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Sacramental Imagery In The Fiction Of James Joyce, Flannery O'Connor, And Wendell Berry, David Jones

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Alienation, nihilism, disenchantment, and destruction of the Earth are some of the widespread maladies of modernity and post-modernity. Dualisms between body and soul, the physical and spiritual, nature and grace, and fact and value have separated humans from other people, from the Earth, from the divine, and ultimately from themselves. Ambivalence about embodiment has characterized Western Civilization since at least the time of Plato and early Christianity. Over time, a confluence of powerful philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas and movements deepened the fissures of these destructive dualisms. Modern science with its claims to hegemony over objective ways of knowing the …