This study is an inquiry into the relationship between the contemporary American writer's understanding of American reality and his attempt to convey this reality by the use of an insane first-person point of view character. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the insane narrator's point of view not only recreates the feeling of absurdity through the disjointed point of view of the madman, but also points to the absurdity in contemporary American life. The first part of this study analyzes the narrators in Henderson the Rain King, The Bell Jar, and Lancelot. The second part uses A Fan's Notes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Breakfast of Champions to discuss the problems that arise from the use of an insane narrator.

This novel of the Vietnam War examines the effects of prolonged stress on individuals and groups. The narrative, which is told from the points of view of four widely different characters, follows an infantry company through three days and two nights of combat on a small island off the coast of the northern I Corps military region. The story's principal themes are the loss of communication that contributes to and is caused by the background of chaos that arises from combat; the effect of brutal warfare on the individual spirit; and the way groups reorganize themselves to cope with the confusion of the battlefield. The thesis includes an explication of the novel, explaining some of the technical details of its production.

The purpose of this investigation is to provide a preliminary critical study of a contemporary Texas novelist. Edwin Shrake. No critical studies on his works have been published; therefore, the sources of data for the paper are limited to the novels and reviews of the books. One chapter is devoted to each of Shrake's major works-- But. Not for Love, Blessed McGill, and Strange Peaches. The plot, characterization, themes, regionalism, and artistic techniques of each novel are studied, and the strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed in order to determine its literary merit. The study concludes that Shrake is a regional novelist whose use of a limited setting does not limit the impact of his books. Through his universal themes, Shrake creates novels that are international in scope.

At the beginning of the novel, the main character, J. D. Alfred, is a young, immature college freshman, naive both socially and sexually. In the initial chapter, however, he encounters a "mysterious" dark-haired girl, older than himself and very experienced. Near the middle of the novel J.D. begins a quest, not quite sure what it is he is looking for. As he moves from place to place, he discovers more and more about his family, his friends, the world around him, and the woman with whom he has become entangled, discoveries which he chooses to ignore until too late. He is left with only one choice to make, whether to die a fiery death, or live to deal with problems which he is not yet equipped to handle.

Tom Randolph, the narrator of this short novel, is a recently divorced university instructor. The setting of the novel is inner-city Dallas, where Tom has leased an apartment after leaving his suburban home. Frustrated by a tenacious affection for his former wife Sharon and disgust at her remarriage to a drunken ranch laborer, Tom marries a muddled eighteen-year-old girl, .Faye. When Faye is abducted, Tom assents to Sharon's request to return to him. Tom buries an unrecognizable corpse he thinks is Faye, and Sharon's new "husband" (a bigamist) is killed in a brawl. After Tom and Sharon's remarriage, Faye reappears as a street-corner missionary.

This study of thirty representative short stories from 1912-1941 demonstrates the stages of growth in Fitzgerald's writing which emerged from his own mental development, focusing upon his changing attitudes toward women as he reflects these attitudes in his depictions of the dominant female figures in the stories. The above chronology is then divided into four major blocks; in each block the dominant female illustrates Fitzgerald's concept of women at that particular stage of his life, The stories prove to be integral to the whole of Fitzgerald's writing and deserve to be judged independently of the novels. Furthermore, through an examination of Fitzgerald's short stories, the growth periods and the natural course of his changing attitudes become all the more clear and incisive.

It is the purpose of this thesis to examine and compare three Restoration and eighteenth century adaptations of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers, acted in 1662; Charles Gildon's Measure for Measure: or, Beauty the Best Advocate, acted in 1700; and John Philip Kemble's Shakspeare's Measure for Measure, acted in 1794. The plays are discussed with regard to their divergence from Shakespeare's play. In addition, they are examined from the standpoint of their ability to reflect the theatrical practices, audience preferences, and social conditions of the time in which they were performed.

This paper will propose a generative analysis of McDavid's dialect verb forms. The concepts of Chomsky and Halle as presented in SPE form the framework for this study.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of determining the role of war and social revolution in Afro-American poetry of the 1960's. For this study, four major poets were selected: Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, LeRoi Jones, and Don L. Lee.

The problem with which this study is concerned is the importance of music in the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. The means of determining this importance were as follows: (1) determining the experiences which the poet had in music as the background for her references to music in the poems, (2) revealing the extent to which she used the vocabulary of music in her poems, (3) explicating the poems whose main subject is music, (4) investigating her use of music in the development of certain major themes, and (5) examining other imagery in her poetry which is related to music.

There are two general approaches to myth, the literal and the symbolic. The literal method considers myth a record of man's responses to factors external to himself, while the symbolic approach evaluates myth as the externalization of internal conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to examine several examples of each type of scholarship and to show the efficacy of both in gaining a complete understanding of the Oedipus myths.

This study describes meaning changes that have occurred in the native word stock of English. Since no existing studies are devoted solely to investigating semantic change in Old English words, this study tries to illustrate word histories through examples of usage in the past and by a discussion of causes for change.

This thesis intends to point out the religious thoughts that Clemens encountered. It will present the various religious groups with which he dealt the most and the clergymen with whom he associated both casually and intimately. It will also attempt to indicate at least one reason why he never found in religion the peace which he sought.

The classical genre of marriage poems called epithalamia appeared in England in the late sixteenth century. The English epithalamia of the Renaissance form a closely related body of literature. This work will be a close analysis of this small body of English Renaissance poetry.

Golding has developed a process of discovery that takes place in the overlap of fable and fiction, which is found in almost all of Golding's works. He is writing about free will and human choice: most of Golding's characters make the wrong choices and, in so choosing, create their own isolated and fallen existences.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore in depth the effect which World War I had on the life and early poetry of Robert Graves, primarily by tracing his involvement in the war as revealed directly in his autobiography and by examining his responses to that involvement as revealed indirectly in the two volumes of poetry which he wrote during the war.

Wuthering Heights is the story of Heathcliff, a psychological study of an elemental man whose soul is torn between love and hate. The Byronic hero is the natural contact with the great heroic tradition in literature. This examination involves the consideration of the Byronic hero's relationship to the Gothic villain, the motivation behind the Byronic fatal revenge, and the phenomenon of Byronic supernatural manifestations.

Hegel and Eliot have been chosen for this study not because of their differences but because of similarities in their thought. Although most of Hegel's works are obscure and pedantic, it is possible to show that his early thinking reflects a deep awareness of many of the implications of the new age. A growing number of philosophers and theologians today are apparently "rediscovering" Hegel as one who caught a vision of the transition in man's history and whose insights are valuable today.

Just to what degree Dostoyevsky's thoughts paralleled those of the Slavophiles will be outlined in subsequent chapters in three major areas--Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. Uvarov's old 1828 formula provides a simple outline in which to describe and compare the more complicated core of Dostoyevskyan and Slavophile philosophy.

The status of bilingual education in Texas has been examined in this paper in order to explore the nature of bilingual education and bilingual education programs, to ascertain whether the implementation of bilingual education programs has been successful in Texas, and to determine if there is sufficient justification for the continuation of such programs.

This thesis has two primary objectives. The first is the presentation and the evaluation of various critical dicta regarding Browning's prowess as a thinker. The second is an attempt to recast Browning's religious and philosophical attitudes into the terms of evolutionism and skepticism.

This study is a survey of plays of Negro authorship in America from 1858 to 1970. It is intended to give a historical view of the Negro effort in the drama and show general trends during the twentieth century. The paper is arranged chronologically, beginning with the first play by a Negro author in 1858 and continuing through the 1960's. Synopses of plays are offered, but very little historical or sociological information is given and little literary criticism is added.

If any interpretation of Theodore Roethke's poetry is to be meaningful, it must be made in light of his life. The sense of psychological guilt and spiritual alienation that began in childhood after his father's death was intensified in early adulthood by his struggles with periodic insanity. Consequently, by the time he reached middle age, Theodore Roethke was embroiled in an internal conflict that had been developing over a number of years, and the ordering of this inner chaos became the primary goal in his life, a goal which he sought through the introspection within his poetry.

This approach to Unamuno does not propose to deny the fact that he was a polemicist, a poet, a teacher, and a philosopher more than he was a writer of fiction or an entertainer. What is intended is to point out to the average reader in simple terms something of the general signification and method in Unamuno's attempt at the art of prose fiction--at least as it appears in translation.