Browsing by Subject "Fables"
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Item Ambrose Bierce as fabulist: controlling the moment(Texas Tech University, 1992-05) Ingham, Donna Sue ChristopherThis is a study of Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (1842-1914?), a journalist, satirist, and fiction writer during the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. As part of his narrative output, he turned to fables and produced over 300 of them, attracted to the fable form apparently because it offered him a medium for control of style, tone, and reader response. The control motif is incorporated thematically in many of the fables as well. Yet the control may be, and generally is, only for the moment: the rhetorical moment, the historical moment, or, perhaps, the epiphanic moment. As a preliminary to an analysis of Bierce's use of the fable, this study begins with an attempt to identify the generally accepted characteristics of the fable, especially as the form has come down to us through representative written literature of Western civilization since the Middle Ages. The study then proceeds to examine Bierce's fables as devices for controlling a moment and to compare the fables with his invective satire and his short stories, in particular. The concluding section examines Bierce's use of the fable in contrast with two other nineteenth-century fabulists, Joel Chandler Harris and George Ade, and suggests that Bierce's techniques anticipated those of three twentieth-century fabulists, James Thurber, William March, and Robert Coover. The study is organized into five chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Fable: A Definition, synthesizing and distilling definitions from dictionaries, glossaries, and the works of fabulists themselves; (3) Ambrose Bierce: A Fabulist, exploring Bierce's own definition of fable and his satiric use of the fable; (4) Control: A Constant, suggesting that certain techniques or themes present in the fables are present in other Bierce works; and (5) Summary and Significance, contrasting Bierce as fabulist with two of his contemporaries and comparing him with three twentieth- century fabulists he anticipated.Item Child and parent experiences of neuropsychological assessment as a function of child-centered feedback(2010-08) Pilgrim, Shea McNeill; Tharinger, Deborah J.; Bunner, Melissa Renee, 1969-; Keith, Timothy; Cawthon, Stephanie; Sherry, Alissa; Nussbaum, NancyResearch has paid little attention to clients’ experience of the psychological assessment process, particularly in regard to the experiences of children and their parents. Advocates of collaborative assessment have long espoused the therapeutic benefits of providing feedback that can help clients better understand themselves and improve their lives (Finn & Tonsager, 1992; Fischer, 1970, 1985/1994). Finn, Tharinger, and colleagues (2007; 2009) have extended a semi-structured form of collaborative assessment, Therapeutic Assessment (TA), with children. One important aspect of their method, drawn from Fischer’s (1985/1994) example, is the creation of individualized fables that incorporate assessment findings into a child-friendly format. The fables are then shared with the child and parents as assessment feedback. This study evaluated whether receiving this type of individualized, developmentally appropriate feedback would affect how children and their parents report experiencing the assessment process. The assessment process, with the exception of child feedback, was standard for the setting. Participants were 32 children who underwent a neuropsychological evaluation at a private outpatient clinic, along with their parents. Multivariate and univariate statistics were used to test differences between two groups: an experimental group that received individualized fables as child-focused feedback and a control group. Children in the experimental group reported a greater sense of learning about themselves, a more positive relationship with their assessor, a greater sense of collaboration with the assessment process, and a sense that their parents learned more about them because of the assessment than did children in the control group. Parents in the experimental group reported a more positive relationship between their child and the assessor, a greater sense of collaboration with the assessment process, and higher satisfaction with clinic services compared to the control group. Limitations to the study, implications for assessment practice with children, and future directions for research are discussed.