This thesis explores the themes love and death in the fiction writing of J. D. Salinger.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DXN119979.

It has long been believed that passionate love wanes over time, whereas companionate love grows stronger with time. Using a sample of individuals in dating relationships who reported on their feelings of love for their partners up to 20 times over the course of several months, I tested whether passionate love and companionate love develop across the early months of romantic involvement in a manner consistent with theory. Additionally, I investigated whether certain developmental trajectories of both varieties of love are more predictive of relationship dissolution than others. To do this, I first examined the average trajectories of passionate and companionate love for those who stayed together with their partners and those who experienced a breakup, paying special attention to extraneous factors that were expected to influence the manner in which both varieties of love changed over time. The amount of time individuals knew their partners prior to becoming romantically involved, their feelings of the opposing variety of love, the extent to which individuals wanted to break up with their partners, their perceptions of their partners’ desire to break up, and gender all informed the ways in which love changed over time. Because it was expected that passionate love and companionate love would show substantial heterogeneity in their temporal trajectories, I then identified the prototypical patterns of development for passionate and companionate love. The results for passionate love revealed eight distinct linear trajectories, and six unique linear trajectories were identified for companionate love. For passionate love, individuals who experienced stable or declining levels of love were more likely to experience a breakup, but the connection between companionate love and relationship dissolution was less straightforward. Perhaps most importantly, passionate and companionate love interacted to predict the likelihood of dissolution, such that, to the extent that individuals who reported higher levels of passionate love also reported stronger feelings of companionate love, the lower their odds of dissolution. The current findings both complement and extend prior theoretical and empirical work on the developmental trajectories of passionate and companionate love and their connections to relationship dissolution. / text

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pope / In the book Agape and Eros, Anders Nygren proposes a way to understand and analyze Christian love in four “dimensions.” He writes: Love expresses a relation between a subject who loves and an object that is loved. If we turn our attention to the object, and confine ourselves to personal objects, love will be seen to take four different forms, which we shall here describe as the ‘dimensions' of love. These are (1) God's love for man, (2) man's love for God, (3) man's love for his fellow-man, and (4) man's self-love. Throughout the course of her writing, Dorothy Day addresses each of these “dimensions of love” and proposes that none can exist properly in isolation from the other three. How did Dorothy Day understand the proper relationship between these four dimensions? Is her description of the integration of these four dimensions of love appropriate to Christian theology and ethics, and is she consistent in her theology? I argue that Day's writing reveals a harmonious and proper integration of these four dimensions of love, and that she does so properly within the framework of Christian theology. I will do so in the following steps: I will begin by examining Day's understanding of God's love for humanity (Part I), our love for God (Part II), proper love for neighbor (Part III), and proper love for self (Part IV). I will then present a counter-argument (Part VI), and will conclude with an explanation of Day's integration of the four dimensions of love (Part V). / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2003. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis is written in three segments: a novel excerpt, an introduction to the genre of English- Canadian love stories; and a critical reflection on the creative process. The introduction to the genre is written in the style of a book introduction and is intended for a general audience. My ecocritical examination of love stories in English-Canadian fiction concludes that these stories tend to be banal subplots that are nonetheless deeply engaged with nature. In this thesis, “love” always refers to the intimate love shared between two lovers or would-be lovers, be they married or unmarried, gay or straight, very young or elderly. Western culture often posits marriage as the pinnacle of accomplished intimate love, though the books researched for this project profoundly object to this viewpoint. Furthermore, the tendency toward scant, emotionally-impotent, and distinctly un-sexy depictions of love doesn’t register indifference; it registers disillusionment. I assert that a meaningful, distinct, and supportive correlation exists between love stories and nature-human stories in these texts. Where more nature is present, more love is present and vice versa. Where nature is less visible, love is less visible and vice versa. I use the term “ecology of love” to address these instrinsic links—the in between—between humans and nature. The first section of the thesis explores this phenomenon through the story and characters of an original novel excerpt. The second section discusses the reasons for banality, which involve social ennui and disillusionment, geographic obstacles, moral propriety, and the unique conditions that arise in a nation of immigrants.

This thesis is written in three segments: a novel excerpt, an introduction to the genre of English- Canadian love stories; and a critical reflection on the creative process. The introduction to the genre is written in the style of a book introduction and is intended for a general audience. My ecocritical examination of love stories in English-Canadian fiction concludes that these stories tend to be banal subplots that are nonetheless deeply engaged with nature. In this thesis, “love” always refers to the intimate love shared between two lovers or would-be lovers, be they married or unmarried, gay or straight, very young or elderly. Western culture often posits marriage as the pinnacle of accomplished intimate love, though the books researched for this project profoundly object to this viewpoint. Furthermore, the tendency toward scant, emotionally-impotent, and distinctly un-sexy depictions of love doesn’t register indifference; it registers disillusionment. I assert that a meaningful, distinct, and supportive correlation exists between love stories and nature-human stories in these texts. Where more nature is present, more love is present and vice versa. Where nature is less visible, love is less visible and vice versa. I use the term “ecology of love” to address these instrinsic links—the in between—between humans and nature. The first section of the thesis explores this phenomenon through the story and characters of an original novel excerpt. The second section discusses the reasons for banality, which involve social ennui and disillusionment, geographic obstacles, moral propriety, and the unique conditions that arise in a nation of immigrants.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 1997. / In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of Educational Psychology. Also available online.

This thesis is written in three segments: a novel excerpt, an introduction to the genre of English- Canadian love stories; and a critical reflection on the creative process. The introduction to the genre is written in the style of a book introduction and is intended for a general audience. My ecocritical examination of love stories in English-Canadian fiction concludes that these stories tend to be banal subplots that are nonetheless deeply engaged with nature. In this thesis, “love” always refers to the intimate love shared between two lovers or would-be lovers, be they married or unmarried, gay or straight, very young or elderly. Western culture often posits marriage as the pinnacle of accomplished intimate love, though the books researched for this project profoundly object to this viewpoint. Furthermore, the tendency toward scant, emotionally-impotent, and distinctly un-sexy depictions of love doesn’t register indifference; it registers disillusionment. I assert that a meaningful, distinct, and supportive correlation exists between love stories and nature-human stories in these texts. Where more nature is present, more love is present and vice versa. Where nature is less visible, love is less visible and vice versa. I use the term “ecology of love” to address these instrinsic links—the in between—between humans and nature. The first section of the thesis explores this phenomenon through the story and characters of an original novel excerpt. The second section discusses the reasons for banality, which involve social ennui and disillusionment, geographic obstacles, moral propriety, and the unique conditions that arise in a nation of immigrants. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate