Many poets feel themselves engaged in a sort of pilgrimage or spiritual journey. In the poetry of certain contemporary women, the personal quest becomes more than the usual course of art; it becomes necessary for survival. This study observes four distinct forms of pilgrimage in the poetry of Denise Levertov, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich. Levertov's quest is designated a secular pilgrimage; Sexton's, a religious pilgrimage; Plath's, a lost pilgrimage, which ends in death; and Rich's, a pilgrimage toward rebirth. These designations indicate a contrastive pairing of Levertov and Sexton, who explore forms of worship, and of Plath and Rich, who seek forms of rebirth. These poets offer a full range of possibilities for the spiritual progress of life and art, and they exemplify varying responses to the difficulty of self-realization for women in patriarchal society. / The direction of each poet's art may be indicated in relation to two dimensions of pilgrimage: death and life (relevant to existence) and the ideal and the real (relevant to art). A creative affirmation of life dominates the poetry of Levertov and Rich, who develop in relationship to the outer worlds of nature and society. A destructive impulse due to emotional pain dominates the poetry of Plath and Sexton, who attempt to develop in isolation. The pilgrimage itself is not directed toward death; rather, death ensues when the poet regards her pilgrimage as a failure. Though any pilgrimage is a search for transcendence, only the aesthetics of Plath and Levertov are oriented toward the ideal. Plath strives for perfection in her craft, and she has a vision of perfection in death. Levertov as a poet searches for the music of life, and although she often deals directly with everyday reality, she seeks glimmers of "Paradise" or "the authentic" in the commonplace, and her conception of an absolute aesthetic form is Neoplatonic in nature. The aesthetics of Sexton and Rich are oriented toward the real: they embrace change and flux, reject any absolute truth or beauty, and stress activity of consciousness rather than poetic product. / Generally, the study discusses each poet's struggle for emergence and the goals, means, obstacles and tensions, and moving forces of her journey. Central concerns in each chapter are (1) the nature and development of the poet's pilgrimage, which usually contains several interrelated strands, (2) the writer's sense of her identity as woman/pilgrim/poet, (3) a central antithesis which contributes to the direction and pace of the poetry, and (4) the relationship between language and pilgrimage for the poet. / Such a comparative study makes possible an understanding which could not be arrived at through studying a poet in isolation. In addition to elucidating the art of each poet, this study attempts to (1) suggest generalizations about the new forms that pilgrimage takes in the poetry of contemporary women who are struggling to find themselves and are bringing the personal voice of that struggle into art, and (2) illustrate the different poetic planes on which similar enterprises can be carried out and thus show a range of options available to the contemporary poet. The study also attempts to demonstrate how women can exist creatively rather than destructively with their art. Though sexuality itself is not the issue, it may be that the problems of self-realization and survival are brought into sharper focus in the poetry of these four women than in that of their male contemporaries. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-01, Section: A, page: 0213. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Gwendolyn Brooks, one of America's leading poets since World War II, is a master of different styles of poetry and prose. Critics and laymen have acclaimed her work. Ms. Brooks has won several academic honors and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. During the early phase of her career her poetry exhibited a boundless faith in the potential goodness of America and the viability of integration. Hence, her writing was rational, controlled, and rarely strident as it made impassioned pleas to white America to recognize the humanity of African-Americans. Subsequently, time and circumstances forced Brooks to alter these views. The civil rights struggle in America, the indomitable spirits of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other activists made the earlier views no longer acceptable to her. Additionally, the Black Arts Movement, fostered by some young black writers, and the development of a new Black consciousness resulted in her decision not only to write about blacks but for and to them in a most simplistic manner. As a Black poet Brooks began to interpret her environment more forcefully; her writing portrayed the lives of poor, black urban dwellers in a forthright, realistic tone. She described life in the nation's ghettoes in brutally frank language and aligned herself with the exploited, joined the battle against racism, classicism, sexism, materialism, and, in general, man's inhumanity to man. Brooks repeatedly revealed that man's quest for human freedom and dignity is widespread, and that this quest forces individuals to become creative in ways unknown to their oppressors. Brooks' writing was directed against both whites and blacks. Partly autobiographical, her work attacks various prejudices manifested by some blacks against each other. Specifically, her writing condemned interracial color discrimination, class, and sexual prejudices. Brooks is not a protest poet in the classic sense. She appeals to all ages, races, classes, and sexes. Her subjects run the gamut of life, for her aesthetic premise is "to vivify the universal fact . . . " especially when it wears contemporary clothing. Brooks is devoted to a truthful representation of the ordinary aspects of people's lives, especially African-Americans. Though the maladies affecting modern man pervade her work, she did include some of life's pleasantries. Specifically, this dissertation entails five sections. "The Early Gwendolyn Brooks" treats her work from A Street in Bronzeville (1945) to Selected Poems (1963). This chapter reflects her integrationist belief in an intricate and a formal style. "The Metamorphosis of Gwendolyn Brooks" deals with her change from assimilation to activism. In a less tightly controlled style as seen in her early work, her later writing emphasizes her Black consciousness. "Gwendolyn Brooks and the Young" features the poet's concern for and interest in children and youth displayed in her three books written especially for children, and a number of other things she has done for them and young people. The powerful influence that young Black writers/artists had on her racial views is also included. "For Women Only" illustrates the poet's representation of typical concerns of women. Finally, "Social Injustices--Update" discusses the ways the poet used her art to assail the inequities that most Blacks, especially poor urban ghetto dwellers, face daily. However, her writing about injustices is not limited to the lower socioeconomic people, for it suggests that injustices are so embedded in America against its Black citizens that a mere chronicling of their lives is sufficient to reveal numerous inequities. Overall, Brooks' work reveals that she is a sensitive, honest, creative, concerned, and sophisticated writer. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, Section: A, page: 1149. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

This study examines the place of A Man's Woman in Norris' experiments to synthesize realistic and romantic forms. In the novel Norris returns to the Zolaesque perspective seen earlier in McTeague but also treats the large philosophical and psychological questions which he was to address in The Octopus and The Pit. Through a close analysis of the text, the writer argues that the book does have "significant form," displaying Norris' intelligence in the matter of preparing the reader for the credible experiences of the main crises and their resolution. Using a psychological structure, Norris creates consistently his "two real people," Ward Bennett and Lloyd Searight. The latter part of the study examines the changes which Norris made as the work moved from serial to text form, changes which shed light both on Norris' own evaluation of the novel and his intentions for the work. Finally, the writer notes that Norris did learn about his own strengths and weaknesses, both in terms of his abilities to develop character and to handle complex questions. Consequently, A Man's Woman represents a significant step in Norris' career. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, Section: A, page: 1148. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Within the past twenty years, critics have begun to reassess the writings of Constance Fenimore Woolson, works that were all but forgotten by the generation that succeeded her. One of the constants that has emerged from this and earlier scholarly writing is the opinion that Woolson's short fiction constitutes some of the best of her work. Thus, this study evaluates Woolson's literary achievement as a short story writer by providing a full examination of Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches, Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, Dorothy and Other Italian Stories, The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories, and the short fiction not included in published collections of the tales. / The dissertation begins with a biographical portrait, which describes the personal and professional influences on Woolson's short fiction. Acquiring a taste for travel from her father, Woolson, for most of her life, led a transient existence. She vacationed in the Great Lakes as a child, attended schools in Ohio and New York, later accompanied her mother throughout her trips in the South, and toured Europe leisurely for the last fourteen years of her life. An admirer of European and American realists--especially Bret Harte and later Henry James--Woolson, with her avid curiosity for people and places and with her keen powers of observation, drew heavily upon her travels for the realistic settings and characters of her stories. Publishing her tales in the most prominent magazines of her day, Woolson enjoyed the critical praise and friendship of such eminent literary figures as E. C. Stedman, Paul Hamilton Hayne, William Dean Howells, and Henry James. / Throughout her fiction Woolson dealt with the forces affecting the nation as well as the individual in the last half of the nineteenth century. Chapter III examines Woolson's thematic concerns. In her Great Lakes fiction, Woolson considers life in the city as well as in the country, endorsing most frequently the value of the rural experience. In her Southern tales, Woolson laments the passing of the old order of the South, and she acknowledges the difficulty of a reconciliation between the sections during the Reconstruction era. And in her Italian stories, while admiring the beauty and charm of Europe, she consistently endorses New World rather than Old World values. In addition to these regional themes, the chapter examines Woolson's concern throughout her fiction with artistic integrity, unrequited love, and magnanimity or heroic self-sacrifice. / In her wide travels Woolson came in contact with a variety of American and European characters. And in her fiction, Woolson felt it her mission to record as objectively as possible life within the regions she visited. However, her stories, like those of many other local colorists, are a blend of the romantic and the realistic. Many of her settings are closely described, while others are cast in a romantic haze. Her characters are often carefully drawn and well-rounded, but some are clearly eccentrics--religious fanatics and recluses--or they are models of virtue, characters who display the magnanimous qualities Woolson so greatly admired. Many of these characters appear, too, in sentimental tales of love, stories whose plots follow the popular formulas of the day in portraying idealized love. Thus, the final chapter of the dissertation addresses the romantic and realistic elements of Woolson's fiction by examining Woolson's literary technique--her settings, her characterizations, and her plots. Despite her romantic tendencies, Woolson is shown to be the realist she steadfastly claimed she was. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-01, Section: A, page: 0250. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

This study of the short fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne begins with the recognition of Ovid as a literary progenitor of the American Romantic master, especially as the Roman demonstrated his story-telling skills in his Metamorphoses. Much of Hawthorne's writing--the mythological and other tales and sketches, as well as his romances--reflects similar fascination with transforming traditional Greek material, for evidence indicates it provided much of both the subject matter and the psychological substructure of his narratives. In particular, Hawthorne's use of one myth from the classical tradition, that of Narcissus, appears to have resonated in the consciousness of the nineteenth-century writer to a greater extent than is generally noted by his critics. / After establishing the form of the Narcissus myth itself, particularly as it was presented in the Metamorphoses, and noting its implications for literary analysis, this study examines Hawthorne's short works for specific evidence of both structural affinities with this classical myth and imagery developing the pattern of discernible motifs. By searching for reflections of Narcissus among Hawthorne's fictitious characters--his artists, scientists, questers, and other tormented men and women of all ages--it becomes startlingly evident that in Hawthorne's short fiction the image of the youth beside the mirroring pool obviously haunted the author's mind, manifesting itself repeatedly, in one guise or another, in a significant number of his works. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2676. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

This study is an identification and review of Southern black writers who published literary works about the South during the years 1829-1953. The writers whose works are discussed either were born in or spent a number of years in the South--the former Confederate States of America and Maryland, Washington, D.C., Kentucky, and West Virginia. / The discussion is not an analysis of how well the authors wrote or how well they were received; rather it is a discussion of how they viewed the South and of their social analyses that focused on the pain and beauty which they saw inherent in the South. In these analyses of the pain and the beauty, the writers make use of the comic and the tragic. / The study is presented in four chapters: From Servitude of Freedom, 1829 to 1865; Reconstruction to 1912; From Migration to Depression, 1913-1928; and Oppressed, Depressed, Suppressed, but Determined, 1929-1953. Each chapter begins with a date that is historically significant to blacks in the South. The writers are discussed in chronological order of first publication within each given chapter. / The purpose of this study is to introduce the writers and their works and to emphasize the importance of studying such black writers in order to acquire a more complete understanding of the South as an integral facet of American society and its literature. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-08, Section: A, page: 3600. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Emerson's conception of the writer's role evolved because of--and also in spite of--the Common-sense philosophy and rhetoric he absorbed during his college years. The Scottish critics, Dugald Stewart, Archibald Alison, Hugh Blair, and Francis Jeffries, helped, ironically, both to unleash and restrain Emerson's writing genius. From 1818, the first year he submitted a college essay for a Harvard prize, to 1814, the year he published his first series of Essays, he would increasingly expand upon the Scottish rhetorical theory and philosophy he learned at Harvard. / Chapter one presents an overview of studies that examine Emerson's attitudes toward Scottish rhetorical theory. This overview establishes a need for a study of Emerson's early rhetorical principles in relation to the Common-sense philosophy underlying these principles. In chapter two, those tenets of Scottish philosophy that influenced Emerson's rhetorical literary opinions during and shortly after his Harvard years are highlighted. / Emerson followed neoclassical conventions in prose writing and criticism in his first two years at Harvard. Chapter three focuses on these early years and reveals Emerson's dependence on the rhetorical theory and precepts he found in Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and the Belle Lettres. Chapters four and five discuss the influence of both Edward T. Channing, Emerson's rhetoric teacher, and of William E. Channing, the great Unitarian minister. These brothers helped to reshape Emerson's perceptions about the art of writing and oratory. Both Channings, fully trained in Scottish Common-sense rhetoric and philosophy, encouraged Emerson to explore his "place of mind" as a source for an original style. At the same time, they urged "habits of watchfulness" in writing that Emerson would eventually find restrictive. / Emerson's style preferences in the 1840s are implicit in his complaints about the "calculated" rhetoric of the day. As chapter six will demonstrate, he would adopt strategies transcending the limited standards his Scottish-trained teachers had imposed upon the orator and writer in America. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-04, Section: A, page: 0983. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

This work is a collection of original poetry, subdivided into three sections: (I) Explorations, (II) Journeys Out, and (III) Images. The poems are exploratory, both in theme and technique, with a main objective of discovering poetic voice. Sections I and II are poems of self-exploration, and section III is a group of "image" poems, some in the traditional Imagist vein, others in an experimental form I have outlined in a critical work: The Image Question. The entire work springs from the creative thesis, China Baby, poetry that explores my heritage. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-04, Section: A, page: 0983. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

Dry Fire is a novel set in the southern United States in the late twentieth century. The novel chronicles the lives of several characters who enter the police academy at the same time, following them through a grueling training stage until each officer reaches solo status. The stress and danger involved in police situations is omnipresent. / Narrator and main character, Abigail Fitzpatrick, enters the police academy in her early thirties after having spent eight years as a paramedic. Issues of gender, privacy, and harassment plague Fitzpatrick throughout the novel as she attempts to integrate a traditionally fraternal order. Fitzpatrick's friendship with less competent and morally shaky Officer Sonny Morelli tests the limits of loyalty and professional integrity. The cost is steep for Fitzpatrick who must learn to balance these two values. In addition, Fitzpatrick is attempting to come to terms with a recent break-up. Her female lover, a police investigator, has moved out in the hope of obtaining a promotion to sergeant. Structurally, the novel is divided into four major sections. The first five chapters deal with training, where the action is forced by an outside agency--the academy. Tension and momentum build in chapters six through ten which deal with a concentrated fourteen-week training period on the streets. The circle of action and interaction expands to include Fitzpatrick's relationship with her trainers, with other officers, and with the public at large. Chapters eleven through fifteen pick up two years later. By now the characters have been firmly established and tension is further developed through personal interactions as friendship and ethics collide. In the final four chapters, the novel comes full circle when Fitzpatrick, now a seasoned officer, becomes a trainer of rookies. The struggles of other characters intensify, intersecting violently with Fitzpatrick's life, altering her perceptions and shaping who she becomes. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1619. / Major Professor: Jerome Stern. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.

Organ Music is a comic novel of approximately 100,000 words about a playwright, Rosalind Lawson, and here attempt to escape from a fundamentalist-ridden north Florida town. When her husband, Henry, a folklorist, remarks that he would be willing to leave Ohumpka if Roz beat his salary, she accepts a job as a dialoguist for a new Atlanta-based soap. As her new job progresses, Roz finds her own life slowly turning to soap until she realizes that a person with a comic worldview cannot find happiness writing for a humorless medium any more than she can find happiness living in a humorless town. / The novel celebrates the Comic Spirit but also satirizes four dismal phenomena in our society: workaholism, soap opera, fundamentalism, and pornography. After four months on the soap, Roz is caught in a terrible tangle of the four, which have more in common, she discovers, than most people realize or would care to admit. Yet, it is this very tangle that enables her to escape from Ohumpka. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-10, Section: A, page: 3227. / Major Professors: Janet Burroway; Jerome Stern. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.