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The Symbolic and Structural Significance of Music Imagery in the English Poetry of John Milton

Description: The purpose of this study is to investigate how John Milton uses music imagery in his English poetry. This is accomplished through consideration of the musical milieu of the late Renaissance, particularly of seventeenth century England, through examination of the symbolic function of music imagery in the poetry, and through study of the significance of music imagery for the structure of the poem. Milton relies on his readers' familiarity with sounds and contemporary musical forms as well as wit… more
Date: May 1979
Creator: Woods, Paula M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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English Phonology Without Underlying Glides

Description: This dissertation demonstrates that the optimal account of English phonology denies phonemic status to oral glides. That is, it shows that all instances of phonetic [y] and [w] are predictable by rule. These occurrences include the following: formative initial glides, such as those in yet and wet; post-consonant, pre-vocalic [w] in such forms as quit, guava, and white and post-consonant, pre-vocalic [y] in such forms as cute, few, million, onion, and champion; the [y] following the tense vowels… more
Date: May 1979
Creator: Leath, Helen Lang
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Failure of the Warrior-Hero in Shakespeare's Political Plays

Description: The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of the warrior-hero ideal as it evolves in Shakespeare's English and Roman plays, and its ultimate failure as a standard for exemplary conduct. What this study demonstrates is that the ideal of kingship that is developed in the English histories, especially in the Second Tetralogy, and which reaches its zenith in Henry V, is quite literally overturned in three Roman plays--Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. The met… more
Date: December 1976
Creator: Ferguson, Susan French
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Sanctifying the Profane: Religious Themes in the Fiction of Frederick Buechner

Description: Frederick Buechner is an American novelist, born in 1926, who, since 1950, has created eight novels and five works of nonfiction. Although his work has been reviewed and admired by prestigious critics, no lengthy study has yet appeared. Yet the merit of Buechner's work deserves wider critical attention. This study does not attempt to deal comprehensively with Buechner's twenty-five year span of creativity. Instead it presents a consideration of what has been Buechner's most consistent concern t… more
Date: August 1976
Creator: Myers, Nancy B.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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God's Newer Will: Four Examples of Victorian Angst Resolved by Humanitarianism

Description: One aspect of the current revaluation of Victorian thought and literature is the examination of the crisis of religious faith, in which the proponents of doubt and denial took different directions: they became openly cynical and pessimistic; they turned from religion to an aesthetic substitute; or they concluded that since mankind could look only to itself for aid, the primary duties of the individual were to find a tenable creed for himself and to try to alleviate the lot of others. The moveme… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Speegle, Katherine Sloan
Partner: UNT Libraries
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John Fowles: a Critical Study

Description: This critical introduction to the works of John Fowles focuses upon his three novels, with secondary attention to his poetry, essays, and The Aristos, his non-fiction book of personal philosophy. Giving some biographical detail, the first chapter treats the influence of other writers upon Fowles's work and discusses his thought--especially as it appears in The Aristos, the poems, and the essays. The second chapter is a study of The Magus, Fowles's first novel, although published second. The Ari… more
Date: August 1974
Creator: Huffaker, Robert, 1936-
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Development of Myth in Post-World-War-II American Novels

Description: Most primitive mythologies recognize that suffering can provide an opportunity for growth, but Western man has developed a mythology in which suffering is considered evil. He conceives of some power in the universe which will oppose evil and abolish it for him; God, and more recently science an, technology, were the hoped-for saviors that would rescue him. Both have been disappointing as saviors, and Western culture seems paralyzed by its confrontation with a future which seems death-filled. Th… more
Date: August 1974
Creator: Hall, Larry Joe
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Anti-Christian Elements in Thomas Hardy's Novels

Description: A commonplace among Hardy critics is that as a young man Hardy lost his Christian faith and entered a serious religious disillusionment. The mainstream of Hardy criticism has followed the general consensus that Hardy suffered keenly as a result of this experience and looked back on Christianity with poignant nostalgia. If his view is not purely nostalgic, traditional criticism has insisted, then it seems at worst only ambivalent. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that Hardy's attitud… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Alexander, B. J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Empty Pockets: Poems with an Introduction

Description: This thesis is composed of a collection of thirty-four original poems with an introduction by the author. The introduction attempts to justify the collection by discussing common influences and techniques employed in its creation. The introduction also supplies background information on each poem and, on occasion, discusses the relation of a poem to the rest of the collection.
Date: December 1976
Creator: Morgan, William Bradford
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Thundershowers: A Novella, with a Commentary

Description: Thundershowers, an original novella, represents one person's perception of relationships between women and men. The first-person narrator, Anna Slone, records her limited observations of married and unmarried couples while she pursues her own involvement with a man. She observes nothing admirable in any of the relationships between men and women in the story, and her own romance falls short of her expectations. The only nurturing love that she records passes between herself and two other women,… more
Date: August 1979
Creator: Butts, Nina
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"A Straunge Kinde of Harmony": The Influence of Lyric Poetry and Music on Prosodic Techniques in the Spenserian Stanza

Description: An examination of the stanzas of The Faerie Queene reveals a structural complexity that prosodists have not previously discovered. In the prosody of Spenser's epic, two formal prosodic orders function simultaneously. One is the visible structure that has long been acknowledged and studied, eight decasyllabic lines and an alexandrine bound into a coherent entity by a set meter and rhyme scheme. The second is an order made apparent by an oral reading and which involves speech stresses, syntactica… more
Date: August 1972
Creator: Corse, Larry B.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"The Living Skein": A Stylistic Study of Dylan Thomas

Description: This study examines rhythm, syntax, sound, and diction in selected early and late poems from Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems. It demonstrates, on the basis of stylistic evidence, that the later poetry is the greater achievement. The early and later poems are different in the area of rhythm. Early poems are regularly metered with a strong iambic beat, and a majority of lines are end-stopped. Rhythms in the later, finer poems are irregular, and enjambed lines predominate. The later poems show an i… more
Date: May 1978
Creator: Franco, June W.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Use of the Bible in George Eliot's Fiction

Description: The purpose of this study is to demonstrate George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible by isolating, identifying, and analyzing her various uses of Scripture in her novels. This study is an attempt to demonstrate in some detail George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible, to show that in the course of her fictional career she made virtually every possible use of the Bible. She at times presents Bibles themselves as significant objects, she refers to the Bible-reading habits of vari… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Jones, Jesse C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Romanticism of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

Description: The thesis examines the influence of the Romantic elements of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird upon the novel's characterizations, structure, tone, and themes. Chapter One contains a critical survey of criticism about the novel and a list of Romantic elements. Chapters Two, Three, and Four present the three most important of those elements. Chapter Two is the exploration of the novel's Gothic traits. Chapter Three explores the Romantic treatment of childhood's innocence and perspicacious visi… more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Turner, Glenn D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Fool as a Dramatic Device in Shakespeare

Description: This study is concerned with the dramaturgic use of the fools of five of Shakespeare's plays. After the Introduction, Chapter II investigates the fool as a historical figure and establishes his credibility. Chapter III examines the comic methods and techniques of the fools. Chapter IV is an investigation of the use of the fool in his capacity as choric voice to present a particular viewpoint on the play. Chapter V is a study of how the fool fits into the action as a character, and Chapter VI in… more
Date: August 1976
Creator: Clarke, Joseph Kelly
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"I'm Leading Now": The Argument for Widmerpool as the Central Character of a Dance to the Music of Time

Description: This study argues that the central character of Anthony Powell's novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, is Kenneth Widmerpool. A survey of the criticism available on The Music of Time, contained in this study's introduction, indicates that there are a few precedents for this argument but there there are no thorough analyses of the problem from which this argument arises: the identity and function of the novel's central character. This study is organized around separate analyses of three of the no… more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Morrison, Cynthia Blundell
Partner: UNT Libraries
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"Grandpa" and Other Stories

Description: These sketches and stories are the result of moods, daydreams, and experiences. The collection progresses from those intimate stories controlled by personal experience to the last two works which try to crystallize a mood or experience in a medium without the device of first person. "Grandpa," "Great-Grandpa," and "Weedgod" are sketches which describe the boundary between what things are and what things seem to be. "Aunt Mary," "Hospital," and "Eggy Cooter" are short stories presenting situatio… more
Date: May 1977
Creator: Winterbauer, Arthur E.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Marriage in the Fiction of Willa Cather

Description: The marriages depicted in Willa Cather's fiction are a crucial element of her works. Although she does not describe in detail the marital relationships between her characters, Cather does depict these marriages realistically, and they are also interrelated with the major themes of her fiction. The marriages in Cather's works are divided into three general classifications: the successful, the borderline, and the failure. The successful marriage is characterized by affection and friendship. In th… more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Dickson, Margaret P.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Short Story in American Women's Magazines: An Analysis

Description: 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 … more
Date: August 1977
Creator: Holbrook, Virgie Cooper
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Group

Description: This is an original, serious, three-act play for eleven characters. The drama focuses on a group therapy situation involving three women patients, two men patients, and their therapist. Flashbacks are utilized to provide knowledge of the characters' pasts. Role playing, dream analysis, and behavior modification are some of the tools employed by the counselor. While the therapist does utilize these techniques adequately, his own personal problems prevent him from being as effective as he might b… more
Date: August 1976
Creator: Highburger, Vivian
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Definition of Brackenridge's "Modern Chivalry"

Description: Early American writer Hugh Henry Brackenridge conceived and developed a code of modern chivalry in his writings that culminated in the long prose satire Modern Chivalry. He first introduced his code in the poem "The Modern Chevalier," in which a modern knight is shown traveling about the country in an attempt to understand and correct the political absurdities of the people. In Modern Chivalry, this code is developed in the three major themes of rationalism, morality, and moderation and the rel… more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Alexander, Teresa L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Poetic Voice and the Romantic Tradition in the Poetry of Maxine Kumin

Description: The purpose of this study is to explore elements of the Romantic tradition in the poetry of Maxine Kumin and the poetic voice of Ms. Kumin as she writes in this tradition. The poet's choice of poetic-persona illustrates a growth of the consciousness, an identity of self. Of particular interest is the poet's close interaction with nature and use of natural symbols and images. A principal motif in Kumin's poetry is the common man. Another theme is the poet's role in the family. In poems exalting … more
Date: December 1979
Creator: Barton, Beverly D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Self-Alienating Characters in the Fiction of John Steinbeck

Description: The primary purpose of this study is to show that John Steinbeck's concern with alienation is pervasive and consistent from the beginning of his career as a writer until the end. The pervasiveness of his concern with alienation is demonstrated by examining his two early collections of short stories and by showing how alienated characters in these stories resemble alienated characters in all the author's major works of fiction. Since much confusion surrounds the meaning of the word "alienation,"… more
Date: May 1974
Creator: McDaniel, Barbara Albrecht
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Posthumous Narrative Poems of C. S. Lewis

Description: The purpose of this study is to introduce the three posthumous narrative poems of C. S. Lewis. Chapter One is an introduction to Lewis's life and scholarship. The second chapter is concerned with "Launcelot," in which the central theme of the story explores the effect of the Quest for the Holy Grail on King Arthur's kingdom. Chapter Three studies "The Nameless Isle," in which Celtic and Greek mythic elements strongly influence both characterization and plot. The fourth chapter is an analysis of… more
Date: December 1976
Creator: Geer, Caroline L.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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