This study is a reappraisal of the dream as it appears in Morris's writing throughout his career. The dream is considered as a function of Morris's temperament as well as an expression of his changing attitude toward his own work. The first chapter examines the formation of Morris's intellectual character, concentrating on the influence of the thought of Carlyle and Ruskin, and the initial direction the literary dream took him in. The second chapter treats the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine stories and the poems from The Defence of Guenevere, exploring and building upon the traditional reading of the dream in these works as an expression of the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. Chapter Three examines the poetry of Morris's "middle period," Jason and The Earthly Paradise, tracing the pressures in his life that now softened and subdued the dream, and accounting for the shifts in the critical fortunes of these poems. The fourth chapter explores Morris's political lectures, paying close attention to the dream as rhetorical figure. The final chapter is a close study of A Dream of John Ball and News from Nowhere as "political romances" in which the dream frame allowed Morris to exploit the features of dreaming in order to strengthen the indictment of the present by the historical past and imagined future. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-02, Section: A, page: 0549. / Major Professor: John J. Fenstermaker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78418 |
| Contributors | Lawson, Robert Bland., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 272 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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