Background
Dillingham, William Byron was born on March 7, 1930 in Atlanta. Son of Cornelius Howard and Emerald (Storey) Dillingham.
( Victorian Studies on the Web Critics Choice! Rudyar...)
Victorian Studies on the Web Critics Choice! Rudyard Kipling: Hell and Heroism is an exploration of two fundamental yet greatly neglected aspects of the author's life and writings: his deep-seated pessimism and his complex creed of heroism. The method of the book is both biographical and critical. Biographically, it traces the roots of Kipling's dark worldview and his search for something to believe in, a way of thinking and acting in defiance of life's hellishness. There matters were more basic to him than any of his social or political opinions, but this the first full-length study devoted to them. Critically, the book takes a fresh and close look at some of Kipling's most important works. The result challenges long established assumptions and amounts to a major reconsideration of novels like Kim and stories like "Mary Postgate" and "The Gardener." Central in these discussions of individual writings is Kipling's concern with the heroic life, but of equal importance is the analysis and evaluation of them as works of art. Avoiding the tangled and special language of some recent literary theory, this will appeal to a wide audience of those interested in Kipling's mind and art.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1403969973/?tag=2022091-20
(This text focuses upon a period usually associated with t...)
This text focuses upon a period usually associated with the waning of Melville's literary powers. It aims to show that his personal isolation was a conscious intellectual decision, and that he was actually intensifying his thoughts on art and creativity to a greater degree than ever before.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820318566/?tag=2022091-20
( Being Kipling exposes Rudyard Kipling’s identity as he ...)
Being Kipling exposes Rudyard Kipling’s identity as he himself perceived it through the lens of a collection of works composed over a period of years and brought together in the volume Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides. Dillingham uses this extraordinary collection, ostensibly put together for the inspiration of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and frequently ignored by critics and biographers, to offer rare insight into formative events from Kipling’s youth that shaped his personality and made him the man and writer that he became. The eight stories, eight poems, and three essays of Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides are all examined closely both for what they reveal about Kipling’s life and worldview and for their rarely perceived, but considerable literary merit.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0230609112/?tag=2022091-20
( An Artist in the Rigging is a study of Herman Melville'...)
An Artist in the Rigging is a study of Herman Melville's early novels--Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, and White-Jacket. The author considers these fictions from the standpoint of thematic relationship rather than of chronological development. He shows that while the five hero-narrators are separate and distinct entities, they have much in common and can be seen as representing different facets of an emergent composite hero-from the sensitive and restless young man who leaves home to search hungrily for experience, to the wanderer immersed in a deep probing of himself and his world. The hero's thirst for psychological independence--what comes to be his overriding ambition--is never satisfied, and destruction becomes inevitable, culminating in a paradoxical "apotheosis" in which the narrator-hero achieves this independence, but only at the expense of his humanity. Dillingham persuasively demonstrates the interrelated qualities of these five novels, and in so doing he shows that the young Melville was a far greater literary artist than he gave himself credit for being. This fiction constitutes a powerful achievement in richness of texture, range of effect, and depth of characterization, as An Artist in the Rigging makes clear.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820332607/?tag=2022091-20
Dillingham, William Byron was born on March 7, 1930 in Atlanta. Son of Cornelius Howard and Emerald (Storey) Dillingham.
Bachelor, Emory University, 1955; Master of Arts, Emory University, 1956; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 1961.
Instructor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1956-1962; assistant professor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1962-1966; associate professor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1966-1968; professor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1968-1984; chairman department English, Emory University, Atlanta, 1979-1982, 85-86, 90-91; Charles Howard Candler professor American literature, Emory University, Atlanta, 1984-1996; professor emeritus, since 1996.
( Victorian Studies on the Web Critics Choice! Rudyar...)
( Being Kipling exposes Rudyard Kipling’s identity as he ...)
( An Artist in the Rigging is a study of Herman Melville'...)
(This text focuses upon a period usually associated with t...)
Served with United States Army, 1950-1952. Member Modern Language Association (member of advisory county American literature section 1988-1990), Society Literature Scholarsand Critics, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Frank Norris Society, Melville Society (president 1987), Walt Whitman Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa.
Married Marion Elizabeth Joiner, July 3, 1952. Children: Rebecca Lynn, Judith Ann, Paul Christopher.