Master of Arts (MA)

<p>My thesis involves a study of a development in Arnold's poetry that is antithetical to the development of Arnold's prose. At first, Arnold's poetry preached an active, moral involvement in the world. This stance gradually collapsed, and, from quite early in his career, Arnold's poetry is characterized by detachment and withdrawal from life.</p> <p>Arnold's literary criticism exhibits an opposite movement. The Preface to Poems (1853) stresses the necessity for the pleasurable presentation of an action as a basis for poetry, and explicitly denies that the poet in any way interprets his age. This, says Arnold, is the "delirium of vanity." Yet Arnold makes an about face. He decides later, in his essay on Maurice de Guerin (1862), that poetry must be both the "interpretress" of the "natural" and "moral" world. This stance characterizes his later literary criticism.</p> <p>The first chapter of my thesis deals with the above development in Arnold's poetry up to the 1853 volume of poems. The chapter ends there because the change described above has, by that time, taken place. The second chapter deals with Arnold's middle and later poetry, but primarily with the antithetical development of his early literary criticism. The third and fourth chapters deal with Arnold's middle and later literary criticism, as well as Culture and Anarchy and Literature and Dogma, and the relationship between this prose and the contemporaneous poetry.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis is a close critical examination of W.H. Auden's most important poetic statement on the nature and function of Christian faith , the Horae Canonicae.</p> <p>The Introduction gives, in brief, the historical background of the Canonical Hours of Worship in the Roman and English Churches, and there is discussion of Aude's particular use of the tradition of the hours. The significant extant criticism of the Horae is surveyed. This study of Auden's poems is presented as being more detailed than any work of criticism presently available , and as a new examination of the Horae Canonicae in the light of the whole of the Auden canon, with particular attention to other of Auden's poetic works analogous in thought , manner and voice to the poetry of the Horae.</p> <p>The seven poems of the series are examined closely, one chapter of discussion being devoted to each. The argument is put forward that Auden's "hours" are not merely a cyclical devotion, but a progressive and didactic meditation on the efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ in the life of each individual willing to accept its claims upon him.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The thesis analyses several female characters in the fantasies of George MacDonald, using the concept of Jungian archetypes as a basis for study and comparison. Various similarities and contrasts between individual figures are developed first among those representing the "good" aspect of the Feminine and then the "evil". Some attempt is made to link the techniques used in the fantasy characterizations with those used by MacDonald in his "realistic" novels.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Since its initial publication in 1855, the conclusion of Tennyson's Maud has created a controversy among critics. Some critics regard Maud as one of Tennyson's greatest successes; other critics view the poem as both naively didactic and a failure of Tennyson's poetic technique.</p> <p>In particular, the decision of the poem's speaker at the conclusion of Maud to enlist in the cause of the Crimean War has aroused much dispute. Many critics have seen this decision as a contradiction of the speaker's claim to have achieved moral enlightenment. This opinion ignores, however, Tennyson's design of the poem as a "psychological study" and concentrates instead on the biographical elements of the poem.</p> <p>I believe that Tennyson's foremost consideration when writing Maud was an exploration of human psychology . Rather than see the speaker's decision as contradictory and an indication of the poem's failure, I regard it as psychologically valid and proof of Maud's success. Tennyson's use of imagery--particularly stone, flower and jewel images--to provide both dramatic continuity and lyric beauty to Maud is extensive and provides the means by which one can obtain insights into the character of the speaker and ascertain his intellectual and emotional condition at the conclusion of the poem.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The worship of the angelic guardian of the hearth is endemic to Victorian novel writing, but she appears no where so frequently as in the work of Charles Dickens. The idealized woman appears in some form in everyone of his major novels. The first portion of this study attempts to look at idealization as a form of psychic process. It tries to discover what causes it and why it takes the form it does. A brief biographical sketch of Dickens early development seeks to apply what we have discovered of Freudian theory to this author's experience to see if some light can be thrown on the haunting reappearance of the ideal woman in his work.</p> <p>In Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams he interprets his own now famous dream of Irma's injection. His method is to take each line of the dream and analyze it separately. Such a method would be hopelessly cumbersome in the study of a whole novel, and so it has been our purpose in chapters two and three to take important passages descriptive of the heroine and analyze them line by line. We have shown in this way that idealization always calls forth a counterpart to it in the form of a wholly bad character, sister to the idealized good one. We have been able to show that idealization is a psychic defence which makes ambivalence toward the image of woman rather than the exaltation of her which it appears at first glance.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The aim of this dissertation is to examine some facets of poetic technique in wordsworth's The Prelude. Because Wordsworth emphasizes the importance of spoken communication In his relationship with Nature, and because that relationship is central to the growth of the poet's mind, the initial focus of the study is on the function of the vocal control as a consciously adopted means of structuring and modulating the monologue in the poem. Wordsworth adopts various voices which are recognizably Miltonic, Shakespearian and Augustan, and these are examined in chapter two. In the third chapter, his use of variations in the voice which are recognizably Wordsworthian is examined. The second area focused upon in the study is the use of particular techniques which substantiate Wordsworth's view that language is "the incarnation of thought" but that there are areas of experience which cannot be reached by language. This view is linked to his conscious use of understatement, his careful use of repetition as a means of probing and clarifying experience and perception, and his control of syntactic and linear structure to demonstrate and to probe the validity of his views on language, expression and experience. These aspects of poetic technique are considered in chapter four. The final chapter attempts to plAce the various aspects of style examined in the dissertation in context, by observing them as they function in one passage.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The House of the Seven Gables and The Spoils of Poynton are comparable primarily in the manner in which Hawthorne and James focus on 'relationships'. The reader usually perceives characters in their relationships to other characters. Furthermore, through the major device of the house, Hawthorne and James compare characters to their settings, indicating the important effect of each upon the other. In the works under discussion, therefore, James and Hawthorne are strongly tied together by their methods of composition.</p> <p>Chapter One deals with some of the general theories critics have employed to compare the fiction of Hawthorne and James, and these criticisms are applied to the specific comparison of The House of the Seven Gables and The Spoils of Poynton. In Chapter Two, the relevant comments of Hawthorne on The House of the Seven Gables, and James, both on Hawthorne's work and The Spoils of Poynton, are examined. The two works are directly compared and contrasted in Chapter Three.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Master of Arts (MA)