M.A.

More than any other English Romantic poet, with the possible exception of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley has been attacked by critics who argue that in both his personal life and in his poetry and prose writings, he was immoral. Regardless of what may be said against Shelley's personal life, as a writer he is profoundly moralistic in almost all of his literary works. This thesis shows, using several of his longer poetic works, selected religious and philosophical essays, and various letters, that Shelley deliberately used the theme of vengeance against tyrannical oppression as an agent for presenting his moral principles. The first chapter introduces Shelley's didactic moral code concerning revenge against tyrannical despotism as revealed in certain philosophical and religious essays, Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and The Mask of Anarchy. Chapter II examines the following three philosophical and religious essays by Shelley which illustrate his moral concept of vengeance as this concept relates to tyrannical oppression: "Essay on Christianity," An Address to the Irish People, and A Philosophical View of Reform. The third chapter discusses the moral precepts involved in Prometheus Unbound as they relate to revenge and despotic domination. Chapter IV explains how Shelley, even though sympathizing with Beatrice Cenci, criticized her for not persevering in love, forgiveness, and forbearance as she avenged the incestuous assault committed against her by her tyrannical father. Chapter V explores the moral principles found in The Mask of Anarchy as they relate to revenge and tyrannical oppression. The conclusion reemphasizes Shelley's use of vengeance against tyrannical oppression as a means of presenting his moral principles. / Master of Arts

The subjunctive mood in the poems of Emily Dickinson was from the outset a source of confusion to editors and readers. The first editors thought that these forms, in particular the third person singular verbs which omit the s inflection, were incorrect usages. These editors often ''corrected" them by adding the missing inflection. Later, more scholarly critics recognized and labelled them as forms of the subjunctive mood. Since 1955 Thomas Johnson and some other contemporary critics have suggested that they are not true subjunctives but forms of a "universal present indicative." It is now known that the chief influences on Emily Dickinson's poetic style were from Elizabethan literature, written in a language rich in subjunctives and the other archaisms which characterize her poetry. There is little or no correspondence in the appearance of subjunctive forms in the letters and in the poems. The subjunctives were almost entirely poetic devices. The subjunctive forms in poems appear in many different syntactic and semantic contexts. Therefore, one explanation of these forms is not satisfactory, although the Johnson interpretation may apply to a few poems. In 1863 Emily Dickinson used them in an average of one in every three poems, a frequency twice as high as the average. Furthermore, that frequency built up to the year 1863 and gradually declined thereafter. She apparently chose the subjunctives deliberately and they became a characteristic of her finest work. / Master of Arts

Throughout the career of E. E. Cummings critics maintained that the poet displayed a lack of growth in his vision. Such a criticism fails in an analysis of the development of specific themes in the love poetry of Cummings. This thesis investigates two major themes from the early love poetry (the volumes of 1923 - c. 1938) and two from the later love poetry (the volumes of c. 1940 - 1963) and proposes a movement of the themes toward affirmation and movement from the concrete to the abstract. Chapter II clarifies the first early theme, the celebration of a specific lover or love experience and presents those poems which define the speaker's response to the lady's presence, delight in her body, and express the joy of intercourse with her. Chapter III considers the second early theme, the unachievable and temporal nature of love. Death as thief, the fleeting nature of love, the distance of the lady, the persuasion, the sordid love affairs, the sexual jokes, and the satirical tone emerge as variations of this theme. Chapter IV deals with the first later theme, the affirmation that love is possible and enduring. Emphasized are discussions of love as a concept, celebrations of highest love, and the transcending power of love. Chapter V in explaining the second later theme, the celebration of love as a force within itself, displays poems which define love, dismiss it as a mystery, theorize about love, arrange hyperbolisms to praise the lady, and glorify the lovers' spiritual union. / Master of Arts

Chaucer's Prioress has been an enigma to scholars who have tried to understand her. The fundamental point of contention about the Prioress centers upon the question: "Is Chaucer presenting her as a satiric figure supposedly dedicated to the Church but worldly in her pursuits, or is Chaucer presenting her as a sincere member of the clergy, typical of those who fulfilled the requirements laid down by the Church?” A study of selected critical statements brings one to no resolution of the question. The statement of one orthodox critic, Sister M. Madeleva, who measured the Prioress against the Benedictine Rule, does riot end the search since this critic chooses to discuss only points on which she can score the Prioress saintly, thereby ignoring vital details in Chaucer's portrait. One must look at historical studies of the English medieval nunnery to see Madame Eglentyne in her milieu. The exhaustive study, Medieval English Nunneries by Power, supported by historical evidence, indicates medieval prioresses generally were strong and pious though worldly. Power feels there is no reason to believe Chaucer's Prioress departed from that norm. One returns to Chaucer's poetic method to search for further evidence on those areas slighted by Sister Madeleva. A study based on W. C. Curry's work reveals the Prioress as more noble than ignoble, atypical of the norm, but the balance of conviction is on the side of Power's contention that the Prioress is typical of prioresses of her day. / Master of Arts

This thesis attempts to show that Robert Louis Stevenson's romantic novels experiment in combining romance and realism. To achieve his objective, Stevenson sometimes imitates earlier writers of romance, sometimes differs from them. He imitates traditional romance by including the motifs of love, adventure, combat, and quest. He juxtaposes good and evil and makes good defeat evil. He deviates from traditional romance, however, by creating villains not altogether evil, such as Long John Silver in Treasure Island. He also deviates from traditional romance by creating incidents where evil overwhelms and drags the good down into moral degradation, as in the encounters between the Durie brothers in The Master of Ballantrae or between Frank and Archie in Weir of Hermiston. Stevenson also includes in his romantic novels some elements of realism--the use of common people, the modeling of characters after known personalities, and the association of fictional events with history. He uses a truly romantic character such as the Prince in Prince Otto to make a moral point about the place of aptitude and interest in assigning roles to people. He also uses romantic adventures to teach moral lessons, as in The Dynamiter. Stevenson establishes that romance functions not only to delight but also to teach; it is not to encourage escape but to serve a pragmatic purpose. / Master of Arts

In 1708 Colonial poet Ebenezer Cooke published a satirical poem entitled The Sot-Weed Factor. The poem, written in the style of Samuel Butler's Hudibras, tells of a tobacco merchant's first visit to Maryland. In 1960 contemporary novelist John Barth wrote a novel, also entitled The Sot-Weed Factor and used Cooke's life and poem as sources. In order to understand why Barth chose these eighteenth-century sources for his twentieth-century novel, one must first examine his theory of "literature of exhaustion." According to Barth, this literature begins with the realization that the novel is dead or dying and uses this fact as a theme. The writers of this fiction must be aware of the history of the novel and must write technically up-to-date novels, but they must, at the same time, treat matters of the human heart. One way to accomplish these goals is to imitate earlier works, as Barth does in The Sot-Weed Factor. Because the novel imitates a two-hundred- fifty-year-old poem, it acknowledges that the history of literature does not begin with itself. Yet Barth's imitation parodies his model by embellishing and exaggerating it to a point of absurdity. The novel thereby reflects this same absurdity in the modern world and thus reaches the hearts of those who must live in it. Thus, though Barth imitates an eighteenth-century poem, he creates a thoroughly modern novel that meets his requirements for literature of exhaustion and gives new life to a moribund genre. / Master of Arts

It is now almost universally accepted that Flannery O'Connor's fiction can be interpreted only in terms of Christian orthodoxy, and that the scope of her work remains, at its broadest, narrowly theological and limited in implication. In truth, however, there remains at least one significant aspect of O'Connor's fiction that is not wholly religious, but pervasively human. In all of her works, O'Connor deals with the serious problem of human selfishness and its ugly effects: man's eventual isolation from those around him; ultimately, his insulation from meaning and life itself. Embodying her message in her characters, returning in each of her works to a similar pattern of character development and thematic representation, O'Connor exemplifies in all of her protagonists a similar emblematic experience: wrapped in their own selfish natures, her characters must either grow to an understanding that embraces others, or perish in isolation. The purpose of this thesis, is to trace the development of Flannery O'Connor's protagonists both as they embody the theme of human isolation and as they determine fictional structure, while at the same time focusing upon the specific nature of each character's selfishness in the illustration of theme. In accomplishing this objective, this work demonstrates that, far from being narrow in scope, O'Connor's fiction illustrates a shared human dilemma that possesses relevance for us all. / Master of Arts

During his lifetime, H. L. Mencken was sometimes dismissed as a lightweight journalist. However, in the years since his death in 1956, he and his work have received increasing critical attention. The numerous works on Mencken issued in the 1960's and 1970's have added immeasurably to our knowledge. However, serious, in-depth studies of Mencken's compositional methods have not been made, a surprising fact in light of the wealth of materials available. This study addresses the need for such scholarship by examining Mencken's composition and revision of one of his finest books, Treatise on the Gods. The extant materials relating to this work include prepublication forms of both the 1930 and 1946 editions and a series of unpublished letters. These documents provide the data for a study of the evolution of Treatise on the Gods. A study of the comments Mencken made about the book, as well as the stylistic changes he made in its many forms, illuminates his working methods and his personality. The result indicates that Mencken was not a careless "cut and paste" composer, but rather was a methodical craftsman, who worked diligently to polish his prose. He was also a careful researcher, who wanted to·record facts accurately. Such efforts in Treatise on the Gods resulted in a durable work of scholarship and served to assure him a lasting place in literary history. / Master of Arts

Throughout his completed novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne employs a unique set of character relationships which fall into two divisions: either parasitic or symbiotic in nature. The parasitic relationship occurs between two characters, each having a clearly defined role of host or parasite. This particular bond is distinguished by the parasite who leeches from and often destroys the host. The symbiotic pairing exists between two characters when a reciprocal exchange of services occurs so that both characters profit and depend upon each other for a meaningful existence. These two relationships differ significantly in motivation and effect. Parasitism concerns the parasite's possession of a special power over the host and the exercise of that power with a cold, obsessive intent to fulfill a particular, selfish need. Symbiosis presupposes a relationship between two characters who willingly render reciprocal services to each other. These characters' basic motivation represents a need to relate fully to themselves and other characters. Thus, the parasitic bond is detrimental to both characters, while the symbiotic contact offers some benefit to the symbiants. Nathaniel Hawthorne employs these two character relationships in order to give his characters significant dimensions in their personalities. Once these characters bond together, their potentiality as actual individuals increases. Through these relationships they can fully relate to humanity by attaining self-realization and an undenying love for the universal human community. / Master of Arts