English Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2766
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Item Conrad's Secret Sharer as the Pole within: The Polish Father as Doppelgänger(1996) Strohecker, Dorothy Pula; Kleine, Donald W.; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)"Conrad' s Secret Sharer as the Pole Within: The Polish Father as Doppelgänger" establishes an As If hypothesis that presents "The Secret Sharer" as a paradigm for reading the Conradian canon. Although other critics have written on Conrad 's father figure, his Polishness, and the double, my essay assumes a combined methodology based on biographical, psychological, symbolic, and doppelgänger strategies for setting up my thesis and text decoding. The first three chapters provide the background and methodology to be applied to "The Secret Sharer" explication in the last two chapters. Beginning with Chapter I, "Conrad's Polishness and the Dual Polish Father Figure," the biographical and cultural basis for Conrad's Polish matrix and his ambivalence as "Homo Duplex" are explored. Chapter II, "Conrad and the Fictional Father," reviews the proliferation of Conradian father figures, seeing the Lacanian metaphor of the father in its conflict over law and desire as significant in Conrad's generation of themes of crisis over identity involving betrayal, guilt, and questions of fidelity to paternal ideals. In addition, the father is discussed as "symbol" in preparation for equating the Polish father, Apollo, with the doppelgänger. Chapter III, "Conrad's Symbolic Approach to Fiction: The Double as Symbol: Motifs of the Doppelgänger" stresses Conrad's claim that all great art is symbolic. The double is examined as symbol of the unconscious in its many doppelgänger motifs. Finally, in Chapters IV and V, "The Secret Sharer as Pole Within: The Doppelgänger as Apollo, the Polish Father" Parts I and II, concepts from preceding chapters are used to formulate the thesis for "The Secret Sharer" as paradigm for interpreting Conrad's fiction. In this hypothetical approach, there is no attempt to be definitive and no intention to be dogmatic; the only purpose is to explore cognitive possibilities of meaning to enrich, not reduce, the close reading of "The Secret Sharer" and provide a paradigm of thesis generation for Conrad's major fiction.Item African-American Modernism in the Novels of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen(1992) McManus, Mary Hairston; Joyce, Joyce Ann; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Because early critical evaluations of the literary works of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen were superficial, their reading audience generally regarded both writers as sentimentalists and authors in the genteel tradition. A close analytical study of Plum Bun, The Chinaberry Tree, Quicksand, and Passing reveals the presence of a feminist sensibility not widely discerned. The themes which these two writers employ are typically mainstream modernist, whereas their strategies are African-American. Both Fauset and Larsen depict the mulatta as alienated, restless, and confused in her quest for autonomy and self-expression. Because the mulatta image is acceptable to a wide reading audience, it becomes an ideal narrative strategy for deflecting attention from issues of female sexuality, female subjectivity, and female spaces. Fauset and Larsen bring their writing into the modern era by conjoining the historical, African-American technique of masking with thematic strands which adhere to the modernist ideology. Such a literary plan requires a redefining of modernism to include race and gender. When the execution of that plan results in an empowering of oppressed groups and a heightened consciousness of the female presence in literature and in society, we have African-American modernism. Fauset and Larsen expand upon a sensibility which their literary predecessor Frances Harper suggested in her novel. These two writers of the Harlem Renaissance anticipate by approximately fifteen years the handling of feminist issues by such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, and Ann Petry. Fauset's and Larsen's novels, along with those of Hurston, West, and Petry, demonstrate the evolution of sexuality from a masked female issue for reasons of morality and respectability to the greater openness seen in later works. The mulatta's significance as a masking strategy diminishes as these writers exercise a female subjectivity. Fauset's reliance upon a female subjectivity results in greater use of material consumption while Larsen explores unconventional female spaces. Both writers display African- American modernist tendencies through experimenting with greater sexual expression, individuality, and displacement of the woman from a male-centered perspective. Fauset and Larsen use the mulatta in their novels to explore new and broader arenas for female expression. Likewise, a re-configuration of modernism to include empowerment of race and gender insures both Fauset and Larsen a less marginalized position in the literary world.Item JOHN PAYNTER'S JOINING THE NAVY: AN EXPRESSION OF LITERARY ASSIMILATIONISM AT THE NADIR(1999) Warner, Charles Fletcher III; Logan, Shirley; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This thesis examines the travel narrative Joining the Navy, or A broad with Uncle Sam, written by African-American enlisted sailor John Paynter in the late nineteenth century. Paynter's narrative is considered in terms of what Dickson Bruce calls "literary assimilationism," a phenomenon describing the strategy of late nineteenth and early twentieth century black authors to reproduce American mainstream values in their writing, in order to de-emphasize their racial otherness. Like civilian America, the American navy embraced Jim Crow policies during the post-Reconstruction era, and Joining the Navy adopts an assimilationist approach to a critique of these policies. Specifically, the thesis shows how Paynter's construction of his identity, his descriptions of his interactions with his shipmates, and his observations of the European, Asian, and African cultures with which he comes into contact are informed by an assimilationist strategy. The thesis suggests how Paynter's assimilationism both consciously and unconsciously critiques American racial attitudes.Item "On One Fix'd Point": The Evolution of Philip Freneau's Rational Philosophy(1992) McNair, Mark Hill; Vitzthum, Richard; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Although most critics who have examined Philip Freneau's work have contended that the poet's philosophic enquiries were scattered and therefore not worthy of critical attention, this dissertation asserts that Freneau's search for an ordered universe that included the presence of a supreme being and the immortality of the soul was in fact more structured than has been previously thought. It focuses on the disappointing results of Freneau's application of Scottish Common Sense realism to the physical world and the rational presuppositions he initially formulated in previously unstudied prose essays that would ultimately lead to the deistic tenets he embraced after 1800. Though much of his early poetry bears a strong resemblance to the work of English pre-romantics such as Cowper, Collins, and Thomson, Freneau's Common Sense empiricism undercuts both the pastoral romanticism and Berkeleyan idealism of these works with realistic images of natural decay and violence, thereby displacing romantic tendencies with empirical observation. But Freneau's hard-nosed realism proves disappointing during the 1780's, for his Common Sense approach, which posited that humans have direct contact with objective reality, finds no evidence of the existence of a deity, little hope of human immortality, and a natural world that both nurtures and destroys indiscriminately. The contradictions of renewal and decay in nature become so great that the poet questions humanity's ability to perceive and understand the physical world. But out of his pessimism Freneau constructs a rational solution that accounts for nature's contradictions and the limits of human perception. In a group of four "Philosopher of the Forest" essays appearing in the 1788 Miscellaneous Works, Freneau determines that discord in nature is part of a divine plan beyond human understanding that has been conceived and set into motion by a remote deity who is also beyond comprehension. From this seed Freneau builds over the next thirty years a rational vision of a universe that, while too complex for humanity's limited intellect, nonetheless provides the materials by which humans, through the active application of reason and science, can begin to comprehend nature's discord as part of a larger design that is necessarily perfect.Item A Straining in the Text: Women Writers and the Deconstruction of the Sentimental Plot 1845-1900(1993) Taylor, Megan Gray; Smith, Martha Nell; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)In the nineteenth century, most sentimental marriage-plot novels by women include a female bildungsroman that terminates with the heroines containment in marriage. The tension between this bildungsroman and the expectations of the marriage-plot novel are examined as a deconstructive gap through which women interrogated the cultural and social realities of their lives under cover of the socially accepted form of the marriage-plot novel. A discussion of the historical realities of women's lives is presented and an embedded interrogation of this reality in the novels is exposed. This examination is Anglo-American in nature including studies of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. At the heart of this deconstructive gap is the experimentation with female relationships, relationships that progressively emerge as the focus of these novels and the decentering force of the marriage-plot. Specifically, female mentoring relationships, which educate the heroine in the ways of the marriage market and, by implication, in the ways of survival in patriarchy, are the source of experimentation. In addition, the psycho-social underpinnings of female development are explored to facilitate an understanding of the nature of these relationships. All of the authors considered in this study have a self-consciousness about their participation in the sentimental tradition and an irony about the expectations the form contains and the reality that their characters experience. Bronte's Shirley, Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, Alcott's Little Women and Work: A story of Experience, and Phelps's Silent Partner demonstrate the power of female relationships to facilitate private survival in a world marked by separate spheres and limited opportunity. A recurring theme in all these novels is the idleness imposed on middle-class women and the heroine's desire for meaningful work. In a chronological progression, the resolution in marriage becomes increasingly less tolerable and/or satisfying, a progression that culminates in the deconstruction of the marriage closure in alternative communities of women (post-marriage) or single alternatives.Item TRADITIONS IN TRANSITION: THE EROSION OF CUSTOMS ON TANGIER ISLAND(1996) Scott, Kimberly M.; Pearson, Barry Lee; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Tangier Island, a tiny crabbing community off the coast of Virginia, is in the midst of a transition. Over the past several decades, Tangier has experienced profound changes that have significantly impacted its culture, from introduction of television to growth of tourism. While positive in some respects, these developments also have eaten away at many aspects of Island Iife. This cultural erosion is seen clearly in the transition of three Island customs - New Year's Giving, the Halloween carnival and Homecoming. Using oral narratives from residents of the community as a primary source, I explore islanders' memories of these customs and how they view the changes that have occurred. New Year's Giving, which is still practiced today, involves young boys going from home to home New Year's morning asking for money. The Mardi Gras-style carnival on the Island's main street, a custom long associated with Halloween on Tangier, died off in the 1960s and has since been replaced with more structured Halloween celebrations. Homecoming, a three-day reunion held on Tangier each year since the early 1800s, has failed to make the transition to present day. The erosion of these customs highlights a much deeper dilemma facing Tangier - namely, survival of the community in the 21st century. Islanders are facing many challenges that will determine their future, from erosion of the Island itself to commercialization of the qualities that make Tangier unique. If the community - and its customs - are to survive, residents must confront and resolve these challenges.Item The Chimney(1995) Phillips, Patrick; Plumly, Stanley; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)There is nothing worse, I think, than paraphrasing a poem, much less a whole manuscript of poems. Doing so wrongly implies that poetry exists mainly as ideas, and not, as it truly does, as words. Thus, that an "abstract" should summarize the writing in this thesis seems to me not only impossible, but also undesirable. Instead, for an expression of my methodology I offer the poems themselves, many of which take the form of the ars poetica; they discuss what I try to do when writing far better than I ever could here. All I can say to introduce the poems, then, is that I hope they speak for themselves.Item Beckett, Giacometti, and the Geometry of Being(1991) Cornish, Sue Karen; Freedman, Morris; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item Betrayal and Moral Imagination: A Study of Joseph Conrad's Five Major Works(1990) Wang, Chull; Freedman, Morris; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)A series of Joseph Conrad's five major novels, beginning with Lord Jim (1900), followed by Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), and concluding with Victory (1915), are all concerned with the theme of betrayal. These novels demonstrate Conrad's artistic depth and ultimately provide a better way of understanding his profound "moral imagination." The "standing jump" Conrad made out of Poland certainly motivated him to speculate diligently and almost exhaustively about the significance of the "jump" or betrayal. Conrad did not, however, remain in a personal realm. He transcended, as Russell Kirk said of T.S. Eliot, "the barriers of private experience" by shaping his unique experience into a universal art with the power of his moral imagination. His treatment of betrayal is too comprehensive, too artistic to be merely private or personal. The life of Conrad was a ceaseless and always agonizing struggle, as Eliot said of Shakespeare, "to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal." It is F.R. Leavis who first noted Conrad's "moral intensity" and thereby placed him in the "Great Tradition" of English literature, along with Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence. Conrad surely occupies his place in the "Great Tradition" not only as an "innovator in form and method" but also as an artist whose "moral intensity" stands out among English writers. Any study of Conrad should not ignore his passion for "the moral discovery" as well as his "spirit of love for mankind." The "moral discovery" was for Conrad "the object of every tale." It is certainly through such moral imagination that Conrad succeeds in, to borrow Lionel Trilling's phrase, "involving the reader himself in the moral life, inviting him to put his own motives under examination." It is also through the redeeming and almost healing power of the moral imagination that Conrad's vision as a whole always resists becoming either wholly existential or merely nihilistic.