Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2008. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Mar. 10, 2009). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-diss.--Greifswald. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the key themes of an adolescent journey during a wilderness adventure therapy program through expressive letter writing to their parents. Ten complete sets of letters (five boys and five girls) totaling over 400 pages were analyzed by four independent coders until saturation of themes were reached. There were five overarching themes that emerged from the data: impact of wilderness experiences, desires for improved relationships, apology and accountability, negative emotions, and positive growth and coping. These themes were presented in the chronological pattern that they appeared in the letters. The findings represent the adolescents’ experiences written in their own words. This research is the first of its kind and has implications for parents and adolescents who are considering this growing treatment modality of wilderness adventure therapy, and for professionals, especially family therapists, who can use the pattern in assessment and as an intervention tool in working with families.

The study investigated business letter writing problems within the banking profession. It identified difficulties in letter writing aspects that bankers perceive; and it investigated the relationship of those perceived difficulties to assessed deficiency aspects in letters the bankers had written. A literature review revealed studies that addressed origination of business letters. These studies typically utilized either a survey of groups involved with writing or an analysis of completed letters. This raised the question of possible outcomes in combining the two approaches within a work setting. A Q-sort technique was used to determine perceptions of 15 branch location bankers concerning difficulty of 40 composition and 40 technical letter writing aspects. The bankers ranked the following composition aspects highest in difficulty: legalese; persuasion techniques; refusal conveyance; unfavorable news conveyance; conflict resolution; and direct versus indirect approach. They ranked the following technical aspects highest in difficulty: infinitives (split); sentence syntax; antecedents of pronouns; wordiness (excessive); dangling participles; and preposition usage. The bankers answered a survey concerning their access to training and instruction in business letter writing. Each banker submitted four recently originated business letters. Composition aspect deficiencies within bankers' submitted letters were assessed by a panel of post secondary business communication instructors. Combined grammar-checking software and researcher screening determined deficiencies for technical aspects of the letters. A total of 900 non-repetitive deficiencies were assessed in the 60 letters submitted -- an average of 15 per letter. comparative percentile rankings showed that perceived difficulties differed most from existing deficiencies in the following aspects: composition -- (perceived difficulties greater) refusal conveyance and euphemisms, (assessed deficiencies greater) sentence construction and letter organizing/structuring; technical -- (perceived difficulties greater) split infinitives and dangling participles, (assessed deficiencies greater) spelling and pronoun usage. / Ed. D.

This thesis examines the use and representation of letters (and other written messages) in Thomas Hardy's novels, and it considers how Hardy's writing engages with Victorian communication technologies. The 1895 Preface to Far from the Madding Crowd describes Hardy's fictional setting as a ‘a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children'. The penny post, a communication revolution with an enormous social, economic, and cultural impact, was introduced on 10 January 1840, just a few months before Hardy was born. This thesis aims to demonstrate how a consideration of the material, technological and cultural conditions of communication in Victorian England might reshape our understanding of Hardy's novels, especially of the countless letters, notes, and telegrams which permeate his texts. The written messages in Hardy's novels serve as a means for exploring the process of human communication, and the way this process shapes individual identity, interpersonal relationships, and social interactions alike. Chapter I of this thesis relates Hardy's portrayal of letters to the historical transition from oral tradition to written culture. Chapter II enquires into the relationship between letter writing and notions of privacy and publicity in Hardy's novels. Chapters III and IV argue that Hardy uses letters so as to give a strikingly modern complexity to his representation of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The two final chapters investigate how the modalities and technological conditions of written communication influence the construction of Hardy's narratives, the design of his plots. Taken together, the six chapters examine Hardy's perception of one of the most fundamental human activities: communication.

Cette thèse vise à étudier la lettre comme un objet littéraire, par une perspective endogène, dans sa relation avec l’œuvre, alors même qu’elle s’en distingue. Par une approche comparatiste, les liens entre une production littéraire et une production épistolaire, qui créent une poétique de la lettre au féminin, sont analysés. Pour cela, les notions de genre et de gender ont été confrontées dans le corpus choisi : les lettres de Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) et celles de Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987). Elles incarnent deux auteures majeures, mais leurs lettres ont été peu étudiées dans leur ensemble. Ces lettres révèlent un questionnement sur la forme et le style, alors que la question du féminin, par le statut de la femme auteure, se greffe à l’analyse. Une résonance se crée entre l’œuvre et la correspondance de ces deux femmes, qui pourtant se distinguent. En repoussant les limites du genre canonique, la lettre est donc envisagée comme un objet au statut ambigu, une zone intermédiaire, qui longe et trouble l’œuvre, qui se fait poétique par le discours de la femme auteure, et par le processus créatif qui se mêle à l’écriture épistolaire. À partir de cette problématique, le corps de la lettre est tracé en trois orientations : la première se focalise sur le discours de la femme de lettres au sein de la correspondance, la deuxième sur la méthode d’application scripturale et la troisième sur l’invention d’un style. / The aim of this thesis is to explore the medium of letters as literary objects, using an endogenous perspective, and taking into account their relationship with the literary work. Through a comparative analysis, this thesis seeks to explore the links between a literary and an epistolary production, which create a feminine poetics of letter writing. Thus, the concepts of genre and gender are explored in the letters of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and those of Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987). Though they represent two major writers, not all of their letters have been studied. They reveal a concern for form and style, as well as for the feminine and the status of the woman writer. The letters echo the work of art of the two women writers despite their differences. The frontiers of literary genre are hence disregarded and this study considers the ambiguous nature of the letters, as an intermediate area, which runs along the literary work and disrupts it. Therefore, epistolary writing provides a form of poetics through the voice of the woman author and through the creative process that is involved. As a consequence, the study of the letters is threefold: first, it explores the way the woman of letters uses the epistolary genre to construct her identity. Second, it focuses on the method used in the letters, between the self and the other, between writing, reading and creating. Finally, it examines the letters as a space of style experimentation.

The broad aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the Victorian letter is more than the sum of its parts. By focusing on the archival collection of a gentry family from Derbyshire, it asserts that the material remains of a nineteenth-century letter are as important as the words and, as such, have a valuable contribution to make to the understanding of letters and letter writing culture of the period. Furthermore, throughout it is demonstrated that the nineteenth-century familial letter was important as an emotional and material object to both the reader and the sender but, as yet, is an undervalued tool in historical research. It argues against the dominant historical trend to read only the text of letters, and in so doing offers a model that can be adopted and adapted to investigate the nineteenth-century letter. The thesis applies James Daybell’s argument that, in order to understand an early modern manuscript, the historian must be directed both to the physical characteristics as well as to the social contexts of its composition, delivery, reception and latterly its archiving. By taking a case study approach, this thesis examines the unpublished nineteenth-century letters of the Turbutt family collection. Each chapter focusses on a particular aspect of letter writing which affords a greater understanding of the nineteenth-century letter as literary culture as well as material culture. Taking this approach uncovers a wide range of uses for the familiar letter and demonstrates that the letter was vital to the nineteenth-century Turbutt women of the Ogston estate. It is demonstrated that the Turbutt women used letters to perform their role as gentry women, to navigate courtship and the emotional and relational divide, and also determine how the letter writer used the material properties to their advantage and, if so, did the material and literary qualities of letters converge to further this. In so doing this thesis bridges the gap between text and materiality, two areas that have tended to be treated separately and, as such, it contributes to the scholarship of letter writing in the nineteenth century as both literary culture and material culture and also to the letter writing culture of nineteenth-century gentry women.

INTRODUÇÃO: A Companhia de Jesus desde o seu início influenciou as mais diversas esferas da sociedade, incluindo o campo informacional. Uma das formas de exercer tal influência foi através das cartas escritas pelos religiosos. OBJETIVO: Identificar e analisar as primeiras prescrições para a escrita epistolar da Companhia de Jesus, investigando o conteúdo das prescrições e comparando-as entre si. MÉTODO: Revisão de literatura sobre o contexto histórico-informacional do século XVI, mais especificamente sobre as primeiras décadas da expansão do impresso e a epistolografia no período, focando nos manuais para a escrita de cartas; a revisão procurou ressaltar as contribuições dos jesuítas no contexto. RESULTADOS: O levantamento encontrou três normas epistolares nos primeiros anos da Companhia: as Reglas (1547), alguns artigos das Constituições relativos ao tema (1558) e a Formula scribendi (1565), cuja tradução em língua portuguesa foi feita exclusivamente para este trabalho. A análise delas mostrou que a Companhia elaborou normativas rígidas para a produção e circulação das cartas, mas que possibilitaram a criação de uma verdadeira rede de informações epistolares pelo mundo. CONCLUSÕES: Os jesuítas tiveram papel relevante no contexto informacional do século XVI, sobretudo através de suas cartas. Por determinarem questões como autores, destinatários, temas das cartas e seus prazos, as normas epistolares foram de essencial importância para a manutenção dessa rede de informações. / INTRODUCTION: The Society of Jesus from its inception has influenced the most diverse spheres of society, including the informational field. One of the ways of exercising such influence was through the letters written by the religious. OBJECTIVE: To identify and analyze the first prescriptions for the epistolary writing of the Society of Jesus, investigating their contents and comparing them with each other. METHOD: Literature review on the historical-informational context of the sixteenth century, more specifically on the first decades of print expansion and epistolography in the period, focusing on manuals for writing letters; the review sought to emphasize the contributions of the Jesuits in the context. RESULTS: The survey found three epistolary norms in the first years of the Society: the Rules (1547), some articles of the Constitutions (1558) on the subject and the Formula scribendi (1565), whose translation into Portuguese was made exclusively for this work. Their analysis showed that the Society developed rigid norms for the production and circulation of letters, but that made possible the creation of a true network of epistolary information throughout the world. CONCLUSIONS: The Jesuits played a relevant role in the informational context of the sixteenth century, especially through their letters. By determining issues such as authors, recipients, themes of the letters and their deadlines, the rules of letters were of essential importance for the maintenance of this information network.