Democratic Dance Of Death: Stylistic And Thematic Analysis Of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology

This thesis, concentrating on the stylistic characteristics and thematic concerns of Edgar Lee Masters'Spoon River Anthology, discusses the new kind of realism that he has brought in. By examining the medieval motif"Dance of Death"and tracing the Populist influence on Masters using the approaches of close reading and reader-response, the thesis finds a new kind of aesthetic effect"Democratic Dance of Death"in the anthology, in which Masters, with a didactic purpose, expresses his own ideal of pastoral life in a free democratic heavenly society. The thesis also, based on this motif, briefly compares this anthology with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and points out the influence of Masters on later as well as his contemporary writers.