George MacDonald (1824-1905) was an important Scottish author. Very little has been done in the area of scholarly research on his shorter imaginative fiction. MacDonald authored over fifty books. / MacDonald was raised within the strict Scottish Calvinistic roots but broke with this tradition. Most of MacDonald's religious values come through clearly in his fiction. / This dissertation examined the childhood of MacDonald, paying careful attention to those elements that shaped and influenced his imagination. Further attention was given to the significant literary figures that MacDonald's fiction influenced. Among those people, one finds Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, and T. S. Eliot. MacDonald's impact varies but they were all influenced by MacDonald's imaginative fiction. / MacDonald also formulated his own theory of the imagination. This theory was examined in light of MacDonald's religious and moral convictions. It was seen that there was a very close connection between religion, morality and imagination in the thought and writings of MacDonald. / Next, twenty of MacDonald's works of imaginative fiction were examined. Special focus was placed on recurring images, ideas, archetypes, religious themes, moral issues and symbols. It was seen that MacDonald's religious convictions were implicit and explicit in these writings. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3070. / Major Professor: John Priest. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

This dissertation is a one-act play about three important women in the life of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. I have used Yeats' poetry and one of his plays, The Only Jealousy of Emer, along with biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, letters and criticism to dramatize the relationships Yeats had with Maud Gonne, her daughter, Iseult Gonne, and George Hyde-Lees. Yeats proposed marriage to each of these women between September, 1916, and October, 1917, the time span for the first three scenes of my play. The fourth and final scene of my play is set twenty-two years later, the year of Yeats' death. I began each of my scenes with an excerpt from Yeats' play The Only Jealousy of Emer to dramatize the relationship between Yeats' life and his work. He wrote his play in an attempt to symbolically understand his emotional connection to each of the three women. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-09, Section: A, page: 3269. / Major Professor: Janet Burroway. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

Statement of the problem. The purpose of this study was to develop a matrix for designing a standard which could be applied in conducting analyses of the content, kinds, and relative amounts of information based on current linguistic knowledge and theory presented in a selected group of college freshman English textbooks. / Procedure. The matrix for this investigation was established from a collection of college freshman English textbooks which are currently used in forty-three (43) private colleges in Georgia and thirty-two (32) public units of the University System of Georgia. A model checklist developed by the investigator, with inputs from other English professionals, was used to determine acceptable language and linguistics content in randomly selected textbooks. In order to assure positive identification, each selected textbook was assigned a code. The contents of each of the texts in the study were examined for category, substance, and relative amounts of information contained in each selected book. Once the research data were compiled, they were measured through the use of standard statistical reliability tests. / Findings. (1) There are more textbooks in which categories of content based on traditional grammar predominate than textbooks in which categories of content based on current linguistic theory and knowledge are predominant. (2) The textbooks in which categories of content based on traditional grammar predominate did comprise a textbook type--either handbook, rhetoric, or composition skills text. (3) Other relationships within and among the textbooks, such as a relationship between content emphasized and date of publication, and between quality of content and publishing companies were revealed. (4) The potential of this study is that it may provide a clear, objective, and valid standard for systematically assessing the presence or absence of language and linguistics content in both textbooks and courses of study. (5) The standard might also serve as a non-impressionistic guide in the planning of language and linguistics content in a freshman English course of study. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-03, Section: A, page: 0691. / Major Professor: Dwight D. Burton. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is often read as a part of its historical milieu. The terms "Gothic fiction" and "Romantic novel" abound in the critical literature. From this point of view, the novel explores the limits of ambition and rebelliousness and their moral implications. These readings are inextricably linked to the traditions of Prometheus, as evidenced by the novel's subtitle, and Milton's Paradise Lost, stories which were important to nineteenth-century Gothic and Romantic writers. In the past few decades, however, feminist critics have read the novel as a criticism of Romantic Prometheanism and the 'masculine' consciousness which literature projects. The feminist literary critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that Frankenstein is Shelley's criticism of the cultural and literary traditions which value 'maleness' over 'femaleness.' For them, Paradise Lost is the literary model of Frankenstein. Subversion of Milton and the gendered ideology Paradise Lost projects, they argue, is Shelley's intent. But Milton was certainly not the originator of what Gilbert and Gubar term "patriarchal poetry." Rather, Milton inherited a poetic tradition that can be traced through Dante and Vergil to Homer, the originator of our western literary tradition. This dissertation brings to light the many thematic and structural parallels between Frankenstein and Homer's Odyssey, reading Frankenstein as a subversion of the Hero vs. Monster paradigm that Odysseus and Polyphemos (and the Suitors) represent. Joseph Fontenrose defines this struggle as a "combat myth" and observes that it articulates the archetypal struggle between the force of Cosmos over Chaos. The combat myth, however, narrates the story of a 'masculine' hero vanquishing a 'feminine' monster and becomes the archetype of a gendered literary tradition. Whereas Odysseus defeats the monster Polyphemos and firmly reestablishes domestic harmony with his wife, Penelope, by vanquishing the monstrous suitors, Victor is defeated by his monster, who in turn murders Victor's betrothed, Elizabeth. The paradigm of heroic myth, canonized in the West from Homer onwards, is subverted. It is my belief that Shelley took the very essence of "patriarchal poetry," the epic form, and used that structure and tradition to expose and reevaluate the 'masculine' heroic ideal. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-07, Section: A, page: 2373. / Major Professor: Karen L. Laughlin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

This dissertation examines nine representative unfinished works of art. It begins with the Van Eycks's Ghent Altar (1432), an example of the practice, common in the medieval era of having a work of art left unfinished by one artist completed by another. Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi (1481-82) and Michelangelo's Boboli Captives (c. 1519) raise the issue of determining the reasons why works have been left unfinished. Mozart's Requiem (1791) and Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) represent works left unfinished because of the artists' deaths. / Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony (1822), Rodin's Gates of Hell (1880-1900), and Duchamp's Large Glass (1912-23) were all intended to be completed but left unfinished during the artists' lifetimes for artistic reasons. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (1797) represents works not actually unfinished but deliberately presented as fragments by the artist. / Critical issues raised by unfinished works are considered. Unfinishedness means different things in the context of different works, and it is not possible to have one definition that can be applied to all unfinished works. Unfinished works can provide insight that might otherwise be unavailable about the artist and the artist's ideas about art and aesthetics. The reason why a work of art was left unfinished has considerable significance. Nevertheless, the aesthetic character of the work itself still determines the nature of the interaction of the audience with the work and the role of the critic. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-02, Section: A, page: 0324. / Major Professor: Douglass Seaton. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

This study applies Toulmin's model of argumentation to the analysis and teaching of the short story in English. The model, based on the judicial system where contentions must be proved before a verdict is rendered, provides a practical layout for the analysis of arguments and conclusions belonging to different fields of knowledge. / The work outlines the model and the interrelationship of its components--claim, data, warrant, backing, rebuttal, and qualifier--in the establishing of a conclusion. It also outlines the development of the short story in English during the last one hundred and fifty years as it sets its base for the application of the layout to sample stories. By analyzing stories from different periods and representative authors of the modern American and British short story, this study thus demonstrates the applicability of Toulmin's layout to the field of literature and, specifically to the genre of the short story. Conclusions--both implied by and inferred from the texts--are supported by evidence from the stories themselves, regardless of time period and the author's gender and nationality. / The use of the model allows readers and students alike to search for logical and rational explanations to their reactions and conclusions from the stories they read. It also helps them to formulate informed and rational questions that in turn help to clarify their doubts. As a result, readers of the short story can better understand, appreciate, and enjoy a story. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-02, Section: A, page: 0540. / Major Professor: Fred Standley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

In nineteenth-century England, an assertive element of the working classes, identified as Chartists, fought for sweeping democratic reforms of government and society. In response, the Victorian Christian Socialists, Charles Kingsley, John Malcolm Ludlow and Frederick Denison Maurice attempted to direct the working classes away from the Chartist agenda through the rhetoric of rights and duties in Politics for the People. Until this date, a monograph commenting exclusively on Politics has not been published. Consequently, Torben Christensen's analysis of the paper in Origin and History of Christian Socialism is the best available commentary. The most current, sophisticated delineation of these individuals and their relations to society has been accomplished by Edward Norman in his study of Church and Society in England and in his collection of biographies, The Victorian Christian Socialists. The religious opinions which the Christian Socialists expressed toward the social order may be explained with reference to the sociological theories of Max Weber, Richard Tawney, Ernst Troeltsch and Richard Niebuhr. Their observations and descriptions of typical attitudes provide a matrix for considering and comparing the various attitudes of the Christian Socialists. The sociological theories of Peter Berger will be relied upon to sort out which among the various possible perspectives on society each of the main contributors to Politics held. Berger's works provide the paradigmatic interpretive sociology suitable for analysis of both religious beliefs and social attitudes as cultural phenomena. Where attention turns specifically to literature, the literary theory of Raymond Williams will be used to augment the Bergerian model. A modified Bergerian methodology will facilitate the delineation of the material and ideological forces which influenced the Christian Socialists. The purpose of this dissertation is to expand the historical and biographical research already accomplished in order to give a more precise account for and an indepth analysis of the ideological differences expressed by Maurice, Kingsley and Ludlow in Politics for the People. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1635. / Major Professor: Fred Standley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.

In 1566, largely in response to the Reformation, Pope Pius V's circa pastoralis enforced clausura (enclosure) on all female religious communities. Protestant populations simultaneously were moving to enclose women within a single, appropriate sphere of domesticated and sexualized space (i.e., the home) which, like the convents, attempted to enforce chastity, obedience, separation and silence. This dissertation engages a number of cultural and historical contexts to construct a reading of the nun as both a historical figure and as an unstable cultural category. Chapter I explores the relationship between female chastity and national constructions of male honor and identity through the texts, The Rape of Lucrece, The Voyage of Thomas Cavendish round the whole earth, and Oroonoko. Chapter II interrogates the subtle resistance to this model in both Shakespeare's portrayal of transitional virginity and Katherine Philips, poetic construction of female friendship circles. In Chapter III, the texts, 'Eloisa to Abelard' and A Simple Story are shown to reflect the ideological struggle between women who long for a voice and a culture interested in silencing them In the course of my investigation, I found that the ideological (and literal) control of sacred female bodies was an integral part of the Catholic/Protestant tension. Ironically, I found that the importance of these women whose sexuality, chastity and/or fertility symbolized and defined nations did not lead to their empowerment, but merely to the necessity of their submission to patriarchal authority. In the final analysis, while women were reverenced for their chastity, they were also criticized for what was seen as its subversive stance / acase@tulane.edu

The most important political occurrence in England in the first decade of the eighteenth century is the establishment of a standing army during the War of the Spanish Succession, for the theatre is dominated by anxiety which can be traced to the growing cultural presence of the military in society. This dissertation is a cultural history of the theatre of the early eighteenth century, focusing on the comedies of Farquhar, Steele, Burnaby, Baker, Centlivre, and others. I emphasize social relationships and theoretical constructions of gender, class, and the human body rather than aesthetics and form, and I contend that military transformations leave an indubitable cultural impression in English society and on the stage Chapter One establishes historically the state's monopolization of physical force and argues that the comedies reveal a 'civilizing process' wherein the individual is forced to restrain his affects and that the feudal warrior is thereby transformed into a courtly nobleman or gentleman. Chapter Two shows how the comedies are dominated by an epistemology of a mechanized body, the theory of which I trace to the institutionalization of power and discipline in the standing army; the observation of mechanical principles at work in the human body leads dramatists to challenge the idea of a 'natural' or essentialized human behavior. In Chapter Three, I examine how the rise of nationalism in an age dominated by war and international trade creates anxiety about male gender identity; dramatists discover that masculinity is conceptually unstable and performative, an essentialized identity being a fiction constructed by class-based cultures competing for dominance. In Chapter Four, I explore the struggle for cultural capital between the discourses of aristocratic hegemony and emerging bourgeois self-assertions; having established that behavior is performative, the comedies show the intensity of social imitation, affectation, and anxiety. Chapter Five gathers the ideas of the foregoing chapters into a reading of The Recruiting Officer, the most popular comedy of the century. Focusing on specific transformations in military culture and technology, I show how Farquhar captures and disarms the competing cultural anxieties of his age yet manages to create a living play that has cultural reverberations even today / acase@tulane.edu

Although the word 'hero' does not occur in Old English, the concepts of heroism and heroic virtue in Old English and early Middle English poetry have inspired a long and rich critical history. Indeed, these concepts have in many ways defined much of the criticism, particularly of the early period and specifically of Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. Late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholars such as Levin L. Schucking and Friedrich Klaeber recognized heroism as central to the literature, and in 1958, R. E. Kaske defined heroic virtue according to the formula sapientia et fortitudo, as the 'controlling theme' of Beowulf. These concepts, however, are not static, but rather they change throughout the period and even within individual texts In each of the four texts that I analyze in this dissertation--- Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, AElfric's Maccabees, and Layamon's Brut---crises arise to test the respective heroes. How the reader judges the hero depends largely upon how the writer responds to the sometimes problematic ethics of heroic action. Not only is heroic virtue an elusive concept to define, it also conflicts often with other ethical, theological, or political paradigms present in the texts. It is difficult, for example, for a poet to reconcile in a single text a martial ethic and a Christian ethic, or heroic pride and the Christian sin of pride, or heroic autonomy and the centralized power of kingship. This difficulty can create an ethical problem for the writer or an interpretive problem for the reader or the critic. A writer may encode in the text such ethical complexity, which will make it difficult for the reader to arrive at a consistent or comprehensive interpretation; however, the more didactic writer may wish to resolve any ethical problems and to guide the reader towards what he or she considers a proper or orthodox interpretation / acase@tulane.edu