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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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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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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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Technique and Meaning in Katherine Anne Porter's Short Fiction

Description: This investigation attempts to uncover a unity of both meaning and technique as reflected in eight of Katherine Anne Porter's best known and most characteristic stories-- "Old Mortality," "Noon Wine," "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," "Flowering Judas," "A Day's Work," "The Cracked Looking-Glass," "He," and "Holiday." An analysis of each story reveals that the core of Katherine Anne Porter's work is a "delicate balancing of rival considerations" specifically and deliberately designed to reveal to the r… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Stewart, Sally Ann
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Interrelationship of Victimization and Self-Sacrifice in Selected Works by Oscar Wilde

Description: This study analyzes the themes of victimization and self-sacrifice as they appear in the life and works of Oscar Wilde. "Victimization" is defined as an instance in which one character disregards, damages, or destroys another's well-being; "self-sacrifice" is an instance in which one character acts to his own detriment in order to help another or through dedication to a cause or belief. Chapter I discusses the way in which these concepts affected Wilde's personal life. Chapters II-VI discuss th… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Eccleston, Phyllis I.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Serpent Imagery in William Blake's Prophetic Works

Description: William Blake's prophetic works are made up almost entirely of a unique combination of symbols and imagery. To understand his books it is necessary to be aware that he used his prophetic symbols because he found them apt to what he was saying, and that he changed their meanings as the reasons for their aptness changed. An awareness of this manipulation of symbols will lead to a more perceptive understanding of Blake's work. This paper is concerned with three specific uses of serpent imagery by … more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Shasberger, Linda M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Major Themes in the Poetry of James Dickey

Description: The themes of sensual experience, nature, and mysticism in James Dickey's poetry are examined. Dickey's "Poems 1957- 1967" and "The Eye-Beaters, Blood, Victory, Madness, Buckhead and Mercy" are the primary sources for the poems. Selections from a decade of Dickey criticism are also represented. Dickey presents a wide spectrum of attitudes toward acceptance of the physical body, communion with nature, and transcendence of the human condition, but the poems exhibit sufficient uniformity to allow … more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Tucker, Charles C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nathaniel Hawthorne's Sketches: Definition, Classification, and Analysis

Description: Nathaniel Hawthorne's sketches, as distinguished from his tales, fall into three main types: the essay-sketch, the sketch-proper, and the vignette-sketch. A definition of these works includes a brief discussion of their inception, source, and development, and a study of the individual pieces as representative of types within each of the three main divisions. A consideration of the sketches from their inception through their final form reveals a great deal of the formative process of some of Ha… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Kelly, Kathleen O.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Kafka Protagonist as Knight Errant and Scapegoat

Description: This study presents an alternative approach to the novels of Franz Kafka through demonstrating that the Kafkan protagonist may be conceptualized in terms of mythic archetypes: the knight errant and the pharmakos. These complementary yet contending personalities animate the Kafkan victim-hero and account for his paradoxical nature. The widely varying fates of Karl Rossmann, Joseph K., and K. are foreshadowed and partially explained by their simultaneous kinship and uniqueness. The Kafka protagon… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Scrogin, Mary R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nature and Human Experience in the Poetry of Robert Frost

Description: This study seeks to demonstrate that nature provided Frost an objective background against which he could measure the validity of human experience and gain a fuller understanding of it. The experiences examined with reference to the poetry include loneliness, anxiety, sorrow, and hope. Attention is given to the influence of Frost's philosophical skepticism upon his poetry. The study reveals that Frost discovered correspondences between nature and human experience which clarified his perspective… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Dixon, David C.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Tulseytown

Description: The five stories contained in the thesis show the changes that take place in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the narrator of the stories, Lucius. The first story, "Getting Ready," depicts a society that builds absurd monuments to itself. The other stories, "Dog Days," "The Narwhal in the Arkansas," "Mayflies," and "The Razing of the Brown & Duncan Building," show the society's deepening commitment to the absurd. Insane actions are condoned by the society as long as they do not threaten the soc… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Shreve, Donald Hiatt
Partner: UNT Libraries
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An Analysis of Angus Wilson's "No Laughing Matter"

Description: This thesis examines Angus Wilson's novels with particular attention to No Laughing Matter, 1967. The introductory overview of Wilson's first five novels and the examination of No Laughing Matter show that all Wilson's novels are concerned with his protagonists' capacity for self-deception and the ways deception limits freedom of choice. In No Laughing Matter six protagonists try to balance self-deception and freedom both in their lives and in the art forms which interest them. The thesis trac… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Arnold, Gloria Cockerell
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Selected Poems: Does This Pen Write?

Description: 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 t… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Shaw, Delora V.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Comparative Study of Byron and Pushkin with Special Attention to "Don Juan" and "Evgeny Onegin"

Description: This thesis examines the major works of two outstanding European poets, Lord Byron and Alexander Pushkin, with a view to estimating the extent of their literary and personal affinity. The study begins with a survey of biographical highlights which are relevant to the interpretation of the works of the two poets. Next, the thesis demonstrates that Byron's "Oriental Tales" and Pushkin's "Southern Poems," as well as their major works, play a prominent role in the comparison of their poetic charact… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Fadipe, Timothy F.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Occupational Influences on the Folklore of Graford, Texas

Description: This study was basically concerned with the effect of occupation on the folklore of the people of Graford, Texas. The people interviewed in that area of North Central Texas were divided into three major occupational groups: ranchers, farmers, and farmer-laborers. At least two members from each of the occupational groups were interviewed; and these interviews revealed that their folklore included folktales, superstitions-remedies, songs, and customs, The customs included household, recreation, s… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Conlee, Anita
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Toward a Phenomenological Theory of Literature

Description: 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 litera… more
Date: December 1975
Creator: Taylor, Larry G.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Romantic Elements in Selected Writings of Flannery O'Connor

Description: Certain characteristics generally attributed to the British Romantics can be seen in selected writings of Flannery O'Connor, a contemporary American author (1926-1964). Chapter I defines Romanticism and identifies the Romantic elements to be discussed in the paper. Chapter II discusses Gothicism, Primitivism, and the treatment of the child as they appear in five of O'Connor's short stories. Variations of the Byronic Hero are presented in Chapter III as they appear in two short stories and one n… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Bradley, William J.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Study of John Steinbeck's Monterey Trilogy

Description: John Steinbeck's three novels Tortilla Flat, Cannr Row and Sweet Thursday are significant in the Steinbeck canon. Although having many elements typical of Steinbeck's fiction in general, these novels, which are referred to as the Monterey Trilogy, are unified by common elements that are either unique or handled in an unusual manner. These common elements are setting, tone, themes, structure, and characters. The novels are complementary and form a unified whole. Just as the setting reflects the … more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Richmond, Yvonne Lorraine
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Eighteenth-Century Rhetorical Figures in British Romantic Poetry: A Study of the Poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth Byron, Shelley, and Keats

Description: 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 ei… more
Date: August 1975
Creator: Kennelly, Laura B.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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