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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Religion in literature'
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Garay, Gotzone. "The literature review of Penan religion." abstract and full text PDF (free order & download UNR users only), 2006. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:1436022.
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Brown, Timothy A. "Secret religion : surrealism in the new era of religion." Related electronic resource: Current Research at SU : database of SU dissertations, recent titles available, full text:, 2006. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/syr/main.
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Short, Richard Graham. "Religion in Cicero." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10590.
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This study describes the religious content of the Ciceronian corpus and reappraises Cicero’s religious stance. Chapter 1 develops a working definition of religion in terms of interested supernatural agents, briefly situating it within the historiography of religion. Support for this definition from scholars in a range of academic disciplines is demonstrated. It is then engaged in Chapter 2 as a tool with which to locate and classify religious material in the Ciceronian corpus, approaching the texts genre by genre and indicating certain difficulties encountered when seeking to divide the religious from the non-religious. Religion in Cicero now defined, Chapter 3 considers the limitations in scope and methodology of previous research on the topic, arguing that these limitations call for a new approach but also suggest how it should proceed. The corpus must be considered as a whole, with twin objectives: to describe and account for conflicting religious viewpoints within and between individual works, and to establish whether a coherent authorial religious position exists. Cicero generally presents religion as beneficial to society, but never expressly sets out to elucidate the reasoning behind this recurrent proposition or collects in one place those beliefs and practices that are repeatedly advocated. Chapter 4 combines disparate Ciceronian material to show how social utility is thought to accrue and how it is predicated upon a surprisingly large and specific body of religious doctrine. This doctrine amounts to a dominant religious ideology; its operation in practice and its substantial resemblance to Roman orthodoxy are illustrated in Chapter 5, a case study on Cicero’s use of religious rhetoric in connection with the Catilinarian conspiracy. Chapter 6 details the similarities and many conflicts between the dominant religious ideology and the religious viewpoints of the Stoics, Epicureans and Philonian Academics as each school is portrayed by Cicero. Finally, Chapter 7 argues that a coherent authorial attitude to religion is present, which maps closely onto the dominant religious ideology and is characterized by a consistent and spirited endorsement of traditional Roman religion in full awareness of competing rational arguments from Greek philosophy. Some possible explanations for this attitude conclude the study.The Classics
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Lagapa, Jason S. "Inarticulate prayers: Irony and religion in late twentieth-century poetry." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280295.
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Inarticulate Prayers: Irony and Religion in Late Twentieth-Century Poetry examines irony and its implications for religious belief within texts ranging from the New York School Poets to the Language Poets and, in Caribbean literature, within the poems of Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite. Taking Jacques Derrida's distinction between deconstruction and negative theology as a point of departure, I argue that contemporary poets employ ironic language to articulate an ambivalent, and skeptical, system of belief. In "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," Derrida contrasts his theory of differance--as a fundamentally negative and critical mode of inquiry--with negative theology, which ultimately affirms God's being after a process of negation. My study asserts that contemporary poets, in accord with principles of negative theology, engage in inarticulate, self-canceling and negative utterances that nevertheless affirm the possibility of belief and enlightenment. By postulating the affinity between contemporary poets and the apophatic tradition, I explain how the work of these poets, despite often being dismissed as arid exercises in poststructuralist thought, productively draws on linguistic theories and also advances beyond the "negativity" of such theories. Moreover, as it intervenes in recent debates over the absence of a spiritual dimension to contemporary poetry, my dissertation opens new perspectives through which to theorize postmodern literature. Demonstrating that experiments in language and form are driven by an ironic stance towards belief, authorship and literary tradition, Inarticulate Prayers ultimately redefines contemporary lyric and narrative poetry and asserts negation, inarticulateness, and contradiction as determining characteristics of postmodern writing.
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Weimer, David E. "Protestant Institutionalism: Religion, Literature, and Society After the State Church." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493395.
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Even as the Church of England lost ground to political dissent and New England gradually disestablished its state churches early in the nineteenth century, writers on both sides of the debates about church establishments maintained their belief in religion’s role as a moral guide for individuals and the state. “Protestant Institutionalism” argues that writers—from Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe to George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell—imagined through literature the institutions that would produce a religiously sound society as established churches began to lose their authority. Drawing on novels and poems as well as sermons and tracts about how religion might exist apart from the state, I argue that these authors both understood society in terms of institutions and also used their literature to imagine the institutions—such as family, denomination, and nation—that would provide society with a stable foundation. This institutional thinking about society escapes any literary history that accepts Protestant individualism as a given. In fact, although the US and England maintained different relationships between church and state, British authors often looked to US authors for help imagining the society that new forms of religion might produce precisely in terms of these institutions. In the context of disestablishment we can see how the literature of the nineteenth century—and nineteenth-century novels in particular—was about more than the fate of the individual in society. In fact, to different degrees for each author, individual development actually relies on the proper understanding of the individual’s relationship to institutions and the role those institutions play in supporting societyEnglish
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Martinelli, Deena A. "Fundamentalist Christian literature and the perception of womanhood /." View abstract, 1999. http://library.ctstateu.edu/ccsu%5Ftheses/1533.html.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1999.Thesis advisor: Dr Norton Mezvinsky. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." Includes bibliographical references (leaves [79-82]).
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Platt, Verity J. "Epiphany and representation in Graeco-Roman culture : art, literature, religion." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.422525.
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Ellis, Matthew Ryan. "William Wordsworth: Religion and Spirituality." Thesis, Boston College, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/358.
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Thesis advisor: John L. MahoneyAn exploration of the spirituality present in seleceted poems of William Wordsworth. Occasionally reference his personal relationship to and influence of the Anglican Church, but is a study of the way he developed his own spirituality, not an argument for or against his classification as a "Christian poet."
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: English
Discipline: College Honors Program
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Twakkal, Abd Alfatah. "Ka'b al-Ahbar and the Isra'iliyyat in the Tafsir literature." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=18763.
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This thesis seeks to analyse several traditions found in the tafsir works of Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari that relate to Ka'b al-Ahbar and the isra'iliyyat. The purpose of the study is to examine how Ka'b al-Ahbar, an early Jewish convert to Islam, was viewed by his contemporaries, most significantly the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, while considering the complex relationship that exists between Ka'b, the isra'iliyyat and those Companions most famous for narrating them. By examining the relationship between Ka'b and the Companions, including those who were not known to narrate isra'iliyyat, this study will also serve to establish a guideline of what can possibly be attributed to the former regarding his character, sincerity and trustworthiness from his contemporaries, thereby providing a sounder basis for accepting or rejecting critical traits or descriptors that were subsequently ascribed to him by later scholars, especially during the 20th century. Finally, this thesis aims to demonstrate the various factors that need to be taken into account when analyzing those traditions involving Ka'b and/or his sayings as found in the tafsir texts, factors that should equally be considered when approaching such traditions as found in other genres of Islamic literature.Cette thèse a pour objet d'analyser un certain nombre de traditions reliées à Ka'b al-Ahbar et aux isra'iliyyat que l'on retrouve dans les ouvrages de tafsir d'Ibn Kathir et d'al-Tabari. Le but de cette étude est d'examiner comment Ka'b al-Ahbar, un des premiers juifs convertis à l'islam, était perçu par ses contemporains notamment les Compagnons du Prophète Muhammad, tout en considérant la relation complexe existant entre Ka'b, les isra'iliyyat et les Compagnons les mieux connus pour avoir relaté ces traditions. En examinant la relation entre Ka'b et les Compagnons, incluant ceux qui n'étaient pas connus pour avoir relaté des isra'iliyyat, cette étude servira aussi d'indication de ce que l'on peut dire de Ka'b relatif à son caractère, sa sincérité et son honnêteté par l'intermédiaire de ces contemporains. Ce travail fournira aux chercheurs une base plus solide permettant d'accepter ou de rejeter des descriptions ou des traits critiques lui ayant été attribués par des savants plus récents, surtout durant le 20e siècle. Enfin, cette thèse cherche à démontrer les divers facteurs qui doivent être pris en compte dans l'analyse des traditions ayant trait à Ka'b et/ou ses dires qui se trouvent dans les textes de tafsir, facteurs devant également être considérés lorsque l'on aborde de telles traditions dans d'autres genres littéraires islamiques.
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Thompson, Mary-Anne Carey. "Future tense : an analysis of science fiction as secular apocalyptic literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15880.
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Bibliography: leaves 208-219.Religious apocalyptic literature appears to have been written in response to a situation of crisis in which the believers found themselves. It is the catalyst which provided the energy which the society needed in order to withstand that crisis, and it did this by radically inverting the dimensions which make up a worldview, that is the dimensions of time and space, and the classification of groups, so that it reflects the possibility of a new order, a new heaven and a new earth. Since the nineteenth century, the Western world has seen itself in a constant state of crisis in terms of the rapid secularisation, industrialisation and urbanisation, and it would seem that the notion of an apocalypse is still relevant. But religious visions of the apocalypse do not seem to have relevance to the largely secular society they would have been addressing. Something new, immediate and drastic was needed, which would supply the society with the energy to withstand the crisis of a secular world. Science fiction as a literary genre arose in the late nineteenth century, and it would seem as if the new social situation generated a new symbolic vocabulary for ancient apocalyptic themes, in other words, science fiction appeared as an imaginative literary genre of mythic, apocalyptic dimensions to address this situation. In the same way as religious visions of the apocalypse, science fiction inverts the components of a worldview so that a new social order, a new heaven and a new earth are seen as possible. In order to explore this theme, science fiction is examined in the light of radical inversion of accepted worldviews, and the genre is divided into three historical periods in order to understand the conditions under which it was written, as well as the content of the material involved. These periods are: 1. Apocalypses of Expectation and Hope. The late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century; the beginnings of the genre in the crisis of rapid industrialisation, secularisation and urbanisation, using the works of Jules Verne and H G Wells. 2. Apocalypses of Irony and Despair. The nineteen twenties to the end of the Second World War; the crises of the two World Wars on a complacent world, using the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. 3. Apocalypses of Destruction and Redemption. The nineteen fifties to the present; the crisis of nuclear power and thinking machines, using the works of Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. Also examined are the quasi-religious nature of science fiction, apocalypse as a cleansing agent of the universe, and the myths of noble survivors of post-apocalyptic literature and films. In the light of the above, it can be understood why science fiction can be seen as the functional equivalent to religious apocalyptic myth, but relevant to the largely secular Western world of the twentieth century.
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Ashok, Kumar Kuldeep. "Clairvoyance in Jainism: Avadhijñāna in Philosophy, Epistemology and Literature." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3700.
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This thesis is an analytical study of the place of clairvoyance (avadhijñāna) in Jain epistemology and soteriology. It argues that avadhijñāna occupies an ambivalent position regarding both, since it is not solely attained by means of spiritual progression but may also spontaneously arise regardless of a being’s righteousness (samyaktva). Beginning with a survey of descriptions of avadhijñāna in the canons of each sect, including a translation of Nandisūtra 12-28, it examines how commentaries, philosophy and narrative literature developed and elaborated upon avadhijñāna as part of its epistemological system. Further, it examines the nexus of avadhijñāna and karma theory to understand the role of clairvoyance in the cultivation of the three jewels—correct perception, knowledge, and conduct—that lead to liberation (mokṣa). Finally, several examples of clairvoyants from Jain narratives show how clairvoyance reamined an ambivalent tool for virtuous transformation in popular literature.
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Ward, Lowery Nicholas J. L. "Patriarchal negotiations : women, writing and religion 1640-1660." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1994. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1682.
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Women were prominent in the Lollard movement in the fifteenth century, but it is only in the mid-seventeenth century that women begin to produce theological texts which contribute to the controversy over popular religious expression and women's part in religious culture. After 1640 women began to publish on a number of theological issues and in a wide range of genres: prose polemic, prophecy, autobiography and spiritual meditation. Subject to widespread criticism, they quickly had to fashion a rhetoric of justification with which to defend their intervention in print and pacify male critics. This thesis shows that they achieved this in two ways: by producing a literature which complied with the expectations of masculine theological culture and by manipulating these assumptions so as to create space for a female symbolic language of piety. They developed a literary self-consciousness which depends on the idea of subjectivity as a gendered experience and they often resisted their detractors by valorising denigrated forms of female subjectivity and pursuing theological conclusions irrespective of normative ideas of gender. Women did not engage in theological debate in isolation, however. They often intervened as committed members of religious sects and thus deserve to be read as representatives of corporate and communal theologies. In contrast to earlier studies which have sought to recover neglected women writers as early feminists, without reading their work historically, this thesis seeks to uncover the social and the theological rather than the authorial origin of much early modem women's writing and to measure its engagement with early modem debates on women and religious culture. It seeks to challenge the increasingly dominant view of early modem women writers which invests them with too modem an authorial presence, by reconstituting the seventeenth-century debates which gave rise to their work and by bringing modem French feminist perspectives to bear on a period largely untouched by theoretical approaches to literature. To this end it proceeds by way of several close readings of women who wrote as women and as Baptists, Independents, Levellers, Presbyterians and Quakers.
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Malo, Roberta. "Saints' relics in medieval English literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1186329116.
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Curran, Timothy M. "The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature." Scholar Commons, 2018. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7491.
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The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature posits religious medievalism as one among many critical paradigms through which we might better understand literary efforts to bring notions of sanctity back into the modern world. As a cultural and artistic practice, medievalism processes the loss of medieval forms of understanding in the modern imagination and resuscitates these lost forms in new and imaginative ways to serve the purposes of the present. My dissertation proposes religious medievalism as a critical method that decodes modern texts’ lamentations over a perceived loss of the sacred. My project locates textual moments in select works of John Keats, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde that reveal concern over the consequences of modern dualism. It examines the ways in which these texts participate in a process of rejoining to enchant a rationalistic epistemology that stymies transcendental unity. I identify the body of Christ, the central organizing principle of medieval devotion, as the cynosure of nineteenth-century religious medievalism. This body offers a non-dualistic alternative that retroactively undermines and heals Cartesian divisions of mind and body and Kantian distinctions between noumenal and knowable realities. Inscribing the dynamic contours of the medieval religious body into a text’s linguistic structure, a method I call the “medievalizing process,” underscores the spiritual dimensions of its reform efforts and throws into relief a distinctly religious, collective agenda that undergirds many nineteenth-century texts.
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Dubrau, Alexander. "Shmuel Safrai u.a. [Hg.], The literature of the sages, second part: Midrash and Targum, liturgy, poetry, mysticism, contracts, inscriptions, ancient science and the languages of rabbinic literature / [rezensiert von] Alexander Dubrau." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/2235/.
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Rezensiertes Werk:
The literature of the sages : second part; Midrash and Targum; Liturgy,
poetry, mysticism, contracts, inscriptions, ancient science and the languages
of rabbinic literature / Shmuel Safrai ... [Hg.]. - Assen : Royal Van Gorcum/Fortress Press, 2006. - XVII, 722 S. - (= Compendia rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, Section 2: 3/2)
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Avni, D. B. "Troubles in Irish writing and the influence of politics and religion." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10032.
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Includes bibliographical referencesIt appeared to me that the differences and a particular atmosphere I found in Irish writing were due to more than the syntax of Hyberno-English. I was curious and to investigate further I returned to university to add English literature as a major to an existing degree in Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics and the relevant ancillaries. The literary approach to the few - mostly Anglo-Irish - writers on which single courses were offered left my questions mostly unanswered. My own research continue along historical and psycho-sociocultural lines. I believe this approach discovered what I sought.
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Kenning, Douglas W. "A failed religion : necessity and freedom in the Romantic poets." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/19007.
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Canning, P. "Language, literature and religion : The stylistics of 'ideoloatry' in early modern England." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.517242.
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Peter, Dass Rakesh. "Language and Religion in Modern India: The Vernacular Literature of Hindi Christians." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:32108297.
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A persistent interest in a particular type of Christian witness is found in a substantial amount of Hindi-language Protestant (hereafter, ‘Hindi Christian’) literature in modern India. Across a range of texts like Hindi translations of the Bible, theo-ethical works, hymns, biblical commentaries, and poems, this literature calls attention to a form of Christian witness or discipleship that both is credible and recognizable and is public.
This witness aims to be credibly Christian: as I will show, Hindi Christian texts have regularly rejected a Hindu concept like avătār in favor of a neologism like dehădhāran to communicate a Christian notion of incarnation in a predominantly Hindu context. Yet, the variety of polytradition (or, shared) words found in Hindi Christian texts suggests a comfort with loose religious boundaries. The witness aims also to be recognizably Christian. For instance, Hindi Christian texts on theology and ethics persistently reflect on a virtuous Christian life with a view toward perceptions in multifaith contexts. Perceptions of Christians matter to the authors of these texts. The attention to Christian witness in such literature, then, is to a very public form of witness. A reading of the works of three prominent Hindi Christian scholars – Benjamin Khan, Din Dayal, and Richard Howell – will show how a focus on the pluralistic context of Hindi Christian witness has shaped influential texts on ethics, theology, and evangelism in Hindi.
This dissertation is a first attempt in the academy of religion to study Hindi Christian texts in modern India. As a result, it seeks to achieve two goals: provide an introduction to Hindi Christian literature, and understand a prominent theme found in such literature. It is by no means an exhaustive study of Hindi Christian literature. Rather, it maps a literary landscape and subjects one trope therein to further examination. Protestant Christian literature in India has generally portrayed the purpose of Christian discipleship in two ways: by describing it as a response to salvific grace and by denying it is works righteousness. Hindi Christian texts shed light on another rationale: to present a credible and recognizable witness in a multifaith public context.
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Mullan, Stephen. ""An atheist's religion" : Richard Rorty and the "De-divinization" of modern literature." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.501385.
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Kim, Young-Ho. "People's tradition of religious education /." Access Digital Full Text version, 1991. http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/bybib/11169321.
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Thesis (Ed.D.) -- Teachers College, Columbia University, 1991.Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Douglas M. Sloan. Dissertation Committee: William B. Kennedy. Includes bibliographical references: (leaf 139-143).
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Anderson, David. "Violence against the sacred: tragedy and religion in early modern England." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32544.
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This dissertation argues that the tragedy of the English Renaissance reflects the religious culture of the era in its depiction of sacrificial violence. It contests New Historicist assumptions about both the relationship between religion and politics, and the relationship between religion and literature, by arguing that the tragedians were reflecting the Girardian sacrificial crisis that characterized martyr executions in the sixteenth century and which was fuelled by uncertainty within the church over the issue of violence. Chapter One develops the historical framework. It begins by surveying the history of Protestant and Catholic martyrdom in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It then traces the doctrine of the persecuted church—the recovered New Testament sense that the true church is necessarily a persecuted minority that suffers for Christ's sake—in various religious writers of the period. The most important of these writers is the martyrologist John Foxe, who fostered an anti-sacrificial strain of Christianity from within the national church. Finally, I discuss how this victim-centred theology disrupted consensus at religious executions, offering an emotional template that the tragedians exploited. Each of the three subsequent chapters is devoted to a different tragedian. Chapter Two discusses William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play which is radical in its sympathy for the sacrificial victim. King Lear shows no particular faith in Christian redemption, but in this very lack of transcendence it demystifies and condemns sacrificial violence. Chapter Three is devoted to John Webster's two tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Here, theNotre thèse soutient l'idée que la tragédie de la renaissance anglaise reflète la culture religieuse de l'époque dans son évocation de la violence sacrificielle. Elle conteste les présupposés du néo-historicisme à l'égard de la relation entre la religion et la politique et entre la religion et la littérature, en proposant que les dramaturges exprimaient à travers leurs tragédies une crise sacrificielle girardienne qui caractérisait les exécutions des martyres au seizième siècle et qui était alimentée par une crise de conscience par rapport à la violence qui s'exprimait au sein même de l'église. Le premier chapitre fait état du contexte historique. Nous nous intéressons d'abord à l'histoire des martyres protestants et catholiques au seizième et au début du dix-septième siècles. Nous détaillons ensuite la doctrine de l'église persécutée, c'est à dire la conviction issue du nouveau testament que la véritable église est nécessairement une minorité persécutée au nom du Christ, au travers des écrits de nombreux écrivains de l'époque. Figure illustre parmi ces écrivains, le martyrologue John Foxe cultivait une tendance anti-sacrificielle au sein de l'église nationale. Nous examinons enfin comment cette théologie centrée sur la victime bouleversa le consensus face aux exécutions religieuses, en présentant un champ émotionnel exploité par les dramaturges tragiques. Chacun des trois chapitres suivants se consacre à un différent dramaturge. Le deuxième chapitre aborde King Lear de Shakespeare qui se distingue précisément par la compassion qui y est manifestée pour la victime sacrificielle. King Lear ne fait preuve d'aucune
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Bates, David Christopher. "Religion and the sacred in the works of Haruki Murakami." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/192981.
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This dissertation demonstrates how the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami infuses religious concepts and sacred motifs into his works, generally through surreal events and otherworldly encounters that defy purely realist interpretations. The literary use of these images and themes encourage the author’s unique stylistic mood as well as subsequent magic realist readings, where everyday occurrences are interjected by providential asides and often overt references to the supernatural.
This study of Murakami also helps to demonstrate how his postmodern works might be viewed in light of widely accepted narratives from varying religions. Certain trends are established in Murakami, especially via themes like isolation and loneliness, which help replace the traditional search for God with an internal quest for meaning through investigations of identity. This is especially accomplished using the Japanese I-Novel form. The addition of dreams and alternative realities, another common topic, represent other worlds in his fiction that mask Heaven and Hell. The sacred is also habitually linked with the profane and cultish behaviour, casting traditional religious concepts in a negative light.
Throughout his career, Murakami has often incorporated a range of ideas from all manner of religious systems, specifically Buddhism, Christianity, and folk mythology. This dissertation, then, addresses a range of critical views on Murakami's fiction, especially considering thematic shifts in later works like 1Q84, which feature concepts of religion and the sacred in a more blatant way.published_or_final_version
English Studies
Master
Master of Arts
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Meyers, Jeanne Marie Gillespie. "World views in literature a Christian awareness and interposition /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1987. http://www.tren.com.
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Bushelle, Ethan David. "The Joy of the Dharma: Esoteric Buddhism and the Early Medieval Transformation of Japanese Literature." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467509.
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This dissertation explores the nexus between Buddhism and literature in Japan’s early medieval period. Specifically, it elucidates the process by which forms of court literature such as Chinese-language verse (kanshi), Japanese poetry (waka), and romance tales (monogatari) were incorporated into Buddhist rites and liturgies from the tenth through twelfth centuries and attempts to show how this process supported and was supported by Esoteric Buddhist discourse. I call special attention to a discourse on ritual performance that understands the chanting of a mantra, hymn, or poem as an act of giving the joy of the Dharma (hōraku) to the kami and buddhas. By attending to this discourse and the rituals through which it was articulated, this dissertation sheds light on the doctrinal reasons why and the practical paths by which even literary genres that were considered to be “worldly” such as nature poetry, love poetry, and romance tales were reconceived as vehicles for offering the joy of the Buddha’s teachings.
The three body chapters examine a variety of rites and liturgies intended for a lay audience—often called “Dharma assemblies” (hōe) in Japanese-language scholarship—and endeavor to demonstrate how they contributed to key transformations in Japanese literature. Chapter 1 investigates the liturgy of the lecture assembly (kō-e) at Shinto shrines and elucidates how it shaped the formation of a key genre of medieval Japanese poetry called “Dharma joy” waka (hōraku waka). Chapter 2 analyzes repentance rites dedicated to Fugen (Sk. Samantabhadra) bodhisattva and considers their impact on the invention of Buddhist love poetry. Finally, Chapter 3 looks at sutra-offering ceremonies and clarifies their role in the consecration of the exemplary Heian-period romance tale, The Tale of Genji, and the imagination of its author, Murasaki Shikibu.
In addition to situating a particular transformation of court literature in its ritual context, each chapter also locates a given example of ritual in its discursive locus. I show that at the center of this locus lies a system of Esoteric Buddhist doctrine and ritual concerned with demonstrating the identity of the esoteric teachings (mikkyō) with those of the Lotus Sūtra. Terming this system “Lotus-Esoteric discourse,” I show how it provided the epistemic framework for the practice of using a mantra, hymn, or poem as a medium for giving the joy of the Dharma to others, rather than receiving it for oneself (jiju hōraku), as was stressed in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism of the late ancient period.
In short, through its attention to Lotus-Esoteric discourse on Dharma joy, this study offers a corrective to an over-emphasis on the liturgical formula of “wild words and fanciful phrases” (kyōgen kigo), which has been the focus of many previous studies on the relationship between Buddhism and medieval Japanese literature, and clarifies the concrete discursive strategies and ritual practices by which Buddhism in early medieval Japan consecrated new liturgical uses for three representative genres of court literature—kanshi verse, waka poetry, and monogatari tales. In this way, it endeavors to show how Buddhist discourse on Dharma joy—in both its doctrinal and ritual dimensions—may constitute a new paradigm for understanding the early medieval transformation of Japanese literature.East Asian Languages and Civilizations
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Gilmour, Michael J. "The significance of parallels between 2 Peter and other early Christian literature /." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36794.
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Historians working with texts often experience a tension in their work. On the one hand there are questions raised by ancient documents. On the other, limited data makes it impossible to answer these questions with certainty. Second Peter illustrates both phenomena and as a result there is a proliferation of theories about its origin. It is used therefore as a test case in this dissertation which is primarily concerned with historical methodology. Scholars have questioned the authorship of 2 Peter since at least the second century and there remains to this day no consensus about such issues as date of composition, provenance, and destination. In short, fixing a precise historical location for 2 Peter is impossible because of a lack of evidence. To compensate for such historical gaps, scholarship has developed various theories that allow for tentative conclusions about where this and other writings best fit within early Christianity.In many cases literary parallels have played a role in both developing and defending such theories. By observing similarities between texts (and put negatively, by observing how texts differ from one another---the absence of parallels) a variety of conclusions may be reached: one writing borrowed from another, writings that share a theological perspective belong to the same period of history, writings derive from a school, and so on.
This dissertation analyses several examples of how 2 Peter specifically is located using parallels as a basis. It is argued for a number of reasons that this 'tool' is not reliable and so, to assist with historical research, a series of criteria are given. These are provided as guidelines to help historians evaluate literary parallels and also to safeguard against inappropriate conclusions based on them. With respect to 2 Peter, it is argued that firm answers are out of reach for various questions given the available data.
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Riveroll, Jesus R. de Lima. "The post/colonial Caribbean novel 1925-1945 : 'race', religion and national culture." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.266608.
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Casey, John J. "An apostate instauration : religion, moral vision and humanism in modern science fiction." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 1989. http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23759.
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Since the characteristic logicality of most science fiction can overshadow its debt to Romantic, or more properly, Gothic literature, the humanistic 'science fiction of aspiration' is a rather neglected element of the genre. This study offers evidence of a distinctive, often quite fundamental current of Gothic feeling which runs through some early science fiction; and traces the changing presentation of scientific materialism and the first strains of anticlericalism in later texts. As religious writers also have used the themes and conventions of science fiction astutely in attacking 'profane' science and 'secular' morality, especially in the context of the scientific or materialistic 'utopia', their stories are of considerable interest and are also discussed in detail. A reader by turns reminded of human sinfulness and then again confronted with the imputed inadequacies which the Romantic humanist seeks to transcend may well wonder why religion and science clash so recurrently in science fiction. The provenances, contexts and discourse of the moral perspectives which are commonly encountered in this popular genre are identified and discussed. These are particulary significant in the light of the apostate quality of humanistic texts, and their teleological concerns. Several influential critiques of institutionalised religion and clerical hypocrisy are examined fully; they reveal how the central device of the factitious religion developed from its generic beginnings in Butler's first satire, Erewhon, and emerged as a distinctive feature of science fiction. From the outset, the utilization of Faustian, Promethean and Messianic protagonists in this 'science fiction of aspiration' is scrutinised. Other intertextual features, whether conceptual, structural or thematic, are also elucidated. The study concludes with an examination of the most hubristic, sublime and teleological of the many themes of contemporary science fiction: the self-transcendence of man, the ultimate fulfilment of humanistic aspiration.
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Kindt, Julia Christine. "The Delphic Oracles : a poetics of futures past between history, literature, and religion." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.620000.
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Tann, Donovan Eugene. "Spaces of Religious Retreat in Seventeenth-Century English Literature and Culture." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2014. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/277961.
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EnglishPh.D.
Religious spaces are inextricably bound to the seventeenth century's most challenging theological and epistemological questions. In my dissertation, I argue that seventeenth-century writers represent specifically religious spaces as testing grounds for contemporary theological and philosophical debates about the material foundations of religious knowledge and the epistemological foundations of religious community. By examining how religious concerns shape the period's construction of literary spaces, I contend that religion's developing privacy reflects this previously unexamined conversation about religious knowledge and communal belief. My focus on the central theological and philosophical ideas that shape these literary texts demonstrates how this ongoing conversation about religious space contributes to the increasingly individuated character of religious knowledge at the beginning of the long eighteenth century and shapes the history of religion's social dimension. I explore this conversation in two distinct parts. I first examine those writers who contend with new sensory and experiential bases of religious belief as they represent dedicated religious spaces. After considering how Nicholas Ferrar's family pursues religious knowledge through dedicated religious spaces, I argue that John Milton's Paradise Regained evaluates competing bases of religious knowledge through an extended debate about religious space and knowledge. Finally, I contend that Margaret Cavendish transforms an imagined convent space into an argument that nature serves as the sole source of religious knowledge. In the second part, I examine writers who contend with the social consequences of individual accounts of religious knowledge. The sequel to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress articulates the writer's struggle to reconcile an individual epistemology with the concerns of the religious community. Like Bunyan, Mary Astell seeks to unify individual believers with her proposal for a rationally persuasive Cartesian religion. Finally, William Penn relies on the solitary space of the conscience in his advertisements for Pennsylvania. As these writers seek to reconcile the individual's role in the production of religious knowledge with religion's social manifestations, they associate religious belief and practice with increasingly private, bounded constructions of space. These complex articulations of religion's place in the world play a significant role in religion's developing spatial privacy by the end of the seventeenth century.
Temple University--Theses
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Lindgren-Hansen, Kaitlyn. "Unsettling religion: anger and race in The bondwoman's narrative." Thesis, University of Iowa, 2019. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6790.
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This thesis examines the clash of seemingly dissonant passages in Hannah Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative to consider how the text can and should anger the reader through the juxtaposition of multiple literary genres. In particular, the placement of scenes of gothic horror alongside expressions of piety unsettles the reader, forcing them to confront a complex array of social institutions (slavery, racism, religion, and the justice system) and their own complicity in those systems. Drawing on philosophical analyses of the structure and the morality of emotion, I argue that the text is intended to elicit anger that is both moderated by reason and rooted in love. I contest the notion that anger necessarily includes a problematic desire for payback and suggest that the desire that accompanies anger is better conceptualized as a desire for recognition of an injury that may include payback but is not fixated on payback. My reading of The Bondwoman’s Narrative contests multiple claims that the moments of dissonance in the text were a result of the author’s lack of skill. Instead, I posit that these juxtapositions are intentional and seek to engage the reader in a process of ethical formation that literature is uniquely able to provide. Anger is an essential part of the formation process, pushing the reader to consider their own complicity in injustice and to work to change unjust social systems.
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Cobb, Michael L. "Racial blasphemies : religious irreverence and race in American literature /." New York : Routledge, 2005. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39232188k.
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James, Robin G. "Politics, religion and philosophy in the poetry of George Chapman (c. 1559 - 1634)." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.339630.
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Sanders, Adam K. "Mimetic Transformations of Sacred Symbols: Christianity in Appalachian Literature." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2005. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1009.
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Though many representations of Appalachian religious practices describe conservative, stagnant, xenophobic, and backward traditions, some authors present Christian practices in Appalachia as a potential source of social and individual progressiveness. Denise Giardina in Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth, Jim Wayne Miller in "Brier Sermon: 'You Must Be Born Again,'" and Lee Smith in Fair and Tender Ladies all represent "mountain religion" practices that offer relevancy not only to the characters in the novel but also to the reader. Analysis of these works through their symbolic representations of uniquely Appalachian religious traditions reveals the authors' commitment to sacralizing social and individual struggle through the sacred and mimetic transformations of characters and communities. By reusing and reinterpreting sacred patterns, both biblical and more contemporary regional patterns, the authors associate their works with sacred and regional traditions, demonstrating the viability, the flexibility, and the vitality of regional religious practices.
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Scott-Coe, Justin M. "Covenant Nation: The Politics of Grace in Early American Literature." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/45.
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The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an overview of recent attempts to integrate theology and theory, specifically comparing Jacques Derrida and Zizek to better understand the latter's theology of materialism which relies on as well as informs the Reformed Protestant covenantal dichotomy of grace and works. The second chapter establishes the complicated architecture of the covenant concept within seventeenth-century New England Reformed Protestantism, and uses church membership transcripts along with Ann Hutchinson court trial documents to demonstrate how this inherently unstable theology created unintended slippage between God's grace and mankind's works, resulting in a theological formulation remarkably open to Zizek's analysis of political ideology. The third chapter demonstrates how Jonathan Edwards, through his ingenious counter-argument in Freedom of Will, provides a theoretical foundation for an uneasy but necessary alignment of the covenants of works and grace, releasing the subjunctive potential of grace to operate through history as a predeterminer of meaning and, potentially, freedom. In the last chapter, I argue that Emerson finally converts the covenant from a politically conceptualized theological framework for radical grace into a personal institutionalization of grace itself. Stanley Cavell's exploration of Emerson's "constitution" in light of the covenant motif demonstrates the political (im)possibilities inherent in America's self-conceptions of personal liberty and civic equality. In the end, complexities inherent in the concept of the covenant, especially its creative failure to control the radical nature of "grace," are determinative factors in our contradictory American egalitarian ideals.
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Wilkinson, Alexander S. "Mary Queen of Scots in the polemical literature of the French Wars of Religion." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2737.
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The French Wars of Religion were more than a battle for outright military victory. They were also a battle for the hearts and minds of the population of France. In this struggle to win over public opinion, often apparently peripheral or collateral issues could be engaged to make partisan points. Such was the case with the polemical literature surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Mary was a very French figure. But Mary's complex career- her brief marriage to the dauphin Francois, her adoption of a tolerant religious policy in Scotland, her implication in the murder of her husband, and her imprisonment and execution at the hands of a Protestant monarch - inevitably made her an ambiguous subject for polemicists, Catholic and Huguenot alike. Based on a bibliographic survey of over four hundred and twenty sixteenth century editions in French relative to the Queen, and extensive reading of these works, this study explores both the general contours and finer detail of French public interest in the Queen of Scots. Chapter one discusses the shifting historical relationship between Mary and France, while chapters two and three deal with the steady stream of Catholic and Huguenot publications relating to Mary that appeared in the public domain between 1548 and 1586. The heart of this study, however, can be found in its final two chapters, which deal with the polemical literature that poured off the presses in response to the execution or martyrdom of Mary. These chapters investigate the interface between the printed word and other media in the Catholic response to the 'tragedy' of Fotheringhay, and examine the many facets of the image of the martyred Queen. The martyrdom of the Queen of Scots and dowager Queen of France became one of the most prominent themes in the propaganda of the Catholic League. Over one fifth of Catholic polemic in the period 1587-1588 touched on the event, contributing to the radicalisation of popular opinion against the king of France, Henri III.
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Carter, Christopher Richards. "Springing from the Same Root: Religion and Art in the Fiction of Willa Cather." W&M ScholarWorks, 1991. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625670.
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Dawkins, Sabrina Y. "Postmodernity and the history of African American religious representations a Foucauldian approach /." Greensboro, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. http://libres.uncg.edu/edocs/etd/1505Dawkins/umi-uncg-1505.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Mar. 11, 2008). Directed by Steven R. Cureton; submitted to the Dept. of Sociology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-115).
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Rep, Marco. "Jewish Religion on Trial : Understanding Isaac Babel’s Short Story "Karl-Yankel"." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Ryska, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-29358.
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The subject of this thesis is the short story "Карл-Янкель" ("Karl-Yankel") by Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel (1894‒1940), published in 1931. The story depicts a trial following the cir-cumcision of a boy against his parents’ will, and thus directly addresses issues of high relevance at the time, namely the transformations of religious life in the early years of the Soviet Union. Firstly, I have analyzed the references to Jewish culture that appear in the story. Further on, drawing on research by other scholars, I have examined the shift of the traditional Jew into a Soviet Jew—a highly secular subject deeply involved in the socialist society and far removed from the traditions of the Pale of Settlement. Lastly, I have studied the narrator’s perspective, which, being far from objective, plays a major role in portraying the trial and is of key im-portance for understanding the transformation of Jewish life that occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. At the end of the story, the narrator deprives the reader of the verdict and gives in-stead his attention to the circumcised boy. I argue that he thus focused on the future rather than on the conflict between tradition and secularism.
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Pereira, Rosemeire França de Assis Rodrigues. "O letrado e o óbolo - Vieira e a justificação da pobreza." Universidade de São Paulo, 2012. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8149/tde-08112012-121049/.
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A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar os escritos do jesuíta Antônio Vieira a partir do recorte temático da pobreza e de sua estreita ligação com o pensamento religioso vigente. Considerando o grande volume de escritos, tanto sermões quanto epístolas e apontamentos históricos, selecionamos aqueles que mantêm relação mais próxima com o tema proposto. A fim de discutirmos essa problemática, buscamos historiadores que discorreram sobre o século XVII, abordando prioritariamente a questão da pobreza, da indigência e da bastardia. A ligação dos discursos históricos e documentais com outros escritos do autor nos revelou as dinâmicas das sociedades gestadas pelos portugueses e a tentativa desses de se inserirem na modernidade, repensando a organização econômica e redesenhando o panorama social de Portugal.This research aims to analyze the writings of the Jesuit Antonio Vieira about poverty, inasmuch they are related to religious thoughts in that period. Considering the quantity of writings, either speeches or letters, we have selected those ones keeping closer relationships to that theme. Discussing this issue, we have researched about XVII Century, focusing mainly the poverty, misery and bastardy. The close relationships of historical and documental speeches to Vieiras writings reveal us how was the society managed by the Portuguese and how they tried to insert themselves in the Modernity, rethinking the economical organization and redrawing the social panorama in Portugal.
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Phillips, Marion Jane. "Charlotte Bronte's concepts of transcendence and of authority in religion as manifested in her correspondence." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1991. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/charlotte-brontes-concepts-of-transcendence-and-of-authority-in-religion-as-manifested-in-her-correspondence(ce24cb7e-bdbd-4d80-8f6d-989de33888fc).html.
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Jany, Ursula Berit. "Heresy or Ideal Society? A Study of Early Anabaptism as Minority Religion in German Fiction." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1370895011.
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Carvalho, Karla Duarte. "Das narrativas maravilhosas do oriente às narrativas do ocidente um perfil da influência muçulmana na construção do universo feminino medieval ibérico." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2012. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=4467.
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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível SuperiorAo longo do processo histórico nas culturas ocidentais e orientais o papel feminino esteve relegado ao segundo plano. Tanto a religião quanto a tradição oral tiveram papéis primordiais no aprisionamento do feminino no quarto escuro da História. A teoria da mulher como origem e potência do mal remonta à antiguidade. Muitos historiadores acreditam na existência de sociedades matriarcais que foram desarticuladas pelas sociedades patriarcais. O universo feminino foi, e ainda é na atualidade, um grande enigma para os homens.A presente dissertação tem o objetivo de demonstrar a importância da religião, dos mitos, lendas e contos na construção da figura feminina medieval, para isso, abordaremos como a tradição oral em conjunto com as religiões patriarcais reforçou a ideia da mulher como origem e potência do mal. Recorremos a aspectos históricos, religiosos e literários, procuramos por intermédio de a Bíblia Sagrada e de O Corão entender a influência religiosa, além de verificarmos quais os aspectos históricos que tiveram relevância na perpetuação da misoginia e a ainda como a tradição oral teve a sua cota na construção desse universo misógino. Tentamos compreender como se deu a conexão entre tradição oral e religião na formulação da figura feminina e o porquê dessa mulher ter historicamente uma posição desprivilegiada diante de determinadas culturas
Throughout the historical process in the occidental and eastern cultures the feminine paper was relegated to as the plain one. As much the religion how much the verbal tradition had had primordial papers in the capture of the feminine one in the dark room of History. The theory of the woman as origin and power of the evil retraces the antiquity. Many historians believe the existence of matriarchal societies that had been disarticulated by the patriarchal societies. The feminine universe was, and still it is in the present time, still it is in the present time, a great enigma for the men. The present dissertation has the objective to demonstrate the importance of the religion, of myths, legends and stories in the construction of the medieval feminine figure, for this, we will approach as the verbal tradition in set with the patriarchal religions strengthened the idea of the woman as origin and power of the evil. We appeal the historical, religious and literary aspects, look for intermediary of The Hole Bible and The Koran to understand the influence religious, beyond verifying which the historical aspects that had still had relevance in the perpetuation of the misogyny and as the verbal tradition had its quota in the construction of this misogynist universe. We try to understand as if it gave to the connection between verbal tradition and religion in the formularization of the feminine figure and why of this woman to have historically underprivileged position ahead of determined cultures
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Yoo, Baekyun. "Religion and Politics in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1997. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278080/.
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Previous critics have paid insufficient attention to the political implications of Yeats's life-long preoccupation with a wide range of Western and Eastern religious traditions. Though he always preserved some skepticism about mysticism's ability to reshape the material world, the early Yeats valued the mystical idea of oneness in part because he hoped (mistakenly, as it turned out) that such oneness would bring Catholic and Protestant Ireland together in a way that might make the goals of Irish nationalism easier to accomplish. Yeats's celebration of mystical oneness does not reflect a pseudo-fascistic commitment to a static, oppressive unity. Like most mystics—and most modernists—Yeats conceived of both religious and political oneness not as a final end but rather as an ongoing process, a "way of happening" (as Auden put it).
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Dollimore, Jonathan. "Radical tragedy : religion, ideology and power in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1985. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/53cbc055-2f12-417b-bf0b-22329cadfb23/1/.
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PART I: Literary criticism in the twentieth century has sometimes shown that Jacobean drama challenged religious orthodoxy. The aim of this thesis is to show that this challenge was bound up with other, equally subversive concerns: a critique of ideology and a struggle to demystify political and power relations. In the tragedy here described as radical, power is identified in its complex manifestations and relations, and in its equally complex ideological misrepresentations. This section concludes with a study of three plays which exemplify this radicalism: Marston's Antonio plays and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. PART II: The sceptical interrogation of providentialist belief finds expression in structuralist disjunction rather than teleological development, realist rather than idealist mimesis. These themes are explored in relation to twentieth century and then Renaissance literary theory, theological controversy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and then through analyses of Dr. Faustus, Mustapha, Sejanus and The Revenger's Tragedy. PART III. In undermining the purposive and teleologically integrated universe envisioned by providentialists, these playwrights necessarily subverted its corollary: the unitary human subject harmoniously positioned at the centre of the cosmic design. Hence the Jacobean anti-hero: malcontented, dispossessed, satirical and vengeful; at once the agent and victim of social corruption, condemning yet simultaneously contaminated by it; made up of inconsistencies and contradictions which, because they cannot be understood in terms of individuality alone, constantly pressure attention outwards to the conditions of the protagonist'ssocial existence. The Jacobean malcontent is a decentred subject, the bearer of a subjectivity which is not the antithesis of social process but its focus, in particular the focus of political, social and ideological contradictions. Plays analysed in this section are Bussy D'Ambois, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and The White Devil. PART IV. This section of the thesis makes explicit the materialist theory on which it draws---including that of Marx, Brecht, and Foucault---and seeks to contest the dominant tradition of idealism in literary erticism, especially its misrepresenation of subjectivity and social process in the early seventeenth century.
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Jönsson, Robert. "Literature for the Intercultural Classroom : Discussing Ethnocentric Issues Using The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-41525.
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Abstract This essay takes as its starting point that the Swedish classroom often is an intercultural environment and that it is therefore important to address issues connected to ethnocentrism in it. In this essay I examine how the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid can be used in schools to raise such ethnocentric issues. The novel’s didactic potential becomes clear by capturing some of the views held by the book’s protagonist as an alternative to Western ethnocentric concepts. Furthermore, the ambiguity of the novel allows for students to reflect on the identification processes that produce ethnocentrism. The power of nostalgia is also discussed in this essay, and with it nostalgia’s possibly alluring, yet counterproductive qualities. Together, these topics and themes from The Reluctant Fundamentalist combine to illuminate a use of literature within the context of intercultural education. Keywords: Intercultural education, Ethnocentrism, Calvinism, Islam, Capitalism.Dominant cultures exist in many different guises, yet may function almost invariably in symbiosis with double standards and discrimination. However, these acts are often only recognised by those being subjected to them, not by those practising the same. Selective concern and empathy depending on who the practitioners happen to be, as well as who the recipients of said acts are, actually helps to illustrate the precise definitions of these terms.
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Wilkes, Kristin. "God and the Novel: Religion and Secularization in Antebellum American Fiction." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/18713.
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My dissertation argues that the study of antebellum American religious novels is hindered by the secularization narrative, the widely held conviction that modernity entails the decline of religion. Because this narrative has been refuted by the growing field of secularization theory and because the novel is associated with modernity, the novel form must be reexamined. Specifically, I challenge the common definition of the novel as a secular form.
By investigating novels by Lydia Maria Child, Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Hannah Bond, I show that religion and the novel form are not opposed. In fact, scholars' unexamined and unacknowledged definitions of religion and secularity cause imprecision. For example, the Marxist definition of religion as ideology causes misrepresentations of novels with evangelical purposes, such as Warner's The Wide, Wide World and Bond's The Bondwoman's Narrative. Both novels feature protagonists who submit--one to patriarchy and the other to slavery--a stance that appears masochistic to feminist scholars and critics of slave narratives, respectively. However, attending to the biblical allusions, divine interventions, and theological arguments that saturate these texts places them in another framework altogether and reveals that they are commenting not on one's relationship with other humans but with God.
Likewise, unexamined definitions of the secular are problematic because critics often conflate two definitions: the etymological sense of "earthly" and the modern sense of "anti-religious." This slippage underlies the view that religious literature of the nineteenth century became less religious, when it simply became more grounded in daily life. Therefore, to label as "secular" an author like Stowe, who promoted an earthly, lived Christianity, is only accurate if one means "mundane."
Finally, my dissertation demonstrates that literary criticism itself relies on the secularization narrative, perceiving itself as modern and progressive. This reliance obscures the role literature has played in constructing this narrative. For example, colonial novels like Hobomok and The Scarlet Letter rewrite American religious history to exclude Calvinism. Noting how our investment in secularity has delimited interpretive possibilities, this project opens the way for increased clarity in the study of religion in literature.
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Acker, John Thomas. "Surrogate Scriptures: American Christian Bestsellers and the Bible, 1850-1900." The Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1500571519102149.
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Husain, Taneem. "Empty Diversity in Muslim America: Religion, Race, and the Politics of U.S. Inclusion." The Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1433503511.
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Skeen, Autumn Alexander. "Compassion as catalyst| The literary manifestations of Murakami Haruki's transformation from Underground to Kafka on the Shore." Thesis, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10020164.
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Murakami Haruki's primary readership consists of Japan's four million born between 1978 and 1990—an Ice Age of hiring freezes and layoffs. Murakami's cynical antiheroes modeled a blasé and passive cool. Japanese youth assimilated his tenor and tone. A moral struggle was missing. Following Tokyo's 1995 cult-instigated gas attacks, the repatriating author delved into his 1997-98 reportage, Underground. Despairing apocalyptic outlooks among the economically abandoned respondents rocked Murakami's insularity. The shock engendered his unprecedented compassion.
This thesis arises from phenomena revealed by current events' intersection with moral philosophy and disposition theory. This thesis claims that Murakami's compassion for Japan's stymied youth triggered his transformation from creating detrimental art to work of engaged responsibility, and that his moral turn manifests first as the 2002 didactic novel, Kafka on the Shore. Murakami's ensuing integration of moral values in his postmodernist narratives has led to the short-list for the Nobel Prize.