Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-10, Section: A, page: 5439. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-10, Section: A, page: 5547. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-09, Section: A, page: 5049. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-09, Section: A, page: 5081. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

This study presents new insights into the esthetic universe of Albert Camus. It demonstrates that Camus, through a transcendent and metamorphic understanding of esthetics, uses his fictional art as a means of correcting a civilization which has progessively declined into decadence due to a pervasive "paradox of reason" principle emerging from the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned doubt. / This study shows that a critical and dynamic parallelism of thematic variation evidences itself in L'Etranger, La Peste and La Chute. The primary parameters of this parallelism are set out by Camus in Le Mythe de Sisyphe. The fictional works are themselves "expressions" growing out of the "impressions" inherent to an absurd reasoning. / To demonstrate how Camus' novels encompass the essential dialectic of un raisonnement absurde evolving into la creation absurde, exile and revolte are examined in relation to the author's esthetic trinity or man/world/absurdity. Using suicide as a point of departure, Camus shows how thanatos haunts the human psyche and brings about both an impulse to philosophical suicide and the construction of systems of irrational hope based on nostalgie for primal innocence. / This study consists of an Introduction and the following five divisions: (1) Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Nostalgia for the Soul; (2) L'Etranger: The Exile at Zero-Point; (3) La Peste: The Collective Passion; (4) La Chute: The Transpersonal Consciousness of the Appointed Suicide; (5) The Gift of Self: A Passionate Dialect or Creation Corrected. The critical approach of the study concentrates on the narration, character and theme of each of Camus' novels and culminates with the recognition of a twentieth century Romantic response to Nietzschean nihilism. The absurd man accepts the reality of le desert and through art itself discovers a means of surviving therein. / Drawing extensively on Camus' Carnets (1942-1951) as a resource to deciphering the novels' apparent ambiguities and enigmas, a primary and comprehensive sense of limites emerges as the artist's duty in correcting creation and mythically resurrecting beauty from the tragic douleur characteristic of the human condition. It is shown how such a mythic undercurrent forms the essential narrative tension within each novel and gives evidence to Camus' appreciation and understanding of ancient Greek tragedy and thought. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-09, Section: A, page: 3988. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

William Butler Yeats's involvement in the esoteric and the occult has attracted considerable interest in the past decade, but much remains unknown about his philosophical development during the period of his life when he was engaged in the most profound spiritual or psychical investigation or experiment of his brilliant career, an experiment which gave birth to A Vision. Often described as the most important work in the canon to the understanding of his art and thought if not his life, this ambitious work represents Yeats's attempt to explain the basic psychological polarities of the human personality, the course of Western civilization, and the evolution and movement of the soul after death. The cogency and gravity of the experiment of investigation which produced a book of these epic proportions cannot be underestimated; indeed, the contents of this well-recorded experiment may well be the most significant body of unexplored Yeats material. The fundamental aim of this study, which includes only the first crucial months of the Automatic Script, is to present to the scholarly world for the first time a transcript of the often obscure, often complex body of materials that led directly to Yeats's most profound work of art. In order to place this manuscript in its proper biographical and critical context, explanatory notes have been included, explicating the essential features of the experiment (i.e., the recording of dates, the authors of questions and responses, the placement of diagrams and notes by George and Yeats, the physical state of the manuscript, etc.) and unraveling or spelling out the numerous references to Yeats's primary works, those appearing prior to as well as those growing directly out of the Automatic Script; special attention has been focused on those materials which were eventually embodied in the 1925 version of A Vision. An editorial / introduction preceding the transcript demonstrates how this momentous experiment was the logical extension of a series of psychical investigations and, in much broader terms, the culmination of a spiritual odyssey that Yeats had begun almost as early as the days of his youth. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-08, Section: A, page: 2522. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.

This is a work of fiction dealing with family relationships and the effects of small-town living upon them. The doubling is an important factor, serving to elucidate familial and filial responsibilities and the results thereof. The novel takes place in rural Florida, bringing together a drifter from outside and a native Arcadian. The ensuing relationship develops amid the violence that is inherent and often expected in farming communities. The pastoral image is inverted, yet the serenity subsumes the drifter, allowing him to perceive through the ferocity, the sublime. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-02, Section: A, page: 0434. / Major Professor: Janet Burroway. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

An original work of fiction--in the form of a social novel--which examines themes of gender, race, religion, and nationality in contemporary American life. The dramatic action springs mainly from the perceptions and experiences of the protagonist, an actress of mixed blood, whose spiritual quest for identity is linked to the major themes. Her evolution is central to the exposition. The protagonist's interactions with other characters, and her inner thoughts, mark the transition between past and future events. Stylistically, the novel combines social history, mythology and literary realism. It sets the story through the dramatic and narrative method--and is told from the third person limited omniscient point of view. The primary setting is New York City and Key West; the time of the action is the early 1980s. Locale and setting make character and background function together in the development of the plot in cultural context. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-02, Section: A, page: 0434. / Major Professors: Hunt Hawkins; Sheila Ortiz Taylor. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

The author launches a triptych journey into his poetic psyche. The first section of poems explores the socio-political landscape of the postwar, postholocaustic world. The traveler rejects the semi-seductive allures of anomie to which too many modern poets have succumbed. "Complacencies of the peignoir," the minor, mundane sell-outs of spirit and heart are kleig light back-lighted to reveal the grotesque contortions that destroy. Courage and the simple heart are sung. / A strain of koto drifts through the second section in which the poet-traveler records his encounter with the Orient--its philosophies, histories, scents and sinners. Hard learning, transcendence and grace are the general themes of the book, and in this section, particularly, a soft suffusing and diffusing mystic light transforms and lingers, calls forward and back. / To section three. Beginning with an epigraph from Emerson; "Let us affront the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times," the poet salutes various literati who did just that. Jonathan Edwards, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman and Osip Mandelstam comprise a pantheon whose courage, Godliness and/or human sympathy can inspire and direct our paths during this parlous era of transition and confusion when the chrysalis must be self-shattered so we may summon our new being forth. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3719. / Major Professor: Van Brock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

An original volume of poetry consisting of fifty-two poems, twelve of which have been previously published. The poems are arranged in a loose chronological order rather than thematically. The early ones are, for the most part, quite traditional in language, tone, and structure even though most of them are unrhymed. The themes are varied, ranging from romantic love to aubades. / Later poems are more modern in that they depend less and less on grammatical statement and more on image and metaphor. Themes are still varied, but a number of them attempt to utilize modern psychological approaches to understanding the dark underside of human nature. / These later poems are written in free verse. The theme of most of them is the human condition: love, rejection, loneliness, alienation, and the search for self and meaning in an existential world. In the most recent poems, there is a noticeable shift away from traditional imagery and grammatical statement. These poems are non-narrative, depending on allusion, tone, and symbols and images that carry their own internal logic rather than depending on grammatical syntax and logical time sequence. They are more innovative in that they attempt to more fully utilize the resources of language. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3719. / Major Professor: Van Brock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.