This paper is a study of a series of books known as the Winston Adventure Books, published by the John C. Winston Company. Each of these books, recommended by the publishers for children ten years of age or older, is based on little-known incidents in the life of an unsung hero who helped shape history. The editors of the series have planned these books to deal with events and personalities not adequately described in history. The various books in the series cover civilization from 1300 to World War II in 1942. This series is of sufficient importance to justify a study to determine the content and quality of the individual volumes in the series and their acceptance by professional librarians and reviewers. The characteristics of the series as a whole will be analyzed. Such a paper may prove to be useful to those interested in the study of children's and young people's literature and a valuable bibliographic source for a librarian interested in identifying books appropriate for slow or reluctant readers in high schools and in becoming familiar with books potentially valuable for supplementary reading in the social studies. / Typescript. / "January, 1960." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Sara Krentzman Srygley, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108).

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains three character types which serve as models for the protagonists of certain twentieth century writers. The distinguishing characteristics of Tom, Jim, and Huck reappear in the central figures of later American novels, novels dealing explicitly with the relationship between human perception and consequent behavior. The contrasting perceptions of Mark Twain's characters provide his novel with thematic tensions that, in distinct and enlarged forms, become basic interests of major twentieth century writers. The tragedy of fixed perceptions in a world of constant flux concerned William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom! and F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel depict heroes dissatisfied with but undaunted by the limitations of human perceptions. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye illustrate the evolution to maturity of George Willard and Holden Caulfield. Mark Twain's conscious presentation of three different and conflicting characters creates an appropriate categorization of types which elucidates thematic patterns in later American novels. The triangular conflict of perceptions in Mark Twain's novel can be traced in any number of modern American novels, and the character types defined by Tom Sawyer, Jim, and Huck Finn can be applied to many more works than are considered here. All of the works treated in this paper are novels of initiation; their protagonists are. young men encountering life and confronting America. The fact that these characters are widespread throughout modern literature indicates the seriousness with which the American writer is committed to arriving at an understanding of the power and limitations of human perceptions.

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This thesis is an in-depth study of Shona fiction about the liberation war in Zimbabwe. It looks at the way Zimbabwe’s liberation war is portrayed in Shona fiction and focuses on the factors that shaped writers’ perspectives on that war. It is argued that Shona war fiction writers romanticised the war and in the process simplified and distorted history. The researcher postulates that writers’ perspectives on this liberation war were shaped by factors that include the mood of celebration and euphoria, the dominant ideology of the time, the situations of independence and freedom, and literary competitions. The thesis further raises and illustrates the point that writers produced romances of adventure because they were writing on the theme of war, and if one writes on the theme of war one ends up writing an adventure story. However, it is also acknowledged that because authors were writing on a historical event they could not ignore history completely. Some aspects of history are incorporated into the fiction, thereby retaining a semblance of historical realism. The post-independence period is also seen as a time of cultural revival and this is considered as the reason behind the authors’ tendency to celebrate Shona traditional institutions and culture. The celebration of Shona traditional religion and culture introduced into the fiction the element of the supernatural that strengthened the romance aspect of the novels. Shona war fiction writers also perpetuate female stereotyping. Female characters are depicted as everything except guerrilla fighters. It is argued that there are no female characters that play roles of guerrilla fighters because during the actual war women were not visible at the war front, fighting. The thesis argues that men, who were pioneers of the guerrilla war and writers of the war stories, excluded women from liberation war discourse and ultimately from literary discourse as well. A few writers who comment on the quality of Zimbabwe’s independence and freedom show the disillusionment and despair of the peasants and ex-combatants as they struggled to settle down and recover from the war. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil.

黃念欣. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2004. / 參考文獻 (p. 354-462). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Huang Nianxin. / Lun wen (Zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2004. / Can kao wen xian (p. 354-462).