This composition is a single-movement work for three choirs and full orchestra, including celesta, piano, and four percussionists. Total duration is fifteen minutes. The music is divided into six sections, with the overall form being substantially influenced by the structure of the poem, War Is Kind, by Stephen Crane (1871-1900). Many devices are utilized to contrast tension and relaxation, as associated with ironic elements of the text, with repetition and development of musical elements and motives providing unity for the entire work.

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This project asserts that male Naturalist authors were not “hypermasculine” acolytes of strident manhood, but instead offer alternative constructions which they portray as less traumatic and more cohesive than prevailing social notions of normative male behavior. I maintain that the rise of the concept of manhood advocated by Theodore Roosevelt in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to this misconception, for it generated a discourse of “manly” individualism which became equated with socially acceptable performances of masculinity for many Americans. My first chapter illustrates the gradual evolution of an individualistic, violent, and strident concept of manhood, which I label “strenuous masculinity,” through the rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt. The second chapter explores the ways in which Stephen Crane’s fiction illuminates the trauma and confusion inherent in strenuous concepts of manhood. Many of Crane’s stories, like “Five White Mice,” demonstrate the failure of individualism, while others, like “The Open Boat,” document a more positive construction of what I call “homosocial manhood.” In my third and final chapter, I attempt to prove that Richard Wright’s early texts showcase a range of possible outcomes of black male attempts to stand up to racial oppression. I document that Uncle Tom’s Children and Native Son both depict a continuum of confrontation, with individual violence on one end of the spectrum and non-violent group protest on the other. Furthermore, because individual resistance is consistently equated with the suffering and death of the protagonists, my project implies that strenuous manhood also fails to provide a site for effectual and sustainable opposition to the negating forces of racial oppression. / Theodore Roosevelt and the transformation of American masculinity -- "The youth leaned heavily on his friend" : alternative constructions of masculinity in Stephen Crane's fiction -- Richard Wright's early fiction as a rejection of the racial oppression of strenuous manhood. / Department of English

This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first, comprising the three initial chapters, looks, in chapter one, at the specifically German origins of the Bildungsroman, its distinctive features, and the difficulties surrounding its transplantation into the literary contexts of other countries. Particular attention is paid to the ethical dimension of the genre, i.e. to the relation between the individual self and the exterior world, and how it affects individual formation. The focus then shifts to American literature, and the term 'narrative of initiation' is recommended as a credible alternative to 'Bildungsroman'. Allowing for similarities between them, it is none the less strongly suggested that the Bildungsroman of German origin and the American narrative of initiation should be seen as being intrinsically different, principally because of the different cultural backgrounds that shaped them. Several features of the theme of initiation are postulated as decisive factors in the discrepancies between the initiatory narrative and the Bildungsroman. Analysis of six texts - three of each literary tradition - follows, to provide support for the theoretical discussion of the terms introduced in chapter one. Three Bildungsromane are considered in the second chapter, namely Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Stifter's Der Nachsommer and Keller's Der grune Heinrich, and three narratives of initiation in chapter three: Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Their relevance to the tradition of German and American fiction as a whole and as precursors of Mann's Der Zauberberg and Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories is considered. A direct comparison between Mann's and Hemingway's texts constitutes the second part of this thesis, wholly contained in chapter four. In addition to a comprehensive critical reading of both narratives, the contemporaneity of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories is taken into account, and consequently special consideration is given to the texts' close relation with the cultural and historical realities of the early twentieth century, particularly the impact of the First World War. With the assistance of Jung's theories, an increased awareness of death and of the dark side of the psyche - though dealt with differently in both texts - is put forward as a significant factor in the deviation of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories from the traditions of the Bildungsroman and of the narrative of initiation. This departure leads to a re-appraisal of the relation between the protagonists and their society, and to a new ethical attitude that presupposes different, more modem conceptions of what Bildung and initiation represent in the context of the early twentieth century. How and why they changed and if they survived as literary notions are questions this thesis attempts to answer.