Nathaniel Hawthorne's personal family history, his boyhood in the Salem area of New England, and his reading of works about New England's Puritan era influenced his choice of witch and Devil lore as fictional material. The witchcraft trials in Salem were evidence (in Hawthorne's interpretation) of the errors of judgment and popular belief which are ever-present in the human race. He considered the witch and Devil doctrine of the seventeenth century to be indicative of the superstition, fear, and hatred which governs the lives of men even in later centuries. From the excesses of the witch-hunt period of New England history Hawthorne felt moral lessons could be derived.

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.

This thesis is a creative one, comprised of eight short stories which deal with a variety of subjects. All of the material is concerned with personal or vicarious experience.

The purpose of this thesis is to point out the three levels of mythic structure contained in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a novel published in 1958 by the British novelist Alan Sillitoe. The novel has been criticized almost solely in its role as a work dealing exclusively with the English proletariat; the critics have ignored mythic content in the novel, and in doing so have missed valuable meaning and structure which each myth adds to the novel.

D. H. Lawrence left one of the most diverse collections of literary works ever contributed to the literature of the English language; the Lawrence canon contains a body of material which includes novels, short fiction, poetry, drama, literary criticism, travel essays, and philosophical writings. Since Lawrence is generally considered a novelist, the problem arises concerning the relationship between his novels and his other writings. In this case the concentration will be upon Lawrence's philosophical writings or what Lawrence called his pseudo-philosophy--his "pollyanalytics."

This thesis attempts to describe a consistent development in the attitudes adopted toward women in the poetry of T. S. Eliot published between 1917 and 1930 and to identify certain philosophical changes which influenced this development. It suggests that a tendency toward the affirmation of an ideal woman underlies the apparently incongruous attitudes toward women in Eliot's poetry of this period. Three stages in the poet's progression toward an affirmation of an ideal woman are suggested and described.

The subject of this thesis is concerned with the organization of a course of study for slow learners in the English class using both full-length and short films to stimulate their discussion and writing.

This thesis is concerned with systematically investigating the relationship between Emily Dickinson's many personal tragedies and the crisis poems which grew out of them. Its basic organization is formed by discussing specific periods of her life in each chapter.

The purpose of this thesis is to consider Camus's use of the death metaphor and its probable meaning for him.

Through a close study of Hawthorne's four major romances--The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun-—this thesis singles out all significant references to apparel or accessories and evaluates the use he makes of them.

The problem with which this study is concerned is the development of a program for teaching composition skills to children in the intermediate grades. The study is based on a survey of research, reports, books, and articles in the field, and on the teaching experience of the author. The organization of the study follows the actual steps in initiating a program for composition teaching in the intermediate grades.