The Gate is a collection of short stories by Cassondra Bird Combs. Combs' first collection is heavily inspired by the small Northern California towns she grew up in, and the disillusioned characters who live there. The Gate marks the introduction of an incredibly sympathetic voice, a voice hard to find in modern literature, that didn't rise from New York or Iowa but from a youth spent in solitude in the redwoods. Combs' characters range from a fifteen-year-old girl trapped in an endless abusive cycle to a young man whose parents have suddenly left him to a older woman trying to end her marriage by burning Christmas trees in the street. In these seven stories, Combs reminds us time and time again of the advantages and disadvantages of a rural life, and forges connection between character and reader in a remarkable way. In "Little World" a little girl is paralyzed by fear of the dark but is stronger than she knows. In "Turn" a young woman has to make peace with her past and escape. In "B-Side" a recovering addict realizes the thing he needs isn't the thing he wants. In a voice entirely in tune with the hum of the woods and alive with unusual descriptions and deft character traits, Combs' collection will keep you reading.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1938. / Bibliography: p. 141-145.

The purpose of this play is to dramatize the fable of a city mouse and her cousin in the country, and the differences in their lifestyles. Through visits to each other's respective homes, the mice discover that there is more to life than what their own environment has to offer.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on December 29, 2009). Thesis advisor: Jan Colbert. Includes bibliographical references.

While a good deal of attention has been paid to pastoral and, less frequently, to antipastoral elements in Shakespeare's comedies and romances, the same does not hold for his tragedies. Granted, pastoral features, as one would expect, are not conspicuous in the tragic plays, but even their anti-pastoral ones have not received extended treatment. That is, they have not received extended treatment as anti-pastoral manifestations. So, for example, the furious tempest in King Lear has frequently been seen as a cataclysmic perturbation of Nature, and/or as an expression and reflection of Lear's condition, but only rarely as an anti-pastoral phenomenon. That is a gap this thesis seeks to fill. In treating of pastoral and its opposite in the three plays selected for study - King Lear, Macbeth and Othello - we have not been bound by a literal understanding of the genres in question. A broad interpretation has been preferred, in keeping with recent trends. Consequently, shepherds and shepherdesses will not be in evidence in the ensuing pages. Instead, the terms 'pastoral' and 'anti-pastoral' are understood to refer to such categories as setting, mood and attributes. Thus, for example, we spotlight the pastoral-like ambience of Macbeth's seat at Inverness when Duncan arrives there. The term 'pastoral' further implies attributes such as simplicity, mnocence, honesty, forthrightness, naturalness, loyalty, trustworthiness, trustfulness, decency, kindness, serenity, and a natural dignity, courtesy and modesty. The term 'anti-pastoral' implies a checklist of contrary qualities, few, if any, of them coloured by rural associations linked to the subgenre's historical development as a riposte to what was seen as pastoral's idealising falsification of the true conditions of rural life. Following an introductory chapter that offers a historical and theoretical sketch of the pastoral genre and the anti-pastoral reaction to it, each of the selected plays is accorded a close reading in terms of the pastoral and anti-pastoral criteria adumbrated above, with the emphasis falling, naturally enough, on anti-pastoral manifestations. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2003.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-70).

Thesis--Gothenburg. / Russian or Swedish. Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-147).

Thesis--Gothenburg. / Russian or Swedish. Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-147).

Thesis--University of Minnesota, 1925. / Vita. Running title: Rural trade centers and farm supplies.

Thesis--Bonn. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-202).