Browsing Theses/Dissertations - English Language and Literature by Title
Now showing items 24-43 of 83
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Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem : Wilfrid Ward and the art of Newman.
(, 2013-09-24)This dissertation investigates John Henry Newman's understanding of the imagination and its role in religious and aesthetic experience. Newman’s fictional and poetic works fell into the background in scholarly discussions ... -
Fate, providence, and free will: clashing perspectives of world order in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.
(2006-12-11)Through the medium of a fictional world, Tolkien returns his modern audience to the ancient yet extremely relevant conflict between fate, providence, and the person's freedom before them. Tolkien's expression of a ... -
Fiction based on fact : subversions of power and propriety in Charles Reade's matter-of-fact romances.
(, 2011-09-14)As Charles Reade began to write It Is Never Too Late to Mend, he developed a method of research and writing that he would use throughout the remainder of his career. In the Memoir, he declares: “The plan I propose to ... -
The flawed ideal : justice and injustice in Malory's Morte Darthur.
(2011-05-12)In his Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory portrays Arthur, not as the strong, fully just king of later portrayals, but as a weaker monarch more in keeping with those of fifteenth-century England. Arthur begins well by ... -
Frank O'Connor's "world of appearances" : epiphany and false personality in his stories of childhood.
(, 2012-08-08)This study illuminates the influence of two vastly different short story writers on the work of Frank O’Connor: James Joyce and Anton Chekhov. O’Connor vowed never to imitate the Russian master, and yet Chekhov’s theme ... -
Genius, heredity, and family dynamics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his children : a literary biography.
(2011-05-12)The children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hartley, Derwent, and Sara, have received limited scholarly attention, though all were important nineteenth century figures. Lack of scholarly attention on them can be blamed on ... -
God's wildness : the Christian roots of ecological ethics in American literature.
(, 2012-08-08)Early Puritan colonists expressed conflicting views regarding the religious significance of the New World’s natural environment. On the one hand, it was “the Devil’s Territories” that God would transform into “a Mart” to ... -
Harry Potter and the search for a church : spiritual community and sacrificial love in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
(2010-06-23)Examining the Harry Potter series through the lens of late Baptist theologian Stanley Grenz and his theories on community as it reflects the triune God, the themes of love and sacrifice in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series ... -
“If to speak meant to repeat myself” : repetition in the later poetry of Louise Glück.
(, 2014-01-28)Louise Glück’s poetry is known for its affinity for change; each of Glück’s eleven poetic collections intentionally departs from her previous work, and Glück herself has written of her desire not to “repeat” herself. I ... -
Imagining membership and its obligations : the voice of John Ruskin in Wendell Berry's fiction.
(, 2012-11-29)This study explores the ways in which John Ruskin’s artistic and social criticism illuminate persuasive elements in Wendell Berry’s fiction, primarily his three major novels: A Place on Earth, Hannah Coulter, and Jayber ... -
Inventing Dixie : literary adaptation and the Hollywood Southern.
(2010-10-08)Many people have never visited the American South, but everyone has "seen the movie." For nearly a century, American films have been the chief cultural arbiters of southern regional identity in the popular imagination. ... -
Jack Clemo's vocation to evangelical poetry and erotic marriage : an examination of his poems of personal tribute and critique.
(2011-01-05)Jack Clemo, whose dates are 1916-1994, calls to us from the margins: a working-class voice from deep within in the china clayworks of Cornwall, having been educated outside the conventional system, contending with deafness ... -
Journeying toward the beatific vision: the uses and abuses of Dante in Robert Elsmere.
(2007-12-04)In Robert Elsmere, Mrs. Humphry Ward addresses the Christological concerns of Victorian England. Robert’s crisis of faith and resulting inability to maintain a belief in the divinity of Christ is juxtaposed against his ... -
Liturgy, ritual, and community in four plays by Brian Friel.
(, 2012-08-08)This thesis considers the function of ritual and liturgy within four plays by Irish playwright Brian Friel—Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964); Faith Healer (1979); Dancing at Lughnasa (1990); and Molly Sweeney (1994)—while ... -
MacDonald’s Antiphon : literary traditions and the "lost church" of English worship.
(, 2012-08-08)This dissertation examines the ways in which Victorian novelist and fantasist George MacDonald re-imagines Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ideas about the religious function of literary traditions. Each chapter of this project ... -
"Man is made a mystery" : the evolution of Arthur Machen's religious thought.
(2010-10-08)Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author now known almost exclusively for his late nineteenth-century weird horror tales such as The Great God Pan (1894) and The Three Impostors (1895). The few Machen critics who have ... -
"A man may have wit, and yet put off his hat" censorship in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew fair and A tale of a tub.
(, 2013-09-24)Ben Jonson’s career gives us an interesting window into English Renaissance censorship, since a number of his plays were scrutinized, altered, or suppressed by the authorities. In response to the critical consensus that ... -
Manifestations of transcendence in twentieth-century American fiction : F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carson McCullers, J.D. Salinger, and Cormac McCarthy.
(, 2014-01-28)At the beginning of the twentieth century, the secularization of American society poses a unique problem for fiction writers. As a number of scholars in various fields have established, humans desire and are oriented ... -
Manuduction and the Passion : the grammar of participation in selected seventeenth-century Good Friday lyric poems.
(2016-01-27)Drawing on the distinction between a “grammar of participation” and a “grammar of representation,” this study focuses on the Good Friday lyric poetry of George Herbert, Robert Herrick, John Donne, and Aemilia Lanyer. The ... -
Mark Twain's art of grotesque exaggeration.
(2010-10-08)This thesis uncovers truths and lies in the works of Mark Twain. It examines the way in which Twain's lies of exaggeration bring about truth. In his early newspaper writings, Twain developed a technique of exaggeration ...