Date of Award

6-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Laird Hunt

Second Advisor

Brian Kiteley

Third Advisor

Clark Davis

Keywords

City, Date, Horses, Man, Woman

Abstract

The dissertation is a creative prose project entitled “Big City.” The book will be divided into four sections. It consists of sets of twelve vignettes with the same titles that are interspersed within their sections, as well as longer poetic prose pieces, and twelve short stories. The first section contains twelve vignettes, each under the title of “People in the city are alone in their beds.” People’s lives are difficult to “get going,” so are books, and so are cities. The hope is that the voices will create a sense the necessary masses that are the city. The first section of the book also contains two longer pieces entitled “A man in the city is writing a story on a bus” and “There are horses and lights in the city.” These segments are intended to capture the movement that is possible in a big city, that is possible in language, as well as become those singular structures, or monuments, that set a city apart. Throughout the text movement of thought is reflected, and reflects back on, the organization of the text itself. The first section also includes vignettes entitled “A woman in a city misses a man in another city.” These vignettes are as close as the book comes to telling a cohesive plot driven story. There is a progression of story line through the thoughts of the “woman” that eventually ends the full cycle of the book. The woman misses a man she fell in love with after she spent one day with him in his city, and so wants him to visit her in her city. The next section is twelve short stories told in different forms, from third person omniscient to dialogue only. All the stories are located by the fact that the characters, or voices, involved live in a city. The third section contains three sets of twelve vignettes. The first twelve vignettes are entitled “Things that can only happen in the city.” There proper names are used tell little mini life stories and situations that can only occur in cities. The next twelve vignettes entitled “There are all kinds of people in the city” are used to explore race and diversity issues in dialogue and thought only. And vignettes entitled “Why is the city beautiful?” set out to give different perspectives on what creates a sense of aesthetics in such an unnatural environment. The fourth section of the book is twelve longer vignettes entitled “The other cities” narrated in the same voice as the one used in “A girl in the city misses a boy in another city.” The texts ends when the “woman” has gone to the “his” city and to another unnamed city and has come back to her own alone still.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Marream Krollos

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

183 pgs

Discipline

Fine arts, Aesthetics, Folklore

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