Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-02, Section: A, page: 0878. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1978.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, Section: A, page: 4059. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

When John Cleland published Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in 1749, the critics immediately labeled it pornographic. This study is an attempt to eradicate this opinion. Fanny Hill is in reality structured in the didactic mode of the other major novels of the eighteenth century. Fanny Hill is a narrative about life in eighteenth-century England; it is about the same social and moral issues found in Clarissa, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones and other novels. But the morality of Fanny Hill was disguised in a lively sex story that dominated its major themes. / It was not until 1764 and the publication of Matthew G. Lewis' The Monk that another author used sex as John Cleland. The Monk was labeled a Gothic novel, but there are many parallels between it and Fanny Hill. This study, also, includes a discussion of the similarities of character and theme between Fanny Hill and The Monk. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-01, Section: A, page: 0188. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

This study presents five chapters for the discussion of five social problem novels: Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845), by Benjamin Disraeli; Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell; and Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1851) by Charles Kingsley. As social problem novels they contain a social thesis which proposes to influence human relations in a general or particular way. / My purpose is to demonstrate to what extent the nineteenth century critics believe Disraeli, Gaskell, and Kingsley have effected successful social protests in these romans a these. / This study commences with an introduction to the condition of England and is followed by the first chapter which provides brief information about the writers, their novels, and their letters. / Chapter Two examines how the critics excoriate Disraeli's social protest in Coningsby. Disraeli's motives are self-serving; Young Englandism is of ephemeral interest and cannot regenerate England's national character. Sybil is a more successful social protest whereby its strengths balance against its weaknesses. / In Chapter Three the critics unanimously acclaim Gaskell's Mary Barton as the premier social problem novel of its time in purpose, content, and style. An exemplary life, bolstered by a lifetime of personal experience among the poor eminently qualify her to write such a novel in which her tragic scenes, characterization, and description summon the deepest pathos and lay bare the general social distress of this period. / In Chapter Four the critics contend that Kingsley's social protest in Alton Locke is hampered by his lack of first-hand experience with the poor, his violation of the properties of composition, and his demagogic tone. On the other hand Kingsley's explanation of the slop-shop practices in the tailoring business, his pictorial power, and some of his characterization re-establish a vivid social protest. They ascribe his social protest in Yeast a failure because the novel violates the properties of composition and contains so many themes which fragment its focus. / Chapter Five summarizes the social protest value of the novels surveyed in this study. It places in perspective the literary contribution of these authors to the social problem novel. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-11, Section: A, page: 3935. / Director: John J. Fenstermaker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

This study takes a structural approach to narrative in short poems (under 300 lines) by British and American poets of the 20th-century, using examples by a wide range of poets to investigate a number of narrative tactics and to consider their importance in relation to several of the major poetic forms of this century: portraiture, symbolism, confessionalism, surrealism, and reflexivity. / The introduction outlines some causes for the critical neglect of narrative in short poems and calls for a reappraisal of the terms lyric and narrative as they apply to such works. Chapter 2 considers the influence of point of view and narrative focalization on the unity and dramatic complexity of portrait poems by Masters, Robinson, Pound, Frost, Levertov, and Jarrell. Chapter 3 covers such topics as narrative's promotion of psychological symbolism, narrative time and the timeless world of symbols, narrative's power to support symbolism directly or create ironies, and symbolism's completion of the action of the narrative. Poets discussed: Yeats, Frost, Lawrence, Roethke, and Dickey. Chapter 4, "Confessionalism and Narrative", deals with several issues: the inclusion of personal and cultural history; the multiple focalization created by the union of narrator, character, and poet; the need to include the materials of everyday life; the fictionalization of the self; and the psychoanalytical-like aspects of narrative transformations. Lowell's "My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow" is discussed at length. Chapter 5 investigates the experimentalism resulting from the surrealist attempts to overthrow the illusions of realism which are the goal of many narratives. Poets discussed: O'Hara, Ignatow, James Tate, and Louis Simpson. Chapter 6 looks at the fabula/sjuzet distinction outlined by the Russian Formalists and applies the concepts to a discussion of reflexivity in poems by Ashbery, Strand, Dubie, and Simpson. The conclusion asserts that invention in structure is extremely important in the narrative of short poems and that two kinds of "inner necessity"--that of the poet and that of the narrative structure--work together to control the invention and create significant poetic narratives. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-08, Section: A, page: 2297. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

Long glorified as a writer of home life, Dickens devotes his energy and talent to scrutinizing the middle-class family structure in his novels. His portrayals of middle-class households are full of perplexing contradictions. Adopting a social and historical approach, this study examines how Dickens works the complexity of Victorian middle-class family structure into his novels. / The first part of this study discusses numerous Victorian concerns involving the family by examining modern social and historical studies and various nineteenth-century essays published in major Victorian journals. Among these concerns are marriage, the household structure, the meaning of love, the roles of women, children, and siblings. By broadly applying Raymond Williams's analytic model of cultural process (the dominant, the residual, the emergent), this analysis presents a multiple picture of the Victorian middle-class family. / The second part of the dissertation discusses how dominant, residual, and emergent elements are projected into four of Dickens's works, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Hard Times. In chapter three, Dickens's contradictions in portraying domestic scenes are analyzed by examining his description of the fall of the paterfamilias in Dombey and Son. Dealing with David Copperfield, the fourth chapter discusses David's dilemma in his quest for an ideal home. The rise of the materfamilias in Bleak House, examined in chapter five, intensifies Dickens's recognition of a dominant femininity in the Victorian domestic world. In its analysis of chaotic domestic scenes in Hard Times, chapter six deals with Dickens's dilemma between idealizing domestic life and exposing conflicts within the middle-class household. / Rather than operating only within the context of the Victorian idealization of the family, these four novels address the variations and contradictions of the Victorian family subculture. It is these contradictions, and interplay of the dominant, the residual, and the emergent in Williams's terms, that enrich Dickens's novels. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-08, Section: A, page: 2929. / Major Professor: John J. Fenstermaker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

One of the more fascinating characteristics of Samuel Johnson's paradoxical temperament was his passionate and lifelong involvement with youth. Whether the "old man's child" of Lichfield, the almost shoeless student at Oxford, the "harmless drudge" of Gough Square, or the literary arbiter of Streatham and the Club, Johnson was surrounded by younger people of diverse backgrounds--from prostitutes to peers of the realm--and of varied achievements or promise, revered companions whose friendships with him often spanned many years. The purpose of this study is to explore the depth and breadth of Johnson's attachment to young people and to demonstrate, first, that this attachment influenced a group of younger associates who benefited from his aid, instruction, and encouragement and who helped to perpetuate his name among further generations; and, second, that it provided Johnson with an intellectual stimulus and a constant assessment of new ideas which profoundly affected the course of his own thinking and writing. / The circle that revolved around Johnson included some of the most brilliant minds and talents of the age: David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir John Hawkins, Thomas Percy, Charles Burney, Thomas Warton, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and numerous others. But while he "talked for victory" among his reserved and scholarly colleagues, he, at the same time, "frisked" and "rambled" with Oxford students Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk. In the company of a Boswell, a Hester Thrale, or a Fanny Burney, he could provide the intellectual stimulus and excitement that they most sought in him or could lapse into a bear-like playfulness that, in their later memorials, they recalled with equal affection. As well as housing and otherwise aiding wastrels and prostitutes, he raised and educated a West Indian negro and made him the principal beneficiary of his estate. In one way or another, with prefaces, dedications, ghostwriting, emendations, encouragement, advice, and money, Johnson assisted the young people who came to him or whom he found in want or distress. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, Section: A, page: 0493. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

George Eliot's novels are widely acknowledged to use the science of her day in their tropes, plots, and themes; but the novels of Charles Dickens (with the exception of Bleak House) do not receive similar critical attention, despite his enthusiastic pursuit of articles on science for the journals he edited, despite his friendships with prominent doctors and scientists, and despite his championing of causes having their wellsprings in science (such as sanitary reform). / This study asserts that Dickens, like Eliot, uses science in the figurative language of his novels and specifically examines the rhetorical functions of metaphors drawn from natural history in two bildungsromane--The Mill on the Floss and Great Expectations--written at nearly the same time (1860-1861). The purpose of the comparison is to examine differences in the two novelists' use of metaphor and to explore how these differences are related to the working methods and theories of composition of the writers. This study also touches on the special relationship of metaphor to the bildungsroman. / While a thorough analysis of the natural history metaphors in The Mill on the Floss and Great Expectations forms the heart of the study, Bleak House and Middlemarch also figure as points of comparison in the artists' development. Essays and short fiction pieces provide further background. Many studies exist on Eliot's use of science, but none discusses the rhetorical uses of science at this level of detail. Using works written at nearly the same time and of the same subgenre lends validity to the comparison. Ultimately a picture emerges of two artists whose working methods differ and whose theoretical positions seem poles apart, yet the message that readers derive is virtually identical--we are all tied to each other through biology and morality. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: A, page: 0200. / Major Professor: John Fenstermaker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

As E. D. Hirsch has said, "Every possible sphere of interpretation" reflects an "element of uncertainty." While this "gap" is "the defining feature of interpretation," it is the critic's primary task either to narrow that break as much as possible or to show how its gulf is unbridgeable. Eighty years of often disparate and sometimes diametrically opposed views has characterized the criticism of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, especially with regard to two issues--the disposition of the narrator, John Dowell, and the nature of his narrative. Is Ford's work unbridgeable, or can a critical inquiry which maintains the initial impressions of a first-read tell us something about the narrator and his "saddest story"? It is the purview of this study to answer that question. Because it is predicated on the centrality of the reader in literary interpretation, it begins with what Hans Jauss calls a "progressive" reading, proceeds with two "retrospective" readings, the last following the examination of issues related to Ford. What this process has concluded is that The Good Soldier is the product of several conflicting approaches and modes of thinking reflective of Ford's Janusian mentality. It is a three-dimensional novel, the result of Ford's appeal to three levels of readers. To fascinate his "l'homme moyen sensuel," Ford creates a passionate tale of subterfuge; to delight his critics, he incorporates the psychological machinations of the unstable mind using Impressionism as his conveyor; to appeal to his fellow artists, Ford creates a new genre which transcends mere Story or mere revolutionary artifact which would have dispensed with the tradition he knew and loved. The Good Soldier fuses traditional, Impressionistic, and Vorticist legacies, the first highlighting Story, specifically, the mystery genre, the second featuring technique, and the third inciting the innovative commingling of both. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-02, Section: A, page: 0557. / Major Professor: Hunt Hawkins. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

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