Charles Tomlinson Griffes becomes a remarkable figure in American music when one considers the musical influences which surrounded him. The first of these influences, and the one of longest tenure, was that of his piano teacher, a Miss Mary Selena Broughton. An eccentric woman and, considering the times, an extremely unorthodox teacher, she instructed Griffes in piano for twelve years. In addition to giving him thorough technical training and sound musicianship, she allowed his imagination free rein. This freedom of expression was to be the biggest factor in the next and last phase of his musical training - the four years of study in Germany. In the last decade of two of the 19th century and on into the first two of the 20th, Germany held the position as the foremost center for music education. That Griffes should choose to study there was only natural; that he should be able to throw off the powerful influences of Wagner and Strauss was, however, remarkable. For most of the pilgrims to Germany the effect was disastrous, as they were never able to free themselves from the german influences. Griffes was one of the fortunate few who, having been exposed to a rigorous and disciplined training in the groundwork of music, had the resilience to outgrow it. During his stay in Germany, under the tutelage of such an eminent man as Humperdinck (one of Griffes’ several teachers), he wrote music which was typical academic but which showed the progress of his craftsmanship. It seems almost as if he were biding his time until he could get back to Americana and away from the German influence, but appreciating all the while the excellent instruction that he was receiving. All his compositions were derivative in this period. He even used foreign language texts for his songs. Some of the German songs are worth some attention as they have been looked upon as being as good as those of “the masters of song”, Brahms and Strauss. Griffes assimilated their technique to a remarkable degree. One of the last of this German group, “Auf geheimem Waldespfade”, shows a definite trend toward Impressionism, which was then at its zenith. Strangely enough, Griffes’ work in the Impressionistic medium was a fairly independent parallel to that of Debussy and Ravel and the others in France, as he had had no instruction in it, nor had heard much of it in Germany. His study and use of Oriental scales and melodies contributed to the similarity which his music had with that of the Impressionists.

The purpose of this thesis is to show two major influences in the thought of Emily Dickinson which contributed greatly to two antithetic doctrines which commanded her loyalty. One of these two was a reverence which she felt for the Puritan concepts of life; the other was a revolutionary trait that would not adhere to Puritan doctrine. The first doctrine was a natural one to be adopted by the poet. The Puritan way of life was the only "style of life" which she know and so, quite naturally, this kind of milieu satisfied her in many ways. But as she matured there occurred along the path of her life certain obstacles which were manifested by her genius, and those obstructions, at various times in her daily life, caused much unrest and uncertainty within the poet's mind.

Although the purpose of this study is to concentrate on an analysis of Paz’s book of essays, El laberinto de la soledad, published in 1950 and revised and expanded in 1959, this writer feels that it would be in order to give a summary-listing of his poetry and other works. The reader will thus not only be able to follow the events of the author’s life, but he will also be able to grasp the details of his development as a writer and to understand his purpose in writing El laberinto de la soledad.

Several guiding principles should be established to discuss the function of original sin in Doctor Faustus. It will be considered synonymous with the Fall, the Adamic myth. It is not to say that original sin must necessarily refer to strict Christian doctrine. It explains the moral implication of man's position in the divine hierarchy, as well as symbolizes the presence of the demonic throughout his cultural consciousness of sin. For the purpose of this essay, original sin concentrates upon several primary factors: the quest for knowledge, the succumbing to sensual temptation, the transgression through pride, and the psychology of the creative process.

In this thesis, I will argue that the characters and groups in Walker's The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, who practice holistic survival, remain or become whole, which is the key to living a meaningful life. For Walker, holistic survival entails embracing the fragments of our past, present, and future experiences. The past is made up of knowing about our personal experiences and remembering our heritage. The present is made up of healing the past by taking responsibility for the pain we have caused and valuing fellow life, and the future is made by using the past and present to create hope. It is not enough to merely survive, to continue breathing;rather, in order to survive whole, we must also successfully paste together the fragments that make up our past, present, and future. However, the consequences of neglecting any fragment can cause us to become lost. We can either collect and come to terms with our many fragments in order to become whole, or our experiences will remain scattered, leaving us fragmented beings.

The author commences with an analysis of the nature of completeness in a variety of situations and media, including visual arts, music, video arts and literature. "Completeness" is determined to be both difficult to define and subject to any individual's personal interpretation. A distinction is made between the 'finished-ness' of works and their completeness as a factor in aesthetic enjoyment. It is noted that some works, though unfinished, are nevertheless complete aesthetically. Various aspects of completeness are defined, discussed, and considered, including absolute, thematic, plot, authorial, segmental, inclusive, emotional, anticipatory, source/material, functional, and formal completeness. It is proposed that the more of these aspects of completeness present in a work, the more complete the work will seem. Examples illustrating each of the different aspects of completeness are given. The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, is examined with reference to the proposed aspects of completeness. The various ways in which the work can be and has been considered incomplete are discussed. The four fragmentary Tales in The Canterbury Tales--The Cook's Tale, The Squire's Tale, The Tale of Sir Thopas, and The Monk's Tale--are examined. First, the ways in which they can be considered incomplete are considered; next, the ways in which they can be considered complete despite being fragmentary are discussed. The Canterbury Tales as a whole (if fragmentary) work is discussed. Its fragmentary nature is considered and possible explanations for difficulties are given. A case is made for considering The Canterbury Tales to be aesthetically complete and satisfying piece of literature as it stands.

Syntax, word usage, and paragraph development form the substance of the analysis of the Apologia. The use of subordination, repetition, and antithesis in sentence construction; the choice of words to produce rhythm and prove mood, as well as the implied metaphor; and careful blending of these elements into an organic unity which reflect not only the personality of the man, but his very thought process; these are the common elements identified by critics of the Apologia. To what extent these elements exist in the prose of the university sermons, and what other elements of style are identifiable in these sermons are the subject of this paper.

Hemingway’s first short story, “Up in Michigan,” portrays the growth and destruction of a young girls’ romantic illusions about love through her infatuation with and seduction by an apparently gentleman who is really an insensitive brute. Hemingway explores this typically anti-romantic theme in what appears at first glance to be straightforward journalistic style. But the prose, like almost everything else in this story, is deceptive, for lurking beneath the flat surface of its denotative diction and simple syntax lie linguistics strategies and dynamically charged meanings through whose interplay the real disillusioning world of the story emerges. In thus concealing the inward psychological phenomena of disillusionment within linguistic substructures which only release their meaning when seen as poetic forces playing against each other beneath the narrative level, Hemingway forces “form” to express the theme that appearance is deceptive.

English poetry in particular has received both enrichment and motivation from classical sources. The case of Percy Bysshe Shelley, nineteenth century English Romantic poet, provides an excellent illustration of this point. This study will attemp to place before the reader evidence of Shelley's debt to ancient Greece as revealed in his life and his poetry, with particular emphasis upon the influences of Aeschylus and Plato.

For several reasons Dos Passos is important to the development of American literature. His novels, with their integrity, breadth, and architectonic form, are painted on a larger canvas than any other American writers. In Manhattan Transfer, his fourth novel, he attempted to portray the greatest metropolis in the world, New York City. He succeeded as well as anyone ever has. Then, refusing to rest on his cars, he went on to the trilogy U. S. A., which takes all of twentieth century American life as its subject. This is Dos Passos' epic of modern Americanlife, the most successful of the many attempts to write the "great American novel". So the vert scope and excellence of Dos Passos' novels demand consideration Then there are technical innovations--tentative in Manhattan Transfer, thoroughgoing in U. S. A.--which have added dimensions to the American novel. Some of these are entirely original, some stem from James Joyce's Ulysses. Yet even the borrowed devices have been completely assimilated. These new techniques arose partly because of the feeling that naturalism gave an inadequate picture of all aspects of humanity. And, as the critic Edmund Wilson has shown, Joyce met this problem by a synthesis of the two French literary methods, symbolism and naturalism. Now Dos Passos has introduced this symbolism-naturalism into American literature. And he has democratized the experimental techniques; Joyce is read mainly by literary experts; Dos Passos can be read by anyone. If, as some believe, the importance of this amalgamation of symbolism and naturalism lies in the future, then Dos Passos will be remembered as the first American writer to use it. While Dos Passos has always been in the vanguard, his relations with his generation have been intimate and pervasive. In many ways he is more typical of his generation than any other significant writer. The Zeitgeist of the War generation is fundamental to all his books. He is both a result and a cause of America's coming of age--and the defeat of neo-Humanism. Even the development of his political ideas has in many ways paralleled the ideas of other writers, For instance, his disillusionment in the radical parties contained in Adventures of a Young (1939) came to nearly all writers later in the same year with the Russian-German pact, Thus, though Dos Passos was an innovator, neither his internal development as an artist nor his contribution to American literature can be understood except in the context of his age. This is to be, then, a study of the interrelations between Dos Passos' personal philosophy, objectives, and techniques and the influence of the Zeitgeist on them.