If Robert Frost's poetry is to be fully prized, it must be recognized as possessing more than a single level of interpretation. Frost has long been thought to be a nature poet. Recent criticism, however, especially in the wake of Lawrance Thompson's biography, has begun to focus upon another Frost, a poet who wrote about the unhappinesses and barriers of human life as well as about the. sylvan beauty of his native New England.First and foremost, Frost was a poet of the human condition. His intent was to focus his gaze upon life. Life is shown in Frost's poems to contain many aspects of darkness which often seem concatenated in a series of depressions of the human spirit. Life, too, is occasionally terrifying, filling men with fear and uncertainty. One thing after another seems to attack the very vitals of man's contentment, and at times the unceasing nature of the attack would suggest man's ultimate defeat. This dissertation deals with several of these dark elements in Frost's poetry against which all of mankind must wage a continuing battle.Chapter one presents a view of the poet himself. If the-reader takes a brief but incisive look into the actual life of Frost, viewing the hardships, disappointments, fears, and failings of the man Frost, then the poet Frost will better be understood as a person capable of versifying about darker elements of the human condition. As a child, Frost was taught that a person must direct his powers against socalled insuperable odds if he is to succeed in a particular goal. This first chapter exhibits the forces against which Frost battled.The second chapter begins a discussion of dark elements of the human condition. Frost views man as being all alone in a seemingly unfeeling and unresponsive universe. Death presents itself as an answer, but man continues his search for the answer. Truth is the goal, but it is elusive, and comes only as a brief flicker. The search for what is true is often begun out of a sense of loneliness and frustration. Frost frequently indicated a human need for retreat from life's oppressiveness, but never did he indicate escape. He thought of escape as an act of finality, an act which can never be undone. Frost's symbol of escape, the "dark woods," must never be entered. Man must cope with his existence. He must not submit to the call of the unknown forest. When coping with life's hardships proves ineffectual, man must learn the value of "acceptance."The darkness of human loneliness is frequently the harbinger of man's most intense griefs. When man finds himself companionless, or when true communication has been interrupted between himself and his fellow men--at such times introspection becomes most intense. Too much introspection leads to a sense of alienation from the world and a desire to escape the world's influence.Even nature itself terrifies. Frost portrays nature as sometimes brutal and unfeeling, bestial. Man must control his fears of the natural world by exercising courage. Though natural forces are hostile, they do not act out of a design of evil. Nature is equally capable of benefitting man, breaking his darkness with images of light and hope such as stars, moon, and sun. These images point to the reality of Truth, to the existence of a reason for living, for struggling against life's oppressiveness. Thus, Frost did not allow the dark to go unbroken in his poems. He wished truth to be seen and recognized as the only force capable of dispelling the shadow of human ignorance and human despair, enabling man to survive in a milieu of darkness.It is hoped that this dissertation will familiarize the reader with an important but all-too-often neglected side of Robert Frost's poetry that needs to be understood if Frost is to be fully appreciated. If such is the case, the poet's image will not be tarnished as a result; rather it will know a brighter luster than when viewed from but a single angle, in a lesser dimension.

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This study presents Theodore Roethke's technique in poetry first by examining his chief areas of concern as.a poet and critic, and then by analyzing the artistic creation of one of his chief works, The Lost Son and Other Poems. Roethke emphasized the role of intuition and the need for the poet to pursue the depths of his own feelings in his search for the material for his poetry. He also insisted that once the poet has control of the material, he must diligently attend to the task of creating a language most natural to the object being presented in the poem. These convictions about poetic technique led him to write short poems and to avoid the "great theme" or the "sweeping work." Hoethke's poetic process, therefore, results in poetry in which a single idea or theme grows in scope as he shapes each poem. The Lost Son and Other Poems presents a series of poems that provide evidence for such a process.The first chapter provides a general overview of Roethke's poetics found in his prose writings, his informal comments to colleagues and friends, and his life-long practice as a poet. It shows his major considerations as a critic of his own and others' poetry to be what poetry-is, what the subject matter for poetry should be, and how poetry is created. 1Roethke basically believed that poetry is feeling incorporated into form. He emphasized that the mind and emotions of the poet himself should provide the material for poetry. He showed how poetry results primarily from a strong reliance on the rhythms of the spoken language and from the poet's fidelity to consistency between the object being portrayed and the actual portrayal in the poem itself. Often, this type of poetry is necessarily dramatic, Roethke's favorite form for a poem. Chapter two explores how Roethke used his personal experience as the subject matter in creating a sequence in The Lost Son and Other Poems. The overall theme in the book is how growth elicits both pain and joy. The subject matter for each poem comes from a central character's memory, his imagination stimulating his memory, or solely from his imagination. This central character's attempt to integrate his personality into a mature understanding of his world results from his growing perception of the relation between the levels of existence and his past experiences as he recalls them. These experiences are the significant events that contributed to his growth into manhood. Hence, as the sequence progresses, the scope of the subject matter broadens until the central character can recognize, accept and understand the relatedness of all of existence and the correspondence between himself and his world.Chapter three shows Roethke's use of time determining point of view in the poems as the unifying element in the structure of the sequence as a whole. It shows how the sequence presents the central character's toward personal identity. He created rhythms for the shorter poemspsychotherapeutic experience through a portrayal of his growing involvement with deeply seated memories and emotions. The sequence dramatizes this experience in which the speaker in the poems probes back in time in order to go forward as a mature person. Such a process involves a gradual preoccupation with both conscious and subconscious memories. Roethke presents this process in the poetry through a careful manipulation of the central character's point of view as he describes either memory or experience.Chapter four analyzes how Hoethke used prosody to create the dramatic poetry for the experience described in the third chapter. It isolates the major techniques providing for his fidelity to the language accompanying the different stages in the central character's growthchiefly through attention to stress, word texture and some of the usual poetic sound devices. Prosody in these poems contribute to a mimetic accompaniment to the subject matter of the poem or to a representation of the emotions of the speaker. The same basic prosodic (effects are created in the four longer poems of the sequence; but in addition, Roethke used other devices involving rhythmical timing to dramatize the most intense aspects of the psychic experience.The study, therefore, contributes to an understanding of Theodore Roethke's method for writing poetry. It offers a close analysis of the major factors involved in. his particular poetic creation. The study of The Lost Son and Other Poems demonstrates both how he creates a poem and how he sequentially develops a difficult theme in a whole book of poems.

The purpose of this thesis is to indicate and describe the interest in mysticism apparent in the prose works of Aldous Huxley, and to show that this interest has developed consistently throughout Huxley's literary career. The books, articles and theses referring to Huxley as a mystic, or accepting Huxley's basic interest in mysticism, make no attempt to account for the progressive stages of mysticism, nor to compare Huxley's pattern of development with that of the traditional mystic. This thesis will indicate at least Huxley's genuine interest in mysticism, and will show that, as work follows work, each displays a growing comprehension of the progressive stages of mystical experience described as typical of the traditional mystic. As a result of this comparison, it will be shown that an interest in mysticism has become a dominating influence in all Huxley's writing. The introduction contains a sampling of criticism to show that critics have generally tended to accept the idea that Huxley went through a conventional religious conversion period in the thirties, but an examination of his works shows that his interest in mysticism began with his earliest writing and developed consistently. Chapter I attempts further to substantiate the contention that Huxley's interest has been progressive, by showing that he is not a personality type likely to undergo sudden religious conversions. The biographical data available suggest that Huxley belongs to a psychological type that usually does not experience conversions, at least according to his own theories of personality classifications. Chapter II includes a general description of the phenomena of mysticism presented in the terms of Western authorities and a description of mysticism taken from Huxley's non-fiction. The comparison makes apparent the variance between Huxley’s theories and those of the authorities. The basic difference stems from Huxley's determination to explore the rich and complex fields of Oriental, as well as of European, mysticism. Chapter III will attempt to trace and evaluate, through his fiction, Huxley's developing interest in mysticism, and it will be shown that the stages of development discernible in the fiction are not directly comparable to the Five-fold Mystic Way — stages considered necessary by Miss Underhill for normal mystical development. Chapter IV will discuss Huxley's latest publications in an effort to show how he has related his interest in mysticism to the problems of contemporary life. On the whole, the thesis is primarily concerned, not with what Huxley, as a man, privately believes, but with the manifestations of mystical apprehension that occur in his writings. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Buchanan County, located in southwest Virginia at the eastern margin of the Appalachian Plateau, is underlain by gently dipping Pennsylvanian formations. The lowest Pennsylvanian Lee Formation is exposed in an area of only 0.3 of a square mile, but information on its character and thickness has been obtained from wells drilled primarily for natural gas. Two members or the Lee are recognized intormally. The lower member containing the Pocahontas coals and distinguished by a predominance of conglomerate and orthoquartzitic sandstone may be the approximate equivalent or the Pocahontas Group of West Virginia. The upper member is characterized by “dirty” sandstone. siltstone, shale, and coal and a lack of conglomerate and orthoquartzitic sandstone. Subsurface data indicate that rocks of Devonian and Early and Middle Mississippian age were deposited in a stable shelf environment, an environment dissimilar to that of the Lee Formation consisting predominantly of continental beds. Published regional surface data supported by 11thologic analysis and isopach mapping of the present report indicate that post-Mississippian pre-Pennsylvanian time in Buchanan County was a time of emergence and erosion. During this time, basinlike topographic depressions were developed in southeastern and northwestern Buchanan County separated by a low northeast-southwest trending ridge in central Buchanan County coincident with the present axis of the Grapevine Branch Anticline. Initial subsidence of the post-Mississippian surface probably accompanied a rising Blue Ridge igneous and metamorphic terrain, the probable source of the Lee elastics, southeast of Buchanan County. Initial subsidence invited a southeastward transgression or the Lee sea which is believed to have advanced as far southeast as central Buchanan County where it probably was halted initially by the low topographic ridge coincident with the present-day Grapevine Branch Anticline. Subsequent southeast advances were impeded by the rapid filling of southeastern Buchanan County with continental sediments, and the southeastern margin of the marine environment remained essentially static throughout lower member time. Inference of a marine environment and its extent is based on the marine aspect of the orthoquartzite as contrasted with the continental aspect of the “dirty” sandstones and associated shales of the formation. Isopach maps suggest that deposition in Buchanan County during Lee time was controlled predominantly by the character of local subsidence. It is interred from the maps that during lower member time Buchanan County subsided essentially as two blocks. Southeastern Buchanan County subsided differentially toward the southeast and the block was hinged along a line coincident with the present-day Grapevine Branch Anticline in the central part of the county. Simultaneously, northwestern Buchanan County foundered almost vertically with only a slight component of southeastward tilt. As a result, continental deposition was localized in southeastern Buchanan County while marine conditions prevailed in northwestern Buchanan County. Failure of the central Buchanan County hinge at the end of lower member time was followed by general differential subsidence during which the county acted as a single unit and subsided toward the southeast in a manner analogous to the subsidence of southeastern Buchanan County during lower member time. A new hinge-line which functioned throughout upper member time is believed to have been located along the northwestern border of the county as indicated by the present distribution of orthoquartzite in the upper member. / M.S.

Esta investigación se inició en una idea generalizada en las Ciencias Sociales. Es la suposición que asume una correlación positiva en la predilección electoral de las clases trabajadoras y los sectores urbano-populares a favor de los partidos de izquierda y, como antítesis, una estrecha relación entre la derecha conservadora, las élites dominantes y la clase media citadina. Esta suposición se sustenta en los resultados electorales de la década de 1980 hasta las elecciones generales del S. XXI. / Tesis