A Natural History is a collection of original poetry written over the past three years. This project represents a period of learning and growth, as well as a concentrated effort to develop an individual writing style and voice grounded in the most enduring poetic values of the past.

The purpose of this study is to examine two plays by Nicholas Rowe, eighteenth-century English poet, dramatist, editor, and translator, in order to ascertain their historical content, as opposed to their mythological and fictional content.

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 …

This study reaffirms the traditional theory of processional staging of the cycle of plays, collectively known as the Corpus Christi Play, that was performed at York in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Because comparative studies of the various cycles are of little value, this thesis focuses on an examination of surviving civic records, as well as current scholarship, to confirm that the plays at York were performed processionally. An analysis of the relationship between the liturgical Corpus Christi procession and the Play indicates that the two, although concurrent, were separate events.

Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, feature women who have no public power, but who find opportunities for varying degrees of power in the private or domestic setting.

Whereas scholarly malcontents and naifs in late Renaissance drama represent the actual notion of university graduates during the time period, scholarly tricksters have an obscure social origin. Moreover, their lack of motive in participating in the plays' events, their ambivalent value structures, and their conflicting dramatic roles as tricksters, reformers, justices, and heroes pose a serious diffculty to literary critics who attempt to define them. By examining the Western dramatic tradition, this study first proposes that the scholarly tricksters have their origins in both the Vice in early Tudor plays and the witty slave in classical comedy. By incorporating historical, cultural, anthropological, and psychological studies, this essay also demonstrates that the scholarly tricksters are each a Jacobean version of the archetypal trickster, who is usually associated with solitary habits, motiveless intrusion, and a double function as selfish buffoon and cultural hero. Finally, this study shows that their ambivalent value structures reflect the nature of rhetorical training in Renaissance schools.

This study is primarily concerned with the formulation of Thackeray's theory of the novel through a thorough investigation of his various reviews and critiques of Victorian fiction which appeared in periodicals and by a careful examination of his letters, By evaluating the numerous comments on particular works of fiction and on the art of "novel-spinning" in general which came from Thackeray's pen, this study investigates the various Thackerayan ideas as to how novels should be written with regard to the function of the novel, the formulation of plot and character, realism and morality, the presentation of description, and the style in which novels were to be written. This investigation concludes that Thackeray's theory of the novel was that novels were to be written in a simple, straightforward style and were to present "living" characters who performed realistic, believable actions within tightly unified, logical plots in such a manner as to provide entertainment and to reaffirm the Victorian moral code.

This dissertation discusses the complicated relationship (known as the comitatus) of kings and followers as presented in the heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. The anonymous poets of the age celebrated the ideals of their culture but consistently portrayed the real behavior of the characters within their works. Other studies have examined the ideals of the comitatus in general terms while referring to the poetry as a body of work, or they have discussed them in particular terms while referring to one or two poems in detail. This study is both broader and deeper in scope than are the earlier works. In a number of poems I have identified the heroic ideals and examined the poetic treatment of those ideals. In order to establish the necessary background, Chapter I reviews the historical sources, such as Tacitus, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the work of modern historians. Chapter II discusses such attributes of the king as wisdom, courage, and generosity. Chapter III examines the role of aristocratic women within the society. Chapter IV describes the proper behavior of followers, primarily their loyalty in return for treasures earlier bestowed. Chapter V discusses perversions and failures of the ideal. The dissertation concludes that, contrary …

This study is an exploration into the Romantics' transcendence of the dualistic world view and their attainment of a holistic vision. Chapter I formulates a dichotomy between the archaic (sacrosanct) world view and the modern (mechanistic) world view. Chapter II discusses the reality of the religious experience in Romanticism. Chapter III elucidates the Romantics' use of mystic myths and noetic symbols. Chapter IV treats the Romantic transcendence of the dualistic world view and the problems of expressing the transcendental experience in aesthetic form. Supporting theories include those of Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and M. H. Abrams. The study concludes by assessing the validity of the Romantic vision in the modern world.

Beginning in 1911 with Jennie Gerhardt and continuing through the publication of The "Genius" in 1915, all of Dreiser's major fiction is curiously marked by the same recurring narrative pattern. The pattern is always triangluar in construction and always contains the same three figures-- a vindictive and vengeful parent, outraged by an outisder's violation of personal and societal values; an enchanted offspring; and a disrupted outsider who threatens established order. In spite of each work's different characterization, setting, and episode, the narrative conflict invariably arises from the discovery of an illicit relationship between offspring and outsider, and the narrative climax involves a violent clash of wills, with victory sometimes going to the parent and sometimes to the outsider. The denouement is consistently sorrowful and pensive in tone, with a philosophical epilogue which speculates on man's melancholy and puzzling fate. As both a guide to personal therapy and a key to the work with which Dreiser established his artistic identity, the recurring narrative pattern is important. Its examination (1) illuminates an obscure period in Dreiser's life, (2) reveals his personality priorities as he turns the kaleidoscope of introspection to observe the Cudlipp crisis from various angles, and (3) offers to the …

Rhetoric, seen either as the art of persuasion or as the art of figurative expression, has been largely neglected as an approach to the poetry of the Romantics. The most important reason for this seems to be the rejection of rhetoric by the Romantics themselves. As a result of negative comments about rhetoric by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, scholars seeking clues about the Romantics' literary principles in their critical writings have agreed that eighteenth-century rhetoric was either abandoned or substantially altered by early nineteenth century poets. The eighteenth-century belief that figures possess a unique power of communicating an author's passions and emotions continued to be transmitted as a viable literary tradition in the nineteenth century. Poetry was thought to have special privilege in the employment of rhetorical devices. In practice, if not in theory, early nineteenth-century poets did not abandon the use of such devices in their creations. An analysis of the role of rhetorical figures in the works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats demonstrates that it is a mistake to envision the poetry of the Romantic movement as a spontaneous outgrowth of an abrupt shift in poetic taste, a shift which demanded the omission of classical …

This paper documents the decrease of short stories in three women's magazines from 1940 to 1970 and concludes that the decline results from readers turning to other sources for escape from housework. Chapter II describes patterns in plots, themes, characters, settings, and other elements of these stories. Chapter III shows the lack of influence which changes in writers, editors, and social and political developments in America have had on these short stories. The conclusion is reached that the magazine article is replacing magazine short stories.

Although Garrison Keillor is perhaps best known as the creator and host of Minnesota Public Radio's A Prairie Home Companion (1974-1987), the focus of this study is his literary career. Keillor's literary accomplishments include a successful career as a writer for The New Yorker and two best-selling books about the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, entitled Lake Wobegon Days (1985) and Leaving Home (1987). His literary style incorporates elements from several traditions in American literature--the precise, sophisticated "New Yorker style" practiced by writers such as E. B. White and James Thurber; the oral tradition prominent in the works of Mark Twain and the nineteenth-century literary comedians; and the satiric realism associated with the small-town literature of writers such as Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.

In this paper I will examine the sources for the tradition of the address of the soul to the body or the dialogue between, the two. I will consider the Old and Middle English poetic expressions of the body-and-soul legend in terms of the criticism of the ten poems which specifically belong to that tradition and the elements which constitute that genre. I will also deal with those poems written at the same time which exhibit one or more of those elements, with the body-and-soul tradition in English morality plays, with the Ars Moriendi, and with the Dance of Death. I will demonstrate that a shift occurs in the consideration of death from a concern for the soul to a preoccupation with the grotesque and gruesome aspects of death. The address and dialogue forms fall into disuse as a vehicle for theological argument concerning the responsibility for sin, and the view of death reflected by the popular pictorial representations of the Dance of Death becomes prominent.

This study shows how the Grotesque Hero evolves from the grotesque victim in selected American novels from 1919 to 1972. In these novels, contradictory forces create a cultural dilemma. When a character is especially vulnerable to that dilemma, he becomes caught and twisted into a grotesque victim. The Grotesque Hero finds a solution to the dilemma, not by escaping his grotesque victimization, but by accepting it and making it work for him. The novels paired according to a particular contradictory dilemma include: Winesburg, Ohio and The Crying of Lot 49, As I Lay Dying and Wise Blood, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Dick Gibson Show, Cabot Wright Begins and Second Skin, The Day of the Locust and The Lime Twig, and Expensive People and The Sunlight Dialogues.

This paper proposes that Samuel Richardson consciously created the motivational complexity of Clarissa Harlowe. The arguments are the following: eighteenth-century scientific interest in motivation influenced Richardson, his Puritanism led him to suspect and emphasize motive, his frequent use of the word motive suggests an awareness, his choice of the epistolary form is ideal for revealing motives, his attention to the ambiguity of motives indicates his interest, and his complexly motivated Clarissa demands a conscious creator. The last argument constitutes the principal section of the study, and Clarissa's motives are analyzed from the events prior to the elopement, through the rape in London, and finally to her death. She is studied as a product of eighteenth-century decorum, individualism, and Puritanism, but also as an intricate personality.

Nineteenth-century women were a mainstay in the New England literary tradition, both as readers and authors. Indeed, women were a large part of a growing reading public, a public that distanced itself from Puritanism and developed an appetite for novels and magazine short stories. It was a culture that survived in spite of patriarchal domination of the female in social and literary status. This dissertation is a study of selected works from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman that show their fiction as a protest against a patriarchal society. The premise of this study is based on analyzing these works from a protest (not necessarily a feminist) view, which leads to these conclusions: rejection of the male suitor and of marriage was a protest against patriarchal institutions that purposely restricted females from realizing their potential. Furthermore, it is often the case that industrialism and abuses of male authority in selected works by Jewett and Freeman are symbols of male-driven forces that oppose the autonomy of the female. Thus my argument is that protest fiction of the nineteenth century quietly promulgates an agenda of independence for the female. It is an agenda that encourages the woman to …

Although Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and Robert Penn Warren (1905- ) belong to different periods of American literary history, the thematic parallels in their fiction indicate their close association in the American tradition of the romance and demonstrate ideological correspondences between writers of the New England Renaissance and the Southern Renaissance. Hawthorne and Warren are appropriate subjects for comparison not only because they represent the two greatest periods of American literary production but also because they share, across the span of a century, a common view of the human condition. This study focuses on one idea or cluster of ideas in each chapter with concentration on one major fictional work by each author. Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and Warren's "Blackberry Winter" (1946) are classic treatments of initiation. Each author utilizes archetypal patterns to dramatize the possibilities for moral, emotional, and psychological maturity. In Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Warren's Band of Angels (1955), the theme of initiation is expanded to incorporate understanding and accepting the past. Alienation becomes the dominant theme in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) and Warren's At Heaven's Gate (1943). Through the pain of self-discovery, characters in Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1860) and Warren's …

This thesis serves to classify Black Humor as a philosophy, which holds that the world is meaningless and absurd, and as a literary technique. Historical origins are discussed and the idea is related to a reflection of the middle-class syndrome of twentieth century man. Close philosophical and literary relatives are presented and a pure work isn't defined. Black Humor literary characteristics are described in terms of style, theme, plot, setting, chronology, and characteristic ending. Black Humor characters are classified as "non-heroes" divided into four categories. Prevalent use and treatment of traditional forbidden subjects of sex, defecation, money, violence, emotionlessness, religion, death, and "illogical" logic are stressed. In summary, Cat's Cradle is examined in light of the Black Humor characteristics described and found to be other than a pure Black Humor work.

A search for self through historical reconstruction constitutes a crucial concern of the American postmodern historical novels of Pynchon, Barth, Mailer, Coover, and Doctorow. This concern consists of a self-conscious dramatization, paralleled by contemporary theorists' arguments, of the constructedness of history and individual subject. A historian-character's process of historical inquiry and narrative-making foregrounded in these novels represents the efforts by the postmodern self to (re)construct identity (or identities) in a constructing context of discourse and ideology.

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 …

Romantic heroes are questers, according to Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye. Whether employing physical strength or relying on the power of the mind, the traditional Romantic hero invokes questing for some sense of self. Chapter 1 considers this hero-type, but is concerned with defining a non-questing British Romantic hero. The Romantic hero's identity is problematic and established through contrasting narrative versions of the hero. This paper's argument lies in the "inconclusiveness" of the Romantic experience perceived in writings throughout the Romantic period. Romantic inconclusiveness can be found not only in the structure and syntax of the works but in the person with whom the reader is meant to identify or sympathize, the hero(ine). Chapter 2 explores Byron's aesthetics of literature equivocation in The Giaour. This tale is a consciously imbricated text, and Byron's letters show a purposeful complication of the poet's authority concerning the origins of this Turkish Tale. The traditional "Byronic hero," a gloomy, guilt-ridden protagonist, is considered in Chapter 3. Byron's contemporary readers and reviewers were quick to pick up on this aspect of his verse tales, finding in the Giaour, Selim, Conrad, and Lara characteristics of Childe Harold. Yet, Byron's Turkish Tales also reveal a very different …

During the Elizabethan period, certain stereotypes existed concerning women. Seven tragedies were examined to discover the role played by those stereotypes in the dramas. These include "The Spanish Tragedy," "Edward II," "Bussy D'Ambois," "The Changeling," "A Woman Killed with Kindness," "Othello," and "The Duchess of Malfi." Female stereotyping was found to be used in three important ways: in characterization, in motivation, and as a substitute for motivation. Some of the plays rely on stereotyping as a substitute for motivation while others use stereotyping only for characterization or subtly blend the existence of stereotyping into the overall plot. A heavy reliance on stereotype for motivation seems to reflect a lack of skill rather than an attempt to perpetuate those stereotypes.

Walt Whitman has long been celebrated as a Romantic writer who celebrates the self, reveres Nature, claims unity in all things, and sings praises to humanity. However, some of what Whitman has to say has been overlooked. Whitman often questioned the goodness of humanity. He recognized evil in various shapes. He pondered death and the imperturbability of Nature to human death. He exhibited nightmarish imagery in some of his works and gory violence in others. While Whitman has long been called a celebratory poet, he is nevertheless also in part a writer of the Dark Romantic.