Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1990

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Robert Y. Drake

Committee Members

William Bruce Wheeler, Allison Ensor, William Shurr

Abstract

The primary purpose of "Companion to Owls" is to examine how Robert Penn Warren's ideas about the relationship between the self and an interconnected world--ideas which collectively make up his loose theory of knowledge--have been born and borne out in selections from his poetry, novels, and prose studies of history and literature. A secondary and closely related purpose is to show how Warren's thinking derived from and affected his own interpretations of American history and American literary history. A statement of the basic tenets of Warren's philosophy of knowledge is established by inductive means in the first chapter. Thereafter, the study is devoted to close readings of works in each of the major genres. Formal analysis of Warren's works--especially in the areas of structure, language, and characterization--is employed with frequent crosstextual reference to prove the binding nature of his theme of knowledge. The study reveals that Warren's works reflect his use of imaginative inquiry to interpret the past in the pursuit of a sustaining knowledge. Warren's extensive use of national, regional, and even a personal past in his writing is interpreted as the work of an individual critic of modern American values and as the work of a descendant from the tradition of democratic questioners which includes Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain.

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