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Title: Out of the ever after and other stories.
Creator: Amadori-Segree, Claudia., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Out of the Ever After and Other Stories is a collection of language-driven stories set in different parts of the world and thematically linked, comprising realist narratives and magical realism. The trope that unifies this collection is that of the journey. The characters go on journeys, whether real or metaphorical. Many are lost at the beginning, but they find themselves in the end; others remain lost, but have a better understanding of their condition in the world. Although diverse in...
Show moreOut of the Ever After and Other Stories is a collection of language-driven stories set in different parts of the world and thematically linked, comprising realist narratives and magical realism. The trope that unifies this collection is that of the journey. The characters go on journeys, whether real or metaphorical. Many are lost at the beginning, but they find themselves in the end; others remain lost, but have a better understanding of their condition in the world. Although diverse in nationality, cultural background and gender, the characters in the eight stories share the need to find a lasting identity and a home-place to return to, whether physically or psychologically. The collection alternates magical and realist plots, male and female narrators, points of view, and diverse settings to create variety and a multicultural, hybrid and hyphenated experience. Some stories experiment with language; others have a more traditional mood, akin to fairytales.
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Date Issued: 2008
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/77641
Subject Headings: Short stories, Collections, Short stories, Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Fiction, Technique
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A Child's Prayer.
Creator: Bergkamp, Jill., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: A Child's Prayer is a Creative Work of 28 poems. This collection examines the relationship between religion and the familial, the habitual and the sublime. Through the reconfiguring of stories, often from a child's point of view, this collection seeks to question the past through the process of retelling it. Themes that are prevalent include memory, alienation, nourishment, and the sacramental. A Child's Prayer gently questions patriarchal religion and its multi-generational effects.
Date Issued: 2011
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3166836
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Poetry (Collections), Conduct of life, Family, Religious aspects
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The power of subtext and the politics of closure: an examination of self, representation, and audience in 3 narrative forms.
Creator: Berzak, Adam., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: This thesis explores the ways that certain artists-including Joseph Conrad, Alan Moore, Richard Attenborough, and Francis Ford Coppola-break from their inherited traditions in order to speak from an alternative perspective to western discourse. Conventional narrative formulas prescribe that meaning will be revealed in a definitive end, but all of the texts discussed reveal other avenues through which it is discerned. In Heart of Darkness, the tension between two divergent narratives enables...
Show moreThis thesis explores the ways that certain artists-including Joseph Conrad, Alan Moore, Richard Attenborough, and Francis Ford Coppola-break from their inherited traditions in order to speak from an alternative perspective to western discourse. Conventional narrative formulas prescribe that meaning will be revealed in a definitive end, but all of the texts discussed reveal other avenues through which it is discerned. In Heart of Darkness, the tension between two divergent narratives enables Conrad to speak beyond his social context and imperialist limitations to demonstrate that identity is socially constructed. In Watchmen, Moore breaks from comic convention to illustrate ways meaning may be ascertained despite the lack of plot ends. The third chapter explores the ways that Attenborough and Coppola subvert technical and plot conventions to resist static constitutions of identity endemic to Hollywood film. The several texts discussed subvert the Self/Other duality by suggesting alternatives to the western narrative model.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2683123
Subject Headings: Narration (Rhetoric), Closure (Rhetoric), Symbolism in literature, Postmodernism (Literature), Rhetorical criticism
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The war within houses.
Creator: Boles, Hillary., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: This work of creative nonfiction is meant to explore the effects of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder in American war veterans and their families. As a work of blended literary journalism and memoir, the author interviewed afflicted veterans from World War II to the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars, included scholarly research, and reflected on how her father's dealings with the disorder have affected her family.
Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/187205
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Patients, Family relationships, Reportage literature, Technique, Creative writing (Higher education), Veterans, Mental health, War, Psychological aspects
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: "Our fellows in mortality": kindness to animals in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
Creator: Brockway, Jessica L., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Abstract/Description: In Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy depicts characters who are especially sensitive to the suffering of all living creatures and thus engages his novel in the topic of animal rights. In this project I examine the human-animal relationships in Hardy's novel in terms of the ideas of two different philosophers: Peter Singer and Cora Diamond. I argue that, while Singer at first seems to provide a useful model for understanding these relationships in Jude, Diamond's account of these relationships is...
Show moreIn Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy depicts characters who are especially sensitive to the suffering of all living creatures and thus engages his novel in the topic of animal rights. In this project I examine the human-animal relationships in Hardy's novel in terms of the ideas of two different philosophers: Peter Singer and Cora Diamond. I argue that, while Singer at first seems to provide a useful model for understanding these relationships in Jude, Diamond's account of these relationships is ultimately a more helpful tool for understanding Hardy's ideas about animals. Diamond helps us see that Hardy believes people should help all living creatures in pain, no matter the cost to themselves, not because they recognize their suffering, but because they recognize a shared commonality with all sentient creatures.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3334248
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Animal rights (Philosophy), Human-animal relationships in literature, Symbolism in literature, Animals and civilization
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: residue.
Creator: Carlson, Susan L., Florida Atlantic University, Scroggins, Mark
Abstract/Description: This creative thesis contains 19 poems exploring and examining the association of residues, primarily through that of memory and memories, through a process of defining and (re)defining those associations of memory (the residues) that attach themselves to memory and the actions of and upon memory. This thematic thread is woven throughout with narrative prose and verse, traditional and free verse, and the melding of each in an effort to exemplify the relationships between memory and its...
Show moreThis creative thesis contains 19 poems exploring and examining the association of residues, primarily through that of memory and memories, through a process of defining and (re)defining those associations of memory (the residues) that attach themselves to memory and the actions of and upon memory. This thematic thread is woven throughout with narrative prose and verse, traditional and free verse, and the melding of each in an effort to exemplify the relationships between memory and its residual associations through structure, form, and language. Speakers are most often characters who represent the roles of memory and the associate value of the residues attached to it. The notion of residue is defined and redefined through the formation of memories, cultural associations, environmental and educational influences.
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Date Issued: 2006
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13339
Subject Headings: Poems, Symbolism in literature, Memory--Miscellanea
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The moral authority of the child in two fairy tales: Perrault's Le Petit Chaperon rouge and the Grimms' Rotkèappchen and Aschenputtel.
Creator: Cedeno, Alyssa., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
Abstract/Description: Although many studies focus specifically on the child's reception of fairy tales, few have considered whether the (step)child in the tales is more aware or more equipped with a knowledge of "moral authority" and "correct" conduct than the (step)parent. This thesis will consider the (step)parent/ (step)child relationship motif in two French and German fairy tales by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm: Perrault's Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre and Le Petit Chaperon rouge; and the...
Show moreAlthough many studies focus specifically on the child's reception of fairy tales, few have considered whether the (step)child in the tales is more aware or more equipped with a knowledge of "moral authority" and "correct" conduct than the (step)parent. This thesis will consider the (step)parent/ (step)child relationship motif in two French and German fairy tales by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm: Perrault's Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre and Le Petit Chaperon rouge; and the Grimms' Aschenputtel and Rotkèappchen. In analyzing the genre's depiction of children, the thesis will examine the ways in which the narrative voice constructs the moral authority of the child (both as intradiegetic character and as extradiegetic reader), while simultaneously diminishing the moral authority of the parent as intradiegetic character.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2974435
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Narration (Rhetoric)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A certain animation.
Creator: Christakis, George A., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: This is a collection of short stories that flirt with non-traditional forms. They are character-driven pieces, in which plot is of secondary importance to the relationships created and established. Ambiguity and abstraction are valued, as is the balance between mood and humor. Scientific principles fuel some of the pieces here, most of which do not attempt to take place in reality, but rather create their own arena to contain the events that follow.
Date Issued: 2011
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3340698
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Short stories, American
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: A collection of stories from the ground up.
Creator: Clark, Dustin., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: The stories proposed within this thesis examine the daily lives of working class men, women, and children and the subtle dynamics of the relationships between them. The stories engage a variety of narrative perspectives, sometimes employing serious overtones and sometimes shifting toward humor. Stylistically, the stories construct a single unified voice that sifts through common themes including alcoholism, self-pity, the loss of culture, grief, distrust, absolution, and hero worship.
Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2953828
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Working class, Labor
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: " Hover through the fog and filthy air": weather witching in Macbeth.
Creator: Clifford, Brooke., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Abstract/Description: This paper examines early modern climatology in order to analyze a correlation between weather, witchcraft, and their combined effects on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Contemporary climactic patterns including hailstorms, tempests, and other unusual phenomena drastically affected not only England but much of Europe. Religious and scientific texts of the period examined links between weather phenomena and witchcraft, suggesting that the weather afflictions were caused by witchcraft. Shakespeare...
Show moreThis paper examines early modern climatology in order to analyze a correlation between weather, witchcraft, and their combined effects on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Contemporary climactic patterns including hailstorms, tempests, and other unusual phenomena drastically affected not only England but much of Europe. Religious and scientific texts of the period examined links between weather phenomena and witchcraft, suggesting that the weather afflictions were caused by witchcraft. Shakespeare incorporates this suggestion into Macbeth, as well, but takes the connection even further ; the witches in the play not only use their weather magic to afflict Scotland but also control the events of the play.
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Date Issued: 2012
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3359303
Subject Headings: Criticism and literature, Symbolism in literature, Witchcraft in literature, Witchcraft, History
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The celebration of uncertainty through gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights.
Creator: Copeland, Kimberly., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Abstract/Description: While critics have argued that the Gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights merely illuminate the psyches of her characters, I show that these moments allow Brontèe to reveal a unique tension and overflow of emotion that arises between her two main protagonists. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these displays --scenes of ghostly hauntings, bloody violence, and excessive emotion--create a desirable uncertainty about the limits of life and love in this novel. This...
Show moreWhile critics have argued that the Gothic moments in Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights merely illuminate the psyches of her characters, I show that these moments allow Brontèe to reveal a unique tension and overflow of emotion that arises between her two main protagonists. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, these displays --scenes of ghostly hauntings, bloody violence, and excessive emotion--create a desirable uncertainty about the limits of life and love in this novel. This uncertainty constitutes an escape from and an alternative to the conventional romantic relationship prescribed by social and narrative standards in which two people fall in love, get married, have children and die. In my thesis, I argue that the revelation of this desired uncertainty is made possible by Brontèe's use of Gothic devices and could not have been as successfully achieved by any other literary mode.
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Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209987
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Gothic revival (Literature), English fiction, History and criticism
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao: an epistemological fantasy.
Creator: Creed, Daniel B., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, published in 1936, has been widely read in the last eighty years and has influenced significant authors in the field of fantasy, yet it has been examined in just three critical studies in that time. This study examines Finney's novel as an epistemological fantasy, a heretofore undefined term that precipitates an epistemological crisis of knowing and certainty. The novel opens a way for fantasy literature to establish itself in a Modernist landscape by...
Show moreCharles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, published in 1936, has been widely read in the last eighty years and has influenced significant authors in the field of fantasy, yet it has been examined in just three critical studies in that time. This study examines Finney's novel as an epistemological fantasy, a heretofore undefined term that precipitates an epistemological crisis of knowing and certainty. The novel opens a way for fantasy literature to establish itself in a Modernist landscape by foregrounding the marvelous and extraordinary knowledge that lies just outside the realm of human experience. Finney presents Dr. Lao's circus as a surrogate model of success, and while many of the characters in the novel are unable to accept the truth offered them by the beings of fantasy, the author uses their experiences to satirize the complacencies he witnessed upon returning to America from the Far East in the 1930s.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2683122
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Knowledge, Theory of, in literature, Fantasy fiction, American, Criticism and interpretation, Postmodernism (Literature)
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: " Merely to officiate light": the subordination and glorification of God the Son in Paradise Lost.
Creator: Cruikshank, Kathryn H., Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College
Abstract/Description: This thesis considers the role and function of God the Son within the anti-Trinitarian system John Milton envisions in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In the poem, God the Father frequently acts independently of His Son, and the divine attributes that traditionally describe the Son, including His timelessness, no longer apply to the character Milton constructs. Despite this apparent degradation, Milton still elevates the Son and considers Him to be a character worthy of our respect. To account...
Show moreThis thesis considers the role and function of God the Son within the anti-Trinitarian system John Milton envisions in his epic poem, Paradise Lost. In the poem, God the Father frequently acts independently of His Son, and the divine attributes that traditionally describe the Son, including His timelessness, no longer apply to the character Milton constructs. Despite this apparent degradation, Milton still elevates the Son and considers Him to be a character worthy of our respect. To account for this seeming paradox, I propose a reading of Paradise Lost that does not dismiss Milton's heretical belief in a subjected Son, but rather uses it as a way envision a new form of power. To do so, I compare the relationship between God the Father and His Son in terms of light and sun imagery, to demonstrate how power is divided and distributed between the two, according to the scientific principles of Milton's day. In addition, I consider how Michel Foucault's concept of the docile body both applies to the Son and explains His deference to the Father. Through these analyses, I hope to demonstrate that the Son's power exists as the result of properly exercising His free will, a will that would not have been His own had He been one with His Father.
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Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209988
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Religion, Symbolism in literature, God in literature, Religion and literature, Criticism and interpretation
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Constituting community: expanding perceptions of community in Rawlings's Cross Creek and Thoreau's Walden.
Creator: Curran, Julianne., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Both Thoreau and Rawlings call attention to humanity's need to expand its perceptions and interpretations of what it means to be a part of a community in Walden and Cross Creek, respectively. Building on the established idea of what it means to be incorporated into a human community, each author also implores his or her readers to extend the perceived boundaries of what comprises a "community" to include the natural world. Ultimately, both texts point to the need for the establishment of what...
Show moreBoth Thoreau and Rawlings call attention to humanity's need to expand its perceptions and interpretations of what it means to be a part of a community in Walden and Cross Creek, respectively. Building on the established idea of what it means to be incorporated into a human community, each author also implores his or her readers to extend the perceived boundaries of what comprises a "community" to include the natural world. Ultimately, both texts point to the need for the establishment of what Aldo Leopold calls a land ethic, which requires the re-drawing of communal boundaries to include the land with man as a citizen rather than a conqueror of Nature. Thoreau and Rawlings demonstrate how an individual can start to expand his or her conception of community to move closer to Leopold's ideal by recounting the different experiences they have with human society and nature while living at Walden Pond and in Cross Creek, Florida. However, each author uses different approaches. Thoreau concentrates primarily on reflecting upon improving his individual self in order to eventually improve his Concord community. Rawlings, on the other hand, makes a greater effort to reflect upon her interactions with the people of Cross Creek in addition to her interactions with Nature in order to strengthen her bonds with these things. Such a difference causes Rawlings to be read as presenting a re-vision of Thoreau's ideas about the relationship between humankind, one's community, and Nature. While the kinds of experiences Thoreau and Rawlings encounter might be different, in the end it is their emphasis on the importance of an individual's relationship to the community-one that includes both humans and Nature-that resonates with readers.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2683121
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, National characteristics, American, in literature, Nature, Effect of human beings on
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Let them run wild: childhood, the nineteenth-century storyteller, and the ascent of the moon.
Creator: Czerny, Val., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Drawing from literary criticism, ecological philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the wisdom of the female principle - or what Paula Gunn Allen perceives as "Her presence," the "power to make and relate"- this interdisciplinary study challenges dominant assumptions that habitually prevail in western cultural thinking. Let Them Run Wild investigates alternative, "buried" articulations which emerge in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century narratives that especially engage an audience of both...
Show moreDrawing from literary criticism, ecological philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the wisdom of the female principle - or what Paula Gunn Allen perceives as "Her presence," the "power to make and relate"- this interdisciplinary study challenges dominant assumptions that habitually prevail in western cultural thinking. Let Them Run Wild investigates alternative, "buried" articulations which emerge in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century narratives that especially engage an audience of both children and adult readers. Recognizing the fictions inherent in linear-driven thought, these articulations celebrate narrative moments where reason is complicated and reconjectured, where absence is affirmed as presence, and where tale-tellers disappear behind the messages they relate. By spotlighting legendary characters, Chapter One, "The Jowls of Legend," explains how "wild consciousness" resists legendary status. Chapters Two and Three discuss the interweaving journey of the wild arabesque in the Arabian Nights and untamed desire within Anne's transformative language in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Chapter Four, examining the death drive in Frank Norris's The Octopus, describes how it is reconceived in E. Nesbit's The Railway Children. Lastly, the Epilogue explores Juliana Ewing's "Lob Lie-By-the-Fire," tracing the manifestation of the female principle through its most wild activity - not hindered by gender - of service rendered through mystery and adventure. Wild consciousness advances through the collective identity of what Frederic Jameson has called the "political unconscious"and commissions older, better approximations of ideology through willing, spontaneous service., It acknowledges Homi K. Bhabha's articulation of "cultural hybridity," while, simultaneously, it directs such hybrid constructions of history, space, and negotiation outward toward a wild feminist critic Elaine Showalter has characterized as the "wild zone," customarily understood as a borderland space, is further reinterpreted as a borderless, expressive, timeless calling forth of receptive minds to engage in wildly compassionate, nonsensical acts and cunning, non-heroic feats in order to transform the inert, polemic systems that define our western collective mind. In short, this study refigures what Vandana Shiva identifies as cultural "patents on life," where "civilization" becomes small - a mere idea in a forest's deep heart.
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Date Issued: 2009
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/209982
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Ecofeminism and literature, Philosophy of nature in literature, Narrative (Rhetoric), Criticism and literature, Storytelling in literature
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The invisibility of here and there.
Creator: De Stefano, Kelly., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: These are collected short stories all dealing to varying extents with the theme of being stuck or captured in an experience or in a moment gone past, often events of hardship or trauma. Some characters explore this territory in desperation, and some seem to become stoic reminders of these pasts, unable to accept the responsibility to move on and allow the experience to mature them and help them grow. I have concentrated on this theme as an aspect of suburbia, the kind of place in which I have...
Show moreThese are collected short stories all dealing to varying extents with the theme of being stuck or captured in an experience or in a moment gone past, often events of hardship or trauma. Some characters explore this territory in desperation, and some seem to become stoic reminders of these pasts, unable to accept the responsibility to move on and allow the experience to mature them and help them grow. I have concentrated on this theme as an aspect of suburbia, the kind of place in which I have grown up and where my characters spend the most time. This collection has been a personal journey for me as well as an exploration in character motivation through imagery depicting the key influential moments in these characters' lives.
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Date Issued: 2011
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3340695
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Short stories, American
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The discourse of confession and the rhetoric of the devil: unnatural attraction and gender instability in Wuthering Heights and The Master of Ballantrae.
Creator: DeFalco, Dana., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ;...
Show moreOften overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontèe's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontèe's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time.
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Date Issued: 2011
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3170602
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Homosexuality in literature, Symbolism in literature, Confession in literature, Desire in literature
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: "Strange Snow" and other stories.
Creator: DeJong, Laura Quinlan, Florida Atlantic University, Bucak, Ayse Papatya
Abstract/Description: Weather assists in shaping our reality. It is an unalterable condition of the world that we are born into. This short story collection aims to present the nuances of weather. It attempts to acknowledge wind, rain, snow and lightning as forces that shape the world of its characters, forces that even influence the structure of the story itself. In some cases, weather acts as metaphor; in others, the weather seeks to alter language itself. The beauty of a snowflake resides in image and language.
Date Issued: 2005
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13293
Subject Headings: Symbolism in literature, Fiction--Technique, Weather--Literary collections, Short stories--Collections
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: Existential consciousness, redemption, and Buddhist allusions in the work of Saul Bellow.
Creator: Durbeej, Jerry K., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Within the past two centuries, massive industrialization, technological and scientific advances, wars, diseases, failures in social systems, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts have produced an existential angst that has saturated the collective consciousness of modern man. The atrocities of World Wars I and II induced European and American authors and artists to confront this state of disillusionment, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and dread; consequently, much of our modern...
Show moreWithin the past two centuries, massive industrialization, technological and scientific advances, wars, diseases, failures in social systems, and religious, ethnic, and political conflicts have produced an existential angst that has saturated the collective consciousness of modern man. The atrocities of World Wars I and II induced European and American authors and artists to confront this state of disillusionment, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and dread; consequently, much of our modern literature reflects this nihilistic darkness. In this state of grave doubts and uncertainties, the modern man finds himself alienated and disconnected from the very essences that ground him. Scholars of literature, philosophy, and the various arts and social sciences, having examined this contemporary dilemma, find just cause to question our western belief that science, technology, and materialism put the world in order. The further indictment is that these rational and materialistic forces have usurped the place of God and dismantled the ancient mythologies that once grounded our existence. This study examines the selected work of Saul Bellow and argues that his recurring themes of suffering, compassion, humanity, and renewal of the human spirit are antithetical to this collective existential angst. My argument introduces the doctrine of Existentialism and then explores the basic existentialist theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. From this platform, I later establish that Bellow takes a stand against this collective nihilism in favor of community and the celebration of life that are defined by a moral framework. Bellow's most representative novel in this vein of existential dislocation is Dangling Man., From this novel, I argue that there is an inherent flaw in the notion that man's essential existence can only be defined through his agency as an individual, and that man, not God, is ultimately responsible for his actions and destiny. This pursuit of existence based on personal freedom and intellectual synthesis is prone to failure; Bellow's point of view is that the existentialist, having disconnected himself from God and community, plunges into an abyss fraught with angst and turmoil. Bellow's theme of humanity instructs that our redemption lies not in our personal quest, but in our absorption and participation in a community framed by moral precepts and the respect for God. Finally, and from another angle and through Bellow's Herzog, I establish a connection to Buddhism. From these Buddhist allusions, I further affirm that the quest for authentic existence and redemption demands a confrontation with our angst and an acknowledgement of our suffering.
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Date Issued: 2010
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1870695
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Existentialsim in literature, Symbolism in literature, Buddhism and literature
Format: Document (PDF)

Title: The bones of the ox: how J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology reflects ancient Near Eastern creation myths.
Creator: Dutton, Amanda M., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description: Scholars have well established the influence of the Old and Middle English, Norse, Welsh, and also Medieval Latin and Christian mythologies that influenced the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. In particular, the mythology contained in The Silmarillion, specific the cosmology, behaves as sacred texts do in the primary world and mirrors a number of extant mythologies when they are directly compared. Several scholars have note, but as yet no one has studied in depth, the relationship between the...
Show moreScholars have well established the influence of the Old and Middle English, Norse, Welsh, and also Medieval Latin and Christian mythologies that influenced the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. In particular, the mythology contained in The Silmarillion, specific the cosmology, behaves as sacred texts do in the primary world and mirrors a number of extant mythologies when they are directly compared. Several scholars have note, but as yet no one has studied in depth, the relationship between the cosmology the The Silmarillion to that of a number of extant ancient Near Eastern mythologies. This thesis seeks to address that gap in the scholarship by specifically exploring Tolkien's mythological creation story in relation to those of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Abrahamic of the Near East. Such a comparative study reveals a number of structural and thematic parallels that attest to the complexity of Tolkien's work that and can be used to argue that his mythology can be considered as well-developed and surprisingly authentic as any of these ancient mythological traditions.
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Date Issued: 2012
PURL: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3355562
Subject Headings: Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Myths in literature, Symbolism in literature, Cosmology, Middle Eastern literature, Criticism and interpretation
Format: Document (PDF)

FAU Theses and Dissertations (83)	+ -
Honors Student Theses (6)	+ -

Criticism and interpretation (31)	+ -
Short stories, American (10)	+ -
Conduct of life (8)	+ -
Postmodernism (Literature) (7)	+ -
Narration (Rhetoric) (5)	+ -

Poetry (5)	+ -
Poems (4)	+ -
Self in literature (4)	+ -
Avant-garde (Aesthetics) (3)	+ -
History (3)	+ -
Postmodernism (3)	+ -
Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) (2)	+ -
Criticism and literature (2)	+ -
Feminism and literature (2)	+ -
Human-animal relationships in literature (2)	+ -
Identity (Psychology) (2)	+ -
Imagery (Psychology) in literature (2)	+ -
In literature (2)	+ -
Influence (2)	+ -
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