Search Constraints
Filtering by:
Degree Level
B.A. with Honors
Remove constraint Degree Level: B.A. with Honors
Department
English
Remove constraint Department: English
Collection
Thesis
Remove constraint Collection: Thesis
1 - 5 of 5
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
- Creator:
- Heglin, Jeffrey
- Description:
- The vision in Sylvia Plath's work is an annihilistic one of surrender to death. Ariel and The Bell Jar are its matured expressions, but when considered with her lesser known poetry, these works reflect a gradual withdrawal and present the reader with Plath's attempt to reconcile idealism in the imagination with the realities of experience. A biographical approach provides a necessary foundation to an understanding of her poetry and her vision. Plath's major predicament is recounted in her short story, 0CEAN 1212-W. Here, at the age of three she experienced a realization of the "separateness of everything," the "objectness" or "otherness" of natural objects and animal life, as well as that of herself. No longer did she feel a total fusion with the world around her--a “bell jar” had been placed over her. The result was an increasing sense of rejection and alienation from the natural world, the social world of man, and the world of her own mind. Plath felt isolated in each of these three worlds. Her responses, though, were ambivalent--she wanted to be united once again on each level but she also desired the distance because of the pain and disappointment present everywhere. In her personal life, Plath vacillated between desire and withdrawal. She saw the positive aspects of motherhood, of being a wife, and of the life of an intellectual and poet; but she was more sensitive to the negative qualities. Too, she saw the roles as conflicting, yet she wanted each and all of them. Even men were seen as "something beautiful, but annihilating." She thus longed to have ''two mutually exclusive things,” but could not make an either/or choice, and instead withdrew further. Death was eventually seen as a resolution, but this too was alluring but terrifying. Ultimately, however, the condition of anesthetized expectations and responses that she experienced in the hospital became preferred to excitable life, and death--the supreme state of nothingness and elimination of consciousness--became the final thrust toward dissolution.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Rens, Mary Louise
- Description:
- In 1857, when Moxon produced an illustrated volume of Tennyson's poems, he introduced the designs of PreRaphaelite artists Rossetti, Hunt, and Millais, whose designs represented the new concept of narrative illumination: elucidation of the poems by portrayal of both literal and thematic elements. The illustrations of these three artists reflect their contrasting approaches to the art of illustration: Rossetti sought to present pictorial allegory, Hunt combined various thematic elements into a single design, and Millais attempted to focus upon the motivating idea of a theme. Their innovative designs, in contrast to the traditional narrative illustrations in the Moxon Tennyson, give the volume a dissonant, uneven quality; but the book's significance is historical rather than aesthetic, for it represents the development of thematic unity in the visual-verbal presentation of literature.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Bebetu, Ree
- Description:
- In Wallace Stevens' aesthetic, reality is a crucial term. But defining Stevens' view of reality is difficult, for much ambiguity resides in the term as he uses it. Frank Dogget says that, for Stevens, all reality is a product of the imagination. Conversely, Frank Lentricchia notes that, for Stevens, true reality is that which is perceived by the senses. The problem is apparent. Is reality an imagined phenomenon, or a sensuous one? For Stevens, reality can be either of these--or something else -depending on his view at a given moment, In fact, when he speaks of reality, Stevens is speaking of different things at different times, Sometimes he designates a barren reality that is ineluctably present; this is the reality of "things as they are," Sometimes he points out the fleeting reality of the immediate moment; this is the reality of things-in-themselves, And it should be noted that this reality is not the same as "things as they are," "Things as they are" are inescapable, whereas things-in themselves are elusive. At other times Stevens indicates a wholly imagined reality. At still other times he specifies a reality composed of both the imagination and physical reality. What we have, then, is a fourfold view: we have phenomenal reality, noumenal reality, imagined reality, and mixed reality, a marriage of mind and matter. When we examine Stevens' work, these distinctions become evident. (See more in text.)
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Feldman, Nancy Linda
- Description:
- Shakespeare's love-passion plays--Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra-constitute a sub-genre within the tragedies. Each play explores the destruction of the principal characters through an excessive passion which leads to death, suicide, or at least to an irresponsible state of recklessness. Although Shakespeare could have included villains in these plays, they are unusual in that there are no major characters who function as villains--villains are not dramatically necessary because the major characters destroy themselves or are destroyed by fate or circumstance. Within this smaller grouping of love tragedies, Shakespeare presents a wide spectrum of characters in whom the conflict between love and honor remains central: among the six major characters are the opportunistic, young Cressida, and the “infinitely various,” mature Cleopatra (the two extremes of the destructive female) and Juliet representing perhaps the Aristotelian mean; Romeo, Troilus, and Antony are lovers in ascending order of experience; and among the several supporting characters are those in whom the conflict of love and honor is also paramount-- Enobarbus, Mercutio, Hector and various others. An examination of these three plays demonstrated how they constitute within Shakespeare's tragedies, a sub-genre, perhaps best named, the love-passion plays.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Winchester, Robert Alexander
- Description:
- Walt Whitman and Alexis de Tocqueville recorded their impressions of American democracy in the nineteenth century. The purpose of this paper is to discover the nature of the genius and soul of American democracy as it is recorded in the writings of the two observers. There are striking parallels in the ideas of Whitman and Tocqueville, especially as they concern the fundamental principles of American democracy. Equality is shown to be the primary element in American democracy. It is further shown that, unless equality is given focus and direction by morality and religion, it can be self-destroying. Tocqueville's means of instilling morally into the people is through their elected officials, while Whitman’s method is through literature. Whitman was confident of man's perfectability, and Tocqueville observed that this same confidence is basic to the American character. The paper concludes by pointing out the fundamental optimism that both writers had in America and its future.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- English