published_or_final_version / abstract / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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"Of the endeavors made each year to select and reprint in an anthology the best magazine stories of the preceding twelve months, Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien's Best Short Stories, the first to be initiated, is one of the best known and most widely recognized. Many college, public, and secondary school librarians have accepted the collections as representative of the best current short story writing, and have made them a permanent part of their annual acquisitions. In this study, an attempt shall be made to determine O'Brien's purpose in establishing the anthology, the criteria followed, the procedures used in making the selections, and the critics' reactions to these criteria, procedures, and selections from 1915 to 1949. And finally, in order to determine more clearly what the reader may expect to find in a volume of Best Short Stories in terms of authors, kinds of stories, and magazines represented, an examination shall be made of these three factors in the selections of the eleven-year period, 1939-1949"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1951." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Robert G. Clapp, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-71).

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The poetry written by combat veterans and other witnesses to the Vietnam War is a testament to what they saw and felt in Southeast Asia. Through their poetry they build 'monuments' to their traumatic experience, piecing together memories in order to heal themselves and teach future generations about the horrors of Vietnam. These poems function in much the same way as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., both poem and Memorial requiring the effort of the 'reader' in order to propagate the legacy of the Vietnam War. By bearing witness to the Vietnam experience, the poem and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial facilitate questions; questions through which the reader and the visitor are able to construct their own imaginary monuments to the Vietnam War.

This essay closely studies several works written by American male writers--either while the author was in an American prison, or shortly after he was released. The first works studied, from the nineteenth century, introduce the themes and questions for the later discussion of the other works, all of which are taken from the twentieth century. A central focus of the essay is on the process by which all of the authors studied attempt a textual reversal of the positions of reader and author. In each of the works, the reader, generally seen as a member of 'outside' society, is portrayed as a representative of the imprisoning society. Thus, the textual confrontation is between a prisoner/author and a warden/reader; and the subsequent reversal that takes place through the medium of the text places the reader in the position of being a prisoner, with the author becoming the prison-authority, or warden. This reversal is used by the authors examined as means or attempt at freeing themselves from both the defining and imprisoning texts of society, as well as from the actual prison where the author finds himself. The writing of the prison-text, therefore, is a verbal act intimately associated with the gaining of various forms of at least visionary freedom.

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