to an increased ability to control poetic material and technique. By confining a poem to particular forms, one is forced to be more creative, imaginative, and exact. Both control and flexibility are important in contemporary poetry, and my hope is that the following poems demonstrate a balance of those qualities.

During Matthew Arnold's lifetime England was in permanent transition: the emergence of a modern industrial society, the new science and liberalized Christianity, and the democratic and humanitarian movements. To be a writer during this time required a curious and precarious balances an alternation of steadfastness and change. Arnold's moving back and forth between the traditions of romanticism and rationalism does present a challenge to the contemporary reader; no single or systematic approach can be applied to his works. An examination of a selection of Arnold's poems, written predominantly between 1845 and 1857, shows the author's reassessment of man's place in the new cosmology as necessitated by the scientific and technological advances of the century. The poems selected also suggest movement away from the romantic concept of the greatness of the past and yesterday's larger-than-life hero toward an acceptance of the best life as represented by the present generation of men. Arnold's theory, that the best self or right reason manifests itself in heroic men, in leaders, and confirms ordinary men, is found throughout the poems studied.

The problem is the investigation of the possibility of an alternative theory of literature that attempts to show literature's relation to human consciousness. A phenomenological theory of literature is presented as a comprehensive theory of literature as opposed to extrinsic theories that are not comprehensive. The basic assumption is that a comprehensive theory of literature must take into account literature's relationship to human consciousness. The shortcomings of traditional modes of literary theory are discussed in order to provide grounds for the proposed intrinsic alternative. The philosophical foundations for the proposed alternative are laid in the phenomenology of Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, and the French existentialists. These four positions are mediated through the introduction of the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Finally, the proposed alternative theory of literature is applied to the test case of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

This thesis discusses trade names including their histories, formations, and semantic implications.

Anatomy of Loss contains a foreword, which discusses the place of autobiography in fiction, and five original short stories.

This thesis consists of a preface and twenty-one original short stories. The preface examines the differences between creative nonfiction, autobiography, and memoir. The twenty-one interrelated stories included are autobiographical in nature, in some ways memoirs and in some ways creative nonfiction. The over-all theme of the collection explores one character's journey of self-discovery and transformation.

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.