It is a great deficit to Fantasy scholarship that Lord Dunsany has remained largely ignored. Despite the lack of critical attention Lord Dunsany's work has received at the hands of critics, his fiction has been immensely important to other Fantasy authors. Dunsany's prose is highly stylized and is an intricate aspect of his world building. While many critics agree that Dunsany's prose style is unique and masterful, no detailed analysis of it exists. This study focuses primarily on Dunsany's prose style in The King of Elfland's Daughter, widely agreed to be Dunsany's finest novel, and certainly characteristic of his early fiction writing. I then discuss Dunsany's profound influence on J.R.R. Tolkien's critical and fictional work. Both authors embrace Dryden's "fairy way of writing" within their respective works, embracing the old and romantic, as well as nature's creations, as precious treasures in our realm and in the imaginative realm of Faery. / by Skye T. Cervone. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis examines the first two novels of Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune and Dune Messiah, in order to consider these two novels from the framework of postcolonial theory and analyze how religious violence becomes a source of subjugation, military power, and colonialism within the works. The three chapters of this thesis chart the creation of a colonial project through epistemic violence, physical power, and cultural control enabled by religion. This thesis argues that, in the Dune novels, religious violence functions as a colonial project that closely resembles the goals of real-world colonial enterprises, and the failure to manage this colonial project by those who initiated it shows that the effects of colonial projects based on religious violence are dangerous and uncontrollable. / by Kenton Taylor Howard. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

In "On Fairy Stories" J.R.R. Tolkien writes that joy is the "mark of the true fairy- story." Tolkien believed that joy was the defining characteristic of the genre. This joy is not just apparent in the happy ending of the fairy tale, but also in the manner in which the plot and characters show theories of joy, and the way the text itself creates joy in the reader. This paper will explore Tolkien's creation of brightness, hope, and wonder, and how these instances express a theory of joy. First I will look at the different types of joy in Tolkien's work, then the more general theories that these types express, and finally the effect the joy in the story has on the reader. / by Natasha Minnerly. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Charles G. Finney’s 1936 novel The Circus of Dr. Lao was published to enthusiastic reviews, but fell into relative obscurity shortly thereafter. Since its publication, it has been the subject of one peer-reviewed critical essay, a number of reviews, one non-peer-reviewed essay, and a master’s thesis. It was published in a world where the fantastic and unique found only barren desert soil, with no scholarly tradition for the fantastic, nor a widely receptive lay audience for something truly unique, or sui generis. The concept of the sui generis, meaning “of its own kind,” provides a useful lens for examining the novel, as Finney develops not only creatures, but people, which are truly of their own kind, borrowing from existing mythologies, traits of humanity, and aspects of nature, recombining them in a singular way which resists classification. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Since Alejo Carpentier's 1944 encounter with the "real maravilloso" in the ruins of the Citadelle La Ferriáere, Haiti has been linked with the notion of Latin American identity, in particular, and American identity, in general. Interesting to me are the ways and the means by which Haiti resurfaces in Cuban and Puerto Rican narratives and what allusions to Haiti in these texts imply about its relationship to the Hispanic Caribbean. I will combine the ideas of John Beverley, Sybille Fischer, and Mimi Sheller to discuss how representations of Haiti work to perpetuate its disavowal and render it a consumable product for the rest of the Caribbean as a whole, and for the Hispanic Caribbean specifically. I will focus on works by Cuban and Puerto Rican authors who have prepared, processed, and packaged Haiti in such a way that its culture, language, and even sexuality are able to satisfy long-held cravings for that which is local and exotic. Thus, I hope to explain how it has been and will continue to be possible for the Hispanic Caribbean to consume Haiti positively as a symbol of its marvelous reality and negatively as an Afro-Caribbean personification of racial, cultural, and political decadence in literature. / by Walteria C. Tucker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

While Flannery O'Connor's characters and narrative landscape may share a history with those of other works often labeled "Southern gothic," her heavily judicious narrative voice utilizes the depravity of the South struggling to find its identity as a means to explore her vision of God's mercy and distinguishes her work as satirical criticism. This thesis analyzes her construction of a distinctive satirical narrative voice for Wise Blood, particularly as it deviates from how she initially wrote the first chapters as presented in earlier short stories like "The Train" and "The Peeler." Here, the ways in which O'Connor revises her diction and syntax to create a satirical tone will be examined closely. For the purposes of this paper, satire is defined as a literary work aimed at utilizing irony, hyperbole, or sarcasm to reveal, critique, and correct some moral, ethical, or social phenomenon or situation that the author finds reprehensible. / by Virginia A. Paxton. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

"Instead of studying, for example, how the psychology of personality limits and prevents real social and political change, we should be studying how political and ideological changes create new personalities and individual needs and motives." The above quotation is from social psychologist Professor John Turner, who is one of the two theorists, the other being Henri Tajfel, most responsible for the Social Identity Perspective, the principle subject of this thesis. The Social Identity Perspective is an approach to Social Psychology that incorporates two sub-theories: Tajfel's Social Identity Theory and Turner's Self-Categorization Theory. This thesis is based upon using the perspective for the purposes of creating more realistic and believable fictional characters in realist fiction. For the purposes of this thesis Pam Morris' definition of realism will be used, that being, 'any writing that is based upon an implicit or explicit assumption that it is possible to communicate about a reality beyond the writing.' According to both theories, individuals can develop two principal identities: the personal self, which is to say a collection of idiosyncratic qualities that define them as a unique individual, and a collective self (or social identity) that encapsulates the status and characteristics of the social groups they belong to in opposition to other social groupings. Turner theorised that the personality of a human being is heavily influenced by their social context at an unconscious level. This influence can be made manifest by their parents, by their school friends and work colleagues, by their romantic partners, and especially by the collective cultural expectations native to the area they choose to reside in. Turner put forward the concept that our personality and actions are therefore influenced by society at the level of how the individual defines himself or herself. This occurs without agency on the part of the individual. These social belief systems therefore mould what the individual thinks, their actions, and their motivations. This thesis will demonstrate a method of usage for elements of Social Psychology, specifically the Social Identity Perspective that underpins the actions, interactions and motivations of the fictional characters contained within the thesis's creative element. It is the contention of this thesis that The Social Identity Perspective will assist an author in marrying together ever more realistic characterisation to other areas of writer research already extensively drawn upon by the author such as those projects focused upon creating a more realistic setting in a historical novel for instance. As previously stated it is the intention of this thesis to apply aspects of social psychology to the creation of realist texts only, the findings however may also be of use to authors who write in other genres, after all even the writer of fantastic fiction still requires characters whose actions are fundamentally recognisable and justifiable to the reader in order for them to be able to make sense of the fiction and as Henry James said, 'one can speak best from one's own taste, and I may therefore venture to say the air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel'. It is the aim of this thesis that its findings may highlight the potential of using The Social Identity Perspective and other adjuncts of Social Psychology as tools for both plot construction and character development that is completely realistic. This may then lead to other areas of research, some of which are suggested in the concluding chapter of this thesis.

As realist and naturalist writers at the turn of the twentieth century adopted a scientific spirit of objectivity, they reflected the emphasis many contemporary scientific studies laid on the forces of the natural world in shaping the character, behavior, and ultimate destiny of man. In this literary mood of "pessimistic determinism," fantasy literature began to experience a resurgence, providing a marked contrast to naturalism's portrayal of the impotence of man to effect change in his circumstances. I examine fantasy's restoration of efficacy to the human will through a study of two representative works of the opposing genres: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter. As I demonstrate, the former naturalistic novel emphasizes the impotence of its characters in the face of powerful natural world, while the latter contemporary fantasy novel uniquely showcases man's ability to effect change in his world and his destiny. / by Tracy Stone. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.