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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Finding The Middle Zone; Redefining Spirituality Through Contemporary American Literature, Mickey Mcpoland
Finding The Middle Zone; Redefining Spirituality Through Contemporary American Literature, Mickey Mcpoland
Master's Theses
In this essay, I investigate the intersection of post-postmodern literature and postsecular thought. I examine Jonathan Franzen’s novel Crossroads (2022) as a means to examine a religious conception of goodness and how goodness becomes rooted in what we worship. I also look to Infinite Jest and “Good People” by David Foster Wallace. The latter illuminates the conflict between traditional forms of worship and contemporary calls to worship one’s own desires, which results in stagnation, frigidity, and indecisiveness. Characters follow their internal compass, which leads them only further away from a sense of stability. Franzen’s work shows what replaces traditional religious …
Reading Zora Neale Hurston's Works Through An Islamic Lens: The Absence Of Islam In Moses, Man Of The Mountain And Jonah's Gourd Vine, Asma Abdullah Saud Alqahtani
Reading Zora Neale Hurston's Works Through An Islamic Lens: The Absence Of Islam In Moses, Man Of The Mountain And Jonah's Gourd Vine, Asma Abdullah Saud Alqahtani
Browse all Theses and Dissertations
Zora Neale Hurston is an African-American writer, anthropologist, and ethnographer of the Harlem Renaissance. She is distinguished for documenting and celebrating the religions of African Americans in the South. In this study, the author argues that Hurston represents the practiced religions in Southern African-American communities in Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Moses, Man of the Mountain while noticeably omitting Islam, despite the fact that Islam predominated in more Northern African-American Communities as a reclaimed religious history and practice. Hurston’s exclusion prompts inquiries into the history of Islamic erasures in Southern African-American communities and introduces ambiguity in interpreting the metaphors found in …
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 …