The detailed examination of two of Shakespeare's female leads, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, is designed to determine whether or not these particular characters were free from the confines of their society, or if they were content within its oppressive grasp. A combination of Feminist Criticism and New Historicism reveals that Lady Macbeth and Gertrude did not overstep the bounds of their gender, but in fact were suppressed within them. The limited rights and freedoms of a woman during the Renaissance is heavily discussed, and aids in giving the reader a vivid impression of Lady Macbeth's and Gertrude's subjugation. As Renaissance women were considered and treated inferior to their husbands in all respects, so are these two characters. Once the supposed driving force behind her husband's actions, Lady Macbeth makes a swift but devastating departure after Macbeth expels her from both his personal and political matters. No longer needing his wife to appease his conscience, Macbeth finds his own aptitude for evil. Torn between her roles as a wife and mother, Gertrude forfeits her happiness to please her overemotional son. Long before her actual death, Gertrude sacrifices a part of her identity to meet Hamlet's expectations. Both women relinquish their hopes and dreams to fulfill those of the men around them. Their blinded selflessness and misplaced devotion result in their ultimate undoing. Though the typical reader of Macbeth and Hamlet sometimes considers these particular female characters to be strong, bold, and selfish, the values of Shakespeare's era and his actual text suggest otherwise. The playwright's time was marked by a bitter gender struggle that pervaded all areas of Renaissance life, including his own work. Upon first glance, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude might come across as women who were strikingly independent. Throughout the progression of the plays, however, both women take a backseat to more important matters, such as politics and war. Even their deaths do not truly belong to them, as they seem to serve as mere asides to the inevitable "manly" action. Striving to meet the expectations of the men they loved, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude lose themselves in the process.

Flannery O' Connor has long been an established southern writer of the mid-twentieth century. This paper discusses briefly the tenets of both Modernism and Post-Modernism as literary movements of the twentieth-century, then looks specifically at how O'Connor's fiction makes her a key hallmark figure in the movement known as Post-Modernism, but also as one of the first female southern writers to utilize very anti-Romantic themes and style. Further, this paper attempts to examine through a discussion of various contemporary male and female southern writers the depth of O'Connor's influence on their own works. Attention is also given to the differences found in voice, theme and tone between southern contemporary male and female writers today, and explanations are offered as to why these marked differences exist.

By means of contemporary diagnostic criteria, Prince Hamlet may be demonstrated to be a Bi-Polar I Manic Depressive. Because current genetic research suggests that this disease is inherited, it is logical to ask if Claudius also suffers from this disorder. It can be demonstrated that he does. We may conclude that Claudius murdered the late King of Denmark during a manic episode similar to the one in which Hamlet kills Polonius.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 223-239). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 249 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-245).

This dissertation investigates the works of two Black female writers: Flora Nwapa(African and Nigerian) and Zora Neale Hurston (African American). Although theycome from different geographical regions, both writers use the same rchetypal patterns to create strong female protagonists. By characterizing protagonists in their novels from an African religious cultural perspective, both authors dismantle the stereotypical images of how black women are typically portrayed in fiction. Using Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and archetypal criticism the study finds that both authors create black female protagonists who are wise, resilient, decisive, courageous, independent, and risk-taking; the women who, through their self-discovery journeys, are neither defined by nor in oppositional relationships with the males in their lives. The study compares how the qualities of two archetypal goddesses, Uhamiri of the Igbo cosmology and Oya of the Yoruba cosmology, are personified through the personalities of the two female protagonists in Nwapa's Efuru and Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, respectively. Using strong mythical females as templates, this research explores the ways in which the authors have defined their female characters, thus providing an alternative strategy for defining and analyzing black female characters in fiction. The study asserts that literary interpretation of Africana women should include the cultural realities associated with the African religious framework in order to capture the full essence of their humanity. In addition, African feminist thought, unlike Western feminist theory, provides a more realistic model of discourse on Africana women's selfidentity. Examining Africana women from these perspectives, as opposed to analyzing them based on European standards, is an effective method of discrediting stereotypical images that continue to plague the portrayal of black women in fiction. When black women in fiction are explored from this vantage point, the literary work sends a message of cultural authenticity and preservation that elevates Africana women, expanding their functions and positions in society beyond traditional roles.

Originally a pejorative label assigned to someone who has left a structured, civilized, sophisticated society for one (presumably) less responsible, less structured, and less industrious than the original, going native seems deceptively simple to define in its implications. However, it raises critical questions about one's sense of self within a group or nationality, opening up new categories within old oppositions. As the term's pejorative nature seems to continue to moderate, this text seeks to find the spaces in which the term "going native" places itself in the writing and film of the 1900's. The term is originally a British term for a phenomenon that touches all historical multicultural contacts and clashes. I am looking at a one-way street in examining this term: the characters involved were all created (in the case of fiction) or born (in the non-fiction examples) Anglo-American or British but found their ways into cultural settings that these two particular cultures find extremely foreign and mysterious. The Introduction looks briefly at the Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized to find a space for the idea of going native as well as looking the linguistic construction itself, its issues for Anthropology, and transculturation. Chapter One looks at the personality of the new native in Sokolov's Native Intelligence, Tidwell's Amazon Stranger and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (as well as Roeg's film of Conrad's novella and Coppola's Apocalypse Now ). Chapter Two examines the texts and films about Archie Belaney/Grey Owl and why a white man at the turn of the century would want to trade a white racial identity for that of an Indian at a time of such social disparity between the races. Chapter Three examines the intersection of going native and treason, focusing on Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Kim Philby, Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga and the writings of Rebecca West. The final chapter looks at an extreme of going native---going feral---(where the new native joins another species rather than another culture) through Margaret Atwood's Surfacing and the story of Dian Fossey.

The distribution of wealth occurs frequently in Mark Twain's novels, especially at the resolution. Indeed, Twain uses wealth as resolution in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. The repeated use of this formula in the author's approach to novel writing indicates the tremendous influence that capitalism had in shaping his worldview. In his early works, Twain appears to endorse capitalism in his use of wealth as resolution. Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and Huckleberry Finn each conclude with the distribution of capital as a reward to the protagonists and as an effective solution to conflicts presented throughout the texts. However, the tone of Pudd'nhead Wilson is decidedly different. This later novel ends with wealth as resolution, but the result is not the happiness granted to characters in Twain's previous works. Instead, the fates of Tom Driscoll, Chambers, and Roxy leave the reader with a sense of the inadequacy of capitalism. Twain's change in his approach reveals a rejection of bourgeois values. An examination at the resolution to all four novels reveals Twain's shifting Weltanschauung, culminating with a rejection of the dominant ideology in Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Inaug.-diss.--Marburg. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": 3d preliminary leaf.