Pearce, Howard D.

The function of humor in Eudora Welty's work is to allow the reader access to her experiential world through language in order to reveal the multivalent life process, the insulating network of ritualistic endurance, and the dignified grace of ill-fated defiance. Exaggerated stereotypes and mythical allusions provide a way of entry into the fictional world of Losing Battles. Using vernacular dialogue and absurd actions as virtually her sole method of character development, Welty represents the elemental vitality of her characters whose will to persevere is reflected in their endless autobiographical storytelling. By recreating the family with talk, Welty's characters are able to shrug off the impinging reality that threatens their Sisyphian effort to survive. Her use of a self-conscious Southern idiom invites a phenomenological reading revealing the ultimately life-affirming pattern that informs the novel and gives shape to her fundamental comic spirit.

O'Connor reveals glimpses of innocence in her child characters before they are brought to a point of being confronted by the discrepancies of this world, when they must distinguish and choose between the good and evil forces of nature. The child who accepts spiritual values is the child of grace and the child of quest is the one who chooses worldly temptations, instead. The dilemma of O'Connor's adult sinners is illuminated by recognizing their origins in these two child types. This parallel is exemplified by a comparison of child and adult characters in The Violent Bear It Away and "The River." By taking a closer look at the first temptations of evil and the offerings of grace in O'Connor's children, we can recognize the mistakes of her adult sinners more clearly.

Flannery O'Connor's Catholicism assumes a transcendent reality to be manifest in the physical world. In her view, as in the essentialist phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, we must penetrate the surface of reality in order to find the principles and generalities that underlie it. The incarnational nature of O'Connor's fiction reflects this vision. Her grotesque imagery and her use of elements of Aristotelian dramatic form manifest this sense of Mystery in her fiction. Character is revealed through imagery and action. Finally, O'Connor's "reasonable use of the unreasonable" is based directly on Aristotelian "Surprise," which carries enough awe to jar the reader into an experience of the Mystery central to her vision.

Robert Penn Warren's Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce dramatizes essential human values in individuals, in their relationships to nature, and in the structural elements of the poem, affirming their necessity for living a fulfilled life. By representing Chief Joseph as exemplar of mankind, Warren creates a symbolic example for all to recognize and copy. The presentation of nature parallels the fortunes and misfortunes of human beings. As man's relationship with nature deteriorates, universal principles of truth, justice, and personal integrity decline. The structure of the poem mirrors life, creating tension. By encouraging reader participation and introspection, an idea of order emerges, and this order can be maintained in the individual who possesses essential human values.

Robert Penn Warren is an accomplished poet, novelist, teacher, and critic. Critics of his work consider the short story to be the weakest genre in his canon; however, an examination of each of the fourteen stories in The Circus in the Attic and Other Stories with a combination reader-response, historical, and analytical reading proves that some of the stories are very good. A comparison of these stories with "Technical Problems and Principles in the Composition of Fiction--A Summary," the appendix of Understanding Fiction, an outstanding textbook co-authored by Warren, emphasizes their quality. The stories should not be grouped under the label "Stories of Robert Penn Warren," but rather they should be read, enjoyed, and judged as individual works of art.

Robert Bly's concern with wholeness of self connects him with the phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Bly's search for wholeness begins with his experimentation with the object and prose poem. The search continues and intensifies with poems that express unification of subject and object. Bly also sees language as a further manifestation of the outer and inner bounds of self. His search appears to rest in a fullness of being as represented in the beauty and importance of human relationships.

This thesis examines four archetypal patterns in Ted Hughes's Crow poems--shamanic initiation, Biblical legend, the Great Goddess archetype, and the Trickster cycle. While examining each archetype separately, I also show how Hughes's synthesis of these patterns has produced a new mythology designed to effect a healing catharsis. Also examined as influences on the Crow poems are personal factors, such as Hughes's early interest in nature, his father's World War I experiences, his relationship with Sylvia Plath, and an interest in the nihilistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

In The Awkward Age James dramatizes social evolution by contrasting two opposing punctilios. Mr. Longdon is heir to the classic codes of behavior, codes that emphasize protection of the woman, that stress privacy, as well as the correspondence between inner feelings and outer actions. Mrs. Brook and her set react against what this punctilio has become in modern society: mere form. They renounce the old punctilio as fraudulent and replace it with a code that emphasizes freedom, one that violates the most cherished canons of Mr. Longdon's punctilio. Yet their freedom is tainted by their knowledge of the old ways. They cannot abandon the past and are caught between old and new in the process of change, unable to act or to speak their minds. Ignorant of the past, Nanda discovers the need to evolve her own punctilio.

Wallace Stevens's poem "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together" contains his most complete figure on the workings of the self's noetic cosmos, the figure being a system of three planets, which accounts for the development of reason from its first stages all the way to its highest in art. This figure provides unusual insight into the most prominent theoretical issues in his poetry: the relationship between reality, reason, and art; and the relationship between subjectivity, intentionality, and externality.

Echoes of Henry David Thoreau's Walden can be found
throughout E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. White admired
Thoreau and this admiration is reflected both in White's
subject matter and his writing style. Many of the themes of
Walden reappear in Charlotte's Web--celebration of the gift
of life, morning and awakening, simplicity, solitude, love
of nature, individuality, and freedom. White echoes
Thoreau's writing style, a style that is clear and precise,
yet rich in original metaphor, paradox, incongruity, and
subtle humor. In addition, Charlotte's Web follows Walden
in structure. Both books begin in spring or early summer
and follow the cycle of seasons through to the reawakening
of the next spring.