CHANG, HSIAO-FENG who was famous for her essays in the mid and late 1960s has enjoyed an excellent reputation for her works and has been well-known author of a number of books for her wide-ranging artistic creation field. Especially, the achievement of her lyrical essays is remarkable with both qualities of rationality and sensibility, the style of the work is most changeful; she has many works which are imaginative and flexible language utilization; the materials of her works are diverse and the essence of her thought is rich in humane concerns. Her works not only can derive the advantages from the classic traditional cultures but also present the appearance of modern literature. In addition to the tender and sensitiveness, as a woman writer, her writing is of lightheartedness and vigor. A unique style of her essays assures her unique status in Taiwanese literary circles. The thesis sets out to study those lyrical essays which had ever been published from 1966 to 2003. First of all, we will provide an objective look at the external factors such as the experience of the writer, the characteristics of literature, and the conditions of her lyrical essays creation in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding on the features of her works. At last, we sum up and clear out the plentiful content of her works which is full of the effects of the artistic achievements on her literary skills. Hoping that the unique meaning and value of CHANG, HSIAO-FENG's lyrical essays in Taiwan literary circles can be identified. This thesis consists of five chapters: Chapter One is ¡§Introduction¡¨ which presents the motives, objectives, the review of the previous studies, the definition of ¡§lyrical essays¡¨, and the establishment of the research scope as well as the research method. Chapter Two is the general discussion of CHANG, HSIAO-FENG and her lyrical essays. We will focus on an all-dimensional discussion of her life experience and divide her life into three stages to indicate that how the life experience influence her works and to explore her own endeavors in engaging in both of creation and editing and the results. This is the preparation for discussing her works. Secondly, we explore the concept of literature. We describe her idea and principle on the literature and creation relating to the discussion of her works as the foundation of cross reference. Moreover, this paper tries to give a general overview of her essay topics and the change of the styles of works at different stages. Chapter Three. ¡§Evolution of her works.¡¨ We review and summarize the content of lyrical essays at different stages. This thesis aims to explore and analyze from three aspects to present the status of her emotions and a broad perspectives on human concerns of CHANG, HSIAO-FENG. Chapter Four. ¡§Artistic Skills.¡¨ We review her lyrical essays and put her great achievements on the artistic skills in order synthetically. With the investigations from four aspects, we sense the outstanding artistic achievements on the skills of the lyrical essays. Chapter Five is ¡§Conclusion¡¨. The author briefly summarizes the critics and suggestions in previous studies from chapter one to four. We place the meaning and value of CHANG, HSIAO-FENG¡¦s essays in the objective and fair positioning. The writer brings out the suggestive guideline for the research workers in the future.

Lucidity is a novella set in the near future of a man living in a city in the United States as a successful businessman. The novella criticizes the idea of consumerism through Aurora, a character who believes that a drug is being introduced into the water and food supply by the corporate-backed government. Characters find advertising to be almost irresistible, experience strange cravings for things like cheap beer, and are generally preoccupied with the latest products. James Simmons, the protagonist of the novella, finds himself in the lap of luxury. He has a job that pays well, a penthouse apartment, a fast car, and women. Even though he has the material riches that society tells him he needs to be happy, he knows that something is missing, something is wrong with the world in which he lives. For reasons unknown to him at the time, James is fired from his job and sets out on a journey to discover why. Over the course of his journey, he is finally able to begin piecing together the nature of deeper questions about himself that he never had a chance to answer.

The thesis traces the evolving attitudes towards rhetoric in the highly-rhetorised English-language prose of the late sixteenth century by focusing on a term that was itself subject to significant change: 'wit'. To wit's pre-existing denotations of intellectual acumen, capacity for reason and good judgement was added a novel meaning, related to the capacity for producing lively speech. As a term encompassing widely divergent meanings, many Elizabethan and early Stuart works explored 'wit' as a central theme or treated the term as significant to explorations of the human mind, its capacity for rhetoric, and the social and moral dimensions of this relationship. The research centres on how 'wit' is seen and how it corresponds to rhetorical wittiness as produced in practice, and questions the implications of this for understanding the social and moral dimensions of the authorial wit. By focusing on the early vernacular manuals of rhetoric by author such as Thomas Wilson and Roger Ascham, on Lyly's and Greene's euphuist prose, and on Thomas Lodge's and Sir Philip Sidney's prose defences of poetry, the first half of the thesis explores the term's conceptual ambiguity. Potentially both reformative and deceptive, this ambiguity becomes a useful tool for the author looking to construct a profitable persona as a Wit, or a brilliant-yet-unruly master of rhetoric. The second half of the research notes how 'wit' tends to outlive its usefulness as a multivalent term in later writings when these seek to move away from the social commodification of an author's rhetoric. Examining Sidney's theological and political aims in The New Arcadia, Thomas Nashe's carnivalesque questioning of the idea of profit, and Francis Bacon's systematic interpretation of Nature, the research suggests that rhetoric and 'wit' maintain both their significance and their ambiguity into the seventeenth century. A meta-rhetorical signpost, 'wit' comes to reflect through its use and disuse both the issues at hand and the inherent self-reflexivity of any attempt to deal directly with rhetoric.

This thesis reconstructs the genre of urban satirical pamphleteering. It contends that the pamphlets of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and Barnaby Rich are stylistically and generically akin. Writing in a relatively undefined form, these pamphleteers share an interest in describing contemporary London, and employ an experimental style characterised by its satirical energy. In addition, they negotiate a series of tensions between profitability and play. In the early modern period, ‘profit' was variously conceived as financial, moral, or rooted in public service. Pamphleteers attempted to reconcile these senses of profitability. At the same time, they produced playful works that are self-consciously mocking, that incorporate alternative perspectives, and that are generically hybrid. To varying degrees, urban satirical pamphlets can be defined in relation to the concepts of profitability and play. Chapter One introduces the concept of moral profitability through an examination of Elizabethan moralistic pamphlets. In particular, it analyses the anxious response to profitability contained in Philip Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses (1583). Chapter Two argues that Greene disrupted appeals to totalising profitability, and instead demonstrated the alternative potential of play. Chapter Three examines Nashe's notoriously evasive pamphlets, contending that he embraced play in response to the potential profitlessness of pamphleteering. Chapter Four argues that although Dekker and Middleton rejected absolutist notions of profitability, their pamphlets redirect stylistic play towards compassionate social commentary. Finally, Chapter Five explores Rich's relocation of moralistic conventions in pamphlets that are presented as both honest and mocking. Taken as a whole, this thesis re-evaluates the style and genre of urban satirical pamphleteering. It reveals that this frequently overlooked literary form was deeply invested in defining and critiquing the purpose of literature.