Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

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 …

Tellers Of Dark Fairy Tales: Common Themes In The Works Of C.S. Lewis And Terence Fisher, Gabriel C. Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This article explores connections between C.S. Lewis and filmmaker Terence Fisher, notably how their works explore themes like the charm of evil, white magic’s dubious nature, and myth hinting at divine truths. By viewing these themes, Fisher and Lewis’s common views on fairy tales, and how feedback informed their work, scholars discover nuance in the perceived “Inklings versus secular British culture” dichotomy.

“It's So Normal, And … Meaningful.” Playing With Narrative, Artifacts, And Cultural Difference In Florence, Dheepa Sundaram, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article considers how player interactions with religious and ethnic markers, create

a globalized game space in the mobile game Florence (2018). Florence is a multiaward-

winning interactive novella game with story-integrated minigames that weave

play experiences into the narrative. The game, in part, explores love, loss, and

rejuvenation as relatable experiences. Simultaneously, the game produces a unique

experience for each player, as they can refract the game narrative through their own

cultural, identitarian lens. The game assumes the shared cultural space of the player,

the player-character (PC), and the non-player-character (NPC) while blurring the

boundaries between each of these …

The Faustian Deal: What Is Good And Evil?, Jaclyn Elmquist

English Honors Theses

How is the “deal with the devil” is portrayed in contemporary films? This essay compares how the original Faustian deal informs modern-day portrayals. Thus, I examine how devils were first represented in early works such as The Faustbuch, Mary of Nijmegen, and Goethe’s Faustus. These depictions and their historical context provide the basis for my research. I compare these works to the films, Rosemary’s Baby, Wall Street, and Sweet Smell of Sucess. In the mentioned films, the main characters make deals with a devil or demon for wealth, success, or fame. I explore how the Faustian character of each film …

Attention, Reflection, And Contemplation: Approaching The Divine Through Romantic Poiesis, Katelynn Tyner

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

Often the techniques of the said and the unsaid work together. This paper will explore ways in which poets embrace iconophilic or iconoclastic postures toward divine poiesis. One objective will be to focus on the arrangement of an abundance of images into itineraries and poetic landscapes. Another objective will be to demonstrate how these patterns of cultivation can be related to a divine poiesis. Through poetry, there are ways of attending to, reflecting on, and contemplating divine images that can return us to forms of participation with the sacred. First examining poetic attention, I identify poets who demonstrate …

Dawn Of A Silver Millennium: Millenarianism, Futurity, And Utopia In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Matthew Dentice

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The story of Sailor Moon, told and retold in countless forms in the thirty years since the original manga’s publication, is imbued with a cosmic sense of time. The modern-day protagonists’ personal journeys are tightly interwoven with the distant past of the Silver Millennium and the far future of thirtieth-century Crystal Tokyo. But only the manga is fully willing to grapple with what the future means for its own present moment. Written in the early 1990s during Japan's "Lost Decade," Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon dramatizes the angst that accompanies the imminent arrival of a new millennium. As the Sailor Guardians …

“Legato Con Amore In Un Volume”: Can Tolkien’S Ainulindalë Accommodate Divine Knowledge?, John Wm. Houghton

Journal of Tolkien Research

Tolkien's depiction of Eru Iluvatar in the Silmarillion as coming to know the Song of the Ainur only as he hears it conflicts with ideas about the nature of divine knowledge developed by such thinkers as Ibn Sina, Maimoindes, and Thomas Aquinas--as well as with more general ideas about omniscience and eternity. Texts recently published in The Nature of Middle-earth indicate that Tolkien was aware of some of these divergences. The fact that he classifies the Ainulindalë as a "legend" in which divine thought is merely "represented" as music offers some possibilities for reconciliation with the theological tradition, but Tolkien …

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff

Journal of Religion & Film

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …

Musical Scores And The Eternal Present: Theology, Time, And Tolkien By Chiara Bertoglio, John Wm. Houghton

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Review of Chiara Bertoglio, Musical Scores and the Eternal Present: Theology, Time, and Tolkien (2021).

The Faithful Reader: Essays On Biblical Themes In Literature, Justin D. Lyons

Cedrus Press Publications

Through essays written by faculty and staff at Cedarville University, this book explores biblical themes such as love, mercy, sin, repentance, and hope in selected works of literature. The volume serves an expression and exploration of the Christian worldview as applied to reading works of fiction from various genres and time periods. It serves also as an example of the practice of biblical integration that Cedarville University strives for in every discipline.

Accommodation And Coping In Medieval Catholic England: A Historical Dramaturgy Casebook For The Chester Mystery Cycle’S Play 14: Christ At The House Of Simon The Leper, Christ And The Moneylenders, And Judas’ Plot, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this historically focused dramaturgy casebook for the medieval Catholic Chester Mystery Cycle's Play 14, Christ at the House of Simon the Leper, Christ and the Moneylenders, and Judas’ Plot, I offer suggestions for Play 14's production as it might have appeared in the cycle's final year of performance, 1575. I contextualize and grapple with the play's antisemitisms, and also offer a brief history of antisemitism in medieval Europe. I also analyze Play 14 and the Chester Mystery Cycle for their rhetorical appeals to the medieval vernacular language, contexts, and events, as well as their anachronistic temporal and geographic …

The Faithful Reader: Essays On Biblical Themes In Literature, Justin D. Lyons

Faculty Books

Through essays written by faculty and staff at Cedarville University, this book explores biblical themes such as love, mercy, sin, repentance, and hope in selected works of literature. The volume serves an expression and exploration of the Christian worldview as applied to reading works of fiction from various genres and time periods. It serves also as an example of the practice of biblical integration that Cedarville University strives for in every discipline.