Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1974

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Pearce, Howard D.

Abstract

This thesis, a study of approximately eighty Robert Frost poems in which the word flower or a specific flower appears, attempts to correlate botanical information with poetic technique. The thesis progresses along the lines of complexity and accumulation, dividing the poems into three interlocking groups based upon the flower's use. In the first stage, the flower is simply an emotional projection of the speaker. In the second more developed stage, the flower is a persona in the poem, exhibiting a force of its own which impels the speaker toward union with men. The flower, in the third and most complex stage blending the two previous characteristics, is both an emotional projection of the speaker's fears about survival and a persona of nature which teaches man about the futility of trying to subjugate or impede nature in her cyclical movement. In Frost, the flower is a positive symbol, usually serving as an intermediary or agent, which tends to be a means of union between man and nature, man and man, or man and himself.

Extent

92 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1974.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Identifier

FADT13675

Format

pdf

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