This is a collection of short stories written to satisfy the requirements for a Master of Arts degree. These stories are done in several different forms in an attempt to help the author discover which one suits his personal style best. The preface to these stories is an examination of how and why the author goes about the creative process. The author has examined the lives and methods of other literary figures to see what their individual inspirations were and how they worked. This preface also looks at some of the obstacles and hazards that these men and women face while they are writing.

In the Midst of Tears and Loud Voices, and Other Short Stories consists of five short stories. The first story, in the Midst of Tears and Loud Voices, is set in the Missouri Ozarks and told by Becky Bricker about an odd aunt. The second story relates an aged man's transition experience in Belgrave Leaves New York. The third story, Dorcas and Deborah, is told by Deborah about her unusual relationship with Dorcas Weatherby. The next, story is a Southern "local color" piece about a single day, The First of May in Battle Ridge. The fifth story, Good Coffee. Cheap Ketchup, Cold Sheets, details the strange meeting of a man and woman whose lives have other, unknown, connecting threads.

This collection of poetry contains a brief introduction, one half discussing Gary Snyder's ideas on poetry in his essay, "Poetry and the Primitive," the other half of the introduction examining the successive revisions of a poem of mine. The examination is not an explication, but rather a look at the technique used in composing this poem. The body of the thesis is a collection of my poetry which I have written within the last four years. The poems speak both of experience and postulation of ideas. Though they do not follow any select pattern of thought or form, there is some connection between them in their subject matter.

This paper is a collection of three short stories. A short preface discussing the origin of the tales precedes the stories. Fractions and Equations is the story of a love triangle. In this tale, the development of love between two people is told. There is no resolution in the tale. The second story, The Sailing of the Fantasy Cafe, tells of the operation of a book shop at Christmas time. The main characters in the story are described and several important incidents are also related. The tale ends with a Christmas party. The final story, And Penance More Must Do, deals with the life of a young teacher. The story begins in Africa and ends in America. During the course of the story the mind and heart of the main character are probed in detail.

Written in the tradition of American political suspense thrillers such as "Fail-Safe" and "Seven Days In May," "Bearclaw" uses their idealistic and nationalistic elements to tell a story of an American President eager to lead the world's peoples in a quest to achieve man's "highest destiny," the conquest of space. Believing that this common goal will cause mankind to come together in a spirit of brotherhood, he misreads the historical purpose of the United States and, in the end, refuses to recognize the obvious truths of human frailty and ambition even though he has been victimized by them. The Introduction is a brief survey of the sociopolitical and literary forces which combined to create the American political suspense thriller and an attempt to define its place in the literary canon.

"Retro" is a novel which attempts to depict the psychological reality of the spiritually isolated individual characterized in traditional gothic novels, in this case the alienated individual in the contemporary American South. The novel follows the doctrine set down by Roland Barthes, Frank Kermode, and other postmodern critics, which holds that, as Kermode puts it, "all closure is in bad faith." Therefore, rather than offering resolution to the problems and events presented in the text, the novel attempts instead to illustrate the psychological effects its main character experiences when confronted with a world that offers only irresolution and uncertainty. The novel's strategy is to depart from conventional, realistic modes of narration and to adopt instead certain characteristics of satire, surrealism, and the type of grotesque often associated with the gothic novel.

This novel of the Vietnam War examines the effects of prolonged stress on individuals and groups. The narrative, which is told from the points of view of four widely different characters, follows an infantry company through three days and two nights of combat on a small island off the coast of the northern I Corps military region. The story's principal themes are the loss of communication that contributes to and is caused by the background of chaos that arises from combat; the effect of brutal warfare on the individual spirit; and the way groups reorganize themselves to cope with the confusion of the battlefield. The thesis includes an explication of the novel, explaining some of the technical details of its production.

Ce travail entend interroger du point de vue du genre les pratiques de lecture des femmes dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle. La manière dont les femmes lisaient et l’usage qu’elles pouvaient faire de leurs lectures demeurent très mal connus, au-delà des discours et des représentations entourant à l’époque la lecture féminine. De ceux-ci se dégage l’idée durable que les femmes, pour l’essentiel lectrices de romans, lisent mal. Cette étude propose de renverser le prisme d’analyse pour interroger le point de vue des lectrices sur leurs propres pratiques. Pour cela, les écrits personnels - journaux, autobiographies, correspondances - de soixante-six femmes nées entre 1789 et 1832 ont été rassemblés, et permettent de suivre leurs trajectoires à l’intérieur d’une biographie chorale. Ces textes mettent au jour une pluralité des pratiques et des usages de la lecture au quotidien, mais surtout ils interrogent deux phénomènes majeurs de la France du premier XIXe siècle : les logiques de sexuation à l’œuvre dans l’éducation, et la construction des identités sexuées. De fait, l’accès aux savoirs par le livre repose alors sur une inégalité fondamentale entre femmes et hommes, et l’apprentissage des manières de lire, ainsi que la liste des livres autorisés, doivent renvoyer l’image d’une féminité acceptable, suffisamment instruite mais non savante, pieuse et vertueuse. Pourtant, les écrits personnels soulignent à quel point dans le quotidien d’autres manières de faire s’élaborent et de nombreuses résistances voient le jour. Car l’expérience individuelle de la lecture, en ouvrant la porte vers des territoires intellectuels jugés illégitimes, permet de transgresser les attentes concernant l’éducation des filles. Au-delà, elle engage la lectrice dans un travail réflexif sur elle-même qui la conduit à sonder voire à reformuler son identité sociale. Par ce biais, l’autonomie intellectuelle des femmes et leur possible émancipation se trouvent directement questionnées. / This work aims to explain, from a gender perspective, reading practices of women in the early 19th century France. Until now, the way French women read in those days and their own uses of reading, behind stereotypes and sexist representations, are not really known in cultural history. According to these stereotypes, women read badly, or not seriously, and only “feminine literature”. Based on sixty six women’s personal writings (diaries, autobiographies, letters), this work aims to inverse this focus in order to analyze the women’s point of view on their own practices. Such analysis reveals how gender’s types shape first education and, more generally, social identities. Women have to read, of course, but only that kind of literature that would be acceptable for a « good wife », educated but not scholar, virtuous and pious. However, focusing on personal writings, we show that women were not passive within this social and cultural domination: as a reflexive experience, reading leads them to a wide reformulation of their social identity, which includes a possibility to emancipate by reading and learning.