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This study demonstrates that Edwin Arlington Robinson's keen interest in mystery is reflected in his poetry. However, he creates an unusual subgenre--the unresolved mystery. Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary, religious treatises, and philosophical works, helped formulate a working definition of the word mystery. I then selected eight murder poems from The Collected Poems -- "The Tavern," "The Whip," "Stafford's Cabin," "Haunted House," "Avon's Harvest," "Cavender's House," "The Glory of the Nightingales," and "The March of the Cameron Men" and three poems from the Uncollected Poems and Prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson --"The Miracle," "For Calderon," and "The Night Before." In these murder mystery poems, Robinson fails to provide definite motives or conclusive evidence or reliable narrators--all necessary components to solve a mystery. These violations of mystery writing rules appear both in his long and short poems.In the short poems, without exception, Robinson provides no motives. Dead bodies indicate that crimes have been committed, but none of the perpetrators is brought to justice, and in some cases, not even identified. Hence, the presence of relevant, but skimpy details disallow solving the mystery with any degree of certainty. In addition, the long poems exclude clear motives, hard evidence or reliable narrators--all of which prevent the reader from reaching a sound conclusion. Other poems suggest the involvement of supernatural beings. Consistently, all his murder mystery poems conclude with the mystery either partially or completely unresolved. / Department of English

This thesis is a study of Robinson's general mental and philosophical development and the forces which contributed to it, the kinds and sources of Robinson's characters and the method and importance of their portrayal, Robinson's single portraits of men, Robinson's portrayal of women characters, Robinson's historical portraits, and the relationship of the short poems to Robinson's total work.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the history in English literature of the relationship between King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, in order to show how various authors have enriched the legend by developing the psychological potential of the chief characters, and by projecting the standards of their respective ages into their versions of the story. Special emphasis has been placed on the work of Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Tennyson, E.A. Robinson, and T.H. White. The Arthurian legend is particularly appropriate for such a comparative study. It has received the attention of English writers for eight centuries, and, for the past hundred years, of writers in America as well. In the fifteenth century Malory used the legend to argue for a strong monarchy, and to remind his aristocratic countrymen of the neglected ideals of chivalry; in the nineteenth century Tennyson hoped that the re-telling of the story for its elements of moral and spiritual allegory would inspire the Victorians to rise above the materialism and sensuality which to him were signs of the times; early in the twentieth century Edwin Arlington Robinson suggested a comparison between the disintegration of Camelot and the disruption of European society after World War I, and he questioned the traditionally accepted greatness of Arthur and his kingdom; in the last decade Terence Hanbury White has seen that the problem facing King Arthur also confronts the strife-torn twentieth century how can the energies of men be harnessed for constructive rather than destructive action? The adultery between Guinevere and Lancelot has been made the focal point of this study because it involves the three best-known characters of the legend, and because it has attracted the interest of writers more than has any other element of the Arthuriad, particularly in the past one hundred years. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate