English Language and Literature Commons^™

2012 Printed Program, Taylor University

Colloquium Schedules

No abstract provided.

"Between Two Strange Hearts": Spiritual Desolation In The Later Poetry Of Gerard Manley Hopkins & Charles Williams, Sørina Higgins, Rebecca Tirrell Talbot

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Spiritual desolation, while a perennial human experience, is expressed in historically-determined diction. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) and Charles Williams (1886-1945) are an interesting case study, especially as Hopkins shaped Williams' later prosody. "My Own Heart" (Hopkins) shares desolation with Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, and reading "My Own Heart" through Williams theory of spiritual "schism" as literary analysis reveals a cleft self similar to the split kingdom in "Prayers of the Pope" (Williams). Neither writer excludes hope: Hopkins' Ignatian language frames "My Own Heart" as a hopeful surrender, while Williams offers hope via occult vocabulary.

A Meaningful Hierarchy: How C.S. Lewis Perceives Humanity's Significance, Zachary A. Rhone

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

"Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal," writes Screwtape. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis would clarify these halves as the Bios and the Zoe -- the biological and the spiritual, respectively. Humans are, as Dr. Ransom admits in That Hideous Strength, "More. But not less" than animals, yet humanity's Fall resulted from "the idea that they could 'be like gods' -- could set up on their own as if they had created themselves -- be their own masters -- invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God" (MC). Humans are …

C.S. Lewis: An Overlooked 1963 Monograph By Roger Lancelyn Green, William O'Flaherty

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

The first full-length (and authorized) biography of Lewis was published in 1974. One of its authors was Roger Lancelyn Green. Few are aware of (or have even seen) a monograph he wrote before Lewis's death about Jack's life and writings. While Jack saw and approved of the manuscript in 1960 it wasn't released until the same year he died. The purpose of this talk is to reveal what information and insights this trusted friend presented in this rare monograph about Jack at the end of his career.

Whimsy And Wisdom: Fairyland As A Window To Reality In The Fiction Of Chesterton And Macdonald, Jessica D. Dooley

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

A comparison of how fairyland is employed in the fiction of G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald, and the role fairyland plays in the personal development of their fictional characters, reveals parallels and important divergences between the two writers' philosophies. Their treatments of fairyland share the context of fixed moral standards that are clearly understood by fairyland's habitants and visitors, but disclose the authors' differing definitions of the relationship between personal responsibility and consequences. Fairyland, with its mysterious, imperative rules, and glorious generosity of rewards, provides a framework for explicating with startling clarity the dangerous immediacy of the consequences of moral …

The Pedagogical Value Of The Screwtape Letters For A New Generation, Brenton Dickieson

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters launched a genre of demonic epistolary fiction. Intriguingly, we have seen Screwtape-style letters about psychotherapy, (anti-) creativity, pedagogy, and scientific research. Evidently, Screwtape continues to be relevant among contemporary writers, but is it relevant to students? From the results of a spiritual perspective survey and various teaching methods in a secular undergraduate class, and including the analysis of ninety-five student-created Screwtape letters of cultural critique, we see that the genre of demonic epistolary fiction gives space for creative cultural critique and the contentprovides inspiration for that critique -- even for generically spiritual, nonreligious, or …

Hidden Heroes In Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, Jan Prewitt

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Joseph Campbell in his seminal book The Hero with a Thousand Faces says in the final chapter, "The Hero Today," that unlike the classical hero, the modern hero faces a world that does not embrace a single mythology. "Then all meaning was in the group, in the great anonymous forms, none in the self-expressive individual; today no meaning is in the group -- none in the world: all is in the individual" (334). That does not mean, however, that there are no heroes in the modern world or that the modern world requires no heroic figure -- quite the contrary. …

"Take Away The Supernatural And What Remains Is The Unnatural": Power, Secularization, And G.K. Chesterton's Villains, J. Cameron Moore

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Chesterton claims in Heretics that denial of the supernatural leads ultimately to the unnatural, and much of his work explores the consequences of suppressing or ignoring the fundamental religious dimensions of the human person. Indeed many of Chesterton's villains spurn religion altogether in their pursuit of social progress. In this paper, I examine the antagonists in The Ball and the Cross, Manalive, and The Flying Inn in light of their rejection of the supernatural.

In their attempts to recreate themselves and their societies, Chesterton's villains demonstrate a clear link between secularization, the loss of human freedom, and the deathly disfiguring …

Casting Truth In An Imaginary World: The Intertwining Of Reason And Imagination, Sharon Kotapish

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

When writing The Chronicles of Narnia, did C.S. Lewis deliberately turn from the world of reason and abandon logical argument? Or did he gravitate toward imaginative fiction because story may be the best way to communicate certain kinds of truth? Just as the Narnia tales reflect major themes in Lewis' overtly Christian nonfiction works, many of the truths taught by Jesus through parable are paralleled in the Apostle Paul's expository letters. By reading a passage from Lewis'' nonfiction writing along with a reflected passage from the Chronicles, our understanding and appreciation of both are deepened.

The Necessity Of The Terrible Good In The Works Of C.S. Lewis And Charles Williams, Kimberly Moore-Jumonville

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Through characters like Eustace, Psyche, and Orual, and others, Lewis reminds us that transformation from what we now are is a necessity if we wish to know God. We must relinquish the lies we blindly wear and be stripped to the bone; ironically, we have to go under the water so that we don't drown or die of thirst. Pauline, of Charles Williams's Descent into Hell, "was not yet prepared to accept the terror of good" (107), but she learns that "the Lord does things in the midst of a fire" (93). Pauline's salvation lies in relinquishing her fear to …

Nothing Can Come Between God And You: Uncle Tom's Cabin, George Macdonald And Shusaku Endo, Miho Yamaguchi

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe depicts the ways that God reveals Himself when evil seems triumphant and God appears to be silent. George MacDonald and Shusaku Endo apparently read this novel and deeply sympathized with its theology -- and subsequently developed its ideas and episodes in their own writings. In their views, nothing can come between God and each person; therefore, even apparent enemies can never victimize anyone -- they can only help us ultimately to be more closely united with God. They also illuminate that God never deserts people who feel weakest in faith.

Gandalf And Merlin, Aragorn And Arthur: Tolkien's Transmogrification Of The Arthurian Tradition And Its Use As A Palimpsest For The Lord Of The Rings, Mark R. Hall

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Certainly J.R.R. Tolkien was very much aware of the Arthurian tradition that existed during the medieval period and even earlier, especially as depicted by Thomas Mallory in Le Morte d'Arthur. The affinities of the characters of Aragorn and Gandalf with Arthur and Merlin are too obvious not to notice, yet transformed in such a way by Tolkien that they are infused with new meaning and purpose. It is this transmogrification that connects Tolkien's work with the past and provides the palimpsest for the world he creates in his epic adventure depicted in The Hobbit and The Lord of the …

Facts And Meanings: From Word To Myth, David Rozema

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

The 1948 Anscombe-Lewis Debate is often cited as an example of how two of England's finest minds of the twentieth century -- C.S. Lewis and Ludwig Wittgenstein -- would have debated had they ever had the chance. Anscombe was a student of Wittgenstein's, and their debate is a case in point for showing the distinction between investigating a proposition's truth and investigating its sense, its meaning. Using remarks from the works of both men, I will show that their understanding of the meaning of language -- from single words to complete stories, including myths -- is remarkably similar; and immensely …

Further Responses To Lewis's 'Lost Aeneid', Richard James

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

For almost fifty years, since his death in 1963, C.S. Lewis, Lazarus-like, has continued through his literary executors to come forth from his literary grave, providing an almost unending, vast landscape of multimedia productions from multi-volume collections of personal letters and anthologies of essays to four major Hollywood film productions; from miscellaneous small action figures and early reader literacy booklets connected to the Narnian movies to highly technical on-stage renditions of the demonic Screwtape and the verbally combative, but highly successful off-Broadway drama, Freud's Last Session.

But beyond all of these highly visible projects, this paper will provide some reflections …

Remembering As A Source Of Creation In The Poetry Of Ezra Pound And H.D. And The Musical Representations Of The Holocaust By Arnold Schoenberg And Steve Reich, Ruth J. Jacobs

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project explores the complex relationship between language and violence. Many theorists, such as Elaine Scarry, argue that language is silenced by violence and that extreme trauma inherently defies representation. Despite the impossibility of representing trauma, its preservation is a cultural and historical necessity. I am going to examine the different ways extreme violence is depicted in both poetry and music and the complex moral issues that are raised by these representations. Ezra Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos while imprisoned in a cage at the DTC in Pisa. I plan on exploring the role of personal and cultural memory in …

Feminine Leadership: Spenser's Britomart And Lewis's Reason, Jonathan Himes

Inklings Forever: Published Colloquium Proceedings 1997-2016

Scholars have debated the apparent sexism in many of Lewis's statements and in his views on female clergy. Without addressing these particular issues of importance in Lewisian studies, this paper will analyze Lewis's choice of a female virgin in the role of Reason who topples the giant Spirit of the Age in his early allegory, The Pilgrim's Regress. Besides the obvious influence of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress on this work and the feminine figures of the divine in George MacDonald's fiction as another influence, Edmund Spenser's female knight Britomart may have provided Lewis with the idea of a strong feminine …

Found Ipod Poem 1.0, Found Ipod Poem 2.0, William Lamberts

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Palabras, A Home Body, Sandy Bot-Miller

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Pussy Willows, Right Temperature, Sandy Bot-Miller

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

A Qualitative Study Of The Motivational Factors In Learning English Of Hong Kong Vocational Students, Siu May, Yvonne Yeung

Practical Social and Industrial Research Symposium

No abstract provided.

De-Centering The Dictator: Trujillo Narratives And Articulating Resistance In Angie Cruz's Let It Rain Coffee And Junot Díaz’S The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Kelsy Ann Mortensen

Theses and Dissertations

Narratives of resisting the Trujillo regime are so prevalent in Dominican-American literature that it seems Dominican-American authors must write about Trujillo to be deemed authentically Dominican-American. Within these Trujillo narratives there seems to be two main ways to talk about resistance. “The resistance,” an organized entity that actively and consciously opposes the Trujillo regime, can be seen in stories like those told about the Mirabal sisters. The other resistance narrates how characters capitalize on opportunities to disrupt business or political functions, thus disrupting the Trujillo machine. This resistance works much like Ben Highmore's explanation of de Certeau's resistance in that …

October Blast, Musings, Elizabeth S. Wurdak

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Poetic License: The Past In Creative Writing, Mara Faulkner Osb, Cynthia N. Malone, Karen L. Erickson, Scott Richardson

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Short Story: "Young Soldier, The Taxi Driver", Sophia Geng

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Verse, Fall Migration, Elizabeth S. Wurdak

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

The Pleasures Of Prayer, Luke Mancuso Osb

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

A Flight Of Quiet Necessities, Autumn Harvest, Boy Child Lies Upon Autumn Leaves, Willard Marwitz

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Short Story: "Celery's Dream", Sophia Geng

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Seeing (The Other) Through A Terministic Screen Of Spirituality: Emotional Integrity As A Strategy For Facilitating Identification, Jarron Benjamin Slater

Theses and Dissertations

Although philosopher Robert Solomon and rhetorician Kenneth Burke wrote in isolation from one another, they discuss similar concepts and ideas. Since its introduction in Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives, identification has always been important to rhetorical theory, and recent studies in emotion, such as Solomon's, provide new insight into modes of identification—that human beings can identify with one another on an emotional level. This paper places Solomon and Burke in conversation with one another, arguing that both terministic screens and emotions are ways of seeing, acting, engaging, and judging. Hence, terministic screens and emotions affect ethos, or character, both …

Traumatized Voices: The Transformation Of Personal Trauma Into Public Writing During The Romantic Era, Karalyne S. Lowery

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Beginning as early as the 1790s and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, it is possible to trace in British literature a distinctive line of fascination among authors with what we now understand to be trauma and its profound effects on the lives and behaviors of it victims/survivors. With today’s neurological proof of the changes that take place in the brains of traumatized individuals, it stands to reason that these changes have taken place in every century, not just the century in which we have had the technology to view it or the vocabulary to describe it. This means that psychological …