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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste
Maternal & Spiritual Healing In J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, Emily Pittman Hoste
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
After World War II, spiritual and emotional healing was needed in America, despite a dependence upon materialism and conspicuous consumption for success. J.D. Salinger’s short-story cycle, Nine Stories (1953), explores what loss and trauma look like from all sides of war—mother, child, soldier, lover—all are harmed by war. Nine Stories emphasizes the need for nationwide spiritual healing and suggests that mothers offer the necessary antidote to consumeristic America. In fact, eight of Salinger’s Nine Stories employ one of three types of mothers: the self-serving and ineffectual mother; the spiritual, often surrogate maternal guide; and the ideal mother. While the ineffectual …
Hawthorne’S Human Nature And Sin: Criticisms Of Puritanism And Progressivism, Oscar Martinez
Hawthorne’S Human Nature And Sin: Criticisms Of Puritanism And Progressivism, Oscar Martinez
Theses and Dissertations
One of America’s greatest authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in a time of rapid scientific, material, and intellectual advancement. However, unlike many of his peers who went all-in on utopian reform movements, Hawthorne took a cautious and reserved approach to progress even though he supported the idea abstractly. Using six tales written acrossHawthorne’s career, this work will examine what each has to say about Hawthorne’s belief in human nature and why he takes such a skeptical position against movements aiming to fundamentally reshape people and society. The tales from the 1830s, “The Gentle Boy,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Minister’s Black …
The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer
The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer
English Theses and Dissertations
The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …
The Christian Right In Translation: Christian Conservative Discourse In Contemporary American Literature, Elizabeth Richardson Duke
The Christian Right In Translation: Christian Conservative Discourse In Contemporary American Literature, Elizabeth Richardson Duke
English Theses and Dissertations
Religion in contemporary American politics and religion in contemporary American Literature: are they independent phenomena? Literary scholars have largely assumed so. Scholars have attended to nontraditional, liberal religion in postwar American literature, while overlooking how this literature represents and critiques the rise of the Christian Right. Since white evangelical and fundamentalist Christians allied with the Republican party in the late 1970s, Christian conservatives have transformed American politics. As the GOP’s most influential interest group, the Christian Right has set the terms for many of the last four decades’ most contentious and consequential debates. Historians, political scientists, and contemporary American writers …
Babylon Is Fallen, Is Fallen: Southern Morality In Go Set A Watchman, Anna G. Dowling
Babylon Is Fallen, Is Fallen: Southern Morality In Go Set A Watchman, Anna G. Dowling
Senior Theses
A crucial theme throughout Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee is the struggle between individual morality and collective consciousness, as exemplified by black and white relations in the American South. In this thesis, I explore the biblical concept of a “watchman” as referenced in the novel’s title and what conclusions can be drawn from delving into the literary and biblical contexts of this allusion. I utilize this as a framework to explore how and why the characters of Watchman exist in such fragmented, defensive states as opposed to their Mockingbird counterparts, and what these differences imply regarding the importance …
The Greater Torment: Religious And Secular Desire In The Poetry And Criticism Of T.S. Eliot, Katie Buonanno
The Greater Torment: Religious And Secular Desire In The Poetry And Criticism Of T.S. Eliot, Katie Buonanno
Senior Projects Spring 2019
Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.
Becoming Your Broken Cisterns: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short-Fiction Treatment Of Religion, Richard W. Halkyard
Becoming Your Broken Cisterns: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short-Fiction Treatment Of Religion, Richard W. Halkyard
Graduate Theses
The intention of my thesis is to reorient the popular vantage points whereby the masses view — and pigeonhole — author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Literary critics and cursory readers alike oftentimes fail to see how the writer’s foundational Catholic upbringing, and therefore, a religious inclination informed his craft. While Fitzgerald was raised Catholic, few literary critics acknowledge the pattern of religious thematics and imagery Fitzgerald implemented throughout the course of his career. Among those select critics — including Joan Allen, Alice Hall Petry, and Edward Gillin — none argue for a positive relationship between Fitzgerald and the Christian God. I …
Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky
Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky
Theses and Dissertations
This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …
Leonard Cohen's New Jews: A Consideration Of Western Mysticisms In Beautiful Losers, Alexander Lombardo
Leonard Cohen's New Jews: A Consideration Of Western Mysticisms In Beautiful Losers, Alexander Lombardo
CMC Senior Theses
This study examines the influence of various Western mystical traditions on Leonard Cohen’s second novel, Beautiful Losers. It begins with a discussion of Cohen’s public remarks concerning religion and mysticism followed by an assessment of twentieth century Canadian criticism on Beautiful Losers. Three thematic chapters comprise the majority of the study, each concerning a different mystical tradition—Kabbalism, Gnosticism, and Christian mysticism, respectively. The author considers Beautiful Losers in relation to these systems, concluding that the novel effectively depicts the pursuit of God, or knowledge, through mystic practice and doctrine. This study will interest scholars seeking a careful exploration …
The Scripture Of Helices, Jessica M. Ramer
The Scripture Of Helices, Jessica M. Ramer
Master's Theses
This thesis comprises poems written during my two years of study for the Master of Arts Degree in English with a creative writing emphasis. The majority of the poems are written in either a received or contemporary form, although a substantial minority are written in free verse. Many of the poems deal with extreme circumstances such as combat and imprisonment. Others address family stresses due to birth, death, remarriage, and clashes of values. Some poems have a religious emphasis while others are firmly rooted in the natural world. All, however, are explorations of human nature.
Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston, Craig D. Slaven
Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston, Craig D. Slaven
Theses and Dissertations--English
This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct …
T.S. Eliot: A Never-Ending Exploration, Kristina Krupilnitskaya
T.S. Eliot: A Never-Ending Exploration, Kristina Krupilnitskaya
Honors Thesis
The following thesis explores the work of T.S. Eliot before and after his conversion to the Anglican Church. While the paper explores the stylistic qualities of Eliot's poetry, the main focus of the essay lies in bridging the pre and post conversion works together in order to show that both of the periods were significant in the poet's life. While many critics viewed Eliot's early poetry as a lot more exploratory and challenging, calling his later poetry banal and bland, my essay aims to show that even though the poetry had shifted in its content, its significance, complexity, and experimentality …
Frank And Gala, Heather M. Mcgrail
Frank And Gala, Heather M. Mcgrail
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Through the gossip and rumors in a small town in Minnesota, the townspeople discuss and react to the Levison family's claimed perfection.
The Socio-Economic And Religious Aspects In Robinson Crusoe, Alexandra G. Macy
The Socio-Economic And Religious Aspects In Robinson Crusoe, Alexandra G. Macy
CMC Senior Theses
In the novel, Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe examines a wide range of complex issues. Defoe takes the typical adventure theme and transforms it into a thought-provoking reflection of many issues involving society. A blending of economic and religious issues is created by first focusing on economy, then bringing the issue of religion in, and finally allowing for the portrayal of the interpenetration between each. Defoe proves that it is possible to live by economic practices and monetary values while still maintaining a good, moral character. The emphasis on economic issues is extremely apparent, as Defoe calls into question the concept …