Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The political thinking of George Bernard Shaw was both a logical extension of and an attack on classical liberalism, for he took the seed of equality planted by Locke and extended it to economics. He agreed with the Idealists, Bradley and Bosanquet, that the state must concern itself with the interests of all the people, and with T. H. Green especially, that it must have a moral foundation. He accepted the idea of an inherent impulse in man from the utilitarians but gave it a wider base, under the influence of Lamarck and Butler, and called it the Life Force. Henry George revealed the importance of economic justice; Marx, the extent of the evils of Capitalism; Jevons and Wicksteed, the utility theory of value; Bentham, the duties of government to provide security for all; Mill, the ways in which competition might be restricted. Thus the various parts of Shaw's writings were not original, but he evolved a unique system out of these parts, overlooking no aspect of life. The rationality of the Fabians attracted Shaw. He went beyond the Fabians in an attempt to improve not only institutions but also man's nature--a difficult task, since each was dependent on the other. In the prewar years, Shaw based his hopes for success on the rationality of Socialism, although his doctrine always contained seeds of totalitarianism. World War I and the accomplishments of dictators led him away from Fabianism to ideas of force. World War II brought more critical attitudes toward authoritarian power [TRUNCATED].

Thesis (M.F.A)--Boston University. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. Boston University, School of Fine and Applied Arts, June 1962.

ix, 288 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / While the impact of Darwin's theory of evolution on Victorian and modernist literature has been well-documented, very little critical attention has been paid to the influence of Lamarckian evolutionary theory on literary portrayals of human progress during this same period. Lamarck's theory of inherited acquired characteristics provided an attractive alternative to the mechanism and materialism of Darwin's theory of natural selection for many writers in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly those who refused to relinquish the role of the individual will in the evolutionary process. Lamarckian rhetoric permeated an ideologically diverse range of discourses related to progress, including reproduction, degeneration, race, class, eugenics, education, and even art. By analyzing the literary texts of Olive Schreiner, G.B. Shaw, and W.B. Yeats alongside their polemical writing, I demonstrate how Lamarckism inflected these writers' perceptions of the mechanism of human evolution and their ideas about human progress, and I argue that their work helped to sustain Lamarck's cultural influence beyond his scientific relevance. In the dissertation's introduction, I place the work of these three writers in the context of the Neo-Darwinian and Neo-Lamarckian evolutionary debates in order to establish the scientific credibility and cultural attractiveness of Lamarckism during this period. Chapter II argues that Schreiner creates her own evolutionary theory that rejects the cold, competitive materialism inherent in Darwinism and builds upon Lamarck's mechanism, modifying Lamarckism to include a uniquely feminist emphasis on the importance of community, motherhood, and self-sacrifice for the betterment of the human race. In Chapter III, I demonstrate that Shaw's "metabiological" religion of Creative Evolution, as portrayed in Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah , is not simply Bergsonian vitalism repackaged as a Neo-Lamarckian evolutionary theory but, rather, a uniquely Shavian theory of human progress that combines religious, philosophical, and political elements and is thoroughly steeped in contemporary evolutionary science. Finally, Chapter IV examines the interplay between Yeats's aesthetics and his anxieties about class in both his poetry and his 1939 essay collection On the Boiler to show how Lamarckian modes of thought inflected his understanding of degeneration and reproduction and eventually led him to embrace eugenics. / Committee in charge: Paul Peppis, Chairperson, English; Mark Quigley, Member, English; Paul Farber, Member, Not from U of O; Richard Stein, Member, English; John McCole, Outside Member, History