The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fogler Library Spring 5-11-2018 The aB cks of Leaves Shelby L. Colburn University of Maine,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Colburn, Shelby L., "The aB cks of Leaves" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2854. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/2854 This Open-Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE BACKS OF LEAVES By Shelby Colburn B.A. University of Maine, 2016 A THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in English) The Graduate School The University of Maine August 2019 Advisory Committee: David C. Kress, Associate Professor of English, Advisor Elizabeth Neiman, Assistant Professor of English Richard Brucher, Associate Professor of English ii Copyright 2018 Shelby Colburn THE BACKS OF LEAVES By Shelby Colburn Thesis Advisor: Dr. David Kress An Abstract of the Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (in English) August 2019 This thesis is a novella that explores themes of emotional abuse, grief, toxic masculinity, sexuality, and gay violence. The author deploys a frame narrative that encompasses short stories that are tied by a narrator in the novella. The narrator’s stories create a continuity between “real,” realistic, and surrealist fictions.