Thèse--Lettres--Paris 7, 1989.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Added t.p. with thesis note. "The documentation": p. 309-310. Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 311-354).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Added t.p. with thesis note. "The documentation": p. 309-310. Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 311-354).

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005. / Thesis advisor: Christine Doyle. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves [72-76]). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The novels of Theodore Dreiser are notably rich in their picture of the operations of American business. The lives of all of the protagonists of these novels are shown to be influenced if not determined by the practices or conventions of our business system.

No description available.

Beginning in 1911 with Jennie Gerhardt and continuing through the publication of The "Genius" in 1915, all of Dreiser's major fiction is curiously marked by the same recurring narrative pattern. The pattern is always triangluar in construction and always contains the same three figures-- a vindictive and vengeful parent, outraged by an outisder's violation of personal and societal values; an enchanted offspring; and a disrupted outsider who threatens established order. In spite of each work's different characterization, setting, and episode, the narrative conflict invariably arises from the discovery of an illicit relationship between offspring and outsider, and the narrative climax involves a violent clash of wills, with victory sometimes going to the parent and sometimes to the outsider. The denouement is consistently sorrowful and pensive in tone, with a philosophical epilogue which speculates on man's melancholy and puzzling fate. As both a guide to personal therapy and a key to the work with which Dreiser established his artistic identity, the recurring narrative pattern is important. Its examination (1) illuminates an obscure period in Dreiser's life, (2) reveals his personality priorities as he turns the kaleidoscope of introspection to observe the Cudlipp crisis from various angles, and (3) offers to the discerning reader a reliable clue to the developing system of aesthetics of one of America's greatest artists.

The rise of naturalism in American letters was born out of a reaction against romanticism by writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and Robert Herrick, who attempted to rid the American novel of romanticism by delving deeper into life's truths than did the realists Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James. The naturalists objected to the limited subject matter of the realists; they focused their attention on "slums, crime, illicit sexual passions, exploitation of man by man"2 and other actualities of the world. George Perkins outlined other distinctions between realism and naturalism in American literature.3 He describes nineteenth-century realism, 1870-1890, as represented by writers who created a world of truth by keeping actuality clearly in mind. The emphasis was on the following: 1. Using settings that were thoroughly familiar to the writer. 2. Emphasizing the norm of daily experience in plot construction. 3. Creating ordinary characters and studying them in depth. 4. Adhering to complete authorial objectivity. 5. Accepting their moral responsibility by reporting the world as it truly was.

A study of strategies and attempts in Theodore Dreiser's novels The Financier, The Titan and The Stoic to resolve the conflict between the material and the spiritual. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that conflicts in Dreiser criticism reflect unresolved conflicts between these issues in his "Trilogy". Having outlined and shown the division in the literary criticism of the "Trilogy", in the first chapter of this thesis, I will discuss the three main themes, finance, art and women, which can be seen as strategies to bridge the division between the material and the spiritual. I will attempt to transcend the traditional categorization of Dreiser criticism to come to a more complex understanding of the core issues of his writing.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Mainz--Universität, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 373-420.