Department of English Language and Literature

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“A beautiful, strong friendship to bless them both” : cross-gender friendship in The Woman in White and Little Women.
(2022-04-19) Flint, Justice, 1995-; Pond, Kristen A.
The marriage plot is intimately connected to the form of the nineteenth century novel, both giving shape to and being shaped by it. Its dominance, however, often precludes the representation of other crucial relationships in fiction, especially cross-gender friendships. Scholarly attention to heterosocial relationships in the Victorian novel has often been eclipsed not only by studies of the marriage plot but by attention to same-gender friendships in this literary period. In this thesis, I examine two notable cross-gender friendships in nineteenth century fiction, namely, that of Walter Hartright and Marian Halcombe in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859), and that of Josephine “Jo” March and Theodore “Laurie” Laurence in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868). I highlight the ways in which these depictions demonstrate both the unique challenges and unique benefits of cross-gender friendship and consider the insights that these works offer for broader reflection on cross-gender friendship and on its representation in literature, as well as on the intriguing connections between narratives of friendship and our reading relationships to—and expectations of—the novel.
A holy stream and a strange marriage : environmental and sacramental healing in Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow.
(2019-04-11) Lambert, Christina J., 1994-; Daniel, Julia E.
Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow, dramatizes both ecological and theological realities, and is invested in the fields of blue-ecocriticism, environmental humanities, ecofeminism, and ecotheology. I consider the images of water and marriage in Jayber Crow in light of these theoretical fields in order to draw attention to the entwined acts of rehabilitating the sacramental and the environmental imaginations that Berry presents in this novel. The first chapter of this project describes how the river that runs through Jayber’s life physically and spiritually shapes him, dramatizing what it means for water to have an environmental and sacramental presence in our everyday lives. The second chapter considers Jayber’s “strange marriage” to Mattie Chatham and how it models a redemption of the objectifying gaze in order to restore the covenantal significance of both human and nonhuman relationships through an education of the imagination.
A mirror for the republic : mimesis, racial justice, and American literary realism.
(2019-12-03) Land, Robin Jeremy, 1978-; Fulton, Joe B, 1962-
The following study examines the degree to which the American Literary realist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century worked to undermine the racial stereotypes that justified the continued marginalization of African Americans. Using Plato and Aristotle’s theory of mimesis, I argue that both black and white writers manipulated audience expectations and prejudices in order to challenge their racist misconceptions. Twain, Chesnutt, Dunbar, and Crane, the writers in this study, used recognizable patterns and historical events that their audience would recognize only to upturn those patterns at emotionally key moments. By creating an emotional connection with the character writers could create a rhetorical space through which they could argue for a new understanding of black people.
A regenerate science : paradigms for science and theology in recent American fiction.
(2018-07-27) Womack, Ryan Lee, 1986-; Ferretter, Luke, 1970-
In this dissertation, I examine four paradigms for integrating science and theology as seen in literary fiction. First, I offer a theoretical approach to integrating science and theology, show some recent anxieties about science and religion, and provide a short history of literature and science. Second, I study the works of Flannery O'Connor as she incorporates aspects of the evolutionary theology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and rejects other aspects. Thirdly, I show how Walker Percy envisions the overlap between depression and the spiritual vice of acedia and seeks to guide to the reader towards new resources for recovery of the self. Fourthly, I contend that Cormac McCarthy's fiction and essays develop a meditation on a generative kind of chaos, and this vision opens up helpful and difficult questions about the agency of God and man. Lastly, I illuminate the fiction of Anthony Doerr in an attempt to find invisible underlying patterns in the natural world as well as human systems. In all of these chapters, I look to provide new metaphors and paradigms from fiction to better understand the natural world. Visible and invisible reality corresponds in ways more profound than we may realize, and metaphors such as snow crystals and sea shells further expand our previous understanding about the patterns of order built into the world. But even more profound are discoveries about human systems which display order or disorder, about how these relate to human choices and emotions, as well as our spiritual lives. I find that these four writers offer lucid images of human life which take seriously the spiritual, unseen, and complex nature of the human person. My dissertation shows how literary fiction can provide new inroads towards bridging major intellectual paradigms in theology and the natural sciences.
A short allowance of hides.
(2018-06-01) Smith, Daniel Robert, 1991-; Garrett, Greg.
This novella tells the story of an ill-starred fraternity blowout named after the infamous Donner Party tragedy of 1846-47. A frame narrative relayed years after the fact by a playfully unreliable yet ultimately empathetic narrator, the text revels in digression, allusion, and symbolism. The setting is The University of the South, in southeastern Tennessee, with the exception of the first chapter, which is set just outside Nashville. While the story’s moral ecosystem remains modern, the style is markedly postmodern. The distant narrator wrestles consciously with his role as storyteller (“keep in mind,” he writes, “I am neither a biographer nor a historiographer or journalist but a narrative opportunist, a renderer of pleasant and scenic half-truths”), and the text is accentuated with fourteen footnotes, some of them stretching beyond the length of a single page. Recurring themes include mental health, brotherhood, guilt, moral decay, ennui, and the transition into adulthood.
A stepwise approach to understanding nanomaterial transformations under situationally relevant conditions.
(2021-04-20) Mulenos George, Marina Rochelle, 1995-; Sayes, Christie M.
Given the increasing use of nanomaterials in various consumer products and industrial processes, it is of the utmost importance to better understand potential mechanisms of adverse effects to ensure human health and safety when developing regulations and standard operating procedure with newly developed materials, like nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are materials with one or more dimensions in the nanoscale range that are produced to advance industrial processes, used as an additive in consumer products, and produce novel drug delivery carriers. Standardized toxicological studies focus on newly produced nanomaterial products before they reach the market; however, most of these studies exclusively investigate pristine engineered nanomaterials. The issue with testing pristine engineered nanomaterials is that most environmental and/or human toxicities are induced after nanomaterials undergo transformations, e.g. release of metal ions. The goal of this dissertation was to conduct a comprehensive study of increasingly complex situationally relevant environments on organic and inorganic nanomaterials to understand important insights into nanomaterial transformations and the associated toxicity after exposures in vitro. Situationally relevant conditions occur when nanomaterials are used in products or processes and interact with the surrounding environment, where they then may undergo transformations. These transformations may include distribution with biomolecules or natural organic matter, lipid membranes in cells, high ionic conditions, or changes in temperature, salt concentration, etc. In this study, important physicochemical characterization methods were established for organic and inorganic nanomaterials. Additionally, these nanomaterials were transformed under simulated conditions and examined in increasingly complex environments. Next, the transformed nanomaterials were incubated with an established in vitro liver model to elucidate the relationship between nanomaterial transformations and the associated toxicity after exposure. Finally, transformed nanomaterials were exposed to an in vitro model for steroidogenic disruption to investigate further into adverse effects nanomaterial transformations may have on human health. Ultimately, the aim of this work is to advance the field of toxicology by improving our understanding of nanomaterial transformation mechanisms and to aid in risk assessment and regulations.
Agricultural approaches to T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and Four Quartets.
(2020-04-16) McClernon, Shannon, 1996-; Daniel, Julia E.
This project considers the convergence of T. S. Eliot's agrarian and Anglo-Catholic views in Murder in the Cathedral and Four Quartets. Drawing on Jeremy Diaper's book T. S. Eliot and Organicism, I explore how Eliot performs and communicates his agrarian politics through these works and how his agrarianism intersects with a Christian understanding of time, martyrdom, and Incarnation. Chapter two examines how Eliot performs his pro-agrarian politics in Murder in the Cathedral through the agricultural imaginary of the Women of Canterbury. I discuss the connection that Eliot makes between ecological and spiritual renewal in the play and explore the eschatological implications of this connection. Chapter three then considers Eliot’s emphasis on the Incarnation in Four Quartets, particularly in the way it elevates the spiritual value of the material world. Fittingly, Eliot stages images of proper and disordered land management at key moments of spiritual crisis and renewal in this work.
'al hero iwilla' : violence and identity in Laȝamon’s Brut.
(2020-07-28) Pittman, Joshua Wayne, 1990-; Johnston, Hope.
All scholarship on Laȝamon’s Brut recognizes that the poem is extremely violent, but most of the studies that interrogate violence or peace in the poem limit themselves to wartime violence. This project attempts to widen the perspective and enable a nuanced view of why violence occurs, both in war and in other forms. To aid in this comprehension, I divide motivations for violence into possession of goods, dominance, revenge, and honor, and I point out patterns such as René Girard’s sacrificial crisis and Steven Pinker’s Moralization Gap. All of the motivations cohere, however, in a concern for identity, and to illuminate that dynamic, I turn to Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and other phenomenologists. Through these lenses, I propose that understanding the uses of violence can help elucidate established scholarly concerns, such as how the text evaluates kings, constructs race, and imagines the possibility of peace. This study also contributes to the current state of scholarship by putting heavy emphasis on early episodes in the Brut, which establish patterns of violence and parameters for understanding the narrator’s evaluations of events. Only after such groundwork does this project arrive at the conclusion that Arthur is the best king, but that his justified imperial project still leaves Britain vulnerable. Several strands of the text imply that the tragedy of Arthur’s rule results from conflicts inherent in the Britons’ self-conception and methods of attaining peace. In this way, the critique of the Britons that the poem offers reaches all the way down to its basic imagination of who the Britons are and how they use violence to organize their society.
"Alone in the front" : isolation and community in the hero's life in Beowulf.
(2013-05-15) Ziehe, Mary E.; Marsh, Jeannette K.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
This project seeks to clarify the paradox suggested by 'ana on orde' (“alone in the front”) and to show how it plays out on both the narratorial and verbal levels of Beowulf. Ultimately, I suggest reading Beowulf using the two sides of this paradox (held in tension with each other) as an interpretive lens. My approach focuses on linguistic and literary analysis of the words 'ana' and 'ord.' I first provide background material on topics of Beowulf scholarship relating to my analysis. Then, I trace the uses of 'ana' and 'ord' in Beowulf’s “pre-battle speeches.” Third, I analyze their use throughout Beowulf. Finally, I look at how they and their cognates are used in the poetry of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German in order to see how the Beowulf poet uses the phrase ana on orde in comparison to other literature in his larger literary and cultural milieu.
American modernism's fading flowers of friendship.
(2013-09-24) Beck, Zachary.; Ferretter, Luke, 1970-; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
I examine friendships between major characters in modernist novels written by four American writers: Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. My examination will reveal that the friendships they portray largely fail due to a symptom of modernism, namely that people cannot agree upon the purpose of a human being’s existence. If the purpose for human life, and therefore the criteria by which to judge whether a human life is lived well, are uncertain, then people cannot selflessly assist one another to live life well; this assistance lies at the heart of my definition of friendship, which I have adopted from Aristotle. The depiction of friendship by these four novelists indicate the immense difficulty of individuals living in the culture of modernism to look past themselves and help those closest to them progress toward a fulfilling, meaningful way of life. My concern with friendship in modernist novels is cultural and philosophical. I approach the novels as artifacts of the modernist culture in which they were created to see how these writers artistically perceive friendship. This emphasis implies that broad, philosophical trends infiltrated the communities of which these writers were members and affected their perceptions of friendship, both in their personal lives and in their art; my focus for this project happens to be the latter, rather than the former. I then want to compare the writers’ modernist-steeped view to a philosophical notion of friendship that was understood in Western thought for two thousand years but that until recently was almost completely forgotten—Aristotle’s conception of friendship and its role in a flourishing, communal life. Through this comparison, I will show that the cultural forces of modernism prompted these authors to create both enfeebled friendships and, on occasion, hopeful ideals of friendship that one might pursue against the alienating forces of modern life. The goal of my study is to reveal that the modernist period is a rich source for understanding the dynamics of and human need for friendship.
American religion and its discontents : American ideology and alternatives in DeLillo, Pynchon, Castillo, and Robinson.
(2017-03-03) Carson, Jordan D., 1983-; Ford, Sarah Gilbreath, 1968-
This study examines the critiques of American civil religion by four contemporary American authors: Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Ana Castillo, and Marilynne Robinson. The works of these authors revolt against secularism as a normative worldview, showing religious faith to be an unvanquishable facet of human life. Yet these writers also insist that religious faith is often misplaced in spiritually enervating objects. They diagnose American cultural malaise as a spiritual deficiency requiring a spiritual remedy. DeLillo, Pynchon, Castillo, and Robinson view contemporary American selfhood as a truncated thing and impute the poverty of this selfhood to two paradoxically related causes: the first is a lack of recognition of genuine transcendence, and the second is a pervasive and comprehensive American ideology that serves as an ersatz spiritual discipline, offering “America” itself as transcendent and dictating the individual’s vision of the good life. The purpose of this study is not to offer a normative account of the form and function of American political ideology, but rather to demonstrate how these four writers depict and respond to it. Each of the respective chapters on DeLillo, Pynchon, Castillo, and Robinson proceeds through two movements: first, establishing the author’s depiction of American political ideology as a false religion, then identifying the spiritual alternatives presented by the author. Excepting Robinson, the authors discussed have been accused of lacking moral vision and even of nihilism; this study aims to combat this reputation and to show that these writers unequivocally hold human flourishing to be contingent upon a flourishing spiritual life.
Analogy, causation, and beauty in the works of Lucy Hutchinson.
(2008-10-14T18:44:51Z) Getz, Evan Jay.; Donnelly, Phillip J. (Phillip Johnathan), 1969-; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
Lucy Hutchinson's translation of the ancient epic De Rerum Natura is remarkable in light of her firm commitments to Calvinist theology and the doctrine of Providence. David Norbrook and Jonathan Goldberg offer strikingly different explanations for the translation exercise. For instance, Norbrook argues that Hutchinson translates Lucretius in order that she might learn from the false images in Lucretius and make better ones in such works as Order and Disorder (Norbrook, “Margaret” 191). In contrast, Goldberg argues for compatibility between Lucretian atomism and Hutchinson’s Christianity, seeing no contradiction or tension (Goldberg 286). I argue that neither critic accounts for the aesthetics of beauty in Hutchinson's poetry; both critics instead attribute an aesthetics of the sublime to Hutchinson. In making this argument, I show that Hutchinson's theory of causation has much in common with Reformed Scholasticism, whereby she is able to restore a metaphysics of formal and final cause. Hutchinson also revives the doctrine of the analogy of being, or analogia entis, in order to show that the formal cause of creation is visible as God's glory. After a discussion of her metaphysics and ontology, I then show that Hutchinson's poetry reflects a theological aesthetics of beauty and not the aesthetics of the sublime. In the fourth chapter, I compare the typological accounts of Abraham found in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and Hutchinson's Order and Disorder with a view to virtue as the proper basis of authority. I conclude that the virtues of Hutchinson's Abraham invite individual participation in a way which is prevented by Hobbes. In my final chapter, I show that Hutchinson writes a hagiographical account of her husband in the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson.
The Anglo-Catholic quality of Christina Rossetti's apocalyptic vision in The Face of the Deep.
(2006-07-30T23:24:33Z) Armond, Andrew D.; Wood, Ralph C.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
Critical scholarship on Christina Rossetti's The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse, where it exists at all, tends to interpret the work as an individualistic and subversive foray into biblical interpretation. However, this dissertation argues that Rossetti's apocalyptic vision in The Face of the Deep is formed by the interpretive presuppositions of the Anglo-Catholic movement, which sought to reinvigorate the interpretation of Scripture with the traditional exegetical methods of patristic and medieval scholars. The central concern of this dissertation is thus to identify particular ways in which Rossetti's The Face of the Deep relies on an identifiable ecclesiastical interpretive tradition and to tease out the implications of Rossetti's use of these traditions for her work both as a budding theologian and as an established poet. Chapter two demonstrates that Rossetti's ostensibly individualistic and pietistic tendencies toward the personal appropriation of the Scriptures are governed less by a Romantic notion of the individual reader of Scripture than by presuppositions with which medieval monks and scholars approached Scriptural study. Chapter three examines Rossetti's anagogical interpretation in The Face of the Deep, particularly the ways in which Rossetti’s mature view of patience draws on patristic and medieval understandings of the temporal relationship of the Christian to God. Chapter four notes carefully Rossetti's use of the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of Reserve, as promulgated by Isaac Williams in Tracts 80 and 89, in The Face of the Deep. I look first at the manifestation of the doctrine in Rossetti's prose, especially as it relates to both her own self-abnegation and her exhortation to her readers to avoid "evil knowledge," and secondly at the doctrine as it helps explain the stylistic oscillation of poetry and prose in the commentary. In chapter five, finally, I examine several of Rossetti’s early poems, including "Symbols," "The Convent Threshold," "Goblin Market," and "The Prince's Progress," to explore the ways in which The Face of the Deep serves as a kind of "grammar," a symbolic and theological vocabulary, by which all of Rossetti's poetry can be interpreted.
Apocalyptic care : the renewal of creation in Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
(2021-07-28) Spofford, Holly, 1993-; King, Joshua S., 1979-
My dissertation seeks to correct the widespread misperception in Victorian literary studies and ecocriticism that belief in an embodied renewal of creation necessarily undermines a commitment to alleviating suffering now. This misperception prevents recognizing how central the apocalypse is—as a reality, not simply as a source of allusion—to the thinking and poetics of major Victorian poets. In my dissertation, I study the religious poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins and challenge those prevailing assumptions through taking the poets’ religious commitments seriously as sources of hope and aesthetic formation. Ultimately, I demonstrate that their commitment to an embodied renewal of creation does not undermine but rather bolsters their commitment to caring for others—both human and nonhuman—in the present. Because of this, my driving question is: “How do these poets imagine and embody the eschaton in their poetry, and how do the theological ideas and poetics work together to invite readers into specific postures of attention, engagement, and action in the present world, all while anticipating the eschaton?” As I argue in my body chapters, EBB uses the eschatological imagery of crowns and graveyards to emphasize a Christocentric stance of receptivity and responsibility, Rossetti connects the sea to the apocalypse and uses this link to invite a stance of humility and connectivity, and Hopkins crafts visceral experiences of the eschaton that call readers to accept finitude and relationship. Each of these poets entwines their emphasis on the eschaton with an emphasis on the value of the physical, suffering world and its creatures. As the conclusion discusses, their acceptance of the eschaton also encourages them to embody in their poetry an acceptance of their own limitations, epistemologically, ontologically, and practically—and that acceptance of limitations encourages them to move beyond the individual self and into a sense of self defined through connectivity to God and to both humans and nonhumans.
Art and artistry in Katherine Anne Porter : iconographic figures and festive patterns.
(2013-05-15) Werner, Karen Svendsen.; Fulton, Joe B., 1962-; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
Exploring how art influences the works of Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), this study examines the way Porter’s fictional narrative patterns adapt and arrange images from paintings, folk art, and prints. In her structural response to artistic issues prevalent during the Modernist Period, Porter runs her literary versions of iconographic figures through festive patterns to depict the changes individuals experience when significant cultural shifts envelop them. Besides employing grotesque images to portray suffering, Porter evokes the life-death-rebirth cycle of festive patterns, also called folk carnival humor by Mikhail Bakhtin, to convey hope for people and the continuation of their culture during times of turmoil. Medieval, renaissance, and modernist artwork provides Porter with images and structural approaches. Reflecting the traits of typology and the subjects of medieval iconography, Porter’s characters function by fulfilling past figures such as Eve and by anticipating literary figures in the future. As part of the development of her literary figures in Noon Wine, Porter blends influences from the Agrarians with her appreciation of renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel to emphasize the relationship between her characters and the landscape. Porter’s associations with modernist Mexican artists and her knowledge of the successors to Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death shape her interpretation of the arts and her portrayal of death in stories such as “María Concepción.” Through Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, Porter develops an understanding of Franz Boas’s theories, which contribute to her sense of folk culture, foster within her a sense of the chronological connectedness of time, and lead her to treat artwork as archeological artifacts. These multi-layered dimensions of Porter’s images also reflect her interest in the allusive modernist paintings of Henri Matisse and the literary theory of T.S. Eliot. Her engagement with modernist debates over the merits of the city appears in “The Cracked Looking-Glass,” a story positing Porter’s agrarian challenge to James Joyce’s urban-centered approach to art and writing.
Augustinian Auden : the influence of Augustine of Hippo on W. H. Auden.
(2008-10-28T16:35:00Z) Schuler, Stephen J.; Russell, Richard Rankin.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
It is widely acknowledged that W. H. Auden became a Christian in about 1940, but relatively little critical attention has been paid to Auden’s theology, much less to the particular theological sources of Auden’s faith. Auden read widely in theology, and one of his earliest and most important theological influences on his poetry and prose is Saint Augustine of Hippo. This dissertation explains the Augustinian origin of several crucial but often misunderstood features of Auden’s work. They are, briefly, the nature of evil as privation of good; the affirmation of all existence, and especially the physical world and the human body, as intrinsically good; the difficult aspiration to the fusion of Eros and agape in the concept of Christian charity; and the status of poetry as subject to both aesthetic and moral criteria. Auden had already been attracted to similar ideas in Lawrence, Blake, Freud, and Marx, but those thinkers’ common insistence on the importance of physical existence took on new significance with Auden’s acceptance of the Incarnation as an historical reality. For both Auden and Augustine, the Incarnation was proof that the physical world is redeemable. Auden recognized that if neither the physical world nor the human body are intrinsically evil, then the physical desires of the body, such as Eros, the self-interested survival instinct, cannot in themselves be intrinsically evil. The conflict between Eros and agape, or altruistic love, is not a Manichean struggle of darkness against light, but a struggle for appropriate placement in a hierarchy of values, and Auden derived several ideas about Christian charity from Augustine. Augustine’s influence was largely conscious on Auden’s part, though it was often indirect as well. Auden absorbed important Augustinian ideas through modern sources such as Charles Williams, Charles Norris Cochrane, and Denis de Rougemont, although he was himself an observant and incisive reader of Augustine’s major works, especially the Confessions. This dissertation demonstrates that the works and ideas of Augustine are a deep and significant influence on Auden’s prose and poetry, and especially on his long poems.
Authorized readers : scriptural mediation as spiritual formation in Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love.
(2021-05-21) Kanary, Jonathan, 1984-; Langdell, Sebastian J. (Sebastian James), 1984-
Scholars have long recognized extensive interaction with vernacular biblical material in Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. However, Love’s engagement with Scripture has often been interpreted primarily as restrictive, anti-Lollard polemic, while Hilton’s biblical intertextuality has received relatively little serious study of any kind. This dissertation offers a thorough reevaluation of both Hilton’s and Love’s use of the Bible in their own texts. As I demonstrate, both authors write with an awareness of their expected audiences’ potential limitations, whether spiritual or educational, and both are concerned to fend off the misuse of Scripture that they believe heresy represents. However, I argue that both authors also want to enable readers’ spiritual progress, and that both see Holy Writ as a necessary and foundational source for such progress. Hilton’s Scale contextualizes and interprets biblical material in order to provide access for non-clerical readers, and it offers them a kind of enacted training in lectio divina, or spiritual reading. Likewise, Love’s Mirror is not intended as an orthodox alternative to the Wycliffite Bible, as many scholars assume; nor does its careful construction of a “symple” audience restrict its readers to permanent spiritual childhood. Rather, it uses a variety of techniques to invite readers’ dramatic participation in the biblical scenes it presents, and it empowers them to encounter Christ’s presence directly through devout meditation. Both Hilton and Love thus seek to form their readers for mature engagement with, and fruitful spiritual use of, biblical material. This dissertation consequently offers a new perspective on orthodox responses to the Wycliffite controversy and contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of Holy Writ in late Middle English vernacular spirituality.
Beauty as transcendent in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Rumer Godden.
(2019-05-28) Clark, Sarah Elizabeth, 1985-; Gardner, Kevin J.
Sacramentality—the close interrelation between the spiritual and the physical—plays an important role in the Catholic Church. To most Catholics, almost any object can be a means of receiving the grace of God and entering further into the divine life. This perspective has significant implications for understanding the material world. Rather than seeing physical objects as merely physical, a sacramental view sees the inherent spiritual possibilities of all physical reality. This perspective extends to conceptions of beauty. Instead of seeing beauty as trivial and purely immanent, the authors in this project—Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Rumer Godden—all saw its potential for transcendence. Interestingly, they all had quite different ways of emphasizing beauty’s transcendence in their writing. Waugh accomplished this by focusing on the role of the human person in beauty, especially the human person as it encapsulates both the physical and the spiritual. Greene treated beauty the same way he treated goodness, which gave it the status of a transcendental. Spark demonstrated her awareness of beauty’s transcendence by reclaiming its connection with sublimity. Finally, Godden also recognized beauty’s close connection to sublimity, but she believed that sublimity needed to be kept in check so that it did not compete with God. She offered community as the solution for a love of beauty that leads to a right relationship with God and others. Though in disparate ways, these British Catholic authors all saw beauty as capable of transcendence, as something that has spiritual qualities in addition to its physical ones.
Beneath the surface: psychological perception in Jane Austen's narration.
(2008-06-10T20:02:20Z) Werley, Erin D.; Vitanza, Dianna M.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
This thesis argues that Jane Austen’s novels are more psychologically sophisticated than they have been given credit for and that the psychological depth of her heroines is revealed by Austen’s unique narration. First, I examine episodes in which the characters exhibit behavior that evinces psychological realism. As a basis of comparison, I juxtapose Erik Erikson’s theories of psychosocial developmental stages as evidence of Austen’s intuitive understanding of human behavior. Next, I examine the narratological means by which Austen reveals her characters’ psychological realism. I investigate Austen’s use of subjective phrases and pragmatic signals to reveal the narrator’s presence and her employment of free indirect discourse to reveal her heroines’ psyches.
Between reality and mystery: food as fact and symbol in plays by Ibsen and Churchill.
(2006) Pocock, Stephanie J.; Russell, Richard Rankin.; English.; Baylor University. Dept. of English.
In Henrik Ibsen's and Caryl Churchill's plays, food is both fact and symbol, a reminder of both the shared physicality of the actors and spectators and of an equally powerful human desire for symbolic significance. This thesis examines the depictions of both facets of human consumption in Ibsen's A Doll House and The Wild Duck and Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. By emphasizing the physical hunger and subsequent fulfillment of their characters, the playwrights draw audience and actors together in a community based on the recognition of shared human needs and experiences. Simultaneously, by exploring the variety of symbolic understandings that give those experiences meaning, they create unpredictability, individuality, and creativity. Through this balance, Ibsen and Churchill demonstrate the potential of theatre to construct a site where communities of actors and spectators can continually re-examine the dynamic space between reality and mystery.

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