Browsing W & L Historic Theses by Subject "Criticism, interpretation, etc."
Now showing items 1-20 of 22
-
The Anxiety of Obsolescence: Pessimistic Depictions of the Artist in the Modern American Novels of Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, and Nathanael West
This study will present the existence of a strand of artistic despair running through modernist American fiction. The consistent failure to positively present the high modem ideal comes about as a result of what I call ... -
Changing Perspectives on Thought and Action in Andre? Malraux's Major Novels
Malraux has expressed his ideas concerning thought and action in many forms. He has explored the conflict between thought and action through various characters on both personal and political levels. He has evaluated "pure" ... -
Discovering F. Scott Fitzgerald's Wise and Tragic Sense of Life
The youthful illusions Fitzgerald alludes to in This Side of Paradise exist in both Amory Blaine, the novel's protagonist, and in Fitzgerald himself speaking through the novel's omniscient narrator. With an attitude of ... -
Edith Wharton's Evolutionary Monster; Undine Spragg of The Custom of the Country
In Wharton's own words she describes her intent for the book, "I argued that in The Custom of the Country I was chronicling the career of a particular young woman, and that to whatever hemisphere her fortunes carried her, ... -
Igor Stravinsky: Perennial Russian Roots Grounded in His Neo-Classical Works
Stravinsky's works are typically categorized into three main periods of composition: Russian, Neo-Classical, and Serial. The most noteworthy works of his Russian phase, roughly 1902-1920, include the ballets made famous ... -
Il Miglior Fabbro, The Achievement of Ezra Pound
In assimilating briefly a body of literature as large as that of Ezra Pound, the urgent thing is to omit and the feasible thing to work in patterns that suggest more than they encompass. This thesis is planned to operate ... -
Maruja Mallo: Lost at Sea
Like many female artists, Maruja Mallo has been "written out of history." Standard texts treating Surrealism generally exclude female Surrealist artists, and Mallo is no exception. However, she is also seldom included even ... -
"The memory of the landscape": An Ecocritical Analysis of Seamus Heaney's Bog Poems
What is the relation between the poet and nature? How is the inspired linked to this natural inspiration? These are among the questions that brought forth the creation of Ecological Criticism, or ecocriticism, a theory of ... -
Missing Mom: The (Re-)Assessment of Gender and Motherhood in Richard Wright's Black Boy, Toni Morrison's Sula and Jazz, and Audre Lorde's Zami
This paper will examine the dynamics of mother-child relationships within African American literature and the ways in which children internalize socially constructed gender roles within not just a male-dominated society, ... -
Natural Imagery Within Kate Chopin's Fiction
Throughout all of Kate Chopin's narratives, sketches, and novels, natural imagery serves as an expression of unconscious, emotional, and unadulterated feeling. Chopin utilizes the environment to illustrate her characters' ... -
Nietzsche's Overman, the Will to Power, and the Absolute Telos
Nietzsche focuses on the idea of the ideal individual as an underlying and vital theme in all of his writing. He examines the question of how man should live his life in this world. His answer encompasses his critique of ... -
The Odyssey of Leopold Bloom: An Attempt to Find What Will Suffice
Standards of morality have changed to the extent that James Joyce's Ulysses is no longer condemned for being exceptionaIly obscene. Almost fifty years after its publication, however, Joyce's novel remains notorious for ... -
The "Projective" Unconscious: Charles Olson and Carl Jung
Charles Olson ( 1910-1970), writing the bulk of his most influential works in the late forties through mid sixties, is an American poet who gained fame as a teacher in the Black Mountain College, a successor of Ezra Pound, ... -
The Proletarian Novel in America, 1900-1940
In this thesis I have tried to give what I think is an accurate picture of the proletarian novel. I have tried to trace the origins, motives and developments of this form in the years from 1900 to 1940. It has been necessary ... -
Quest for Expression: The Ekphrastic Poetry and Artistic Creation of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is widely praised for her mastery of poetic form and language. Recently, Plath scholars have uncovered another dimension to this already complex literary figure. In addition to poetry, Plath also ... -
"Sex explains it all": Gender in the Literature of Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost
Gender is merely an attribute, rather than the single determining factor of one's identity, yet Hemingway and Frost both devised their own distinctly masculine personality -- a public image which became progressively more ... -
Sexuality and System in Thomas Hardy: The Affirmation of Experiential Over Moral Truth
This project is a psychological study of Thomas Hardy's developing attitude towards sexuality; specifically whether it could be brought into a constructive moral system, or whether the experience was fulfilling in its own ...