This thesis reaffirms the Celtic influence on Beowulf. The first chapter reevaluates past attempts to demonstrate a Celtic connection with particular emphasis on the work of Martin Puhvel and R. Mark Scowcroft. The second chapter compares Grendel’s Mother to the Lady of the Lake, from the Prose Lancelot, using the Celtic water hag motif. The third chapter analyzes how Grendel exemplifies the Celtic motifs of the violent child and the wild man by comparing him with Cu Chulainn, from the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Lancelot, from the Prose Lancelot, and the Celtic wild man tales surrounding Suibhne, Myrddin, and Lailoken. The final chapter uses Michael D. C. Drout’s Lexomic analysis and a network analysis by Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna to problematize the assumed unity of the text. Therefore, this thesis provides both narrative and textual evidence to validate the Celtic influence on Beowulf.

This thesis utilizes Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self” to examine three texts from 1980s British literature for the ways that postmodern writers compose the self. The first chapter “Liminality and the Art of Self-Composition” explores the ways in which liminal space and time contributes to the self-composition in J.L. Carr’s hybrid Victorian/postmodern novel A Month in the Country (1980). The chapter on Jeanette Winterson’s novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) titled “Intertextuality and the Art of Self-Composition” argues that Winterson’s intertextual play enables her protagonist Jeanette to resist the dominance of religious discipline and discourse and compose a more autonomous, artistically oriented self. The third chapter, titled “Spatial Experimentation and the Art of Self-Composition,” examines R.S. Thomas’s collection The Echoes Return Slow (1988), a hybrid text of prose and poetry, arguing that Thomas explores spatial gaps in the text as generative spaces for self-composition.

Review of Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians. by Hugh Kenner

George Meredith's Modern Love deals with a formula for achieving happiness in life by a man whose marriage has failed. His marital breakup serves as a catalyst for the husband's internal journey which, through intense self questionings, leads him to a fuller understanding of himself and his purpose within the harmony of nature. Definite overt action and external events are secondary in the sonnet sequence. Indeed, the major portion of the work is conveyed by images which reveal the husband's developing psychological states. As Lionel Stevenson says of Modern Love in the standard biography of Meredith, . . . the action is not easy to decipher; and, once deciphered, it sounds like the plot of a conventional "problem" drama. This was merely the framework, however, on which Meredith displayed his interpretation of . . . ethical and psychological issues.1 Modern Love, then, which expresses a vision of reality based upon the interaction of the protagonist's inner consciousness with his external environment, is the vehicle for Meredith's philosophy concerning right--proper--action in life. The husband in the sonnet sequence learns through suffering that man must observe nature, accommodate himself to and accept change, and apply reason to his instinct. 1. Lionel Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 104.

In Poets of Reality, Joseph Hillis Miller seeks to establish T.S. Eliot as a precursor of the modern movement towards romantic. subjectivism. By applying his phenomenological critique, Miller claims that several major modern writers, including Eliot, adopt aesthetics based on various forms of philosophical monism. The point underlying this thesis is that Eliot stands opposed to any such position and, until 1930, breaks with philosophy, monistic or otherwise. His art from this period is instead characterized by a search for solution in poetic artifice, a pure art. However, with "Ash Wednesday," the poet once again enters fully into the realm of ideas, and by Four Quartets has achieved a synthesis of art and idea that is clearly dualistic in nature and affirms the importance of a progressive, and not destructive tradition. All of this he finally undergirds with a logocentric belief in language as a vehicle to be purified, far from the linguistic nihilism of Miller's "Yale School" colleague, Jacques Derrida.

The examination of the climaxes of the two plays Hamlet, and Coriolanus, illustrates that the two mothers, Gertrude and Volumnia, have destructive influences on their sons. The closet scene in Hamlet reflects that Gertrude's second marriage and her choice of Claudius shatter Hamlet's Idealization of her in the role of the faithful wife and the virtuous mother. Hamlet's inaction and destruction are caused in part by his mother's influence. Volumnia's influence both shapes and destroys her son. She rears him as the embodiment of her chivalric ideal of nobility. The climactic scene in this play reveals that Coriolanus' calamity is caused by his mother's influence. The study shows that Hamlet's catastrophe springs from an inability to accept the disparity between the real 'Gertrude of the play and his Idealization of her, and that Coriolanus catastrophe springs from his inability to conform to the ideal Volumnia has instilled in him, and act in accordance with his concept of filial duty. This thesis examines and reveals sore of the inadequacies of a psychoanalytic approach to explain the action of the characters case studies of the suppression of sexual drives.

The vehicle Tennyson uses to explore the thematic ambiguities of love/indifference; faith/doubt; hope/despair; and life/death is domestic imagery, specifically images which involve the home or house and those images of personal relationships which move the poet from despair to a tentative faith. The initial chapter of this work will present a general view of Tennyson and In Memoriam by which the subsequent study of the elegy's domestic imagery may be brought into focus. In addition to a discussion of the occasion of the poem, pertinent critical material will be evaluated in terms of value to this discussion of imagery. After a brief working definition of domestic imagery in Chapter II, an in-depth analysis of this imagery in In Memoriam will be studied. The first major cluster of domestic images is found in the beginning movement of the poem. In this movement images of domesticity proliferate. The aspects of home life which pertain to the poet's grief over the loss of his beloved friend will be explored and analyzed in depth in Chapter III. Moving away from the domestic scene, the poet concentrates in the next major movement on a specific symbol: the hand. This hand imagery is the vehicle for the poet's exploration of the tree aspects of love: agape, philia and eros. In Chapter V, it will be shown that the poet, in his grief, progresses through a movement of mind from negation to indifference. These attitudes of denial and insouciance are not conveyed by a single cluster of images such as those of domesticity and the home, but rather by disparate images as widely scattered as physical objects, states of mind, and human relationships. In delineating the progress of Tennyson's grief from despair through indefference to affirmation, the poet traversed essentially those elements found in Hegelian Triad - thesis, antithesis and synthesis - or in the Carlylian diction of the Everlasting Nay, the Centre of Indifference, and the Everlasting Yea. The Everlasting Yea, or rather, the arrival of the poet at a tentative affirmation is the subject matter of Chapter VI. The final movement of the poem considered in this chapter makes use of all previously used symbols to some degree for the purpose of revealing the emergence of a new state of mind and a more healthy attitude toward life as exhibited by the poet. By way of conclusion, a synthesis of the six preceding chapters will be presented in which the interaction and interrelation of domestic imagery, hand imagery, scenes of domestic relationship, and states of mind show a persistent progression from uncontrolled grief through a period of apathy and indifference to arrive finally at a state of acceptance of life as it is and of affirmation, although qualified, of the significance of life.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate, and hopefully, to elevate the literary "currency" of Richard Lovelace. To this end, various methods and approaches will be utilized in order to capture a comprehensive, yet coherent view of Lovelace and his poetry. Specifically, these methods and approaches will include: a survey of Lovelace's biography, including clarification of discrepancies among authorities concerning pertinent details of his life; a location of Lovelace in the primary social, philosophical, and poetical movements of the early seventeenth century; an identification of Lovelace as a Cavalier poet, differentiating him from other Cavaliers; an analysis of representative poetry according to theme, imagery, and conflict-structures; and a summation of Lovelace's critical reception since the Publication of Lucasta. Recent criticism, while inconclusive and sparse, points to an increased awareness of Lovelace's conscious craftsmanship. This study is an effort at bringing this vision of Lovelace into clearer focus.

The multiple and widely varying interpretations of Duke Vincentio in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure can be reconciled and made into a consistent interpretation by the application of a framework consisting of both literary and Elizabethan conventions as well as a view of comedy that accepts the comic function of movement toward identity as comedy's goal. Duke Vincentio is the comic drive in the play. His behavioral motives are based on his sincere concern for his constituency and his courageous use of his power during a time when reform is vital. The morally equivocal means he sometimes employs are justified by his hoped-for ends. Each decision the Duke must make is based on his goal of redeeming his dukedom to a place of harmony and order. He keeps in mind all the while both man's frailties and man's potential. The major characters come to a degree of self-knowledge that enables them to accept and apply a more loving justice. Through humility and mercy, a new pattern for reconciliation is provided. The marriages at the end serve to provide the characters with a position within which they can employ their new wisdom.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a limited number of the most influential and interesting studies dealing in depth with the question of Hopkins' religion and its resultant influence on his poetic talent, and to attempt to resolve some of the points of dispute. some of the studies investigated argue that Hopkins was hindered in his poetic endeavors by his religion, while others attempt to prove that his religion enhanced his poetry. The present study is not intended as an evaluation of individual works; its purpose is rather to present the pertinent and relevant ideas projected in each study discussed, thus giving the reader an understanding of the general trend of critical thought dealing with the religious problem in Hopkins.