The thesis examines the influence of the Romantic elements of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird upon the novel's characterizations, structure, tone, and themes. Chapter One contains a critical survey of criticism about the novel and a list of Romantic elements. Chapters Two, Three, and Four present the three most important of those elements. Chapter Two is the exploration of the novel's Gothic traits. Chapter Three explores the Romantic treatment of childhood's innocence and perspicacious vision as it pertains to Dill, Jem, and, in particular, Scout. Chapter Four is a detailed study of Atticus Finch, the novel's Romantic hero, who expresses or incorporates many of the most important elements of Romanticism in the novel.

Issued also as thesis, University of Chicago. / Bibliography: p. [261]-272.

Carolina Coronado is often being compared to Rosalía de Castro or even Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and the truth is that even Bécquer found his inspiration in her. The fact that in the Czech Republic nobody has ever studied this author before made me choose her as the subject of my thesis. Writing this work was complicated, since there is no literature available in the Czech Republic, so I was constrained to find an appropriate literature in Spain. The goal of this thesis is to present the author and analyze her life and work depending on the romantic tendencies in order to lay the foundations for future study. We are going to study her childhood and outer impulses that had later influence on her work, just as her first liberal and feminist thinking. Then we will familiarize ourselves with a very original way of composing verses, the very first poetry and publication. We are going to analyze her life together with the political and social situation in Spain and we will present the author as a feminist pioneer. We will find out that all those aspects depended on the romantic tendencies of those times and comparing the author with other romantic authors we will understand that her themes and expressive forms were not novelty. Finally we are going to summarize all of her work and analyze her poetry. In...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Katherine Arens. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Throughout history, there have been playful prefaces to literature (or in classical oratory, before display pieces). But German examples written by authors around 1800 to their own works, together with contemporary, self-authored prefaces to speculative philosophy, constitute a peculiarly paradoxical text type. Once literature was conceived as an autonomous domain rather than as a branch of general learning; as a popular book market took hold; and once systematic philosophy competed with literature’s broad acclaim as well as intellectual independence, the preface became not only a pragmatic, but also a creative and conceptual problem. Hence the preface became complicated as a form, in a broadly Romantic tradition of thought in which every act of genuine reflection was understood to expose epistemological contradiction. After my general, theoretical Preface and my comparative, historical Introduction, I focus on three preface paradoxes and three case studies of remarkably complex textuality: on Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel. Most notable among their prefatory texts are the prefaces to Werther (1774), to a fictive second edition of Quintus Fixlein (1797) and to Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807). This trajectory is a story that begins with literary creativity and moves towards greater philosophical intricacy. The significance of my study is threefold. First and foremost, considering prefaces in this period of German literature and philosophy complements and augments the negative, subjective Early German Romantic idea of irony, Romantic textual fragmentation, as well as Jean Paul’s and Hegel’s literary and philosophically informed attempts to render both concepts and their manifestation on the page more positive and objective. Fragments are conventionally conceived as additive pieces, fortifying or undermining works. This conception can hold true for prefaces, including those by Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, a number of writers of fragments argued that their works should be understood as wholes. Precisely some prefaces by Goethe, Jean Paul and Hegel can be read so paradoxically: as unifying, wholesome (in a Sentimental sense) and systematic fragments respectively. Second and third, I show the wider importance of the German preface at the turn of the nineteenth century. Authors around 1800 not only displayed, but discovered and debated a prefatory paradoxicality that we encounter in post-Romantic, post-Structuralist and post-modern literature, theory and philosophy, too. Moreover, I demonstrate the ways in which prefaces by particularly Jean Paul and Hegel influenced especially Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Derrida.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.